Life on the West Island - Deep down under

We recently visited the Clifton School of Arts, perched atop a cliff on the Grand Pacific Drive – the Premier State’s answer to the Great Ocean Road – not far north of Wollongong. It was no surprise to be told that the School, one of the oldest still operating in the nation, was situated above an old coal mine. After all, the escarpment from Helensburgh to Bulli and inland to Appin, has been a honeycomb of coal mines for almost two centuries. But it was a surprise to hear that the colliery underneath that institution is the largest underground mine in the nation. We had assumed that such a distinction would belong to the Victorian goldfields or perhaps to the massive Roxby Downs mine.

But the Coalcliff Collery – which is no longer operating – has tunnels stretching about a kilometre under the ocean to the east and extends around eight kilometres inland to the east. When European explorers headed south in quest of pastures for cattle and sheep in the 1820s, they also began to open up rich deposits of coal, which had been reported in 1797 by shipwreck survivors. The settlers and miners rapidly moved south from Sydney.

In the process, they fought and killed the Dharawal Indigenous nation, driving those who survived back into the thick bush of the hills. There were several documented bloody massacres, including the 1826 killings at Appin and Wilton when a large but unknown number of Indigenous women, children and men were shot or driven off high cliffs to their deaths. Another grisly massacre was on the banks of the Minnamurra River in 1828, where a clan group of Aboriginal people were ambushed and shot in cold blood while eating. Today these killings are belatedly remembered in memorials at the Clifton School of Arts.

That institution also grew from the work of the coal miners, when it was built by them during a famous and prolonged strike in 1911. But the Coalcliff Colliery dates from a much earlier time, having been commenced in 1878 by the Vickery family. It rapidly expanded, and by 1892 had its own jetty at the foot of the cliff loading large amounts of coal into ships for transfer to Port Kembla, Newcastle and Sydney.

The Illawarra Heritage Trail now passes the site, and its guidebook reports:

There are remnants of the jetty to be seen on the rocky shelf to the left of the boat ramp. In construction, steel dowel pins, 3 inches diameter were inserted into holes drilled into the rocky shelf. Wooden piles with holes drilled into their bases were then positioned onto these to form the structure of the jetty. These dowels can best be seen at low tide. Shifting sands may cover some of them at times. The stern mooring ring is also visible in the area where the steel pins are protruding from the rocky shelf.

The official history of the mine reports the next stages of its growth and ownership:

In 1892 the Jetty Mine was acquired by Ebenezer Vickery with plans to sink a shaft at the nearby Stoney Creek adjacent to the recently completed South Coast Rail line. With the demand for coal continuing to decline due to the 1895/1896 depression, the sinking of this shaft was deferred. In 1902 the ownership of the mine was transferred to E. Vickery and Sons Limited and in 1909 to the Coal Cliff Collieries Limited Company. These changes were merely legal issues with the venture remaining at all times, firmly in the hands of the Vickery family.

The Coal Cliff Collieries Limited Company, formed in 1909, took over the leases and assets of the original Coal Cliff Company with the aim of developing a mine that was both efficient and profitable. While the shaft proposed earlier was being sunk and the pit top site was being developed, the Jetty Mine remained in operation and the underground workings of the new (Coalcliff) and old (Jetty) mine workings were linked together under ground.

The surface plant for the new mine was very modern and the latest technologies were adopted. In October 1910 the mine shaft and winding equipment was commissioned and in 1916 a direct current (DC) power station building was erected and generating plant installed to provide surface and underground lighting and a source of electric power for mining equipment installed underground.

A coking plant was developed above ground with its own rail siding, and the mine grew rapidly, following coal seams underground in all directions. Hundreds of miners were employed, and the mine became very profitable. There was a hiccup in 1944, when under wartime provisions the Commonwealth Government paced the mine under control of the Coal Commission to ensure supplies to munitions factories and railways. But by1947 it was back in private hands and subsequently was acquired by the company running the Port Kembla steelworks.

In the 1960’s the Coalcliff mine became the largest underground mine in Australia, employing 988 men and achieving an annual production in excess of 1.7 million tonnes. But as the cost of recovery of coal increased and demand dwindled, the Coalcliff Colliery ceased operations in 1992. The mine site buildings and facilities were demolished with the exception of the brick powerhouse building.

The Heritage Trail guide reports that the Coalcliff mine site mine site has been rehabilitated, the brick powerhouse building remains standing, and the mine seam entries facing the sea at the old jetty mine site have been sealed and are now overshadowed by the Seacliff Bridge.

But the mine retains its title of the West Island’s largest mine deep down under.