Then, in one powerful scooping motion the bucket slices down, gouging out huge chunks of coal. In the past half hour it has dug out about five tonnes of the stuff.

The machine is operating here, in a "worked out" part of the huge Hazelwood Coalmine on the edge of Morwell, after a worker identified a "hot spot" with a hand-held thermal imaging camera. The hot spot, about one metre into the coal, recorded a temperature of about 50 degrees before the coal was pulled out.

As the excavator pauses a worker points the camera at the hole for a fresh assessment, which reveals a much lower temperature reading of about 16 degrees.

Nearly seven months after the devastating coalmine fire, Fairfax Media is getting a rare glimpse inside the mine - the first visit by media inside the mine since the fire. We visit disused areas  destroyed by fire, as well as areas that were saved. We see a work crew welding together massive lengths of water pipes to increase the mine's pipe network - a system criticised during and after the fire - and we visit the "operating" west field of the mine, where a huge dredger is chewing into coal which is then used to create electricity.

We also pause at a storage area that resembles a metal graveyard where huge reels that once held vast lengths of rubber conveyors now just hold, in many cases, scorched and rusted metal. The rubber has been burnt or removed but the metal inside the rubber - like steel inside car tyres - remains.

Our first glimpses of the massive open-cut mine come shortly after we leave the Hazelwood Power Station. As we stop at the top of the southern outlet and look west we see ponds on the mine floor, the northwest batters more than two kilometres away and, in the distance behind them, the Hernes Oak district where there was bushfire in the days before the mine fire began on February 9. The coalmine fire inquiry heard that burning embers from this bushfire were the most likely cause of the mine fire, which covered Morwell and its 14,000 people in thick smoke and fine ash when at its worst. The fire burnt for 45 days before it was declared safe.

Just a short distance away from the "hot spot" more heavy machinery is at work on the eastern edge of the northern batters, the  part of the mine closest to the Princes Freeway and Morwell. Here, a `dozer is working to reduce the slope of an embankment, so tractors can operate safely on it to slash grass.

A short time later we pause and look across at the mine's operational west field. To the naked eye the huge dredgers stationed there seem the size of insects on a kitchen windowsill. But in reality the biggest of the dredgers, which is in fact kilometres away, weighs about 18,000 tonnes and is 45 metres high.

What is most striking about this mine is its scale. At its widest point, running from the south west to north east, it is about 5.4 kilometres wide. And it is deep. From ground level to the floor of the mine is a drop of about 140 metres. The bottom of the mine is 71 metres below sea level.

Not far from the pipe welding station another excavator is at work. It pulls out small trees and shrubs with a giant claw, which it then deposits into a giant mulcher. Seconds after being dropped into the chute they are spat out the other end in minced-up pieces, adding to a vast line of mulch.

A spokesman for GDF Suez said the company was "undertaking a range of work that delivers on commitments made to the Hazelwood mine fire inquiry to minimise the risk of a repeat of the unprecedented fire in the mine early this year. We have been getting on with the job of implementing a number of important fire-prevention measures in the mine."