I am a Newcastle born, proud Novocastian who has grown up in the Waratah and Mayfield area. I am also a keen gamer who has worked in the amusement industry for over 37 years, initially working at Orbit arcade stores on Hunter & King Street, later, moving to Sydney and becoming the chain's operation manager, the buying group's game consultant, and operations analyst. This allowed me to travel the world, with a dream of returning to Newcastle where we could design & develop our own products.

Some time ago, I opened my own business, becoming a distributor for major arcade gaming factories that included Sega, Namco, Taito, Atari, Midway.... We love Mayfield and decided to establish our base here, initially starting at 44 Maitland Road, then purchasing 38 and 42 Maitland Road. Our plan was to have a dedicated audio/visual store, and, a full showroom of amusement machines with dedicated offices along Maitland Road. We drafted building plans and lodged with Council.

Our 38 Maitland Road property was being used to accept container shipments from overseas, as well as our workshop and warehouse. Customers would arrange their pickups from here. We were the #1 Australian importer of classic Japanese arcade cabinets that included Astro City, Blast City, Atomiswave SD and more. At the time, we had the biggest collection of arcade machines available for sale that ranged from 38 to 44 Maitland Road, more than 1,400m of space filled with amusement machines.

But at the end of 2008 water started flowing into the lower floor of 38 Maitland Road. Originally, it was a trickle of water coming out of the retaining wall closest to Maitland Road. The water would randomly flow, then stop, then start up again.

Over time however, the water started flowing permanently and making the lower floor unusable. We then started noticing subsidence damage, not only to our building but also along the footpath where a sinkhole had opened on the kerb.

We made the decision to close our ground floor carpark at 38 Maitland Road, and to purchase a number of containers where we could store our equipment and continue to trade. At this time we were hoping the authorities would solve the water problems, this was not the case.

The water problems continued getting worse, with not just the inside warehouse being flooded, but now water was flowing beneath the containers and then later, completely throughout the carpark. Water had damaged the containers and inventory inside. It became impossible to handle the import/sales and we had to stop importing machines. 

With the ground floor completely out of action, we tried to continue working from the street level of 38 Maitland Road. Soon we found that the subsidence damage to the building allowed a significant amount of water to enter the building during storms. Even without rain, the building now has permanent dampness - leaving any products on the concrete floor immediately absorbed moisture (even during the hottest days, weeks after any rain).

Our Newcastle team designed innovative products with Patents granted in Australia & USA.

Our work with Tencent Games involved product development for touch screen game titles, and PUBG for the coin operated market.

As we started to gain serious international momentum, water appeared in our meeting room which quickly took over in our 44 Maitland Road office. Water was flowing from from the wall cavities as well as through the concrete slab, then through the carpet. The water was now permanently running in our office & workshop. Walls had cracked, subsidence damage was evident throughout including brick damage, pipe breakages and sewer pipes all being broken. Doors and gates were also not able to be closed due to subsidence problems.

We had no option but to throw out all  water damaged timber desks, cabinets and various electronic equipment/computers, and began working on fold out tables and portable devices. But each time we were flooded, it significantly affected our office. Development work was lost, destroyed or damaged.

Due to these water/subsidence problems, staff resigned, our work conditions deteriorated so badly, we were either closed or doing clean up work. As team members left, projects that we had been working on over these years needed to be stopped or abandoned.

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The NSW government has informed us that they are not interested to help solve either the mine subsidence or the water issues caused by the abandoned legacy mines both beneath us, or, parallel to us. The NSW Government further acknowledges that broken Newcastle Council stormwater pipes, and Hunter Water pipes are feeding the legacy mines, which then flow into our properties.