Coal pile to the moon
To the moon, with plenty left over. That’s how far the coal mined from the Hunter Valley in NSW during the decade up to 2010 would have reached, if it had been stacked into a two-square-metre pillar. I did that calculation when I was working as a reporter at The Newcastle Herald, the newspaper serving the city of Newcastle. Newcastle is the second city of NSW and lies at the mouth of the Hunter Valley. It is often reputed to be the world’s largest coal port, in terms of volume. My figures didn’t count the coal…
