Carpentry Workshop

The wire mesh tool storage cage in the carpenter's shop at Elrington Colliery stands in a lean-to addition that runs along the side of the main workshop building. By 2017, ferns had pushed through the mesh and across the framing, filling the cage with green growth. The tools are long gone. What remains is the structure that held them, and the plants that have quietly taken it back. Elrington Colliery was established by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited near Abernethy, approximately 6 miles south-east of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley. BHP sank two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, to reach the Main Greta Seam at 1,190 ft below the surface. Coal production commenced in 1930. The mine was designed to deliver 3,000 tonnes of coking coal per day to BHP's Newcastle steelworks, a target it never reached. Every tonne that did come out was bound for those steelworks, less than 40 km away. The colliery's workshops supported everything required to keep the mine running, from the battery locomotives on the 3 ft 6 in underground railway to the surface infrastructure connecting the pit-top to the South Maitland railway network. A carpenter's shop was a standard part of that support fabric, maintaining the timber work that underground coal mining required continuously. BHP closed Elrington Colliery in December 1962, citing persistent operating losses. Large reserves of coal remained in the seam. Around 90 men were affected by the closure. The workshops, however, did not close with the mine. Elrington Engineering Pty. Ltd. opened on the former colliery site on 17 June 1964, employing approximately 50 tradesmen. The engineering business that succeeded it still occupies the grounds. The carpenter's shop, by 2017, had passed well beyond either phase of that working life. The cage records what the ferns found when they arrived.