The most important mining problem facing many of the established surface coal mines in the Bowen Basin area of Queensland is the rising cost of overburden stripping associated with increasing depths to coal. The Dragline-Hopper-Truck Project is one of a number of responses to this problem, and involves the design and construction of an experimental hopper followed by field evaluation of a dragline-hopper-truck mining system.
Such systems, if proven feasible, could be used for a range of applications, eg prestripping, extension of depths for single pass dragline operations and solution of geotechnical problems.