Two More Years (for Eraring Power Station)

Eraring power station has always been a part of my life. Construction started in 1977 and it and I were unleashed on the world in 1982. It was announced this week they were going to again extend its life another two years, this time until 2029. Transitions are well under way and it’s surely becoming more and more expensive to keep it alive. There’s a battery project well underway locally by Origin, and will the huge amount of private households getting their own solar systems and batteries the load on the station is being shifted. Workers are getting support for training in related industries and people should be pretty damn confident that the old girl  won’t be needed by its new closure date of 2029.

All those people who are buying land for the McMansions in the shadows must be a little disappointed but the further push back. They, like us, get to experience the localised particulates for another couple of years. At least housing prices will hold for that time I hope, don’t wanna know how much more the local area will go up once we’re free of it. The small Myuna colliery was opened to directly supply coal to the station, and its workers are still waiting to hear if Origin will continue to buy coal from them til 2029 or finally stop as they keep threatening to do. Every time there’s a looming closure people talk about how everything will change and businesses will suffer, but we’ll see.

As a kid, I remember having this cold-war fear that my area of the world would only be a target for nuclear annihilation because we hosting the biggest Power Station in the land. That little concern bubble up whenever the world leaders tick us a little closer to doomsday, but all in all it’s pretty chill here in Lake Macquarie.

We used to travel to ovals near the station for interschool softball days. I think the netball girls also headed there. The local primary school closed in 2014 after having no enrolments for 2015. They rocked a brown and yellow uniform. It’s unlikely that Eraring itself would need a primary school again but the smaller public schools like Dora Creek and Cooranbong are going to see huge numbers once the estates are filled with families moving up from Sydney for affordable detached housing. There’s a twin service station being built on the M1 that’s only 2km from me, but fortunately no exits from the highway to the towns are planned. There’s two water trucks that run on a loop from the estate here to the build site for the servos ferrying water for dust dampening.

There’s SO much that needs to be done up here in terms of services to support the growing population. Like we still only have a two hourly train service on weekends, hourly through the week, there’s only steep steps to the platform, and there’s no bus connection between Dora Creek and Cooranbong, the two towns shall not meet. Cooranbong with its new sea of grey roofs  (it’s always a little hotter over there) in Watagan Park Estate got a Woolworths last month (which is great and quiet – but my partner did day it all feels litlle Sydney out there).

Our little semi-rural town’s need to get some support to handle our new residents and commenters in the coming decades.