ONE family has been evacuated and another said it was fearing for their rented home after a mine shaft opened up in Brown Hill on Thursday.
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The Humffray Street North family, which has a two-year-old daughter, woke to the shock in their backyard on Wednesday morning, opening up their curtains to find a three metre wide hole which was at least two metres deep.
READ MORE: Huge mine shaft opens
Tenant Brian said he didn't realise anything was wrong until he received a call from the body corporate of the block of units.
"I thought someone was making a prank call when I was told that part of my backyard had gone," he said.
"But I came outside and had one look, I couldn't believe it.
"The people next door have been evacuated, but we're still here, we just hope it doesn't collapse any further.
"It's a huge shock, it's the same size as it was when I came out, so it hasn't grown throughout the day at all.
"We've had the council and the SES here having a bit of a look, I'm not sure what they do from here."
Fellow tenant Theonie said she feared for her two-year-old daughter, who would normally play out in the backyard.
"I'm just so glad it wasn't summer because Armani is out there all the time playing when it's warmer, fortunately she wasn't outside today," she said.
"I told dad only a couple of months ago that I'd found out the house was built on top of a mine shaft and here it is, just two months later and it's collapsed.
"It's quite frightening, you don't know if there's going to be another collapse. We didn't hear a thing, you wouldn't have known it had happened."
Brian said the way the garden had been designed, there could easily have been a car or a caravan parked exactly where there collapse occurred which could have caused thousands of dollars damage.
"I work shift work and often I might come home at 4am and open up the gate, who knows if I had have done that last night, I could have fallen straight down. It's quite frightening," he said.
An SES spokesperson said a three metre by two metre hole was discovered in the early morning about five metres from one house and very close to another.
City of Ballarat Director Infrastructure and Environment Terry Demeo said in a statement that because the mine shaft was on private land, council had no direct responsibility.
But council was willing to help with standard engineering drawings for recapping the shafts, a project that was not uncommon in Ballarat, especially due to historical timber caps having a limited lifespan.
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