Steel Frame

A rusted steel frame lies flat in the paddock beside the former manager's office at Elrington Colliery, near Abernethy in the Hunter Valley of New South Wales. Dry grass has grown up around it and through it. The paint is long gone. What remains is bare metal returning, slowly, to the ground. Elrington Colliery was established by BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited to supply coal to the company's Newcastle steelworks. The mine was designed around the Main Greta Seam, reached by two concrete-lined shafts each 18 ft in diameter, sunk to 1,190 ft below the surface. BHP planned a target output of 3,000 tonnes per day. The mine never achieved it. In the Hunter Valley coal industry it became known, with some affection and some irony, as the Peter Pan Colliery: like Peter Pan, it never grew up. Coal production commenced in 1930. The mine operated for just over three decades, employing a workforce that stood at approximately 90 men by the time BHP made its decision to close. That decision came in December 1962. Large reserves of coal remained untouched in the seam at closure. BHP cited persistent operating losses. The site did not sit idle for long. On 17 June 1964, Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd opened in the former colliery workshops, employing approximately 50 tradesmen. The mining equipment left outside the buildings was not moved. It stayed where it had been parked, in the paddocks around the office and the old workshop buildings, and the Hunter Valley weather began its work. This photograph was made in 2017, more than 50 years after the mine closed. The steel frame in the foreground is one piece of that equipment. The manager's office stands in the background, still upright, still identifiable for what it was. Everything else in the frame is grass, rust, and time.