Lockers

The locker room at Awaba Colliery is a long, functional space built for shift workers. A timber bench runs the length of the centre, its blue-painted edges worn and chipped from decades of use. Dark blue-grey metal lockers line both walls, each fitted with a T-bar handle, most still in place. At the far end, two large rectangular windows push diffused light into the room, washing across the tiled back wall and the grimy floor below. Awaba Colliery, formally known as Awaba State Coal Mine, began development in 1947 and was officially opened by NSW Premier James McGirr on 14 July 1948. The mine was created specifically to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station, and was designed from the outset as a state-owned operation under the NSW Department of Mines. A dedicated railway branch line, opened on 25 May 1954, carried coal from the pit top to the power station. The mine worked the Great Northern Seam by bord-and-pillar methods using continuous miners, producing more than 35 million tonnes across its operational life. Ownership moved through successive state bodies, the State Coal Mines Control Board, then the State Mines Control Authority from March 1950, then Elcom Collieries under the Electricity Commission from 1 July 1973, and eventually Centennial Coal following the NSW Government's sale of PowerCoal in August 2002. In November 2011, Centennial Coal announced the mine would close. By then it employed around 85 workers and produced approximately 800,000 to 900,000 tonnes of thermal coal per year. The last shift ran on 23 December 2011. Final underground mining operations ceased in March 2012 when the Great Northern Seam's coal reserves were exhausted. This photograph, made in 2015, records what the locker room looked like after closure, the bench, the lockers, the handles, the light.