Leaving aside those who believe the world is flat, there is widespread agreement that coal mining in the Hunter is ending. A consequence is the emergence of discussion about how to transition out of coal.
Dealing with the loss of over 12,500 jobs will be difficult. Ensuring rehabilitation of an estimated 30,000 hectares of open cut mines is an equal challenge.
A concern, for me, is what happens if the transition plans don't deliver, especially for the districts most affected by the end of coal? Non-metropolitan regions rarely get second chances.
It's early days, though, and ideas for the transition are firming up. Most are ideas for activity on mine voids and redundant power station sites, both of which have attractive characteristics. They involve large land parcels and come pre-packaged with heavy rail, high voltage transmission lines and large volume water storage.
Some plans envisage industrial activity, such as solar panel manufacturing, with significant jobs outcomes. Others link directly to the renewables energy network, such as pumped-hydro schemes, batteries and data centres. But what if the middle and upper parts of the Hunter - where the end of coal will hit hardest - get the jobs-poor bits of this list, like the batteries and data centres, but miss out on enduring investments with many quality jobs?
It's easy to imagine the middle and upper Hunter in a few decades tagged as members of the regions-left-behind club, places trapped in an economic and demographic death spiral common to de-industrialising and old mining regions across the world.
Where discussion in these places was, for a time, about transition, it's now about how to arrest decline and decay. Government agencies with jazzy titles have stopped running local start-up seminars, innovation parks are abandoned, business hubs boarded up. Central to a death spiral, invariably, is the departure of the best workers, the ones who thrive any labour market. When they leave, plans for replacement industries fall in a heap.
But what if districts in the Hunter were to embrace a certain amount of population decline from the get-go? Research coming out of Germany, in the Journal of Rural Studies, shows de-population of a region after industrial and mining shutdowns doesn't necessarily prevent transition to a thriving local economy.
Important, however, is the need for the local population to value its rural surrounds and steer resources into rural resuscitation. Important is rebuilding local villages and towns around quality services - including telecommunications - so living away from the big city has intrinsic rewards without the disadvantages of isolation. Critical are education and health services the equal of those available in the city. Also important are decent roads and regular bus services.
To date, the merit of investing in rural communities has had little mention in discussion of the Hunter's transition out of coal.
Yet overseas experience invites us to the idea of a revitalised rural economy, with 21st century add-ons. There are lessons from Australia, too. Most rural valleys east of the Great Dividing Range are highly valued for amenity and liveability, a combination of productive agriculture, preservation of significant natural environments, and highly liveable, well-connected villages and townships. From Noosa to Bega, these valleys have long been the targets of self-indulging investors, financially successful folk willing to put money earned elsewhere into a rural property, a tree-change, life cycle move. No one calls these rural valleys regions left behind.
For three decades, at least, the presence of coal has dissuaded such investment in the middle and upper Hunter.
Who'd buy into a farm, small or large, in the shadow of an open-cut mine? Who'd invest in a getaway home situated at the end of a frantic journey along roads packed with drive-in, drive-out miners? Who'd set up an online business in a township with third world telecommunications, inferior schools and below-par health services?
But we can change all this, you know.
