The Mines of Cessnock
The vast drama which made the Greater Cessnock area a strategic point in the economic and social concerns of Australia began to evolve over 200 million years ago. It was then that a stabilizing earth commenced the geological formation of the Permian Age.
Between the beginning and end of the Permian Age over a time of 21 million years, the Main Coal Province of New South Wales had been laid down, over a long structural depression covering 16,000 square miles. A coalfield within the Main Coal Province known to us as the Greta field has its greatest formations beneath Greater Cessnock.
It’s opening and development in earlier days of lesser population gave rise to a relatively thickly populated district concentrated into a comparatively small area.
One writer was “immediately impressed” with its close similarity to the more well known industrial regions of the Saar and the Ruhr.
As will be seen the coalfield had strong associations with other heavily industrialized mining communities in the world, particularly with the coalfields of Britain, but also with those of USA, Canada and New Zealand. Those associations with their corresponding influences affected industrial, social and technical spheres, but the Permian Age itself which mothered the field gains its name from the Perm area of the Soviet Urals with its central city of the same name based upon huge mining and metal industries.
The great father figure of the Greta Coalfields Professor Sir T. W. Edgeworth David spoke about the Greta Measures being correlated with the coalfields of India.
It is not our purpose to deal with the ebb and flow of the geological movements which brought the Greta Coalfields into being. They did, however, leave the seams where worked within Greater Cessnock’s local government area into two distinct sections: one the Greta-Branxton field and the other the South Maitland field.
These are located at:
- The Greta Coalfield is situated on the north-western flank of the Lochinvar dome. In includes the site of the first discovery of coal on the field, and embraces the Whitburn, the Central Greta and Rothbury Collieries.
- The South Maitland Coalfield embraces the south-western, southern and eastern flanks of the Lochinvar dome, extending from Farley on the north-east to Millfield on the west, and includes the following collieries: South Greta, East Greta, Glen Ayr, Ayrfield, Stanford Merthyr, Pelaw Main, Richmond Main, Hebburn, Hebburn No. 2, Elrington, Abermain, Abermain No. 2, Abermain No. 3, Greta Main, Neath, Aberdare, Aberdare South, Hill End, Cessnock, Bellbird, Kalingo, Pelton, Greta Main, Standford Merthyr No. 2, and Millfield Greta.
That was written at a time when the fields had reached their zenith. TO many who have been born in and lived in the Coalfields as the areas are known, the names of many of the mines must appear strange. Most have been long closed and abandoned, but not exhausted of their reserves. Reading that list today resembles the roll call of a badly mauled military unit after combat. It is a list of very high casualties.
The mines, many of them large by world standards, e.g. Richmond Main, Pelaw Main, Hebburn, Abermain and the Aberdares, were remarkable for their concentration in a relatively small area. The volume of their output to serve the needs of a not large, but growing, economy and population gave rise to the comparisons with the Saar and Ruhr. One mine, Richmond Main, when Australia’s population was only about 6.5 million people, produced the world’s record from a vertical shaft. That was in 1927, when 3,400 tons was wound in about 6 hours 50 minutes.
Not only was the concentration of mining impressive; it was equally impressive by the rapidity of its development. Where in Europe and NOrth America the industrial complexes developed over several decades, on the South Maitland Coalfields the main burst of development began about 1903 and ended within 25 years.
Such an authority as Professor F. R. E. Mauldon found difficulty in assessing the total contribution of New South Wales coal to Australia’s energy requirements over the period of major mining activity on the Greta Coalfields. That it was the main energy source is clear. In the inter-war period when the highest outputs were won, Australians coal production in 1924 was 13,757,500 tons, about 60 per cent, 5,448,111, came from the Greta fields of Cessnock. Those fields were also heavy suppliers to New Zealand. In 1928, of 1,557,000 tons of coal consumed in New Zealand, 378,080 tons was Australian coal, again mostly from the Greta fields in the Cessnock area.