John Turner has been working in the underground coal mining industry for forty years, starting out as a contract mine labourer and making his way through the ranks all the way up to Mine Manager. He’s also been a Mines Rescue brigade member for thirty-five years which has had a huge influence on his career.
Whilst John has recently retired from his fulltime job as Executive General Manager – Mining Safety at Centennial, he’s not quite ready to say goodbye to the industry and is still working as a casual Mining Advisor for Centennial Coal.
He’s not ready to turn in his Mines Rescue shirt just yet either.
“I’m still doing a little bit of work to keep my hand in, going from a senior position to nothing is a pretty sharp change so I want to have that transition period. Hopefully it will also let me finally catch up on all the jobs from the last twenty years that I never quite had the time to do!
“I’ll also continue representing Centennial on the NSW Minerals Council OHS Committee and on the Coal Services Standing Health Committee, plus a few other groups where I believe I can still add value.
“As for Mines Rescue, I have no plans to leave! Although, I am 61 now and once you hit 40 you have to do a pretty demanding medical every year. I got through it last year and it was hard, so I know eventually my time to stop will come but even then I plan on still being involved in the organisation however I can.”
John’s career in underground coal mining is a success by any measure, so it’s surprising to learn that it only began on a whim.
“Originally, I was going to do a degree in chemical engineering, but the coal industry was in a bit of a boom when I was making the decision and mining engineering sounded like an interesting thing to do.
“So I put myself through university and was lucky enough to get a scholarship from the Australian Coal Association for the last couple of years of my degree which gave me some experience on mine sites.
“However by the time I finished uni the industry was pretty quiet and so it was get whatever job you could. I started working for a mining contractor called Allied Constructions out at Ulan No.2 as an operator. I remember the first day on the job I had a couple hours of an induction and then it was straight into it!”
The contract came to an end after six months and John took a position as an operator with Newcom Collieries, a state owned mining company. In 1986 he started at Cooranbong Colliery which suited John just fine as he grew up on the Central Coast. He’s not left the area for any significant period since.
“Bob Gibbons, the Manager at Cooranbong put me to work with the idea that you needed to learn how to be a machineman and then see what else comes up. Graduate mining engineers weren’t common in coal mining in those days, but I started to get jobs that were more relevant to my qualification.
“I put myself through deputies and undermanager certificates; it wasn’t like now where mining companies are strongly supportive of people doing these qualifications, back then apart from the manager saying that’s a good idea or maybe getting time off for an exam you were pretty well on your own.”
It was around twenty-five years ago that John took on the role as a Mine Manager for the first time at Cooranbong Colliery. Since being with Centennial he has worked at Myuna, Mandalong, and at Newstan which is now in care and maintenance, as well as recent Executive operational and safety roles.
John said he never consciously focused on safety becoming such an integral part of his career, it was simply the experiences that shaped him that led him in that direction.
“In the late 80s I joined Mines Rescue and a big part of the reason why was because while I was working at Cooranbong there were three fatalities.
“Two of those were roof fall fatalities and part of my job was to go down and survey the sites. I can still picture today looking at the bits of stone that had killed the people I worked with.
“During my time in Mines Rescue I also responded to the Gretley disaster and the explosion at Endeavour mine. These and the other call outs I was sent to really brought my focus onto safety. You turn up to an incident like Gretley and you see just how important the mining engineering stuff that we do is. Four people lost their lives and it shouldn’t have happened.
“Those experiences and seeing firsthand how people are impacted when fatalities occur has stayed with me all the way through my career and solidified how important safety is.”
When reflecting on his time in the industry, John said that without a doubt the best change he has seen is the industry going from fatalities being commonplace to today where a person can get through an entire career without ever having a fatality in their workplace.
He also believes that a safe workplace makes for a productive workplace.
“Back in 2006 I came to Mandalong mine which had just started and was running about 3.5MT a year which was its design capacity. In 2007 Centennial Coal senior management decided to lift the operation to 5MT a year. While I was only a part of it and I was supported by a whole lot of people, we took on the challenge and we achieved it. In fact, we continued performance improvement work and were pushing up to 6MT a year for a while.
“While that might not sound like much compared to what mines are doing these days, due to the constraints of the mine everything we did had to be designed to minimise subsidence. Where mines today might be running 400 metre wide longwalls, we were running 150 metre wide longwalls!
“But what really makes me proud is that we achieved it safely and that was because we had built a culture where people knew you don’t take risks.
“My advice to anyone entering the industry is to be uncompromising about safety. If you are focused on doing tasks safely, you will also have a more efficient and productive operation, and that is what we have showed at Mandalong.
“I also encourage everyone in the industry to consider joining Mines Rescue. Because I’ve spent twenty odd years working as a manger which often involves spending a lot of time sitting in an office, I’ve always seen the training as so valuable, not only in keeping up the skills, but also being able to spend time with people from different sites with different jobs and perspectives.
“There’s a great feeling of comradery and being a part of something that is making the industry safer for everyone.”
