Workshop Bay

The shelving is empty now, each open compartment stripped of whatever tools, parts, or equipment it once held. A faded sign above reads 'Fire Extinguisher'. Pipes run overhead. Two windows let in flat light, one pane still swung open as though someone left in a hurry and never came back. A red graffiti figure marks the wall near the floor. The rendered brickwork and concrete are the same surfaces that surrounded maintenance workers through decades of underground coal mining. Awaba Colliery sits at 242 Wilton Road, approximately 1 km south of Awaba township in the City of Lake Macquarie. The mine was established in 1947 on land gazetted for state mining operations that June, with 8,500 acres reserved for the purpose. Premier James McGirr formally opened it on 14 July 1948. It was built specifically to supply thermal coal to Wangi Power Station, and a dedicated railway branch line was constructed in 1954 to carry the coal there. The mine was known officially as Awaba State Coal Mine from its opening until 1994, when it was renamed Awaba Colliery. Ownership passed from the State Coal Mines Control Board to the State Mines Control Authority in March 1950, then to the Electricity Commission of New South Wales on 1 July 1973, and eventually to Centennial Coal Company Ltd in August 2002 as part of a $331 million purchase of the state's PowerCoal portfolio. Mining was carried out by bord-and-pillar methods using continuous miners in the Great Northern Seam. In the final years before closure, the workforce had returned to pillar extraction, recovering coal from pillars left during earlier first-workings development. Total production across the operational life exceeded 35 million tonnes. When coal reserves were finally exhausted in March 2012, around 85 workers remained. Eleven retired; the rest transferred to other Centennial operations. This photograph was made in 2015, three years after the last shift. The surface buildings remained standing, the shelves empty, the signs still in place.