Store Racking

The stores area at Awaba Colliery sits inside a surface building typical of mid-twentieth-century drift-access mining operations: corrugated iron partition, timber staircase, a row of tall windows letting light fall in bands across a concrete floor. Heavy steel racks line the walls. Sprocket drives remain where they were left on the floor to the left. What appear to be PLC units stand near the base of the staircase. Nothing has been staged or cleared. The room reads exactly as it was on the last day anyone needed something from it. Awaba State Coal Mine began development in 1947, established by the NSW Government to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station. The mine was formally opened by Premier James McGirr on 14 July 1948. It sat at 242 Wilton Road, approximately one kilometre south of Awaba township in the City of Lake Macquarie, and its underground workings extended from the western edge of the lake toward the Watagan Mountains, following the Great Northern Seam through bord-and-pillar workings driven by continuous miners. Ownership passed through several hands over sixty-five years. The State Coal Mines Control Board gave way to the State Mines Control Authority in March 1950, which transferred to the Electricity Commission of New South Wales on 1 July 1973 under the Electricity Commission (State Coal Mines) Act. The mine was renamed from Awaba State Coal Mine to Awaba Colliery in 1994. Pacific Power's coal subsidiary PowerCoal Pty Ltd held it until August 2002, when Centennial Coal Company Ltd acquired the PowerCoal portfolio for $331 million. Centennial was itself acquired by Thai group Banpu Public Company Ltd in 2011. By November 2011, Centennial announced closure. The Great Northern Seam was exhausted. In the final years, miners had returned to earlier workings for pillar extraction, recovering coal from pillars left behind during the first-workings phase. The last shift ran on 23 December 2011. All underground mining ceased in March 2012, and all mine entries were sealed that same year. Total production across the operational life exceeded 35 million tonnes. The photograph was made in 2015, three years after the last shift. The stores still hold what the stores held.