Kooragang Island - Candac Thiess Joint Venture
 Stabilised Pavements of
Australia (SPA) was contracted by the Candac Thiess Joint Venture on
Kooragang Island near Newcastle to assist in extending the existing coal
loading facilities. The Candac Thiess Joint Venture involved building an
additional 1.4km to the reclaimer track, coal storage area and conveyor.
The work was to be completed within a strict time period and material for
the extension consisted of sand dredged straight from the Hunter River,
which was later stabilised with a mixture of cement and slag. All extensions
were founded on a reclaimed sand base, which was formerly a swamp area. SPA
was employed by the Candac Thiess Joint Venture to overcome the time
restraints and the extremely poor quality of the soil to be stabilised.
 Problems included cement
spreaders sinking in the soft sand, and the extremely low water content in
the mixed product. Such is the characteristic of sand that retention of
water is near impossible and so to react with the cement/slag it was
necessary to saturate the sand and to complete the work quickly, thereby
achieving adequate compaction. Specially built 6 wheel drive Volvo cement
spreaders were employed to overcome the poor traction encountered in the
sand. These spreaders were used for the bulk of the project in conjunction
with 2 CMI RS500 mixers.
Over the 6 month project, a series of berms were each built up over 13
lifts to a total of 4m in height. The stabilised sand involved an area of
1.1 million m² and a volume of 342,500 m³, using 31,000 tonnes of
cement/slag. The coal loader extension will be required to support an
additional 650,000 tonnes of stockpiled coal, and the coal reclaimer itself
weighing 2,000 tonnes.
 As well as stabilising
the sand, a second project involved mixing bentonite with some 37,450 m² of
sand to produce an impervious layer which could trap contaminated water
running through the coal stockpile to then be treated. This process was
required between the berms, thus maximising untreated water retention. Here,
alternate bentonite and cement/slag layers were mixed, using a total of 1700
tonnes for each of the bentonite and the cement/slag mixes.
Although the construction site was a 24hr site, SPA generally mixed for
an average of 10 hr days. Some of the best days achieved during these shifts
included 440 tonnes of cement/slag used and 15,000 m² mixed. The finished
berms now resemble a dense white sandstone, rather than what was only 6
months ago a cohesionless sand.
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