Workshop Gantry

The main workshop building at Elrington Colliery sits near Abernethy in the Hunter Valley, roughly 10 km south-east of Cessnock. The 15-tonne overhead crane gantry visible above the roofline is part of the surface infrastructure BHP Collieries Proprietary Limited built out between 1925 and 1930, the same period that two concrete-lined shafts, each 18 ft in diameter, were being sunk 1,190 ft through rock to reach the Main Greta Seam below. Standard-gauge rail ran through the workshop floor. Coal wagons came in for access and repair, serviced by the same overhead crane whose gantry beam now frames the sky above the corrugated roofline. The branch line connecting the colliery to the South Maitland Railway network had opened on 14 January 1924, with the first loaded train running on 13 June 1928. Everything on the surface, workshops included, was built to support a planned output of 3,000 tonnes a day. That figure was never reached. BHP established Elrington Colliery specifically to supply coking coal to its Newcastle steelworks, less than 40 km away. The mine commenced production in 1930 and operated for just over three decades, closing in December 1962 with large reserves of coal still in the ground. BHP cited persistent operating losses. Approximately 90 men were affected by the closure. The workshops did not go idle with the mine. On 17 June 1964, BHP opened Elrington Engineering Pty Ltd at the former colliery workshop site, employing approximately 50 tradesmen on mining equipment and general industrial orders. The business continued operating under private ownership and the site remains in industrial use today. This photograph, made in 2017, records the gantry and roofline as they stood. The corrugated cladding, the crane beam, the rail-level floor below: what remains of a building purpose-built for heavy work.