Striking the right balance between paying respect and creating a sense of hope is what is facing the creators of a new memorial to the Appin mine disaster.
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After a nationwide call for artists, South32 has commissioned Queensland group Artventure to design and build the sculpture, which will be officially unveiled at the Appin Sportsground in July next year.
The finished work will sit alongside the existing memorial, which features a plaque - one for each of the miners who lost their lives - amidst a grove of trees.
On the night of July 24, 1979, an explosion ripped through the busiest pit at Appin mine after sparks ignited a build-up of methane gas.
Forty-five men were underground in a crib room at the time; when rescue crews made it to the location they found 10 of their colleagues' bodies still in the crib room and four more a few metres from the coalface.
Paul Johnson and Gail Mason are the professional public artists behind Artventure and they've made more than 50 projects around Australia.
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As part of their preparation, the pair have spoken to family members and colleagues of the miners who lost their lives, and have heard the hurt and pain that still lingers decades later.
Mr Johnson said it was a balancing act to create a memorial about such a tragic event.
"There's a horror, an ugliness and an unhappiness attached to it," he said of the mine disaster.
"But you don't want to make a horrible, ugly and unhappy sculpture. At the same time you cannot pretend there aren't people still traumatised by it because they are, and they've expressed that very clearly over the last couple of days.
"However, we still want to create a space where they can reflect, understand a little bit of the past and talk to each other, but not in a morbid way."
Mr Johnson said there was some good that came out the tragedy, which was the subject of a NSW judicial inquiry.
"Some really good things came out of the inquiry," he said.
"I know there were significant changes made in the management of safety as a consequence of that disaster. I know it had a huge impact, not just on Appin mine but on mine management throughout the country."
He said the memorial would be largely made of aluminium and would be designed so that people could move through it rather than look at it from a distance.
"It's about creating the right space in which those many and varied emotions past and present can be remembered, voiced and shared," he said.
"It's important that our final piece complements the existing memorial and its sentiments."