An Open Letter To The Mining Giants, From The Landlords

Dear BHP and friends,

We hear you’re leaving the Bowen Basin because the royalties are “brutal.” As the Traditional Owners — that is, the original and ongoing landlords of the property you’ve been renovating without permission since the 1800s — we wanted to check in.

You’ve been on Country for generations. You’ve dug enormous holes. You’ve made billions. And now, asked to pay a fairer cut, you’re standing at the door with your bindle on a stick, threatening to move out like a teenager who’s been told to do the dishes.

Brother, we invented this exact heartbreak. Ours just didn’t come with a press release. When the wealth left our Country, nobody ran a sympathetic headline about the “towns left behind.” They ran a story about progress, then a story about us being ungrateful for the progress.

So here’s the new lease, mob to mob: pay the royalties, mind the water, fix the holes, and maybe — wild idea — talk to the people whose Country this has been for sixty-five thousand years before you “abandon” it.

Or don’t! Leave! The land stays. It always stays. That’s the one thing about Country you fellas never quite costed into the model.

Warm regards, Management.