We're told to go about our normal lives without letting terrorism affect us.   That message is through loud and clear in central Queensland, where I've spent the past week or so looking closely at the mining industry.

This is the engine room that supports our standard of living - so in the interests of going about our business untroubled by Islamists I thought I'd publish these photos from Gladstone over the past couple of days.

These 110 car coal trains are ubiquitous in the region, running every few minutes along Aurizon's small gauge rail tracks.

The audio on this home video is not the best but you'll get some sense of the dimensions of each trainload of coal - profiled, flattened along the top of the car and lacquered into place.

The Port of Gladstone is alive all day every day with an apparently unstoppable stream of coal heading off to our overseas customers.   The source of our wealth and jobs here is obvious everywhere you look.

Every spare bit of space around the huge port seems to be taken up with stockpiles of coal - this relatively small mountain is is the result of dozers cleaning up spillage in the rail yards.

And the region's wealth is reflected in the town where cashed up miners spend up big.

Gladstone's river is constantly alive.

The massive man-made infrastructure in the region is formidable but it can't hold a candle to Central Queensland's natural beauty - here's Rockhampton at sunset.