the way we worked

Chasing coal, from Newcastle to the valley
It is hard to imagine what the Hunter Valley, and the harbour at the mouth of its namesake river, might
have been like if it had not been for coal. The discovery of coal at the river north of the infant settlement of
Sydney in the latter years of the 18th century prompted almost immediate efforts to extract it, and it wasn’t
long before colonial governors started sending convicts north to work makeshift mines.
In time the convict-operated mines gave way to the commercial operations of the Australian Agricultural
Company, and soon that state-sponsored monopoly was forced to give way to numerous mining
entrepreneurs. As mines spread out from what became the city of Newcastle, the shape of future suburbs was
mapped, with houses, roads and rail and tram lines springing up to follow the coal and serve the miners.
Australia’s first export was coal from Newcastle and, over the decades as the mines shifted inland and
technology changed, the volumes of coal shipped through the port climbed to levels that the early pioneers
could never have imagined possible.
In the 21st century massive-scale open-cut mining has become the norm, and the industry has shifted
from the labour-intensive pattern of the past to an increasingly capital-intensive and export-oriented model.
Not long ago it was calculated that, if all the coal extracted from the Hunter in the 10 preceding years was
stacked in a column one metre square, the column would reach to the moon and back, with plenty left over.
While the days of the old underground pits, with their attendant armies of men and horses, are long gone,
the legacy remains all around. The district is extensively undermined at many levels, with shafts and tunnels
underlying the city and suburbs in a bewildering spider web that no maps can illustrate with complete
accuracy.
Mining has changed or erased watercourses, altered landforms, changed the shoreline of Lake Macquarie
and removed or altered forever some villages in the Hunter Valley.
While modern mining is often characterised as “quarrying”, the practices of the past gave birth to
many tasks and skills now rapidly being forgotten. Men now alive can recall with clarity the dangers and
challenges of working deep underground, with power supplied by horses and with no more than timber
props holding up the roofs and the threats from fire, gas and collapses an ever-present concern.
A delightfully atmospheric early morning portrait of a group of wheelers and pit horses at Pelaw Main colliery.
4