A former coal mine in the heart of the Blue Mountains, New South Wales, is offering Union Coal and Mines Minister G. Kishan Reddy a striking window into what post-mining land transformation can look like — and he is making sure India takes note.

On Thursday, 29 October 2026, Reddy shared glimpses from his visit to Scenic World, tagging India's Ministry of External Affairs, the Ministry of Mines, the Coal Ministry, and the High Commission of India in Canberra. The message was deliberate: here is a working model of what happens after a mine closes.

From coal seams to cable cars: what Scenic World represents

Scenic World sits at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains, perched above the Jamison Valley. The site was once a working coal mine; today it draws hundreds of thousands of visitors a year with the world's steepest passenger railway — the original mine incline — along with aerial skyways and walkways threading through ancient rainforest. It is one of the most-visited private attractions in Australia, and its origin story is inseparable from coal.

The transformation is exactly the kind of case study that resonates when a government is simultaneously managing an active coal economy while facing growing pressure to plan for its eventual wind-down. India operates the world's second-largest coal sector by production volume, with hundreds of mines spread across Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh — many of them in ecologically and economically fragile zones where post-closure land use will matter enormously to local communities.

Why Reddy looped in four government handles

The deliberate tagging of @MEAIndia, @MinesMinIndia, @CoalMinistry and @HCICanberra is more than social-media housekeeping. It signals that the visit is being framed as cross-ministerial intelligence-gathering — connecting diplomacy, resource policy and tourism potential in a single frame. India and Australia have held a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership since 2020, with minerals and critical resources forming one of its core pillars. Periodic ministerial exchanges on the resources front have become a regular feature of that partnership.

Reddy's post stops short of any policy announcement, but the optics are pointed: a senior minister responsible for India's coal future standing inside a coal mine that reinvented itself as a global tourist draw.

The quiet argument for post-mining planning

India does not yet have a formal, unified policy framework for post-mine closure land repurposing at the scale that countries like Australia or Germany have developed. The conversation is early-stage — but it is happening, pushed along by civil society, state governments sitting on depleting deposits, and international partners keen to showcase alternatives. A minister's social-media post from a Blue Mountains cable car is a small signal. But in policy terms, small signals from the minister who controls the portfolio are rarely accidental.

What Kishan Reddy saw at Scenic World, India's coal belt may eventually need to imagine for itself.