Cardboard boxes and paper stacked on metal shelving in a former shower room at Awaba Colliery, with the original shower heads still visible on the cracked tiled back wall.

Document Storage

Provenance

Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Settings: 14mm · f/8.0 · 6.0 sec · ISO 100
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm

Stacks of paper and cardboard boxes on metal shelving along both walls of a former shower room. Original shower heads remain on the tiled back wall. A green plastic bag sits on the right shelf beside a box with handwritten lettering. Cracked white wall tiles throughout. Grime covers the floor.

Edition

Open edition

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A fixed number of prints exist. Once sold, the edition closes permanently. Each print is individually numbered and signed.

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Colour

Signed, numbered, with COA. Made to order in 10 to 20 business days (framed). Shipped in protective packaging with edition certificate, paper-stock reference and a printed care guide.

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In situ

01 PROVENANCE

Print datasheet

Title: Document Storage
Series: Awaba Colliery
Catalogue: AWB-005
Process: Giclée
Captured: 20 December 2015
Camera: NIKON D7000
Lens: 14.0-24.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture: f/8.0
Shutter: 6.0 sec s
ISO: 100
Focal length: 14 mm
Paper: Ilford Galerie Smooth Cotton Rag 310 gsm
Location: Awaba
Recognised by: Highly Commended in Multimedia at the 2016 National Trust of Australia (NSW) Heritage Awards

02 LOCATION

Awaba

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

03 THE STORY

About this print

The room in this photograph was built for miners coming off shift. The original shower heads are still fixed to the back wall, the tiled surround cracked and discoloured but otherwise intact. At some point between the mine's operational years and its closure, someone fitted metal shelving along both sides and turned the space into document storage. Cardboard boxes and stacks of paper line the shelves. A green plastic bag sits on the right side beside a box with handwritten lettering. The grime on the floor and the state of the tiles record the years that passed after the last shift. Awaba Colliery operated from 1947 to 2012, sixty-five years of underground bord-and-pillar mining through the Great Northern Seam beneath the western shores of Lake Macquarie. The mine was established as a state enterprise to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station, with 8,500 acres in the Awaba district formally reserved for state mining operations in June 1947. NSW Premier James McGirr officially opened the mine on 14 July 1948. Over its operational life, the mine produced more than 35 million tonnes of thermal coal. The NSW Government sold the mine's operator, PowerCoal Pty Ltd, to Centennial Coal Company Ltd in August 2002 for $331 million as part of a broader privatisation of state-owned coal assets. Centennial Coal was itself acquired by Thai group Banpu Public Company Ltd in 2011. By November of that year, Centennial announced the mine's closure. The Great Northern Seam was exhausted. The last shift ran on 23 December 2011, with final cessation of all underground operations in March 2012. All mine entries were decommissioned and sealed that year. The surface infrastructure at Awaba was a drift mine, with no headframe. Administration offices, workshops, a bathhouse and change-house, lamp room, and coal handling facilities occupied the pit top. This photograph, made in 2015, records what one room of that complex had become: shower fittings on the wall, shelves full of paper, a floor that had not been cleaned in years.

04 FROM THE FIELD NOTES

The shower room at Awaba Colliery still has its original fittings on the back wall, the shower heads left in place when the room was given over to document storage. Metal shelving replaced whatever else occupied the space, stacked with paper and cardboard boxes, one marked in handwritten lettering beside a green plastic bag. The cracked wall tiles and grime-covered floor record the years since mining ceased in March 2012, when the Great Northern Seam ran out and the last of the underground workings at Awaba were sealed and decommissioned.

Brett Patman

The series

Awaba Colliery

1947 to 2012 · 24 photographs

Awaba Colliery worked the Great Northern Seam at Awaba, on the western side of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales, from 1947 until 2012. The state opened the mine to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station, and from 1954 a branch railway carried the coal there. It was a drift mine, entered by an inclined tunnel rather than a vertical shaft, so it never carried a headframe. Mining ended in March 2012 when the workable coal in the seam ran out, and the entries were sealed that year.

View all in this series →

05 SIZE GUIDE

Print sizes

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