The open cut mine is located on the northern extremity of the development area and is bounded by the Main Northern Railway, Glennies Creek Road and the New England Highway. It is comprised of two pits. The Arties Pit is parallel to the New England Highway and was used to develop the entry portal for the underground coal mine. The Barrett Pit is located to the east of the Arties Pit and is the source of most of the coal extracted by open cut methods. Initial emplacement of overburden was to the east of the Barrett Pit behind an environmental bund to reduce the visual and noise impact of the mining equipment.

Currently the open cut pit extracts approximately 2 Million tonnes (Mt) of Run-of-Mine (ROM) coal per year over a six year period. The overburden emplacement areas are progressively rehabilitated in accordance with the approved Mining Operations Plan with a total of 100ha rehabilitated by May 2009. The final void will be utilised for the disposal of reject and tailings material from the underground mine.

Ashton Coal own and operate the Open Cut pit using backhoe-style excavators and earthmoving trucks. Open cut mining operations are limited to the hours of 7am to 10pm Monday to Saturday and 8am to 10pm on Sunday and public holidays. A total of three water carts are used at Ashton Coal to manage dust generation from approximately 4.5km of haul road.

A number of open cut equipment has been sound attenuated to reduce noise impacts on Camberwell Village and includes bulldozers, trucks and loaders.

Coal is extracted from the lower section of the Foybrook formation and includes the Pikes Gully, Arties, Liddell and Barrett seams in the vicinity of the Camberwell anticline, which is an upthrust that brings the coal seams closer to the surface.