Beehives

The beehives stand in rows across a flat paddock outside Abernethy, a few kilometres from where Elrington Colliery once operated. Nothing about the scene announces what the ground once held. The land has settled into something quieter: open grass, fence lines, light industry at the edges. Elrington Colliery was developed from 1924 by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, a company with Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd and Hebburn Limited as its principal shareholders. The purpose was specific: a captive supply of hard, bituminous coking coal for BHP's Newcastle steelworks. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 feet in diameter, were sunk to the Main Greta Seam at 1,190 feet below the surface. Coal production began in 1930. The railway branch serving the colliery had opened in January 1924, with the first loaded train running in June 1928. BHP designed the mine for 3,000 tonnes per day. It never reached that figure. By 1950 it was averaging around 1,500 tonnes a day, roughly half its intended capacity. The nickname that followed it through its operational life said it plainly enough: the Peter Pan Colliery, because like Peter Pan, it never grew up. The mine closed in December 1962. At closure, approximately 90 men were affected, and large reserves of coal remained untouched in the seam. BHP cited persistent operating losses. The branch line was dismantled in 1963. The workshops did not go quiet immediately. Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd opened at the former colliery site on 17 June 1964, employing around 50 tradesmen. The engineering operation continued under private ownership and the land found its next uses in stages. This photograph, made in 2017, records one of those uses: beehives in a paddock where the coal trains once ran.