Chemical Storage Area

The chain-link gate to the chemical storage area at Awaba Colliery is still secured with its Poison 6 hazard placard in place, the bold diamond warning fixed to the wire as though the last person through simply forgot to take it down. Behind the gate, a narrow brick-walled corridor runs toward a window at the far end, light entering along the passage and catching the dust suspended in the still air. Rough timber planks form the ceiling above. Empty wooden shelving units line the left side of the corridor, cleared of whatever they once held. A handful of containers remain further back, the only objects left in the space. Awaba Colliery operated on the Great Northern Seam beneath the western margins of Lake Macquarie for sixty-five years. The NSW Government reserved the district for state mining operations in June 1947, and Premier James McGirr formally opened the mine on 14 July 1948. It was established to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station, and a dedicated railway branch line was built to carry the coal there, opening in May 1954. The mine passed through several hands across its life: from the State Coal Mines Control Board at opening, to the State Mines Control Authority, to the Electricity Commission of New South Wales in 1973, then to Pacific Power and its subsidiary PowerCoal, and finally to Centennial Coal Company Ltd following the NSW Government's sale of PowerCoal in August 2002. By the time mining ceased in March 2012, the workforce numbered around 85 people and annual output ran to approximately 800,000 tonnes. The mine closed not because of market conditions or regulatory action but because the coal was gone, over 35 million tonnes extracted across the operational life, with the last workings returning to areas mined years earlier to recover what the pillars still held. This photograph was made in 2015, three years after the final shift.