Store Floor

The main store at Awaba Colliery sits as it was left. Cardboard boxes remain on timber shelving to the right of a large multi-pane window, the grimy glass still admitting enough light to read partial lettering on the packaging. White plastic sheeting lies across the concrete floor, catching a shaft of daylight that falls beneath exposed ceiling joists and metal support beams. A metal staircase with wooden treads rises into the upper left corner, connecting this level to the floor above. Nothing was packed out. The store simply stopped being used. Awaba State Coal Mine began development in 1947 on 8,500 acres reserved for state mining operations in the Awaba district of Lake Macquarie, New South Wales. The NSW Government formally opened it on 14 July 1948, with Premier James McGirr officiating. The mine was built with a specific purpose: supply thermal coal from the Great Northern Seam to Wangi Power Station, with a dedicated railway branch line opening on 25 May 1954 to carry the coal there. Ownership passed through successive state authorities before the NSW Government sold the PowerCoal portfolio to Centennial Coal Company Ltd in August 2002 for $331 million. Centennial Coal was itself acquired by Thai group Banpu Public Company Ltd in 2011. By then Awaba was a small bord-and-pillar operation with around 85 workers producing approximately 800,000 tonnes of thermal coal a year. The mine closed not because it was shut down but because there was nothing left to take. Coal reserves in the Great Northern Seam were exhausted. The last shift ran on 23 December 2011, with all underground mining formally ceased by March 2012. Across sixty-five years of operation, the mine produced over 35 million tonnes of coal. This photograph, made in 2015, records the store floor three years after that last shift. The shelving is still stocked. The staircase still connects the floors. The window still lets in light.