Main Engine House Windows

The main engine house at Elrington Colliery sits close to the bush near Abernethy, in the Hunter Valley coalfields of New South Wales. Looking along the side wall, a column of window openings runs the full height of the facade, every pane of glazing long gone. A metal fire escape staircase frames the elevation, its treads rust-marked, its handrails intact. The surrounding scrub has come in close. There is no buffer between the building and the bush now. BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, with principal shareholders the Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited, built the surface complex between 1925 and 1930. The ground lease was executed on 13 November 1925. Shaft-sinking had already begun by January of that year, with all machinery on site. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, were sunk to 1,190 ft below surface to reach the Main Greta Seam. The engine house was the centrepiece of that surface infrastructure. The mine was built for a single purpose: to supply coking coal to BHP's Newcastle steelworks. The target was 3,000 tonnes per day. Coal production commenced in 1930, and the mine ran for 32 years, but the planned output was never achieved. By 1950 the actual average was approximately 1,500 tonnes per day, roughly half what BHP had designed for. The mine closed in December 1962, with large reserves of coal still untouched in the seam. BHP cited persistent operating losses. About 90 men were affected by the closure. After the mine shut, the workshops kept running. BHP opened Elrington Engineering Pty. Ltd. at the former colliery site on 17 June 1964. The engine house the photograph shows is what remains from the years before that transition. The glazing is gone, the fire escape still stands, and the bush holds its ground at the edges of the frame.