QER is acknowledged for providing assistance with this resource.

In this activity, students analyse four photographs that were taken at the QER oil shale mine at Yarwun near Gladstone, while standing in the same position on a 4WD track on the same day. Two of the photos are of one side of the track: untouched, native bushland. The other two are of the other side of the track, an exploratory shale oil site, cleared in the 1980s and rehabilitated twenty years ago. Rehabilitation is the process of restoring a disturbed site to its original state by re-establishing native plants.