Showers

The washhouse at Elrington Colliery sat at the end of every underground shift. Workers descended 363 metres to the Main Greta Seam, a hard bituminous coal seam in the Greta Coal Measures on the southern slope of the Lochinvar anticline. They came back up carrying the evidence of that depth on their hands, their faces, and their clothes. The showers in this room were where the day finished. Elrington Colliery was established by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, whose principal shareholders were the Broken Hill Pty. Company Ltd. and Hebburn Limited. The mine was built specifically to supply coal to BHP's Newcastle steelworks, and every tonne mined here was headed there. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 feet in diameter, were sunk to reach the seam at 1,190 feet below surface. Coal production commenced in 1930. BHP designed the mine for a planned output of 3,000 tonnes per day. It never reached that figure. Ross Mainwaring's 2009 history of the colliery records the nickname that stuck: the Peter Pan Colliery, because, like Peter Pan, it never grew up. Actual output ran at roughly half the planned capacity through the mine's working life. The colliery closed in December 1962. BHP cited persistent operating losses. Large reserves of coal remained in the seam at the time of closure. About 90 men were affected. The railway branch that had served the mine since 1924 was dismantled the following year. This photograph, made in 2017, records what remains of the washhouse. The shower fittings are still in place. The pipes still run along the wall. The room is quiet in a way it never was at shift's end.