Brazil mudflow

When I was a boy of 15, in my final year at Grafton High School, somebody encouraged me (?) to enter a competition for the award of a bursary from Australia’s celebrated BHP company. I knew that this gigantic company had obtained its name from a mining town, Broken Hill, in western New South Wales, and that it had a steelworks in Newcastle, to the north of Sydney. But nobody bothered to provide me with information about this potential employer, or to take me on a visit to its sites.

I was awarded the bursary, but I didn’t stay with BHP for more than a year. That was more than enough time for me to learn (often from hands-on experience at their Newcastle site) that I had no desire whatsoever to spend my earthly existence in such an environment. Normally, if my parents and school-teachers had been a little more alert, they would have reached such a conclusion a year or so earlier.

Today, the Australian-registered mining, metals and petroleum company is called BHP Billiton, and their latest revenues class it as the planet’s largest mining company. Can you imagine me still working for such an employer?

A month ago, there was a mudflow in one of their mines, in Brazil. Here’s a photo of the site (which appeared in the context of COP21):

I look upon this photo as a watery and muddy image of Hell on Earth, and I'm relieved to know that I was in no way associated with the folk who create such a hellish environment.