Next-generation miners tested in old-school methods

Engineering and geology students will dig, pan and muck their way across Langley Park in Perth, WA, this weekend in the 2025 AusIMM Asia Pacific Mining Games Competition.

This year’s games, formerly known as the National Mining Games Competition, will be the biggest in the event’s history, with 34 teams from 14 student chapters of AusIMM competing in a series of challenges based on old-school techniques.

The games will also go public for the first time, with the event held on Perth’s doorstep to accommodate the hundreds of competitors and showcase WA as a mining hub.

The 2025 event is being organised and hosted by student chapters from The University of Western Australia (UWA), Curtin University and the WA School of Mines, with support from several mining-related sponsors.

Principal organiser and UWA engineering student Matt Robinson says the 2025 games will be a blockbuster, with the addition of a New Zealand chapter and the decision to open the games to the public significantly expanding their reach and impact.

“This year we’ll have nearly 200 competitors — twice as many as last year’s games in Brisbane,” he said.

“Typically, the games have been held at universities, but the fact we’re holding them at Langley Park this year reflects how big they’ve become and how valuable they are as a way to connect the next generation of leaders with their peers and the broader mining sector.

“They’re loads of fun for the competitors and for spectators, but it also gives us a chance to really showcase the interconnectedness of the mining industry and show the public what mining is all about — maybe change a few perceptions and highlight what a big role mining plays in everyday life.”

A mix of men’s, women’s and co-ed teams will take part in a series of intensive, timed challenges featuring traditional skills including railway building, gold panning, wood sawing, surveying, hand steeling, air-leg drilling and hand mucking.

UWA chapter treasurer and final year engineering student Tom Salter says the old-school challenges help celebrate and preserve mining traditions while showing how far the industry had come over the past 50 years.

“It’s a whole different world — basically everything back then involved manual handling, whereas in this day and age, it’s all highly mechanised with minimal manual labour,” he said.

“For example, surveying now is digitised and does the calculations for you, but at the competition, we go back to doing it manually — finding your angle, calculating your distances and doing all the trigonometry yourself.

“It really fosters respect for the miners who came before us but also gives us a real appreciation of what we’re able to do now, at scale and with technology — all with the protection of safety procedures that didn’t exist at the time of the Sunshine mining disaster.”

Having been established to honour and learn from the Idaho disaster, the games —which have equivalent events in other countries — maintain a heavy focus on safe mining practices, situational awareness and a culture of care.

Each competition event includes a scored risk assessment to focus competitors’ attention on potential hazards and how to avoid them.

“Imagine you’re 400m deep and you have to shovel ore into a mine cart, handpick into a wall, then put the explosives in,” Mr Robinson said.

“Now, there are all these procedures where everyone has to be out of the mine before you fire. It makes you appreciate how hard it was back then and all the risks associated with every one of those tasks.”

The 2025 Asia Pacific Mining Games begin at Langley Park September 5 – 6.