Mining companies leave many Queensland farmers' land barren and broken. When they go belly up who pays for rehabilitation?

'I just want them to pay up what they owe me, rehab that country and get the hell out of here,' says farmer Patricia GoodwinSandstone cliffs rise from the brigalow scrub around the tin and timber farmhouse of Patricia Goodwin at the back of Bluff, a tiny town in the central Queensland highlands.One ridge stands out from the rest. Stripped of all vegetation, the blacks and browns of its earthen ramparts loom over the landscape like the citadel of a Mad Max warlord. This is no natural formation - it is the spoil of an open cut metallurgical coalmine. Continue reading...