ABSTRACT
Why should mining create a distinctive cultural landscape? There are a number of reasons. First, mining industry obeys different geographical imperatives. Geographers have created a number of useful models which, given parameters of climate and terrain, can accurately predict the location of farms, agricultural settlements, towns, ports and roads. But one cannot model the location of mining industry. Mines are located where the minerals are; they cannot be anywhere else. And frequently the location of those minerals takes settlement into regions where farmers and pastoralists do not go: across Australia there have been mines and mining settlements in utterly waterless deserts, in tropical rainforest and on frozen mountain tops.
