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  4. 30 March 2004

Newcastle Coal Heritage

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About this Item
SubjectsNewcastle; Coal Mining; Australia: History
SpeakersHickey Mr Kerry; Turner Mr John; Gaudry Mr Bryce
BusinessMatter of Public Importance


    NEWCASTLE COAL HERITAGE
Page: 7708


    Matter of Public Importance

    Mr KERRY HICKEY (Cessnock—Minister for Mineral Resources) [4.21 p.m.]: This year Newcastle celebrates its bicentenary. It was founded after the Battle of Vinegar Hill, on 4 March 1804. Governor Phillip King ordered that a new penal colony be established as a place of secondary punishment for the rebellious convicts, most of them Irish. On 24 March Governor King commissioned Lieutenant Charles Menzies to establish the new settlement, which he named Newcastle. Lieutenant Menzies arrived in Newcastle on 30 March at noon, making the first European settlement in the penal colony of New South Wales outside the Sydney Basin. Why was Newcastle chosen above all the other potential sites? It was chosen for one reason: coal.

    Escaped convicts discovered the first-known coal deposits near Newcastle in 1791, only three years after the First Fleet sailed into Sydney Harbour. A British soldier, Lieutenant John Shortland, found a river and a coal seam while looking for the escapees in 1797. Lieutenant Shortland's discovery of Coal River, now the Hunter River, and the sample of coal he took back to Sydney assured Newcastle's future. Coal was a much sought-after commodity for the domestic comfort and industrial growth of Sydney.

    The Steel City was built on its winnable coal. Five years before the settlement was established, Newcastle exported its first coal: Australia's first mineral export. The Hunter carried the coal to Bengal, India. In 1800 coal shipments from Newcastle reached 4,000 tonnes. Convict labour was used in the first official coalmine, which was a government monopoly. Convict lives dominated the early cultural landscape and convict labour contributed to Australia's early economic success. Coal River's convict beginnings are representative of the worldwide movement of forced labour of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which is a world heritage theme.

    By 1804, the year Newcastle was founded, convict numbers in Newcastle coalmines reached 128, growing to 553 in 1817. The first privately owned coalmine in New South Wales was opened near Newcastle in 1831 by the Australian Agricultural Company. The mine produced 40,000 tonnes in its first full year. Convict miners were still part of the work force, although they were overtaken in numbers by free miners in 1843. The Australian Agricultural Company effectively took over the monopoly previously held by the Colonial Government, a monopoly that was not successfully challenged until 1847.

    Three years later the borehole seam was discovered. The quality of the coal was far superior to anything else being mined at Newcastle, and greatly enhanced its future potential. Maps and plans of the early mines show they operated from tunnels and shafts driven into the cliff faces adjacent to Newcastle Harbour. These archival documents have been digitised and placed online by the University of Newcastle's Coal River Working Party. Formed in February 2003, the working party channels university expertise towards researching, uncovering and interpreting Newcastle's past as revealed through the Coal River precinct. The discovery of the Coal River precinct, as well as its earliest convict mines, is potentially Australia's most significant regional historic site.

    The precinct is situated at the mouth of the Hunter River and includes a number of historic sites: Nobbys Headland; Macquarie Pier, now Nobbys Breakwater; the military fortifications of Signal Hill, now Fort Scratchley; and the convict coalmines beneath. The precinct is an area much loved by Novocastrians as a place of historical and cultural significance. Thanks to the efforts of the working party, surveyors have now marked the original entry points to these tunnels. Coal River Working Party chair, Dr Erik Eklund, has reported that the three sites marked by surveyors were possibly the first coalmines in the Southern Hemisphere. The locations of the original mine drifts on the Flagstaff Hill plan of 1856 have been located by council surveyors and marked out in white paint on Fort Drive, the roadway surrounding Fort Scratchley.

    Two sites are on the southern side of Fort Drive, while the site of the New Discovery mine is located near Nobby's Beach. The New Discovery mine was developed by Lieutenant Menzies after 1804 and provided a poorer quality coal that was used to light the coal-fired beacon that was placed on top of Signal Hill, or what is now Fort Scratchley. Coal River marks the birthplace of Australian coalmining and the beginnings of a major industrial city. Techniques used to mine in the early 1800s were at the forefront of world practice. Picks, shovels and other equipment used in Australia's first coalmines were forged and maintained at the convict lumber yard, discovered in 1989. The construction of the Macquarie Pier increased the navigational safety of the port of Newcastle, encouraging international shipping participation in the coal trade.

    But without the coal—and the coalminers—there would be no Newcastle. The working party's progress to date is pleasing, but further research and geological work is needed to confirm its findings. But there is now a dog in the manger: the working party has had to call off its attempt to drill into the newly rediscovered mines. The drilling, which was scheduled to take place on Friday 26 March, would have enabled Novocastrians to once again peer into the 1804 convict mines in time to coincide with the 30 March bicentenary of permanent settlement open day. The proposal had State and local government approval, but the working party's request to the Commonwealth was referred to the Department of Environment and Heritage by the Department of Finance and Administration.

    The working party was told that they could not officially reply until the 14 April. What a joke! Three or four Hunter businesses were prepared to support the Friday 26 March drill, which included a drilling rig, a camera set-up and gas testers. The generosity and commitment of those Hunter firms has been wonderful. It is a pity the Federal Government has let down the people of Newcastle once again. Nonetheless, in view of this setback, the working party is continuing to secure approvals from all levels of government to regroup for another attempt in the near future.

    Further archaeological and archival investigation may also reveal the routines of daily life for the convict and military populations as well as further evidence of convict labour, particularly coalmining, quarrying and pier building. In August 2003 the State Heritage Register Committee recommended to the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning that the Coal River precinct be placed on the State Heritage Register. My colleague the Hon. Diane Beamer, the Minister Assisting the Minister for Infrastructure and Planning (Planning Administration), announced that the precedent would be gazetted, and it was placed on the register on 19 December last year. The contribution of the coal industry to Newcastle's development cannot be underestimated.

    The Coal River Working Party open day at Fort Scratchley will go ahead today despite the Federal Government's action. Another important event is the Hard Work major exhibition, which will run from 16 April to 30 April. The exhibition contains art, photography, performance and heritage displays that focus on 200 years of coal, transport and steel—the three industries that have shaped Newcastle's development. Our coalmining industry is integral to our State's history and our future. I am sure all honourable members will join me in acknowledging the miners and mining operators who built Newcastle, and will join me in giving a vote of thanks to the Coal River Working Party for its hard work in bringing this part of our history to life.

    Mr JOHN TURNER (Myall Lakes) [4.30 p.m.]: The Minister has given a good outline of the history of coal at Newcastle, and I will not repeat what he said. I am not sure how much notice the Federal Government was given of the request to approve the drilling, and I do not know the reason for putting off the request until some time in April. Perhaps the Minister could have been more forceful with his Federal counterparts in seeking to ensure that the full program of the open day went ahead. I hope the approval will come through and that the undertaking goes ahead so that people can have a glimpse of how mines worked in days gone by.

    There is no doubt that the Newcastle area has a terrific coalmining heritage. I will refer more broadly to the Hunter Valley generally, which is the coalmining area with which I am more familiar. The Coal River area spawned the Maitland, Cessnock and Upper Hunter coalfields, as well as those further afield. If coal had not been found down the river at Shortland we may not have had this wonderful industry. Edgeworth David, who found the rich coal seam in Cessnock, was the father of the coal industry in the Cessnock area. The industry has changed considerably. We know that the coal barons who came into the area exploited the coal industry and its workers in a most regrettable way. The union movement introduced some respectability into the industry to even up the scales: some would say the scales became too even. Problems with wages and conditions resulted, followed by a downturn in coal prices in the 1970s.

    When I was young I went down the coalmines many times. I could not think of anything worse than being down there with pit horses, skips and coalminers with black faces. Sometimes the beam from the lamps and their shining eyes were the only indication that people were around. It was quite an experience. Coalmining is still not the most pleasant way to earn a living, but the industry has improved significantly. The Hunter Valley and Newcastle were shaped by the mining industry. As the Minister said, convicts started working in the mining industry and were replaced by skilled workers—if that is the correct term—who came from Wales and Scotland. Their legacy is evident in areas like Spion Kop, Stanford Merthyr, Aberdare and Abernathy, names that appear on a map of Wales.

    The Welsh and the Scots brought their own special culture to the area. They were strong men from a strong culture. For many years they formed and shaped the crust of the Hunter Valley. They lived a tough life. Many of them were squatters around the coalmines. When I was a councillor on Cessnock council we had the devil's own job trying to sort out property problems. There was no title, but people had been living in houses for many years through family connections. Often one could tell how many daughters a miner had by the number of fingers he had missing. Workers compensation for the loss of one finger was about the cost of one wedding. Unfortunately, a lot of coalminers were missing digits. It was a sad way to live.

    I remember the pit horse derbies in Cessnock. They were 500 yards of sheer terror for little jockeys, but a great example of the heritage of the times. I regret to say that much of that heritage has probably been lost. We still have the Freemans Waterhole Memorial and the Rothbury Riot Memorial. Unfortunately, Mick Frame, a great supporter of the industry, died recently. However, our coalmining heritage is not sufficiently recognised. I was pleased to hear the Minister say that a working group is trying to raise the level of awareness of the role of the coal industry in Newcastle and the Hunter region. Coalmining is no longer part of the Newcastle trade, apart from coal-loading facilities and ships standing offshore. There are some working mines in the vicinity, but the mines are now up the valley.

    New technology has resulted in longwall mining, continuous mining and open-cut mining, which are vastly different from the pick and shovel method. These days most miners are in airconditioned cabins on huge pieces of machinery and earn fairly good money. It is important to ensure that we acknowledge the work of the convicts, the Scots and the Welsh, and Australians who descended from the Scots and the Welsh. I would not have wanted to be involved with the mining industry, which was tumultuous but also very generous. If the miners wanted anything they had to get it themselves. For instance, Cessnock and Kurri Kurri hospitals were built by the miners. If miners were injured down the pit or they had the terrible choking coal dust disease they had nowhere to go. So they took it upon themselves to contribute to the building of the hospitals to ensure they had somewhere to take their injured and sick.

    I remember when I was a kid hearing that terrible wailing siren alerting people that there was an accident down the mine. Although my father did not work in the mines, I knew a lot of people who did. I went to school with many coalminers' sons and daughters. If the wailing did not signal the shift ending at three o'clock and nine or ten o'clock you knew it was an accident. You hoped to blazes that it was not one of your friends and you hoped that nobody was seriously injured. Regrettably, in those days there was a significant number of deaths and injuries in coalmines. Coalmining continues to be a dangerous industry, although significant safety precautions have been put in place to try to minimise injuries and deaths. I do not know too much about the group formed by the Minister. However, I wish it well and I hope that it can make a lasting contribution to the coal industry, not only in Newcastle and the Coal River but throughout the State. There is not enough historical recognition of this vital industry that was so important to the development of the Newcastle and Hunter Valley regions.

    Mr BRYCE GAUDRY (Newcastle—Parliamentary Secretary) [4.39 p.m.]: I am pleased to support the Minister for Mineral Resources today in bringing this matter of public importance before the House. As the member for Newcastle, I know first hand the tremendous contribution that coalmining has made not only to our city but to the Hunter region and to the State as a whole. It fuels our power stations and contributes massively to the nation's export earnings. As the Minister outlined, today's coalmining industry follows on from events that took place just a few short years after the settlement of Sydney. In March 1804 Lieutenant Charles Menzies formed a second settlement with 34 Irish prisoners who had been convicted in relation to the notorious Castle Hill rebellion. Newcastle became the colony's major prison, with more than 1,000 convicts by 1814.

    Those convicts mined the coal that warmed Sydney's homes and fed its industrial furnaces. Coal sales to other British outposts, including India and South Africa, boosted the colony's revenues. Without the coalmining pioneers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Newcastle may never have become an industrial powerhouse of the twentieth century. As a society, it is vital to protect our heritage. The Carr Government, like other Labor governments before it, is deeply committed to that value. As the Minister stated, the Coal River Precinct was placed on the State Heritage Register last year. The Carr Government created the register in 1999, under the auspices of the Heritage Council of New South Wales, which was founded under the Wran Government's Heritage Act 1977.

    What makes this listing special is that it celebrates our industrial past, which is especially important in the history of cities like Newcastle. From its convict origins, coalmining spread from what is now inner-city Newcastle. As new mines were developed, villages sprang up around them—places such as Wallsend, which was home to the largest colliery in the Southern Hemisphere in 1860; Greta, whose population swelled to 2,000 on the back of the rich coal seam bearing its name; Stockton, north of the Hunter River estuary, which has been mined since 1882; Minmi, where J. & A. Brown's Duckenfield Colliery supported some 3,000 people; Charlestown, Burwood, Waratah and New Lambton, which all operated off the Borehole Seam; and Teralba, which was the centre of an estate bought by the Great Northern Coal Mining Company in 1882.

    Australia's oldest continually mined colliery was founded in 1889 on the Wallarah peninsula in the electorate of Swansea. It was closed in 2000, but Wallarah remains Australia's oldest continually mined colliery. That is why the history of the coal industry deserves to be included in Newcastle's bicentennial celebrations. Several organisations must be congratulated on their commitment to bringing our industrial heritage to life: the Parks and Playgrounds Movement Inc., which is the community organisation that came up with the original proposal for the Coal River Precinct and spearheaded the vision under the leadership of Doug Lithgow; the University of Newcastle, which formed the Coal River Working Party to move the vision forward and engaged in research under the leadership of Dr Eric Eklund and Gionni Di Gravio from archives section of that university; Monteath & Powys Pty Ltd, consulting surveyors and planners, which came forward to prepare a schematic plan and then double-checked the markings that had already been identified; Coffey Geosciences Pty Ltd, which has been engaged to carry out the ground penetrating radar [GPR] and drilling component of the project; and the Newcastle City Council, which provided a $10,000 grant, funding some of the research and allowing the drilling component of the event to occur.

    I have been involved in the process, and it is great to see it reach this point. I congratulate Doug Lithgow on his drive and initiative over a long period to ensure that the Coal River Working Party has been focused and recognised in this bicentenary year. Together, all the people involved have focused our attention on coalmining and its impact on the development of Newcastle, the Hunter and New South Wales as a whole. I congratulate the Minister for Mineral Resources on bringing this matter to the attention of the House, and the honourable member for Myall Lakes, who spoke in detail during his contribution to this debate on the social impact of the mining industry. I also mention that miners once paid threepence a week to create the Wallsend Mining and District Hospital, which was a wonderful contribution to community life. My earliest memories are of my father returning home from the pits and of the black coaldust that remained after he had taken a bath in a galvanised tub—coaldust that was with coalminers to the end of their days.

    Mr KERRY HICKEY (Cessnock—Minister for Mineral Resources) [4.44 p.m.], in reply: I welcome the participation in this debate by the honourable member for Myall Lakes and the honourable member for Newcastle. I note that the honourable member for Myall Lakes was originally from the Cessnock area—he is a Cessnock boy—and that he has a good understanding of coalmining, unlike the Opposition spokesperson, who continually displays his arrogance and laziness in his performance of the role entrusted to him by his political party. Where is he now? Where was he during the debate? If the truth is known, he is probably penning more articles for the Daily Telegraph.

    I wish to deal in more detail with the point I made earlier on the delay in commencement of the drilling project. The Coal River Working Group gained approval for drilling from both the Newcastle City Council and the State Government. However, drilling could not proceed as planned because the Federal Government's environmental authority did not even officially reply to the request until 14 April. That is simply a crying shame for everyone who has worked so hard to support the project and for the people of Newcastle. It shows that the sympathy that the Federal Government has for the preservation of Newcastle's coalmining heritage is absolutely zip. The Federal Government is not worthy of the trust of the people of Newcastle.

    I know the history of the Cessnock coalfields very well and I am well aware of what happened at J. & A. Brown's at Minmi, where coalmining first started. My grandfather told me about the exploitation of workers and the Rothbury riot, and his accounts of what happened are preserved as treasured family history. People should remember what the union movement, in particular the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union [CFMEU], have done for workers over a long period. In the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, an enormous downturn in coalmining left the city of Cessnock absolutely devastated. A former member for Cessnock, George Neilly, served as a union organiser before being elected to this Parliament. He staunchly stood by the workers during a time of crisis and was locked in a gaol cell for being a member of the union. Quite clearly, George placed the wellbeing of the workers above his own wellbeing and thereby demonstrated his level of involvement and commitment. As a member of this Parliament he served the community well.

    Mr John Mills: As did Harry Cockrill in the upper House.

    Mr KERRY HICKEY: As the honourable member for Wallsend says, Harry Cockrill did also. I think he and George Neilly were members of Parliament at the same time for a period. Towns in the Cessnock districts such as Paxton, Aberdare North, Aberdare East, Kitchener and Abernethy were formed around pitheads. One of the biggest problems in the area is that expansion of individual population centres around pitheads has resulted in the city of Cessnock growing disproportionately, which has had adverse impacts on policing and infrastructure. The contribution made by mines and miners to the community is immense¯not just in economic and social development but also in cultural activities. We have mine pipe bands, mine choirs, the Welsh gymanfa ganu, and the Abermain Eisteddfod, which is the oldest established eisteddfod in New South Wales and probably Australia, and strongly continues to this day.

    The modernisation of the coalmining industry has come a long way, but we should never forget our past. We have to preserve our past to ensure our future. It is great that the history of Newcastle is being recognised as based on coalmining and it is also great that the Coal River Working Group has been working so hard to ensure that the history of the area is never lost. The honourable member for Myall Lakes referred to the history of coalmining and to Freemans Waterhole site, which was formerly a mining museum. Consideration probably should be given to adopting a whole-of-government approach involving local government authorities and the State Government to re-establish the museum, bearing in mind the number of coalmines in the Cessnock electorate and the immense wealth the area has contributed to State and national economies.

    Cessnock has been the powerhouse of New South Wales and has generated more economic strength and benefit to this State than has any other area. The Hunter region should hold its head high. Considering the net benefit to the State and the Commonwealth, it is pretty poor form that the Federal Government cannot find its way to even answer correspondence from the Coal River Working Group. The Federal Government should hang its head in shame.

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