Slurry Pump

The yellow slurry pump in this photograph is tagged 'Lot 80', a sticker that places it sometime after the mine's last shift, when the contents of the pit top were being catalogued and cleared. Its control knobs, levers, and pipework remain intact, the machine still assembled as though ready for use. Blue barrels are stacked against the wall to the right. Three concrete steps with yellow-painted risers lead up to a doorway marked 'First Aid Station', a panel of red and white graffiti beside it. This is what the surface of a working mine looks like once the working has stopped. Awaba Colliery, formally the Awaba State Coal Mine, began development in 1947 on 8,500 acres in the Awaba district of Lake Macquarie, reserved for state mining operations by NSW Government Gazette that year. Premier James McGirr formally opened the mine on 14 July 1948. The mine was created specifically to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station, and a railway branch line was built in 1954 to carry coal there. Underground access was via an inclined drift driven into the hillside, no headframe was ever built. The primary seam was the Great Northern, worked by bord-and-pillar methods using continuous miners, with pillar extraction in the later years recovering coal from pillars left during earlier workings. The mine passed through state hands across several decades: from the State Coal Mines Control Board at opening, to the State Mines Control Authority from March 1950, to the Electricity Commission of New South Wales from 1 July 1973, and eventually to Centennial Coal Company when the NSW Government sold its PowerCoal portfolio in August 2002 for $331 million. By the time of closure, the mine employed approximately 85 workers and was producing around 800,000 tonnes of thermal coal per year. Coal reserves in the Great Northern Seam were exhausted and the final shift ran on 23 December 2011, with all underground mining ceasing in March 2012. Over its operational life, Awaba produced more than 35 million tonnes of coal. This photograph was made in 2015.