Machine Shop Garden

Within the main workshop building at Elrington Colliery, a small court inside the machine shop has been left open to the sky. Ferns have established themselves in the only unpaved ground in the space, growing steadily in the absence of any other competition. The machine shop shared this building with the electrical workshop and compressor room, forming the core of the surface workshop complex that supported operations underground. Elrington Colliery was developed by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, whose principal shareholders were Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited. The site sits near Abernethy, approximately 6 miles south-east of Cessnock in the Hunter Valley. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, were sunk to reach the Main Greta Seam at 1,190 ft below the surface. Coal production commenced in 1930. BHP designed the colliery to supply coal to its Newcastle steelworks, with a target output of 3,000 tonnes per day. That figure was never achieved. The mine produced roughly 1,500 tonnes per day on average in 1950, consistently running at around half its planned capacity. It became known informally as the Peter Pan Colliery because, like Peter Pan, it never grew up. The colliery closed in December 1962. Large reserves of coal remained in the seam at closure. BHP cited persistent operating losses as the reason for shutting the mine. Approximately 90 men were affected by the closure. After the mine shut, BHP opened an engineering works at the former colliery workshops, incorporated as Elrington Engineering Pty. Ltd., which opened on 17 June 1964. The operation employed approximately 50 tradesmen and continued under private ownership into later decades. This photograph, made in 2017, records the machine shop court as the ferns have quietly claimed it.