Elrington Colliery

Photographed 2017

Frames 66

Camera NIKON D810

Location New South Wales, Australia · Hunter Valley, NSW

Status Workshops in continuous industrial use since 1964 as Elrington Industries

Closed 1962

Heritage Colliery: Hunter Regional Environmental Plan 1989 (Heritage), Schedule 3 local item (1989 to 2011); within Cessnock LEP 2011 item I215, Collieries of the South Maitland Coalfields/Greta Coal Measures, local (from 2011). Company houses: Cessnock LEP 2011 item I109, local (from 2011). Not on the State Heritage Register.

01 ABOUT THIS SERIES

Series story

Map · Mapbox · OpenStreetMap

Elrington Colliery sits in the South Maitland coalfields near Kearsley, south-east of Cessnock. BHP began sinking the first of its 2 shafts, specified to be lined with concrete, in January 1925, and struck coal 1,195 feet down in December 1927, in a mine meant to supply its Newcastle steelworks. The colliery worked the Main Greta Seam, and its underground railways used battery locomotives. The target was 3,000 tonnes a day. It was never reached. Ross Mainwaring's 2009 history calls the mine the Peter Pan Colliery, because it never grew up. In 1935 The BH Review, BHP's jubilee publication, said the company's John Darling and Elrington collieries were "hardly excelled in modern equipment and methods of working". The pit closed in December 1962. In 1964 its surface facilities were given a new lease of life as Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd, later Elrington Industries.

02 TIMELINE

Chronology

1924

1925

1927

1929

1935

1954

1957

1962

1964

1989

2011

03 PRINTS

Prints in this series

Hand-signed and numbered, printed from the original RAW file. Open editions in the two smallest sizes; limited editions of 100, 50 and 25 in the three larger, never reissued once they sell through.