Almost everyone in the Upper Hunter Valley has a connection to the Liddell Power Station.
After more than half a century of helping to power New South Wales and employment in the region, the coal-fired thermal generator will shut down for good this Friday.
In its lifetime, the AGL operation has produced almost 431,000 gigawatt hours of power.
Twenty minutes away on the streets of Singleton, feelings about its closure are mixed.
"It's an end of an era. It's been pretty good to the state, Liddell," local fitter Glenn O'Brien, who has worked in the power sector since 1991, said.
"We should have made the investments years ago on another coal-fired power station.
"I look at renewables and I just don't see where a blue-collar worker like me would [fit] …there's no transition there for me."
Sue Jones, whose husband worked at Liddell, has lived in the region her whole life.
"We all knew it was going to close but now that the time's here, I think everybody's a bit unsettled about it," she reflected.
"I think it's sad. We all wish it wasn't closing."
Zoe Collins is optimistic about the broader move to clean energy but wonders how it will impact jobs.
"I think it's great that they're moving across [to renewables] but they've had a whole industry of coal-power here and there are so many families who rely on it," she said.
"If they can sustain those jobs while still going into more renewables, that would be awesome."
Similarly, 23-year-old Brayden Ward is excited by the prospect of industry diversification.
"I think it would definitely help out," he said.
"It would be nice to see different things in the town, a lot more change."
Workers prepare to clock off
On March 14, 1979, Steve Lanesbury walked into Liddell for the first time.
Fitted out with a uniform and toolkit, the young apprentice never thought he'd see it to closure.
"Being a Muswellbrook boy, Liddell pretty much means everything to me," he said.
Mr Lanesbury's father used to work at the mine that originally supplied coal to the station, while his mother still lives in the home bought with Liddell pay checks.
"Everything I have in life is because of Liddell."
He recalls a time when there was triple the staff, regular rugby league, cricket games, even skiing on Lake Liddell.
"The social networking and all that was huge," he remembered.
After the closure, about half of Liddell's 180 workers will transfer to AGL's nearby Bayswater Power Station.
Others have found new paths, and a third will retire, including Mr Lanesbury.
Twenty workers will stay on for the decommissioning phase.
"Someone else will always make power but it's the people that have worked here, the friendships," Mr Lanesbury said.
Businesses navigate future
Nostalgia aside, businesses in the region have been forced to consider the practicalities.
Harold Hobden's family started a steel supplies workshop in Muswellbrook 25 years ago.
About 5 to 10 per cent of the business comes from AGL's local operations.
"Shutting down Liddell is going to impact us quite largely," he said.
"When you lose half of your biggest customer base, it really does affect the business in a very hard sort of way."
While he acknowledges the move towards renewables, he thinks a new coal-fired plant is needed in the interim.
"My biggest question is, 'where's our base load power going to come from?'"
"We're very resilient here in the Hunter Valley and we will get through it but it's going to be hard on us in the meantime."
Anita White runs a disability support service that employs at least 60 people to make products for the local energy sector.
She hopes the closure will create new opportunities for skills and training.
"It's scary but it is exciting because it's a time for change," she said.
"For us it is, 'what do we do? How can we get into renewables? In parts assembly perhaps?'"
"We will always keep our eyes open to change and opportunities that might be out there for people with disabilities."
Environmentalists call time
Others, like Tony Lonergan, say Liddell's closure will be a breath of fresh air.
Mr Lonergan, who was born and raised in the Muswellbrook Shire, has run as the local Greens candidate at several elections.
He remembers Liddell being built.
"It was a source of great pride, really the first of the big stand-alone power stations," he said.
But now he's ready to see it close.
"Muswellbrook is considered the third-most polluted local government area in the country and a lot of that is down to the power stations and coal mines."
Four more stations are set to close by 2030 and while Mr Lonergan continues to campaign for a greener future, he's not sure we're ready.
"We still need the coal generators to operate for a while yet because we've been so slow in rolling out renewables," he said.
"The reality is we really should be further ahead than we are."
Bob Hawes, chief executive of Business Hunter, agreed.
"The approval processes for these projects can be long and often it cripples the projects," he said.
"We need to be looking at reskilling people that are interested in going into those sectors.
"We really do have to work hard about landing some of these projects so that the promise of the renewables that we're hoping for as we switch off the coal-powered stations becomes a reality."
Editor's note 6/6: A title related to this article has been amended to reflect Liddell was one of Australia's oldest operating coal-fired power station at the time of publication, not the oldest historically. It has since closed.
