Over the past three years, the Gladstone Centre for Clean Coal (GC3) has been working towards its foremost aim of promoting the current and future importance of coal as a sustainable energy source via communication and information dissemination.

The GC3 has been busy keeping up its regularly maintained web presence and publishing newsletters, all designed to promote coal to the broader community as a suitable energy source.

The most recent achievement by the GC3 is a sensory learning environment, featuring coal as a sustainable energy source.

The history and development of coal, and its role as a clean energy of the future, is on show in a three dimensional interactive display at CQU Gladstone for community viewing.

The audio-visual display, valued at approximately $25, 000, is linear in its representation and features how coal was formed, to early mining and the use of coal in the Industrial Age, to the future of coal as a cleaner, more efficient energy source.

Visual models are accompanied by sound effects and include a waterfall. The animation of trains and factory machinery, all set in motion by the viewer through button activation, allow visitors to interact with the educational display.

The GC3 decision behind constructing the display was to provide a medium that the gives general public a rapid overview of how coal is formed and to give stakeholders a sense of the display being part of their community.

Built to illustrate the growing global drive to ensure that coal is becoming a cleaner and more efficient energy source, the 5.4 m2 exhibit is on display in the Leo Zussino Building on campus.

The GC3 Steering Committee worked closely with Wickerson Designs Studio in Rockhampton on the theme for the display. Taking about a month to design and prepare, the display was brought to Gladstone in three separate pieces and took about two weeks to install.

The display is open during working hours and when the Leo Zussino Building is open.

Details from c.greensill@cqu.edu.au or at http://www.gc3.cqu.edu.au/