Vent Fan

In a low-ceilinged basement at Awaba Colliery, a large vent fan sits enclosed in green mesh caging, its housing still bearing 'Services Pty Ltd' text. A red danger sign on the nearest brick column reads 'Danger No Smoki', the last word cut off at the frame edge. Further back, a teal industrial unit occupies the left side of the space. A dark drill press with coiled hoses fills the foreground. The room reads like a workshop floor mid-shift, except nothing has moved in years. Awaba Colliery, located at 242 Wilton Road, Awaba in the City of Lake Macquarie, began development in 1947 as a state-owned operation created specifically to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station. The mine was formally opened on 14 July 1948 by NSW Premier James McGirr. It was a drift mine, meaning access was via an inclined tunnel driven into the hillside rather than a vertical shaft, and the surface infrastructure reflected that: workshops, a bathhouse, a lamp room, administration offices, and ventilation plant built to service an underground operation working the Great Northern Seam by bord-and-pillar method. The mine passed through several operators over its life. The State Coal Mines Control Board governed it at opening, succeeded by the State Mines Control Authority in March 1950, then the Electricity Commission of New South Wales from 1 July 1973, and eventually Centennial Coal Company Ltd following the NSW Government's sale of the Powercoal portfolio in August 2002 for $331 million. By the time Centennial announced closure in November 2011, the mine employed approximately 85 workers and was producing around 800,000 tonnes of thermal coal per year. The last shift ran on 23 December 2011. Final underground operations ceased in March 2012 after more than 35 million tonnes of production across 65 years. This photograph, made in 2015, records what the basement workshop held after the mine closed: ventilation equipment, signage, tools, and the particular stillness of a space that was still organised but no longer in use.