A utopia can be any place that people find perfect as to a dystopia is a place people find horrible to the point where they can stand it there. With the information that we know now, it is most likely that certain people consider something a utopia but others might consider it a dystopia. You can say a reference to a utopia would be <span>The Farm, Lewis County, Tennessee. This place is beautiful, and what most farmers would consider a Utopia, but on the other hand, people who don't farm can't stand it. That is a real life Utopia.</span>
I don't know much about the Sydney mines, but from the context, I can infer that the tunnels were unsafe. Whether being that they were collapsing, or they were filled with poisonous gasses.
My reaction to this quote is that Abraham Lincoln is referring to the ideal that once people have power they tend to abuse it for their advantage, and personal gain. For Example, gerrymandering. Gerrymandering is the manipulation of the county sizing and grouping in states by the Legislative branch to guarantee their reelection into federal or state offices. A typically Democratic city perhaps may be grouped or redrawn to conjoin with a vastly Republican populated area, creating a larger group of supporters of one party, and a polarized county.
