‘A train wreck’: what happens to workers and towns when the lights go out on coal power?

Warrick Jordan, coordinator of the Hunter Jobs Alliance, outside Eraring power station. Photograph: Peter Lorimer

When Jacqui Coleman heard that Australia’s largest coal-fired power station was to close seven years earlier than planned, she initially didn’t believe it.

Coleman is a retail worker in Dora Creek, the closest suburb to the Eraring power station on the shores of Lake Macquarie in New South Wales.