Answer: For much of the 1900s, Ipswich’s West Moreton coalfield was mainly:

✅ b) A major state-level coal producer

Ipswich’s West Moreton coalfield – with mines clustered around suburbs like Goodna, Redbank, Swanbank and Rosewood – grew from about 17,000 tonnes a year and under 150 miners in the 1870s to over 2 million tonnes in the 1980s, supporting more than 4,000 local jobs.

For much of the 1900s it was Queensland’s main coalfield, while nationally the Hunter Valley and Newcastle coalfields dominated exports.

Today Queensland as a whole produces around 220 million tonnes of coal a year from roughly 60 mines, most of them in the Bowen Basin.