Workshop Breakers

The breaker panels on this wall distributed power to the machinery that kept the main workshop at Elrington Colliery running: the overhead crane, the electrician's shop, the machine shop, and the compressor. Each circuit labelled, each cabinet latched. The kind of infrastructure that gets installed once and then ignored for decades, tended only when something trips. BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited, principal shareholders Broken Hill Pty. Company Limited and Hebburn Limited, built this surface complex between 1925 and 1930. The mine was sunk specifically to supply coking coal to BHP's Newcastle steelworks, with a planned output of 3,000 tonnes per day. Two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, were driven 1,190 ft through rock to reach the Main Greta Seam. Shaft-sinking began in early 1925, with H. M. Hindmarsh, previously under-manager at the Balmain Colliery, appointed as the first manager. Coal production commenced in 1930. The mine never delivered what BHP had designed it for. Actual output through the 1950s ran at roughly half the planned rate. A conservative workforce, the disruptions of the 1929 to 1930 South Maitland coalfields lockout, and the economics of the Depression years all worked against the mechanisation programme BHP had staked on the site. In December 1962, with large coal reserves still in the ground, BHP closed the colliery, citing persistent operating losses. Approximately 90 men were affected. The workshops did not close with the mine. On 17 June 1964, BHP opened Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd at the former colliery site, employing approximately 50 tradesmen on mining equipment and general industrial orders. The breaker panels in this photograph supplied that operation too. The surface complex built for a coal mine became, quietly, something else, and the infrastructure stayed in place to serve it. This photograph was made in 2017.