Engineers are working to save a row of million dollar homes threatened by sinkholes that have opened up on the waterfront near Newcastle.
The front room of one property was left hanging over an eight-metre wide crater for most of the day after a mine shaft beneath it gave way.
The first sinkhole, measuring up to 20m wide and 10m deep, developed on Tuesday night, next to a three-storey home on Lambton Parade in plush Swansea Heads, near Lake Macquarie.
The second sinkhole then appeared in an up-market neighbourhood south of Newcastle, prompting fears more land could collapse into an old mine shaft that appears to have caused the erosion.
Another sinkhole has opened near Newcastle after a 15-metre-wide hole appeared "without warning" overnight. Photo: 7News
A husband and wife returned to their seaside property about two hours after the hole developed next to their front deck, swallowing tonnes of dirt and debris - but luckily leaving the house, built in 1997, intact.
The area underneath the neighbourhood was once part of the Swansea Pit, a coal mine abandoned in the 1950s.
The Mine Subsistence Board is now leading an investigation into the sinkholes, including checks to ensure the stability and structural integrity of surrounding homes.
"It appears what has happened is that an old mine shaft, a furnace shaft, has caused the collapse," Inspector Sam Crisafulli told the Newcastle Herald.
Photo: 7News
Engineers believe the house can be repaired and salvaged.
"It's confined, from what I’m told, just to the front corner of this house," Inspector Sam Crisafulli said.
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