Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/166113
Coppabella coal mine, southwest of Mackay city, Queensland state, Australia. Falling coal prices have hastened the closure of some financially marginal mines in the region and shed thousands of jobs. he Australian mining boom built over a decade on China's hunger for energy and raw materials is turning into a bust for many business owners. China's cooling growth reverberates through a country accustomed to winning from the rise of an Asian economic giant. Endowed with vast mineral resources, Australia has been the envy of the Western world for avoiding recession during the global financial crisis, while other wealthy countries drowned in debt. But the country now faces a potentially painful transition, as it weans itself off a heavy reliance on its two biggest exports, coal and iron ore. Australia's dilemma underscores that China's long run of supercharged growth has given it enough weight in the world 46 economy to create not only winners, but losers, too, when its own fortunes change. Trade between Australia and China equaled 7.6 percent of Australia's $1.5 trillion economy last year, a dramatic threefold increase from a decade earlier, according to an Associated Press analysis of trade data. During that time, mining companies gushed multibillion dollar profits, while jobs as mundane as maintenance commanded salaries above $120,000. Now the downside of that tight embrace is being felt across Australia's mining heartlands and in its bustling cities. The number of jobless is expected to increase more than 70,000 in coming months, and the government's finances are turning a deeper shade of red, forcing cuts to public services. Andrew Howard has done well buying and selling jumbosized earth moving equipment from his base at an industrial estate in the tropical northeast coast city of Mackay, the largest mining service center in Australia's richest coal country, the Bowen Basin. At the height of the global financial crisis, he traveled to the United States to buy up machinery cheap in a depressed economy and later sold it to a resurgent Australian mining industry. But now Howard plans to shut the doors of his business, Truck driver Ken Smith hauls giant mining truck tires along the Peak Downs Highway southwest of Mackay city, Queensland state, Australia. AP Photos/Rod McGuirk IDA UNIVERSAL September-October 2013