At a recent meeting of our Probus Club of Toondah, our guest speaker was Gavin Becker, a retired metallurgist, who spoke on ‘The Minerals Council of Australia’s 30 Things’. You can download the PDF slide show of his presentation by clicking here:
http://minerals.org.au/sites/default/files/30%20Things.pdf
It’s worth downloading this presentation and reviewing each use of minerals. I like the extra information presented in small print. For example: Australia gave the world WiFi:
WiFi was developed in the radiophysics lab at CSIRO in the 1990s. The technology was a revolution in mobile computing and is today estimated to be in more than five billion electronic devices. For its efforts, CSIRO has earned more than $430 million through licensing agreements with tech companies since 1996.
Gavin still works in the mineral processing area, specializing in base and precious metals. He is keen to offer the other side of mining to that which the media are currently exploiting with the Extinction Rebellion crusades. He abhors politicians short term thinking that plans only for one election. When sand mining stops on Stradbroke Island, it is estimated that there will be $130 million loss to my local area in the Redlands.
Everything we consume is either grown or mined.
More recently, there were demonstrations in Melbourne outside an international conference on mining. Personally, I think it’s a mistake to lump coal mining in in the same category as that of base and precious metals, when it’s really just coal mining that we need to be cutting back on. As Gavin’s talk demonstrated, there’s much more to mining than just coal.
