Mining company fined after worker trapped under coal for eight hours

Peabody Energy fined after worker trapped inside bulldozer in coal void Fri 3 Jul 2026 at 3:30pm In short: A mining company has pleaded guilty to failing to discharge health and safety obligations after a bulldozer rolled at Moorvale mine. The worker was trapped in his machine buried in coal overnight until he was rescued more than eight hours later. What’s next? Peabody Energy Australia will pay more than $132,000 in fines and costs. A Queensland magistrate has criticised a mining company for allowing workers to use a faulty GPS system that resulted in a bulldozer falling through the bottom of a coal stockpile, trapping the driver. The Mackay Magistrates Court heard the bulldozer operator was trapped upside down in the cab for more than eight hours at the Moorvale mine on January 27, 2023. The open cut mine is located about 140 kilometres south-west of Mackay and employs about 200 people. Mine operator Peabody Energy Australia PCI (C&M Management) Pty Ltd pleaded guilty to one count of failing to discharge health and safety obligations. The court heard workers were using bulldozers to move processed coal through valves that fed coal onto a conveyor belt for transport to waiting trains. In sentencing the company, Magistrate Damien Dwyer said workers relied on GPS to know where the valves were located. He said the GPS in the bulldozer was not working correctly and, about 11.30pm, the worker was shifting a 20-metre-high coal stockpile when his dozer came too close to an open valve and rolled backwards into it. Magistrate Dwyer said the dozer was almost completely buried with only one of the machine's tracks visible from above. The worker was not rescued until 7:30am the next day. The court heard the worker lay on the cab roof overnight, cooling himself with a fan and had access to a self-rescuer oxygen supply. He was taken to Moranbah Hospital where he was treated for dehydration and released later the same day. Second incident in months Magistrate Dwyer said it was "concerning" the GPS in the dozer was known to be faulty. He said the same system had failed to operate correctly four months earlier, on September 27, 2022, when a worker was trapped in their bulldozer for five hours above the same valve. The court heard the valve was not marked on the surface but other valves were. Work Health and Safety prosecutor Edward Fleetwood argued that, because of the previous incident, the fine should be raised above the base rate of $80,000. Defence barrister Benjamin Dighton said that, after the first instance, the company had started to address the risk through a physical marker for the valve and a technological upgrade for the GPS, which was still underway when the second instance occurred. Magistrate Dwyer said the company was attempting to fix the GPS issue but allowed work to continue as normal when the second incident occurred. Despite this, he said Peabody's sentencing was mitigated by the company's 26-year clean record. He ordered the company to pay $132,768.95 in fines and costs. No conviction was recorded, and the organisation was given three months to pay.