Carpentry Workshop Garden

A small unroofed court sits within the workshop building at Elrington Colliery, near Abernethy in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. Concrete covers almost all of the ground inside the enclosure. Ferns have colonised the one patch of soil left open, growing without apparent encouragement in the gap between the paving and the wall. Light comes from above, through the open roof, the only source in a space enclosed on all sides by masonry. The workshop complex was part of the surface infrastructure BHP constructed at Elrington between 1925 and 1930. BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, whose principal shareholders were the Broken Hill Proprietary Company and Hebburn Limited, developed the site specifically to supply coking coal to BHP's Newcastle steelworks. The ground lease was executed on 13 November 1925. Both concrete-lined shafts, each 18 feet in diameter, were sunk to the Main Greta Seam at 1,190 feet below the surface. Coal production commenced in 1930. The mine was designed to produce 3,000 tonnes per day. It never reached that figure. BHP had intended Elrington to pioneer modern extraction methods in the Hunter Valley coalfields, but a combination of factors, including the effects of the 1929 to 1930 lockout that shut all collieries on the South Maitland coalfield, kept output well below target throughout the mine's working life. Elrington Colliery closed in December 1962 with large reserves of coal still in the ground. BHP cited persistent operating losses. Approximately 90 men were affected by the closure. The workshops did not close with the mine. On 17 June 1964, BHP opened Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd on the former colliery workshop site, employing approximately 50 tradesmen. The operation continued under private ownership into the 1970s. This photograph, made in 2017, records the workshop court as it now stands: concrete, masonry, ferns, and open sky.