SPIRITUAL HEALTH AND SAFETY ON MINE SITES

A woman who works as a FIFO worker on a Pilbara mine site says her mental health has been challenged by supernatural activity for more than two years.

“It’s pretty much been turned inside out,” she said. “I’m questioning my beliefs, questioning what am I doing here, and what’s happening to me.”

Tee, who wants to remain anonymous, says she and her colleagues started to hear and see things in the spiritual realm after a portion of land near multiple caves was blasted in 2020. 

“I was getting strangled in my bed last night,” she said. “And another girl came to me and said: ‘we’re too scared to sleep in our own dongas because we’re getting visited frequently through the night.”

Tee reported the incidents to her supervisor who referred her to a cultural officer within the company.  

Tee says the officer did not help.

“(I said) ‘so you’re from the company, and I put myself in your hands, and what was the outcome? It made it worse’,” she said.

Yinhawangka elder Brendan Cook says he believes what Tee is saying and witnessed something similar at another Pilbara mine site.

“When these come to grab you … it will be in a dream,” he said. And you wake, in this dream. You get afraid and then all of a sudden you get paralysed. And you can’t call out, you don’t know what this thing is doing.”