Darryl Best was born in Lithgow in the Blue Mountains, where coal has been mined since 1868. 

“I worked all my career in coal mines,” he says. “I started as an apprentice electrician at Kerosene Vale Coal Mine out near Lithgow in 1975.”

It was his first job out of high school – after his dad told his sports-mad son not to waste time on university – and was paid $60 a week. Coal took off in Australia in the 80s and 90s, unions grew stronger and the pay got a lot better. 

It was a few years before he went underground. 

“Underground’s interesting. It's different. The camaraderie is great, because you are working with a crew who all have to perform or somebody could get hurt. The banter amongst crews is great. It's a lot of fun. It's also dirty, dusty, hot, cold, depending on where you are. Wet. It's a challenge because you're working with people against a really hostile environment.”

Over the years, Darryl studied engineering and rose through the ranks. In 2009, he moved to Wollongong and a job in management at Mt Kembla’s Dendrobium Mine, a move he remembers as a “good economic decision”, but also one that marked the beginning of the end of his coalmining career. 

Six months later, he shifted to Wongawilli, in the southern foothills of the escarpment.“I was the production manager at Wongawilli until it shut in 2014, and it wasn't a great way for the mine to finish.”

It was a stressful time work wise, trying to support longwalls mining through old workings, as well as weeks of no wages; a battle to be paid super; and a change of ownership. Running the mine became harder, machinery broke down, contractors went unpaid. “The workforce was so dispirited,” Darryl says.

At the end, he says, “We had people laying on their sides, along the longwall face that had fallen in, digging pieces of coal out. A horrendous job.” 

Ultimately, recovering the longwall was supposedly what the longwall was worth and the owners decided to shut the mine.

"Then they said, since you know the men better than we do, you can tell them.

“So I stood in front of these people, four different shifts, and told them that, and told them that all the things that I'd said to them about job security were not right, because they're all going to be out of work and they're going to shut the mine. The looks on their faces and the things they said, I'll never forget. 

“It absolutely shattered me.

“They went wherever they had to go to get work. They went to Western Australia, Queensland, the road tunnels up in Sydney.

“I went to Russell Vale, where I was the longwall superintendent.”

It was another senior role with huge challenges that ended badly. “The mine shut towards the end of 2015. And that was the end of that, for me. I got really, really stressed and really upset … took me a long time to get over it.”

Darryl took time off, did contract work, but in the second lockdown of 2020, he finally retired.

“I'd lost my desire. The world, the climate was going to crap. My knees had gone to crap and I couldn't walk anywhere.

“It was a really great industry to work in. I don't regret that I worked in it. I totally regret the effect it's had on the climate. So that's why I'm working so hard to try and reverse that.”

Overseas travel was the catalyst for his new outlook. Seeing the world first-hand, rather than through the lens spruiked by the Murdoch press, made Darryl worry about Australia post-coal. During his career, he’s seen breadwinners grapple with loss of face, of income, of options out. He’s seen young fathers forced into fly-in, fly-out jobs; divorces; people contemplate suicide.

“And I thought, well, that's just wrong. 

“I looked at the American model. They’ve invested billions into renewables, but they are in California or Texas – they're not in West Virginia or somewhere the coal mines shut, and they're horribly depressed communities. 

“I thought, we've got to make sure we don't make the same mistake here.”

Attending 2022's South Coast Writers Festival at Wollongong Town Hall set Darryl on a new path. It wasn’t so much the talk he’d come to hear by former Greens senator Scott Ludlam as the person he met afterwards: Greens councillor Cath Blakey. 

Cath stood up to call for submissions to stop the Dendrobium extension going under the water catchment. “I walked over and said, ‘hi, I am Darryl Best, I've worked in coal mines all my life. I'd like to talk about what you said.’ And she took a step backwards, which was really funny. And I said, ‘I'd like to help.’”

Through Cath, Darryl met the leaders of Protect Our Water Alliance and found himself on the ABC’s Drive program, sharing his story with Lindsay McDougall.

Actor and Hi Neighbour founder Yael Stone was listening and, in September 2022, they met for coffee at the Two Sisters cafe in Bulli. Darryl remembers “being really nervous meeting someone as high profile as her”.

“I didn't know her at all before and I had to look up who she was as I have never watched Orange Is The New Black.”

Yael’s plans to help workers upskill for renewable jobs inspired him to volunteer at the not-for-profit, founded after Black Summer. 

“I thought she was passionate and really, really bright and totally on the right track.

“I think the philosophy behind it is spot on.”

For a mine electrician to retrain to fit solar panels takes about 20 hours, plus a practical component and Clean Energy Council accreditation costs about $2500, Darryl says. Hi Neighbour offers scholarships and advice, making the path clear. 

“That takes out a lot of their anti-climate vitriol because there is somewhere for them to go. At the moment, coal miners are just attacked everywhere for working in an industry that's killing the world.”

Darryl thinks that most miners – even though salaries are still good, starting from about $120k – know they’ll be out of work in a decade or so. “While there's no opportunity for them, they’re just going to keep denying it and keep voting for parties that tell them that coal’s here forever.”

Some former colleagues are supportive of his efforts, many are not. “The word got round Russell Vale that I was a mad climate change person and that I was trying to shut Russell Vale. And so none of them will talk to me. Which is a shame, because that's not what I'm doing.”

Darryl says he is driven by a desire to help.

“My wife and I have three adult children; three, about to be four, grandchildren. We are really concerned about their future. I don't want them growing up in a world that I ever contributed to destroying and not have tried the hardest I can to get it better.”

Today, he volunteers anything from two to 20 hours a week with Hi Neighbour and the Social Enterprise Council of NSW & ACT. At age 67, he has a new circle of friends, a passionate group of environmental activists, many of them women. “I love that women are changing our world. I think it's brilliant,” he says.

One of Darryl’s goals this year is to advocate for the government to establish a skills and training base for renewables in the Illawarra. He would like to get involved with Green Gravity, which repurposes disused mines for green energy storage. 

Retirement is different to how he imagined it. “I was going to write a book, this is more fun.”

Darryl has also found time to relax – work on his native garden, listen to music, drink red wine, walk the dog. In December, amid a 40-degree heat wave, he and his wife hosted a party at their home in Woonona. “It was almost the who's who of people in environment that came to our place. 

“My social circle is really different.”

In February, at Wollongong's Yes2Renewables Family Fun Day, Darryl was one of the speakers alongside Austinmer engineer Dr Saul Griffith. 

On Sunday 4th, Darryl shared his story with a crowd seated on a lawn overlooking the sea, telling them of mine closures and their devastating effects on families and communities. 

“In the past there were other mines opening. That is not the case now. There isn’t an abundance of jobs for these workers to adapt their skills towards.

“That is why it is so important that we transition to renewables as soon as possible.”

The next day, on Monday, 5 February 2024, news broke that Wollongong Resources would close Wongawilli and the Russell Vale colliery, the same mine Darryl left almost a decade ago. 

The ABC reported that more than 200 workers had lost their jobs.