Forty-one Year 5 students from Singleton’s King Street Primary School visited the Glencore site this month as part of the dialogue’s initiative, which will see an estimated 1000 Year 5 and Year 9 pupils from Upper Hunter schools tour mine sites in 2018.

The King Street Primary students were amazed by Mt Owen Mine’s sheer size as they got up close to massive mine machinery as well as gained a bird’s eye view of the open cut mining operations in action from the mine’s lookout.

As well as touring the site, the Year 5 pupils also saw a presentation which explained in detail the entire mining process from exploration to the end of a mine’s life including uses of coal, impacts of mining and how mined land is rehabilitated.

This year the dialogue’s Mine Tours Program has 27 individual tours scheduled with students from 18 participating Upper Hunter schools visiting 13 different mine sites across the region.

The tours program aims to offer a fact-based, first-hand educational experience to teach local students about the impacts and benefits of coal mining in the Upper Hunter.

The dialogue provides the free tours to all schools in the Singleton-Muswellbrook educational catchment and the program uses educational materials and messaging developed by a dialogue working group made up of teachers, community members and industry and local government representatives.