And yes there were hour requirements, 500+ Multi being the big one. And this is the requirement that was the most difficult to find, because of a lack of pilots with this experience, pretty simple.
What part of this do you not understand??????? The company could not find pilots??? maybe because there is a pilots shortage?
You keep saying that the company "could not find pilots". I think what you mean to say is that pilots "were not coming forward".
So why were they not coming forward when they knew about the T&Cs? Obviously because they didn't feel the job was worth it. Sure the package may have been 62.5k, but when you take out rent (and other bits) the gross pay would have been around 40k.
So, for pilots with 500+ hours multi, on 40k living sometimes at mine sites and spending half the time in the right hand seat of a Baron - doesn't sound too enticing to me. The Auswest management would have realised that it wasn't very enticing after all and tried to increase the pay - but there would have been a limit on how high they could go - the limit set be Rio Tinto in the contract!
So, simple economics after all - how surprising!