Main Engine House

The main engine house at Elrington Colliery stands near Abernethy in the Hunter Valley, roughly 10 kilometres south-east of Cessnock. The building housed the winding and ventilation equipment that serviced the mine's two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 feet in diameter, sunk 363 metres through rock to the Main Greta Seam. BHP built it as part of the surface infrastructure completed between 1925 and 1930, the same years the shafts were being driven down through the Greta Coal Measures. The colliery was established by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, with principal shareholders Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited, specifically to supply coking coal to BHP's Newcastle steelworks. The intention was to produce 3,000 tonnes a day using modern extraction methods that were a significant departure from conventional hand-mining practices then common on the Hunter coalfields. The mine never reached that figure. Actual output in 1950 averaged approximately 1,500 tonnes a day, roughly half the planned capacity. Coal production commenced in 1930 and continued until December 1962, when BHP cited persistent operating losses and closed the mine with large reserves of coal still unworked in the seam. Approximately 90 men were affected by the closure. The railway branch that had served the colliery since its first train ran on 13 June 1928 was dismantled in 1963. The engine house the photograph records is what remains of that surface infrastructure. The shafts it once served are gone. The winding gear is gone. What the frame holds is the building itself: brick and concrete, built to last because the machinery inside demanded it, now standing in a Hunter Valley paddock long after the last skip of coal came to surface.