You wouldn’t meet anyone more approachable and humble than Rae O’Brien. Starting out as a mining engineer, she has spent 30 years quietly lifting the sustainability standards of mine sites across NSW and Queensland, while breaking quite a few records along the way.
Rae grew up in an Air Force family full of engineers so she always had a pretty good idea of the degree she would be undertaking at university. What she didn’t know was that it would lead her to mining.
“My interest in mining was sparked by my chemistry teacher in Year 11 and 12, who was a geologist. We did a lot about minerals processing, and I discovered that geology was really fascinating, particularly that chemistry side of it.
“We visited a mine and the teacher told me about a Co-op scholarship offered by the University of NSW. I applied and ended up getting it for mining engineering, the rest is history!”
During her degree, Rae had to complete 120 days of work experience on site. She spent time at Broken Hill underground, at Tahmoor Colliery near Bargo and finally at Paraburdoo with Hamersley Mining in Western Australia.
Rae said all three were so different, giving her a great insight into what she could do and some of the places she could potentially be working.
Rae completed her mining engineering degree, got engaged to a mining engineer in her final year, and the pair set off to find work together in the mining industry.
“We ended up at CapCoal in Central Queensland and lived at Middlemount for five years. We were there with lots of other people our age but there were two couples in particular who started when we did and we are all still very good friends to this day.
“From a work perspective we both got great grounding there. I worked underground as an operator for a few years, doing mine engineer work at the same time. I worked on every crew and operated every bit of machinery.
“We set lots of records in those days. Cable bolting was one of my favourite things and the first CRAM multibolter was trialled at CapCoal and on our first shift with it we set the world record for the number of bolts in an eight hour shift!
“With that crew at CapCoal I did five longwall moves. If I was doing something else I would drop everything to go pull chocks with c-crew and we set records for the most amount of chocks removed in a shift.
“We were like a racing crew at a pitstop, everyone knew what they had to do and played their part to get it done,” Rae reflected.
Rae spent the last two years of her time in Middlemount doing gas drainage and from there she and her husband moved to the Blue Mountains to work at Springvale mine, a site with arguably the most challenging geotechnical conditions in the country.
“There were some really difficult areas underground where roof supports needed work so one of my first jobs was to fix that.”
Rae worked out that the deputy would be key to helping her roll out her ideas to address the issues.
“That was something I worked out fast in the industry, you need to find out how the pit operates in terms of the people. You need to work out who to ask, how to ask and work out who ACTUALLY runs the pit,” Rae laughed.
Rae was the senior mining engineer at Springvale when she started and then became the longwall superintendent. She continued to break records, having the first 305 metre-wide face in Australia.
After nine years at Springvale, Rae got the call to work in the Hunter Valley for Xstrata in their Ravensworth underground operation.
She said it was one of the best jobs she had.
“One of the challenges I enjoyed there was Ian Cribb had asked me to build a mining engineering framework. I said, ‘do you realise what you’re asking me to do?’, we had to unpack half a dozen disciplines and work out what they are, so we unpacked the core of geology, geotech, mine planning, gas drainage, and came up with the core principles for each.
“Those principles have been used by many companies with the thinking even being taken out globally, particularly the geotech principles which I’m proud to say ended up being put into a global standard.”
From there Rae received her first call to take on a general manager in waiting role with Peabody and before she knew it, she was being asked to take on the General Manager position at Metropolitan Mine near Helensburgh at Wollongong.
“The mine was a challenging one. We had to think about it all differently and put in place solutions that hadn’t been tried before. We broke records at that mine while I was there too.
“It’s about showing people what’s possible, getting them to think about the problem and use the collective to come up with the answer. It’s amazing what can be achieved when you do that.”
Rae went back to Springvale for a short time before stepping into her current role as Group Executive, Australia East for Thiess.
“The mine planning and thinking happening at Thiess is awesome. They’ve got the fundamentals down pat and it’s all about adding value which I don’t think as a general industry we’re at the level we used to be.
“The men and women in my team are at the highest level that I’ve seen in a long time in terms of getting the best value out of the deposit – the core purpose of a mining engineer.”
Rae has been a valuable member of any crew she’s worked in, from pulling chocks and roof bolting to solving problems others could not in every role she has stepped into.
Among her other achievements Rae was also the first woman in NSW to hold both first and second-class Mine Manager’s Certificates. Her groundbreaking work throughout her career saw her recently named the 2026 Exceptional Woman in the QRC and WIMARQ Resources Awards for Women. She was also awarded the Exceptional Woman in NSW Mining Award a decade before back in 2016, proving she’s not one to rest on her laurels.
The engineering gene has been passed down to Rae’s twin daughters who are both studying to be engineers as well – one of them a mining engineer.
Whether she’s receiving an award or breaking a roof bolting record, Rae epitomises what it means to be exceptional in mining.
