Kimberley Quarry Pty Ltd was fined a total of $167,000 for a June 2022 incident in which a screening machine operator fell more than 3 m and sustained multiple injuries, including a spinal fracture, and the company didn’t hold the site for a WorkSafe investigation.
At Geraldton Magistrates Court in June 2025, Kimberley Quarry pleaded guilty to two offences under the Work Health and Safety Act 2020—exposing workers to a risk of death, injury or harm to health ($160,000 fine) and failing to preserve the site of a notifiable incident ($7,000 fine).
The screening machine operator was supervising a routine task at the Kimberley Quarry-operated Chapman Valley Quarry. The screening machine operator and a less experienced colleague were working on the top deck of a horizontal screener, removing wire screen panels weighing between 15 kg and 30 kg each before throwing them on the ground below. The two workers were carrying out the frequently assigned job at a height of about 3.18 m without either edge protection or a fall restraint system in place. When the screening machine operator threw one of the screens from the horizontal screener, the panel’s wire hooks caught on their jumper and pulled them off the screener. Their fall resulted in internal bleeding, ligament damage, a sprained wrist and elbow, a forearm laceration and several back injuries, the most severe of which was a fractured L2 vertebra. After emergency services personnel transported the screening machine operator by ambulance to Geraldton Regional Hospital and before a WorkSafe inspector arrived at Chapman Valley Quarry, Kimberley Quarry’s site supervisor directed other workers to complete the task of changing the horizontal screener’s screens.
