Morning settles gently over the southern edge of Lake Macquarie, where mist lifts slowly from the water and the land holds its breath between shifts. The road toward Myuna Colliery is familiar to those who travel it before dawn, headlights tracing the same bends they have followed for years. Beneath the ground, coal seams wait in quiet continuity, unchanged by the questions now circulating above them.
Those questions have grown louder as the mine’s future is reconsidered. Myuna Colliery, long tied to the nearby Eraring power station, is seeking a “better” commercial arrangement with Origin Energy, the plant’s owner and its primary customer. The request is technical in language, framed around supply terms and market realities, yet its weight is felt most acutely by the workforce whose livelihoods are bound to the outcome.
For decades, the relationship between mine and power station has been one of steady exchange. Coal moved predictably, shifts followed established patterns, and families built routines around the certainty of ongoing work. But Australia’s energy landscape is changing, and with it the economics that once sustained such arrangements. As Origin moves closer to retiring Eraring’s coal-fired operations later this decade, the long horizon Myuna once relied upon has begun to narrow.
Management at the mine has pointed to rising costs and tightening margins, arguing that without revised terms, Myuna’s viability becomes harder to sustain. Workers, meanwhile, find themselves suspended between negotiations they do not control and futures they must quietly plan for. Many have spent most of their working lives underground, their skills specific, their communities shaped around the mine’s presence.
The anxiety is not only about jobs, but about time. Transitions in energy policy and generation are often discussed in years and targets, but for those clocking on each day, the shift feels immediate. Retraining, redeployment, or redundancy are abstract ideas until they begin to approach, slowly, like weather on the horizon.
Union representatives have voiced concern about the lack of certainty, calling for clearer commitments and transition planning that accounts for workers rather than treating them as collateral to broader market shifts. Local leaders echo those worries, mindful of the economic gravity a single operation can exert on surrounding towns.
As discussions continue behind closed doors, the mine keeps running. Conveyors hum, machinery turns, and the routines of work persist, offering a sense of normalcy even as the ground beneath it subtly shifts. Whether a new agreement is reached with Origin Energy will shape not only Myuna’s immediate future, but the pace at which its workers are asked to adapt to an energy system in motion.
For now, the question lingers in the early morning air. The coal remains where it has always been, but the certainty that once surrounded it does not. In that space between past reliability and an unwritten future, Myuna’s workers wait — steady, watchful, and hoping that whatever comes next arrives with enough time to prepare.
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Sources Origin Energy New South Wales Resources Regulator Australian Energy Market Operator Mining and Energy Union Australian Financial Review