Calf

The calf in this photograph stands on paddock land directly adjoining the former Elrington Colliery site near Abernethy, in the Hunter Valley. The grass is green, the fence line unremarkable. Nothing in the frame announces what sat next door for three decades. Elrington Colliery was developed by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, a company whose principal shareholders were Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited. Construction began in early 1925, when shaft-sinking operations commenced with all machinery already installed on site. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, were sunk 1,190 ft through rock to reach the Main Greta Seam of the Greta Coal Measures on the southern slope of the Lochinvar anticline. The coal they were after was hard, bituminous, low in ash, and well suited to coking. Every tonne produced was headed for BHP's Newcastle steelworks, less than 40 km away. BHP designed Elrington to deliver 3,000 tonnes of coal per day and to demonstrate what modern, mechanised extraction could look like on the Hunter coalfields. It delivered neither. The mine averaged roughly 1,500 tonnes a day in 1950, consistently running at half its intended capacity. The nickname it earned was the Peter Pan Colliery: like Peter Pan, it never grew up. Coal production ceased in December 1962. At that point, large reserves remained in the seam. BHP cited persistent operating losses as the reason for closure. Approximately 90 men were affected. The railway branch that had served the colliery since 1924 was dismantled in 1963. After production ended, BHP opened an engineering works at the former colliery workshops, incorporated as Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd, on 17 June 1964. The paddocks surrounding the pit-top returned to farming. This photograph, made in 2017, records what those paddocks look like now: a calf, open grass, an ordinary Hunter Valley afternoon.