Breakers and Compressor Room

The breaker panels at Elrington Colliery are mounted on a workshop wall the way they always were, in rows, labelled for circuits that no longer carry current. The adjacent lean-to holds the air compressor that once kept pressure running through the mine's underground workings. Together they represent what remains of the surface infrastructure BHP built to support one of its most ambitious coalfield ventures. Elrington Colliery was established by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, with principal shareholders Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited, to supply coal directly to BHP's Newcastle steelworks. The site sits near Abernethy, roughly 10 kilometres south-east of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 feet in diameter, were sunk to the Main Greta Seam at 1,190 feet below the surface. Shaft-sinking commenced in early 1925, coal production began in 1930, and the mine ran for just over three decades before BHP closed it in December 1962, citing persistent operating losses. Large reserves of coal remained in the ground untouched. The workshop complex was the operational hub of that surface infrastructure. Electrical distribution, compressed air, maintenance equipment: all of it concentrated in these buildings. When the mine closed, the workshops did not. BHP opened Elrington Engineering Pty. Ltd. at the former colliery site on 17 June 1964, employing around 50 tradesmen. The engineering operation continued under private ownership into subsequent decades, and the site remained in industrial use long after the last coal came up the shaft. Photographed in 2017, the breaker panels and compressor room record what that long industrial life left behind. The panels are still in place. The compressor lean-to still stands against the wall of the workshop. The circuits are dead, but the hardware that once carried the working load of a colliery remains, in the building where it was always kept.