Hi fellowes111, Your item has made me recall a childhood...

Hi fellowes111, Your item has made me recall a childhood incident, about mid 40's I'd say, where a relative who lived in Yallourn was going through a bundle of family photographs.
There were snaps of the huge open cut with trains running out for miles to the operating coal face drag line excavators and returning to dump their loads at the power houses. Staggering stuff then.

A snap came up and he laughed and said,
"and that's Lake Yallourn!" There was this huge expanse of water. The open cut had filled with water during some exceptional winter.
Don't know what year, but obviously the drainage provisions had failed totally.

Point. Coal fired power systems have not been all plain sailing either. No doubt tales of exploding boilers and so on are manifest as well.

It's never that easy.

geojac