the willunga slate quarries: past, present and future - History SA

THE WILLUNGA SLATE QUARRIES: PAST, PRESENT AND
FUTURE
Susan Piddock
The main focus of the Hills Face Zone Cultural Heritage Project, which ran from
2002 to 2005, was to document the Indigenous and European cultural impacts on
the landscape of the Adelaide Hills Face Zone, and to develop a Geographical
Information Systems database which would allow a diverse range of people to
access information about the heritage sites in the various council areas covered
by the Hills Face Zone. As an Australian
Research Council funded linkage project it drew on the research interests of
Flinders University staff in the areas of archaeology, geography and cultural
tourism, and was supported by both local councils and government agencies.
Today l would like to highlight some of the results of this project by focusing on
the cultural landscape of Willunga and how we can interpret this landscape for
the widest possible
audience.
The Hills Face Zone runs from
Gawler in the north down to Sellicks
Hill in the south, and its boundary
lies along the eastern side of the
township of Willunga. We extended
the study area to include the township
itself because it retained a wide
range of material culture that reflected
the use of slate from the nearby
slate quarries. One of the most useful ways we used to identify these cultural
impacts was by talking to local people about the cultural heritage of their area.
We not only talked to local history groups but to local historians and the general
public. By using letters sent to residents in the study area followed by visits to
those who replied, we were able to identify a range of features on private land
that had previously been unknown. These visits revealed the historic landscape
of Willunga and we are particular indebted to Martin Dunstan whose grandfather
and father managed the Bangor Slate Quarry and who provided information
about the quarry industry and Gerald Martin, who took us around Willunga.
The township of Willunga was first surveyed in 1839 as part of a wider survey of
the regions south of the new town of Adelaide. Small land holding tenants settled
along creeks in the area planting crops and running flocks of sheep. Willunga
quickly became the government and industrial centre of the region. Slate was
first discovered in the Willunga hills by Edward Loud in March 1840. While out
shooting quail Loud identified an outcrop of slate on the western side of a ravine,
and shortly after opened Loud’s Quarry which in June of 1840 was employing 12
families. The quarry was managed by Sampson Dawe, Loud’s neighbour, who

was familiar with slate quarrying in Cornwall. Within three months Sampson
Dawe went on to find slate on his property 1.6 kilometres north-east of Loud’s
Quarry and the Delabole Quarry was established, deriving its name from the
Delabole Slate Quarry in Cornwall. This slate was from a reef which was 4 miles
long and 3,000 feet deep. On this slide
Loud’s quarry is on the lower left and
above it is Delabole. Loud’s Quarry
closed soon after the opening of the
Delabole Quarry as its slate was
superior to Loud’s making it a more
viable venture. By 1841 over 150,000
roofing slates had been shipped from
the Willunga quarries. They were taken
by bullock drays to the coast at Aldinga
Bay and shipped to Port Adelaide,
Melbourne and Sydney.
The slate trade continued to grow with the opening up of the Willunga Slate
Quarry by Thomas Williams in 1842. Another quarry was opened by James
Gregory & Co. in September 1842 but the competition provided by English slate
and the other quarries saw the company unable to pay its rent to the South
Australian Government and the lease was given up 19 months after it was taken
up. In 1846 Sampson Dawe and Thomas Polkinghorne, a former member of
James Gregory & Co., took up this lease and the quarry on Section 1008
became Martin’s Quarry. A second quarry was opened up near by Martin’s by
Sampson Bastian. The Bastian’s and Martin’s quarries were located near the
Glenunga Creek in the Beltana Gully.

In 1861 Sampson Dawe sold the
Delabole Quarry to J. Allen who in turn
sold it to the Australian Delabole Slate
Co. on August 30 th 1865. While the
transfer documents appear to indicate
that there may have been buildings on
the land, this may have been a standard
legal phrase, as the Delabole cottages
which are still visible on the landscape
today appear to have been built by the
Australian Delabole Slate Company.
Their construction is detailed in the newspaper accounts of the company’s first
half yearly meeting which indicated that the six worker’s cottages close to the
quarry faces was nearly complete and that the construction of the foreman’s
office and residence on the road down to the quarry faces was underway. In
1866 the workers at the slate quarry erected a Wesleyan Chapel on the hill
opposite the cottages and adjoining the roadway down to the quarry. Services
were held in the Chapel and a Sunday School was provided for the children of
Delabole.
While the Delabole Quarry was the main supplier of roofing slate in Australia
from 1840 to 1893, the growing popularity of galvanised and other roofing
materials in the later 19 th century saw interest in slate fall. The Delabole Quarry
suffered a slow decline in its workings until Allen who had repurchased the land
in 1872 sold the land to G. Ware purely for grazing in 1903.
Along with Martin and Bastian’s and Delabole, the Bangor Quarry was the other
major slate quarry at Willunga and continues to operate today as a commercial
quarry as does Martin’s. Bangor was initially opened in 1842 by Thomas
Williams, it is not clear whether he owned the land or leased it. Certainly in 1856
the quarry was being leased by Kernick, Male and Cobbledick. Experienced
Cornish stone dressers, they had been working a quarry owned by the Martin
family, but with its collapse, they entered a rental contract on the Bangor Quarry
for £125, with the option of purchasing it for £1,000. After the first 21 year lease
expired, they took out a further 7 year lease. After this the quarry passed through
several owners before being abandoned.
In 1917 John Dunstan, a Sydney architect, and William Noller, a builder and
contractor, tendered for the quarry and The Australian Slate Co. was formed to
operate the quarry. By 1919 the quarry was producing between 500,000 and
2,000,000 slates per year as required. The First World War was to affect the
availability of galvanised iron, and slate was the ideal replacement, however from
the late 1920s the availability of terracotta tiles for roofing saw a renewed
decline. By the 1940s the quarry was only producing walling and paving flags.

Slate was quarried directly from the hill face where the seam of slate was
identified. At Martin’s and Delabole several quarry faces were opened to access
the slate, at Bangor the quarry face was over a hundred feet in height. Slate was
obtained from the quarry faces by blasting and was then cut into workable
pieces. As the slate was worked down from the top, it was possible to create
plateaus on which the quarrymen would climb.
After climbing on top of the slate mass
which had been moved, a worker inserted
a wedge between the layers and split the
slate. A high level of skill was required to
produce the largest block. The South
Australian Register in 1868 reported that
at Delabole, these were up to several
inches thick and 90 superficial feet in
extent. The hill men would then split the
slate block into the proper size and
thickness required by the slate dressers. The art was to determine the proper
number of slates a block would produce. An incorrect decision would lead to
pieces of slate that were too thick or too thin, liable to breaking or of inferior
quality. The blocks would then be loaded by winch into trucks and sent to the
working site via a tramline. Here the dresser would cut the slate to a series of
sizes either manually or using a machine. Manually the slates were cut using a
notched gauge and an iron frame to
mark out the sizes of slates to be cut
from a block. A block and the tools used
at the quarries can be seen today at the
Willunga Slate Museum.

We know from historic
documentation that most of the
Willunga slate quarries had a
range of infrastructures that
supported the quarrying process,
including workshops, cranes, and
tram lines, however today much of the
evidence of these structures
has disappeared as equipment
could be sold and reused. However
there are some features remaining
at the quarries that reflect the past
quarrying activities. At Delabole it is possible to see where the slate was quarried
and where the water course was altered to flow through drains and to supply a
well on the plateau where they cut the slate. Above the three quarry faces a
complex of ponds and drains controlling water flow was constructed of slate and
the hillside benching is still visible where the tramline probably ran. At Bangor it is
possible to see the remains of the Slate
Mill, a slate lined well next to the quarry
face, the quarry office, and powder
magazine as well as the quarry face,
which has been partially filled in. But it is
not just the quarries that have survived, at
Delabole it is possible to see the remains
of the Delabole cottages built on to the
hillsides a stone’s throw away from the
quarry itself, as well as the foreman’s
house and office, and the chapel.
Adjacent to the cottages are slate
retaining walls that probably defined
the cottage gardens.
However the heritage of the slate
quarries is not limited to these
places. Slate was used for a variety
of purposes, many one examples of
which can be seen if one looks
around the township of Willunga and
the surrounding countryside. Slate
water tanks can be found throughout the area, and fencing posts, drains
alongside the roads and sheep pens were made from sheets and pieces of slate.
The Martin family sheep run was constructed of slate as were many roofs in the
area. Glantawe built by Martin Dunstan’s grandfather was entirely constructed of
slate using timber frames as were the garage and fence. Slate was also used to
build walls in a manner similar to that used for dry stone walls for cottages and
other buildings, and examples of this can still be seen around Willunga.

Gravestones were also made of slate and these can be seen in the church
cemeteries. The Hills Face Project was then able to identify and record not just
the heritage of the slate quarries but identified a wider landscape that reflects
both the importance of slate to the community and the uses slate was put to that
link into the agricultural and pastoral industries of the area.
The preservation of past landscapes such as that identified at Willunga very
much rests in the hands of local communities and in the hands of developers.
The essential key to maintaining these links with the past is knowledge. It is the
older members of the community who are the ones with a fund of local
knowledge which may or may not be recorded in some way, and it is often these
people who lead the fight to preserve local heritage. As has been demonstrated
in the past heritage listing in any form is not a protection against the destruction
of a place and often the heritage or importance of a building is not realised until
it’s too late to protect it. Last minute battles between developers and local
communities are often recorded in local papers with only well known sites making
it into the Advertiser. The village of Delabole is listed on the South Australian
Register of State Heritage Items but has significantly suffered over the last 40
years and the buildings are rapidly disappearing.
As can be seen by this first slide taken in
the mid 1960s the walls of the Delabole buildings were largely intact with
windows still in place. In 1972 the
deterioration had begun. In 1996 this process had become marked with parts of
the walls collapsing, but the lines of the original walls were still evident allowing
Pauline O’Malley to draw the cottages as part of an archaeological study.

In 2004 the buildings were showing signs of being significantly damaged, most of
the windows have disappeared. This deterioration is most evident at the
Foreman’s cottage as demonstrated by this slide. In 1996 it was possible to
determine the original room shapes and sizes, in 2004 there were only a few
pieces of the walls still standing. This cottage near the creek had largely
disappeared by 2004. This more than anything demonstrates the fragility of the
past. Delabole like many of the sites where slate has been used for a variety of
purposes discussed in this paper are on private land and as such they can not be
readily accessed by the general public which in turn would generate interest in
their preservation, consequentially we have to find another way of bringing the
cultural heritage and history of Willunga to a wider audience.
We need to find ways to interest the wider community not just children who are
most often the ones targeted for structured activities. We need to involve their
parents and visitors to an area. A significant step towards this has been
undertaken by the Willunga Branch of the National Trust with the opening of the
slate Museum in the Police Stables near the Courthouse Museum. This museum
seeks to explore the working of the slate quarries and to people the past through
artefacts and stories. In the past tours have been held and these are a good way
of allowing people to visit these places.
Such tours can be supported by brochures
that highlight the story of the quarries. A
further option is to place interpretative
signage nearby the sites on adjacent roads
so that people can physically locate the
places in the landscape without actually
going on to properties, for example at the
quarries and Delabole. These signs would
need to include photographs and
illustrations if they are to have any value if
the sites are not accessible. This has been
done in Fremantle, Western Australia in an unobtrusive way.
The most effective way to interpret the Willunga landscapes and its stories may
be through the World Wide Web. The use of interactive tours within a website
that includes photographs of sites on private property without providing location

details would allow people to explore the Willunga landscape without the inherent
dangers of people walking through the landscapes. As l indicated before the
Delabole landscape is very fragile and the safety issues of people walking across
very steep hillsides brings its own inherent problems. Within a website it would
be possible to use oral histories, either as voice recordings or as story links to
record memories before they disappear with the passing of those who worked in
the slate quarries. Video footage could also be linked in allowing the techniques
of slate dressing to be recorded, for while historical documents are useful, the
subtilises of actually watching someone work can make a vast difference to our
understanding of the processes involved. In an age of mechanisation and
computers traditional skills are rapidly being lost. These traditional skills are not
just those of the nineteenth century or further back in time, but skills of our
lifetime.
The wealth of historic photographs of quarries such as Bangor, and photographs
of the archaeological evidence remaining on the landscape can be combined
with information from documentary sources to explore the process of quarrying
slate, the dangers of quarrying and how the slate was dressed. While we don’t
have detailed descriptions of working at the Willunga quarries, nineteenth century
pamphlets from Cornwall provide extensive details about the quarrying process
which can be used to interpret what we have found and know about life here. The
use of modern technology such as web sites allows us to access the widest
possible audience for history and with the increasing use of the Internet by
school children and adults for research purposes we have a way of generating a
picture of the past that is not limited to features on the landscape that have little
meaning unless we know what we are looking at.
We have the opportunity to present the story of the Willunga slate industry in a
number of ways to the public. These include presenting the economic history of
the slate quarries that links the history of the quarries and their products to
economic changes in the State and locally within the Willunga area. While roofing
slates or flagging may be the most commonly known product of the quarries, the
landscape of Willunga demonstrates the diverse use of slate as a practical and
readily available building product that could be used for fencing and wall
construction as well as rainwater tanks and gravestones.
Another approach is to look at the possible reasons for the development of the
landscape at Delabole, why did they build the cottages so close to the quarry?
While there is not time to discuss it here, l believe that the Delabole landscape
reflects the familiar Cornish slate quarry landscape. These approaches then draw
together the disparate elements of cultural heritage found at Willunga into a
comprehensible story that is likely to be remembered far more readily than a list
of individual items. We must present Willunga and its slate quarries in such a
way that it is not just experienced on tours linked to special events like History
Week, and in this way interest can be stirred in local history and support built in
the preservation of places like Delabole before our cultural heritage is lost
forever.