After 23 years of growth, including one of the biggest mining booms in the nation's history, tumbling iron ore and coal prices have put a brake on Australia's economy - and mining towns are paying the price.
Peter Windle is a casualty of the mining slowdown. The New South Wales mining employee has lost a well-paid job, a company car and an annual bonus that in some years was as high as A$60,000 ($48,800; £31,300).
A termination package from the mining company he used to work for has helped soften the blow. But Mr Windle still had to sell his investment property to keep his head above water.
Once part of a vast army of workers in what was Australia's booming resources sector, Mr Windle now gets up at 5.30 am five days a week to clean and drive school buses in the small town of Muswellbrook. For decades, the town had ridden the waves of Australia's coal boom.
"It's the worst I've seen it in 28 years in the mining industry," says Mr Windle. "Everyone is getting out. Three hundred houses are for sale in my town, three in my street, and rental prices have collapsed on older weatherboard houses from A$1,000 a week to A$200," he says.
