The emotional geographies of a coal mining transition: a case study of Singleton, New South Wales, Australia

ABSTRACT

The transition required to remove coal from the global energy mix will have major implications across coal producing regions. There is limited work, however, that explores how this transition is being received by communities with multi-generational connections to the industry. This paper explores understandings and responses to transition in the Australian community of Singleton. Located 145 km north of Sydney in the Upper Hunter Valley, the local area has been a site of coal mining activity since the 1850s – helping foster a strong connection between industry and place. Using an emotional geographies framework, we uncover various local feelings associated with the prospect of a future without coal. While these emotional responses can stem from the anticipated material losses of mines and jobs, they have also been found to stem from the mutually imbricated threats posed by a ‘hidden dimension of loss’. This dimension of loss positions mining as much more than an emotionless economic activity. Instead, it is uncovered as an activity – a tradition – that can define understandings of place. Whilst set in Australia, this study holds relevance for mining communities internationally faced with the disruption of existing ways of life, identities, and understandings of place as the energy transition unfolds.

KEYWORDS:

• Mining
• resource extraction
• emotional geography
• energy transition
• resource transition
• solastalgia
• place attachment

Introduction

Geography’s emotional turn has sparked growing recognition of the need to challenge problematic representations of the extractive sector as a ‘rational’, ‘economic’, and ‘emotionless’ space (Ey, Sherval, and Hodge 2017). As such, increasing attention is being given to understanding the emotional responses that are evoked by mining’s operation and expansion (Albrecht 2005; Albrecht et al. 2007; Ey 2018; Ey, Sherval, and Hodge 2017; Higginbotham et al. 2007; Tjandra 2023), as well as its contraction in the wake of economic and environmental pressures (Bennett 2009; Della Bosca and Gillespie 2018; Pini, Mayes, and McDonald 2010; Rohse, Day, and Llewellyn 2020). Despite this growing collection of research, there is little work that has applied an emotional geographies lens to both locate felt responses to the resources and energy transition, and to identify the underlying triggers behind these deep emotional responses. As such, this paper explores local understandings of, as well as emotional responses to, the resources and energy transition occurring within the Upper Hunter community of Singleton – the modern epicentre of coal mining in the Hunter Valley, two hours north of Sydney in Australia. In doing so, we draw upon media and political discourses, as well as community and stakeholder interviews; to gain insights into a tradition and way of life that defines understandings and imaginings of place.

Singleton and coal mining

The Hunter Valley community of Singleton – located in New South Wales (NSW), Australia (see Figure 1) – was founded on unceded Wonnarua/Wanaruah land in 1820 (Singleton Council 2020; Singleton Council 2021). Although European settlers first discovered coal in 1830, the first mines in the local area would not open until the 1850s (Singleton Council 2020; Coal and Community n.d.). The widespread adoption of electricity post-World War II finally saw local coal mining become a fully viable economic activity while the onset of the 1980s witnessed the proliferation of the vast open-cut pits that now scar the landscape between Singleton and Muswellbrook (Hartig and Holmes 2000; O’Neill and Green 2000). It is estimated that approximately 15–20% of the coal from these mines is currently retained onshore for domestic consumption, while the remaining 80–85% is exported through the Port of Newcastle to markets in countries such as China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea (Cottle 2013; Munro 2012). As such, the jobs of Hunter Valley coal miners are beholden less to domestic markets and more to international demand for coal. Across the region as a whole, these coal jobs account for just 7.95% of all employment; however, this increases to 41% of all jobs in the Singleton Local Government Area (McCarthy 2021; Perry and Hewitson 2019). This sizable dependence on the coal mining industry as a provider of local jobs – and the role these play in informing local ways of life, understandings of identity and place, and feelings of pride – reinforces the need to continue breaking down ‘emotionless’ representations of the extractive industry. This is especially important amidst forecasts of substantial reductions in domestic coal consumption and international exports – events, which have the potential to evoke heightened emotional responses from those whose livelihoods, sense of self, and sense of community derive from the industry.

Figure 1. Location of Singleton, New South Wales, Australia.

The paper will now discuss this changing role of coal in both domestic and international contexts, before reviewing existing literature focussed on feelings of loss in communities impacted by industrial decline and moving on to emotional geographies. This is then followed by a discussion of our methods and the results of our research.

The changing role of coal

Growing recognition that the burning of fossil fuels contributes to human-induced climate change has resulted in international commitments to reduce the world’s fossil fuel consumption. At the COP26 climate summit held in Glasgow in 2021, attendees reaffirmed the 2015 Paris Agreement’s commitment to limit average global temperature increases to well below 2°C above pre-industrial levels.¹ This re-commitment came alongside recognition that limiting global warming would require greenhouse gas emissions to be reduced by 45% by 2030, relative to 2010 levels, and to net-zero by mid-century (United Nations 2022). As subsequently explained by Edwards et al. (2022), if Australia’s major import partners meet this commitment, the country’s thermal coal exports will drop significantly, likely corresponding with a large downturn in domestic coal-fired power generation.

Modelling cited by Wood, Beauman, and Adams (2021) reveals that NSW coal production volumes will begin to meaningfully fall during the mid-2030s, with forecasts suggesting that they will have dropped to at least half of today’s current production volumes by mid-century. Whilst declines in coal production will be driven largely by changing export demand, indicative of climate change mitigation strategies and the increasing use of solar, wind and gas energy (International Energy Agency 2018; United Nations 2022), reduced domestic demand is also likely amid the recent and planned closures of the Upper Hunter’s Liddell and Bayswater power stations (AGL 2022; Hannam 2022; Whittaker and Bryce 2022). However, it should be noted that energy is a highly volatile policy area in Australia, with the New South Wales government having announced in September 2023 that it would enter talks with Origin Energy to keep the Hunter Valley’s Eraring coal-fired power station open beyond its planned closure date of August 2025 (Hannam and McLeod 2023). This fluidity in the state’s domestic energy mix, and the mixed messages it sends to workers whose livelihoods are dependent on coal, adds to the importance of exploring understandings and responses to transition in communities impacted by its uncertainty and fragility.

Given these international and domestic threats to the sustainability of current coal production volumes, levels of mining industry employment are also forecast to fall by anywhere between 75% and 100% by 2061 (Wood, Beauman, and Adams 2021). Such forecasts have the potential to incite significant concern and even political resentment within mining communities as they grapple with the prospect of a life after coal.

Based in the United Kingdom, Rodríguez-Pose (2018) notes that industrial towns and villages across the globe are at the centre of an emerging trend in which voters are opting for a form of politics with strong territorial, rather than social foundations. Anderson and Secor (2022) note that right-wing populists are ideally positioned to benefit from this phenomenon within communities perceived to have poor development prospects because they typically promote optimism through promises of a future that blurs with an idealised and longed for past. However, it should be recognised that both extremes of the political spectrum may seek to benefit from this deficit of hope in the future. In the context of Singleton, this has manifested through sudden support for right-wing populist candidates promising to ‘save coal mining’ and ‘Save Hunter Coal Jobs’ (AEC 2019a; AEC 2019b; AEC 2022; Bonds 2022; McNamara 2022). Whilst Anderson and Secor (2022) have recognised that right-wing populism gives people permission to feel pride in threatened objects or scenes, such as a mining industry with deep connections to place and community, local drivers of this trend have not been well understood.

Industrial decline and feelings of loss

The long-term and problematic representation of the extractive sector as rational, economic, and emotionless has led to an intense focus on the economically grounded or ‘rational’ reasons as to why people resist change within the coal industry (Ey, Sherval, and Hodge 2017). As such, concerns relating to energy and resource transition have been understood by some researchers as stemming primarily from a material dimension of loss comprising consequences such as mine closures, jobs losses, and population decline.

Brauers and Oei’s (2020, 7) study into the political economy of coal in Poland found that resistance to decreased coal production was driven by ‘fear of change and loss’ in coal regions. This fear related especially to unemployment, potential business closures, past negative experiences of structural change, and concerns about rising energy prices and weakened energy security. Similar economically grounded or ‘rational’ concerns have also been well documented in the context of the Upper Hunter Valley. Following the announcement by AGL Energy Ltd. to close its Liddell coal-fired power station near Muswellbrook, Roden (2021) sought to understand the extent to which local communities accepted the power station’s closure. This led to the discovery that close to three quarters of respondents believed that a transition away from coal would significantly impact the economic and social life of communities in the Upper Hunter, with concerns relating most prominently to the loss of high-paying mining jobs and the ripple effect of job losses on housing prices, local businesses, and population retention (Roden 2021). These highly tangible economic concerns are important in understanding why communities might resist the departure of coal, especially given the way they help to cement perceptions that many towns could not economically exist without mining (Petrova and Marinova 2013). However, other community concerns may also need to be uncovered.

The term ‘hidden dimension of loss’ was coined by Della Bosca and Gillespie (2018, 734) to describe the intangible assets that may be lost amidst the departure of coal from a generational mining community. Whilst not exclusively described using this term, other researchers have also shown that intangible community assets have the potential to be lost following a resources and energy transition (Bennett 2009; Kalt 2021; Pini, Mayes, and McDonald 2010; Rohse, Day, and Llewellyn 2020; Thomas et al. 2022). Such findings ultimately challenge the overall adequacy of transition policies focussed on compensating for the loss of jobs alone (Luke 2023).

In their attempt to understand attitudes towards energy transition in the multi-generational Blue Mountains’ mining community of Lithgow, Della Bosca and Gillespie (2018) analysed hundreds of public submissions to the NSW Planning Assessment Commission (PAC) regarding a development application to extend the life of an existing coal mine. This ultimately uncovered that mining’s potential demise had the capacity to be interpreted by some community members as a threat to place, local knowledge, identity, and ways of life (Della Bosca and Gillespie 2018). Such a finding suggests that place attachment, or the emotional bond between people and place that allows the associations of a particular place to be incorporated into the identity and behaviour of both individuals and communities (Bartel and Graham 2015; Della Bosca and Gillespie 2018; Hernandez et al. 2010; Hummon 1992), is relevant to understanding why people may respond so emotively to place-based development and change. This is especially significant given that parochial place-based identities can lead to conflict when local interests, identities, authority, and control are understood to be threatened or under challenge by changes to place – particularly if this change is solidified via regulatory means (Bartel and Graham 2015; Bennett and Layard 2015).

In keeping with the notion that industrial decline can evoke intangible loss, an earlier study of the Ravensthorpe nickel mine in Western Australia drew upon an emotional geographies framework to understand the responses of both mine workers and community members to the mine’s sudden and unexpected closure (Pini, Mayes, and McDonald 2010). This revealed that the emotional responses of displaced mine workers were rarely triggered by fears for their lost income or concerns regarding their future employment prospects. Instead, study participants were primarily found to be dealing with the loss of their strong emotional connection to the identity of ‘miner’ and a sense of betrayal linked to being disconnected from the spatial arena that was ‘the mine’. This observation helps to highlight that, whilst distinct from material mine closures and job losses, the hidden dimensions of loss associated with industrial decline are only made possible through tangible changes to the mining landscape.

Whilst nostalgia has been observed as a coping mechanism in former mining and industrial communities (Bennett 2009; Rohse, Day, and Llewellyn 2020; Thomas et al. 2022), it is possible that some members of contemporary mining communities are experiencing a similar kind of distress in anticipation of the resources and energy transition. ‘Solastalgia’ is a term coined by Albrecht (2005) to refer to the distress caused when environmental change impacts upon people in their home environment. The feeling of solastalgia differs to that of nostalgia as individuals are not feeling homesickness as a result of being separated from a loved home but are instead coming to the recognition that the identity of the place where they reside is under immediate assault (Albrecht 2005; Albrecht et al. 2007). This attack on one’s sense of place, and the erosion of their sense of belonging amid its transformation, can lead to an intense desire for the place where one is a resident to be maintained in a state that continues to provide comfort and solace (Albrecht 2005). As such, solastalgia can be understood as a ‘form of homesickness one gets when one is still at “home”’ (Albrecht 2005, 45).

The desire for place to be maintained in an unchanging and constant state reflects what Massey (1991) described as a reactionary sense of place – defined by place having a close connection to a single form of identity and being grounded in a single history (Barron, Hartman, and Hagemann 2020; Creswell 2014). This stands in contrast to a more progressive sense of place that acknowledges how understandings of community and place are rarely constant and are instead defined by multiple identities and histories that are constantly being re-made through our everyday lives (Barron, Hartman, and Hagemann 2020; Massey 1991).

As explained by Albrecht (2005) solastalgia can develop in any context where place identity is threatened by change. Whilst experiences of solastalgia have already been well documented amongst people impacted by the physical effects of mining on the landscape (Albrecht et al. 2007; Ey, Sherval, and Hodge 2017; Higginbotham et al. 2007), the relationship between this sense of displacement and loss with questions of power and dispossession beyond the biophysical realm have been less well understood (Askland and Bunn 2018).

Just because the resources and energy transition has the potential to evoke deeply felt responses to change, it is important to recognise that regions impacted by this change do not see themselves exclusively defined by the transition. In their study of policy preferences in the energy contested region of the Upper Hunter, Colvin and Przybyszewski (2022) noted that people viewed the future of their local area in an integrative way that considered, but was not defined by, the transition. As such, researchers warned that policies focussed on transition alone may fail to resonate with current realities of ‘life in the Upper Hunter’ (Colvin and Przybyszewski 2022). This creates a need for alternative approaches, such as that proposed by Fairbrother (2017), to take into account both immediate and more long-term patterns of change. Similarly, research from Victoria’s coal dependent Latrobe Valley has likewise demonstrated that strategic framings within transition policy can sideline local interests (Weller 2018). Thus, highlighting why deeply felt emotional responses to change may not always result in urgent and widespread community calls for policy responses predicated on ‘energy transition’ or ‘just transition’.

Emotional geography

The importance of emotionally charged contests over local identity, agency, and place that are evoked by economic development and environmental change has historically been underplayed in research. This can be linked partly to society and academia’s privileging of the rational; however, it also reflects how emotions are typically imagined as purely internalised mental states as opposed to relational flows that exist between people and place (Bondi, Davidson, and Smith 2005, 3). In failing to acknowledge that emotions can be the products of historical, political, economic, cultural, and social conditions, mainstream accounts risk further invisibilising how emotions enhance political agendas, empower resistance to change, and drive progressive social change (Williams 1976; Wright 2012). In the context of resource extraction, this neglect of the importance and affective capacity of emotion, limits what is possible to know when it comes to understanding how real or perceived change can reinforce support for mining; thus, highlighting a need to be more attentive to the myriad ways in which people may respond to changes in their local built and natural environments.

During the late twentieth century, amidst a realisation that to sideline emotion is to sideline a key relation through which the world is made, the discipline of geography took an emotional turn (Clouser 2016; Mansvelt and Berg 2016). This emotional turn recognised that emotions have long had an important role to play in helping to understand the human and more-than-human worlds (Bondi, Davidson, and Smith 2005; Clouser 2016). For example, Wright (2012) explains that acknowledging emotion allows us to better understand the material world, agency, and knowledge. This is because giving attention only to what is considered ‘rational’ limits understandings of what people do, how and why they act and react, and what they experience in their daily interactions with others and the world around them. As such, engaging with phenomena not traditionally viewed as objective, like emotions, makes it possible to develop richer and more layered understandings of our worlds (Dowling, Lloyd, and Suchet-Pearson 2018). Therefore, this paper draws upon the knowledges of emotional geographers to explore the complex and often overlooked ways in which residents of coal mining communities may respond to the prospect of major economic and societal change impacting upon their lives.

When viewed as a methodological approach to conducting research, emotional geography builds upon the broader discipline of geography’s commitment to write the earth by describing how our feelings work to shape the world around us (Anderson and Smith 2001). This more-than-rational approach to conducting research recognises the emotional dimension of human decision making whilst still remaining attentive to the economic drivers of their behaviour (Ferrell 2009; Whitehead, Jones, and Pykett 2011). As such, it can help to reveal a more nuanced picture of how people respond to change in their local environments. Whilst it is not possible to fully understand and document all of the emotions of others, largely because they are rarely ever surface level phenomena, emotional geographers seek to privilege intimacy and proximity through their research by engaging directly with people as a way of capturing felt aspects of the human experience (Bondi, Davidson, and Smith 2005). The most common methods for accomplishing this are interviews and participant observation (Bailey and Osborne 2020; Bennett 2009; Pini, Mayes, and McDonald 2010; Svobodova, Owen, and Harris 2021; Thomas et al. 2022); although, analysing how people express themselves and are represented in written form can also be effective (Della Bosca and Gillespie 2018; Pile 2010). The methods section below explains how a combination of both interviews and textual analysis have been used to examine emotional responses to transition in the Singleton community.

Methods

Data collection took place between April and August of 2022 with textual analysis being applied to media articles published between 2019 and 2022 (Table 1) and political campaign material disseminated within the federal electorate of Hunter during the 2022 Australian federal election campaign (Table 2). To be considered for analysis, texts had to document the felt responses of local community members to the transition away from coal and/or reveal how political and other leaders were involved in the co-creation of these felt responses. Media articles and political campaign material were selected for analysis in order to help understand how prevailing discourses both communicate and incite the emotional responses of local community members to the transition away from coal.

Table 1. Publishers of Analysed Media Articles.

	Publisher	Number of Articles	Date Range
1	Newcastle Herald	9	11/04/22–02/07/22
2	The Guardian Australia	4	19/05/19–04/05/22
3	ABC News	4	25/02/22–19/05/22
4	Sydney Morning Herald	2	14/04/22–18/04/22
5	The Singleton Argus	2	02/05/22–29/06/22
6	Hunter River Times	2	17/06/22
7	SBS News	1	20/10/21
8	The Australian	1	23/04/22
9	The Saturday Paper	1	07/05/22

Table 2. Publishers of Political Campaign Material and Types of Material Published.

Publisher of Campaign Material	Facebook Posts Mentioning Coal and Transition	Corflutes/Banners Mentioning Coal and Transition^2	Pamphlets Mentioning Coal and Transition^3
Australian Labor Party	6	N/A	N/A
National Party of Australia	6	3	2
Pauline Hanson’s One Nation	13	N/A	N/A
The Greens	5	N/A	N/A
Independents	5	1	N/A
Don’t Go Cold on Coal	N/A	1	N/A
Mining and Energy Union	N/A	2	N/A
Advance Australia	N/A	N/A	1

Community members were initially invited to participate in a semi-structured interview through the distribution of an online flyer within two Facebook Community Noticeboards (with a combined membership of 20,470) on June 1, 2022. A letterbox drop of 180 households was also conducted across June 1 and 4, 2022, and a radio interview on the Upper Hunter station 2NM was aired on June 6, 2022. These recruitment pathways, however, only elicited a single research participant so the decision was made to reach out to personal contacts who might be interested in participating in the research. The personal contacts were typically friends or acquaintances of the researchers whom they had come to know via avenues such as family connections, sporting clubs and local businesses.

Eight semi-structured interviews were ultimately conducted between June and August of 2022. Six were with community members and a further two with individuals representing the Hunter Jobs Alliance and Singleton Council (Table 3) – both key stakeholders in Singleton’s transition away from coal. Approval to conduct these interviews was granted by the University of Newcastle Human Research Ethics Committee in late May 2022 (Ref. H-2022-0115).

Table 3. Interview Participants Background Information.

	Gender	Occupation/Role	Time in the Singleton Area	Connection to the Coal Industry
Participant One	Female	Oil Tester	22 Years	Indirectly employed by the coal industry and the daughter of a coal-fired power station worker.
Participant Two	Female	Miner	40 Years	Directly employed at a local coal mine driving trucks (has done this for 12 years across both the Hunter and Queensland).
Participant Three	Male	Real Estate Agent	57 Years	No connection to the coal industry.
Participant Four^4	Male	Retired Power Station Worker	22 Years	Worked at a local coal-fired power station from the time of his arrival in the Singleton area until his retirement in 2019.
Participant Five	Female	Hairdresser	26 Years	The daughter and wife of coal miners.
Participant Six^5	Male	Farmer	77 Years	Lives and works on a property next door to a coal mine and worked in mining for a period to supplement his family’s farm income.
Participant Seven	Male	Staff Member at the Hunter Jobs Alliance	N/A	N/A
Participant Eight	Male	Staff Member at Singleton Council	N/A	N/A

Interviews were audio recorded, unless otherwise requested by research participants, and then transcribed for analysis. One community member asked to respond to interview questions in written form as opposed to verbally. Interviews lasted between 18 and 75 min in duration and were conducted either in-person, over the phone, or via online video conferencing technology.

The discussion that follows has been constructed using quotes and insights that are drawn from empirical interview data as well as the textual analysis of media articles and political campaign material. Of particular note, transition discourses propagated by the media and politicians were thematically analysed to isolate the emotional responses being evoked by the resources and energy transition, while interviews were thematically analysed to identify the various drivers of these emotions and community attitudes as to the likely nature and pace of change. As such, the discussion has been divided into three sections that respectively deal with emotional responses to change, the dimensions of loss driving these emotional responses, and the significance of time.

Discussion

Emotional responses to change

Singleton community members can be seen to embody a range of different emotional responses to the resources and energy transition; however, feelings of fear and anxiety are by far the most pervasive. In regions where the mining workforce is supplied by locals rather than fly-in-fly-out (FIFO) workers, the loss of one job has the potential to have a major ripple effect throughout the broader community. This harsh reality is helping to instil a fear, captured in both media discourse and primary empirical data, that without mining, the town of Singleton itself might not exist:

It's not just the direct employment in the mining industry, it's the flow-on effect of all the support businesses … If the mines closed, [Singleton] probably wouldn't exist (Murray, Singleton resident. In: O’Brien 2021).

The community’s very dependent on mining. If we lost the mining, we’d be a ghost town (Participant One – Oil Tester).

As emotions are challenging to both document and describe, it was also important to be attentive to expressions of fear and/or anxiety that were more subtle than seen above, and which may have been nominally conveyed through ‘rational’ concerns about employment security or economic instability. Such subtlety is exemplified by Singleton’s mayor when recounting an interaction she had at a local government conference to ABC journalist Stephen Long:

I sat down at a lunch break … and his words [to me] were, ‘What do I have to do to convince Singleton people about climate change?’ My reply was simple: ‘Tell them where their jobs are going to be.’ It's not a conversation about climate change, it's a conversation about jobs, jobs, jobs, and once jobs are solved then other things will flow (Sue Moore, Singleton Mayor. In: Long 2021).

In recalling her response, there is an implicit suggestion from Mayor Moore that responses perceived externally as climate change denial are actually symptoms of the anxiety and underlying fear that is being evoked by local perceptions of limited future job security and economic opportunity. Repetitious use of the word ‘jobs’ helps to convey the heightened nature of this anxiety as well as how urgently a solution is considered to be needed. Interestingly, it is worth noting that expressions of fear and anxiety are evoked almost exclusively by material economic concerns, such as those observed by Brauers and Oei (2020), as opposed to the hidden dimensions of loss observed by Della Bosca and Gillespie (2018). The same cannot be said, however, when it comes to emotions such as indignity and loss.

Feelings of indignity and loss are strongly evident within discourses relating to Singleton’s transition away from coal. In an opinion piece published by the Newcastle Herald, economic geographer Phillip O’Neill charts the arrival of a new politics of coal that has stripped industrial power from workers and political power from their communities. According to O’Neill (2022), this has led miners to lose the nobility they once held as members of the coal industry:

A new politics of coal has arrived. This time, a different characteristic of coal – it is the worst fossil-fuel contributor to greenhouse gases – has stripped industrial power from coal workers and political power from their communities. Coal miners have lost their nobility, coal unions have lost their throne, and the relevance of Labor politicians to a more diverse Hunter Valley is under question.

The power of this ‘new politics of coal’ (O’Neill 2022) to usurp past nobility, and leave indignity and loss in its wake, is illustrated by how some Singleton and Hunter Valley residents discuss their most prominent transition concerns. For example, it is noted by somebody with no connection to the coal industry that working in coal mining has, alongside good pay, always come with ‘some sort of status’ (Butler 2022). This is not too dissimilar to a comment made by a Singleton miner to a Guardian Australia journalist which highlighted that transitioning away from coal will strip miners of an activity that provides them with a sense of purpose and satisfaction:

If you take a job away from a thousand blokes, you’ve got to give them something to do (Shane, Singleton Miner. In: Visontay 2020).

In recognising that mining jobs not only pay bills, but also give people a sense of purpose and satisfaction in life, it is easy to understand how talk of coal’s demise would trigger feelings such as indignity and loss that often stem from being out of work.

Interconnected dimensions of loss

The various emotional responses being evoked by Singleton’s implication in the resources and energy transition are at least partly in response to an easily quantifiable and material dimension of loss. In particular, there is a widely held perception that the transition will culminate in mine closures and the subsequent loss of jobs, incomes, and population from the town:

I get excited that there are options that are being proposed, but then I’m like; what’s going to happen? Is it actually going to work? Will it have the jobs that mining did? Will it have the income that mining did? (Participant One – Oil Tester).

Without alternate employment available, there is likely to be a gradual exodus of families from Singleton and other nearby towns (Participant Four – Retired Power Station Worker).

In total, two-thirds of interviewees believed that a future without coal mining, or any alternative employment opportunities, would eventually lead to a smaller and less prosperous community. For some of Singleton’s residents, this future was imagined simply as the gradual exodus of families from the local area, while for others it conjured the ghost town imagery described earlier in this discussion. It should be noted, however, that in line with the work of authors such as Luke (2023), this prospect of a less prosperous future is already likely to be a lived reality for at least some community members who have been excluded from energy and mining industry employment due to factors such as their gender. Nonetheless, it is through this concern about Singleton becoming a ghost town that another dimension of loss begins to emerge; a hidden dimension of loss which, whilst inextricably linked to changes in the material world, is harder to quantify as it deals with the intangible characteristics of place that stem from the presence of a particular industry.

Interviews conducted for this paper reveal that, in line with Della Bosca and Gillespie (2018), the resources and energy transition can be interpreted as a challenge to local ways of life, identity, sense of place and knowledge within mining communities facing change. However, it was similarly revealed that support for mining can also be reinforced by perceptions that the transition away from coal will lead to a loss of community agency as well as a sense of diminishing and denying local contributions and losing pride.

It was acknowledged by multiple community members that the coal mining industry provides a unique way of life for its employees – characterised by high incomes and good working conditions. For example, one research participant, a farmer who spent two decades working in the mining industry, recognised that it provides material benefits like jobs and incomes but went further to suggest that these facilitate a particular way of life no longer provided by many other blue-collar industries. This way of life and standard of living was recognised by other community members as a major factor making it difficult for people dependent on the industry to willingly accept change:

People won’t have the money to spend on all of those luxury things they have, or you know, sending their kids to school here or sending their kids to private schools or whatever it might be (Participant Five – Hairdresser).

The transition away from coal mining also has the potential to significantly alter how some people imagine the communities in which they work and/or call home. When asked to identify words that encapsulate Singleton’s identity, five of six community members mentioned ‘mining’. Meanwhile, when interviewed by the Guardian Australia in 2022, one resident noted that digging coal is ‘what we do’, even if such attitudes invisibilise community members who have other occupations:

This is a mining town. The boys and ladies here, they dig coal. That’s what we do (Lincoln, Singleton resident. In: Butler 2022).

This strong association of mining with Singleton indicates that the resources and energy transition could see the town lose a significant part of its identity in the eyes of at least some community members. This echoes the observations of Kalt (2021) who noted that the hegemony of coal is strongly established in German mining regions and pervades regional culture and identity. Therefore, given how parochial place-based identities can lead to conflict if local interests and identities are understood to be threatened (Bartel and Graham 2015; Bennett and Layard 2015) – especially via regulatory means, it is important to understand that the move away from coal could be felt by some as much more than just a threat to jobs and economic prosperity. This is particularly significant given current efforts by Singleton Council to re-imagine the community as ‘more than a mining town’, and Hunter Renewal’s⁶ release of a community blueprint to help restore the broader Hunter Valley region post-mining (Hamilton 2022; Hunter Renewal 2023). In articulating future visions and blueprints, it will be vital for organisations such as Singleton Council and Hunter Renewal to not be perceived as disregarding or devaluing current conceptualisations of Singleton as a mining community, especially given coal’s role as a reference point for not only local, but also personal and familial identity:

My husband used to be in the mines. His father was in the mines. My brother got a start in the mines after we sold the family takeaway business. My Mum’s uncle actually, he was an underground miner back in the fifties/sixties after he came back from the Second World War (Participant Two – Coal Miner).

In viewing coal mining as an activity that has passed through multiple generations of some families within the Singleton community, it is evident that, much like Della Bosca and Gillespie’s (2018) observations in Lithgow, mining is a material activity, which provides immaterial markers of both connection and identity to the Singleton area. This includes understandings of place itself. In one interview with a young community member, it was explained that for them personally, the material loss of mining, alongside the thousands of jobs and population it sustains, will be accompanied by a loss of place if other businesses are also forced to close:

Everything’s going to close, there’s going to be nothing left. It’s kind of like places you’ve gone to as a child aren’t going to be there anymore (Participant One – Oil Tester).

This insight, alongside coal mining’s current role in defining Singleton’s identity, indicates that feelings of solastalgia relating to change beyond the biophysical realm, such as those identified by Askland and Bunn (2018), have the potential to be evoked by the town’s eventual transition. In addition, the strong association that currently exists between industry and place in the eyes of some community members points towards what Massey (1991) described as a reactionary sense of place which may need to be overcome through a greater appreciation of, and identification with, Singleton’s multiple and complex identities and histories.

Rather than stemming from a denial that Singleton must ready itself for the resources and energy transition, our interviews indicated that recent support for populist right-wing candidates is more likely emblematic of the conflict identified by Bartel and Graham (2015) and Bennett and Layard (2015) that can occur when local identities and interests are perceived as being placed under threat by external regulatory or legislative factors outside the community’s control. When asked to reflect upon what might have driven recent populist backlash at the federal ballot box, one organisation representative believed strongly that it was a protest vote in response to mining communities such as Singleton having their priorities ignored:

People were trying to explain it away in various ways, but it was absolutely a protest vote because mining communities felt like they’d been ignored and their priorities hadn’t been heard (Organisation Representative One – Hunter Jobs Alliance).

This assessment aligned closely with sentiments emerging from community members when asked how they felt about people outside Singleton having their say on the town’s need to transition away from coal:

Sometimes it makes you angry because they’ve got no idea what happens. It comes back to the old city folk think milk comes out of a carton – they don’t realise it comes from a cow or a farm (Participant Two – Miner).

I guess they don’t understand how this town, or how the industry does work, and have scant regard for how important it is economically (Participant Three – Real Estate Agent).

In addition to these feelings of disenfranchisement, the changing politics of coal identified by O’Neill (2022) is also creating a sense amongst some coal workers and locals that their contribution to society is being devalued. In recounting an advertisement in which energy company AGL used special effects to erase its Bayswater Power Station and replace it with wind turbines, the retired power station worker felt a strong sense that his work no longer being valued:

Where once we were providing essential energy to power the people of NSW, we were now great polluters and destroyers of the environment. What a fall from grace (Participant Four – Retired Power Station Worker).

Linked to having one’s contribution to society devalued, is a loss of pride associated with coal’s shift from being regarded as an essential resource, to being a major carbon admitter. For example, the retired power station worker noted the pride he once felt as the provider of an essential service; however, he also acknowledged how this was eroded by AGL’s advertising campaign:

I felt both fortunate and proud to progress to a senior public sector position within an organisation responsible for providing an essential service to the people of NSW (Participant Four – Retired Power Station Worker).

I can’t say how successful the advertising campaign was in AGL’s eyes but any remnant pride that Bayswater employees had was also being erased (Participant Four – Retired Power Station Worker).

In light of the feelings of agency, contribution and pride that can be diminished amidst individual and community severing from industry, it is apparent that there is room for Della Bosca and Gillespie’s (2018) notion of hidden loss to expand so as to encompass new intangible dimensions of loss that may arise from coal mining’s demise.

The significance of time

Interviews with community members reveal that, whilst people recognise coal mining and energy production may not be around forever, many are unable to imagine major changes occurring to the industry in the immediate future. This attitude is expressed primarily through the belief that other resources are not yet capable of providing reliable baseload electricity; although, it can also be observed through the mindset that coal will always be needed to at least a minimal extent:

They’re going to need something very reliable before they just shut up shop on all the coal mines. I honestly can’t see anything becoming that reliable probably for another 50 years. Probably not in my lifetime (Participant Two – Miner).

I think there will always be coal to some degree, but is it going to continue to be what it is today? More than likely not (Participant Five – Hairdresser).

Such beliefs clearly reflect the reassurances offered by politicians and local leaders when allaying community anxiety about the transition, especially their promises that coal mining operations look set to continue for many decades to come (Butler 2022; Perry and Hamilton 2022; Toms 2022; Wilkinson 2022). However, it is possible that dominant political discourses are not the only factor informing community attitudes regarding the pace of change.

The current reality of life on the ground in the Upper Hunter may also be helping to fuel an attitude that preparing communities for the resources and energy transition is not an urgent priority. For example, record high thermal coal prices, accompanied by news that some mining companies plan to extend their operating licences and even reopen moth-balled mines, hardly indicate that the industry is coming to an imminent end (Bernasconi 2022; Kelly 2022; Stapczynski and Stringer 2022). These immediate and tangible indicators of the mining industry’s current prosperity suggest that there is significant merit in Colvin and Przybyszewski’s (2022) argument that policies focused on transition alone may fail to resonate with current realities of ‘life in the Upper Hunter’ as well as Weller’s (2018) observation that strategic framings within transition policy in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley had the effect of sidelining local interests. It also strengthens Fairbrother’s (2017) case for transition policy that is focussed both on immediate, or transitionary change, as well as longer-term transformational change. While the current reality of life on the ground might be contributing to a lack of urgency at a community level, it is likely that as evidence of coal’s demise begins to mount, more people will be willing to prioritise planning for a post-coal future. In keeping with Roden’s (2021) finding that power workers were more likely than members of any other profession to state their uncertainty amidst AGL’s decision to shut its now closed Liddell Power Station, it is possible that people directly employed in mining may also develop an increased sense of uncertainty and urgency to act as announcements like BHP’s recent decision to close its Mount Arthur coal mine become more widespread (Butler and Cox 2022).

Conclusion

This paper ultimately continues Ey, Sherval, and Hodge’s (2017) work in breaking down problematic representations of the extractive sector and further develops Della Bosca and Gillespie’s (2018) hidden dimension of loss by responding to calls within the literature for further research into the balance and composition of motives amongst residents of mining communities facing change (Svobodova, Owen, and Harris 2021). In doing so, it illustrates that deeply felt emotional responses to change will not always result in urgent and widespread community calls for a policy led transition. Therefore, we recommend that policy makers and local leaders must develop policy responses that mitigate against material losses, honour the hidden loses, and simultaneously address current community priorities that are considered more urgent than initiatives predicated solely on the resources and energy transition.

In mitigating against the effects of material loss, policy makers and local leaders must begin to move beyond vague talk about transition, towards developing tangible policy solutions that will actively prepare coal-mining communities for the future. In addition, these policies must be developed in conjunction with communities themselves so as to not re-enforce attitudes that outsiders are imposing change. Such attitudes could also be challenged through greater attentiveness to local history, identity and hopes for the future, thus simultaneously honouring and respecting the intangible assets that coal mining has historically and currently provides.

To help secure the legitimacy of policy solutions in the eyes of local community members, policy makers must also reflect upon how responses to transition can simultaneously work to address current community priorities considered more urgent. Acknowledging the complex and nuanced understandings of locals regarding the nature and pace of change in this way should help to further allay concerns that the resources and energy transition is being imposed on coal mining communities by outsiders with no understanding or appreciation of local realities and priorities. This lesson should carry relevance for mining communities right across the globe who are faced with the disruption of existing ways of life, identities, and understandings of place by factors beyond their control.

Acknowledgements

To everybody who participated in our research, thank you for generously sharing your time and stories with us. We hope that you can see, as well as feel, your knowledges and experiences reflected in this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Myles Egan

Myles Egan is a Development Studies (Honours) graduate from the University of Newcastle. As part of his honours studies, he undertook research into the emotional and attitudinal responses towards the transition away from fossil fuels in the Hunter Valley coal mining community of Singleton. Since completing his studies, Myles has continued to be involved in research focussing on the resources and energy transition through his work as a Research Analyst at the University of Newcastle's Institute for Regional Futures.

Meg Sherval

Dr Meg Sherval is resource and legal geographer at the University of Newcastle. Her research interests are place-based and have revolved around issues of land-use change and development of new and emerging energy sources both locally and internationally. As calls for decarbonisation increase, her work also considers the final voids left behind post mining and how these might be repurposed into the future as transition away from fossil fuels takes place.

Sarah Wright

Sarah Wright is Professor of Geography and Development Studies in the Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Newcastle. Her research focus is in collaborative and Indigenous geographies, working with Yolŋu and Gumbaynggirr co-researchers to attend to Indigenous ontologies of connection, and with networks of small-scale subsistence farmers, particularly in the Philippines, around food and weather.

Notes

1 The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 21), out of which the Paris Agreement emerged, and the 2021 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP26) held in Glasgow are both part of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

2 Corflutes/Banners on display at the Singleton Heights Public School polling place on election day (21/05/2022).

3 Pamphlets delivered to my personal residential address in the electorate of Hunter during the 2022 Australian federal election campaign.

4 Participant Four asked to provide written responses to my questions.

5 Participant Six asked for his interview to not be audio recorded.

6 Hunter Renewal is a civil society group bringing together people, businesses, and organisations to envision a diverse, resilient and thriving future for the Hunter Valley – predicated on a ‘just transition’ away from coal.