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Mt Kembla: Australia's Worst Land Disaster, 1902

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Mt Kembla: Australia's Worst Land Disaster, 1902 1 Mt Kembla: Australia's Worst Land Disaster, 1902 Most Rhondda chapels were rather plain and functional from the outside, builtof massive blocks of Pennant Sandstone to withstand the hazards of mine explosions, subsidence, and the window­ rattling chords of the Hallelujah Chorus. Clive Woosnam, Sydney Welsh chorister, reminiscing on his South Wales childhood At the dawn of this century an old man stood beside the cemetery at the Soldiers and Miners' Memorial Church on Mt Kembla, a serene setting in the thickly wooded Illawarra escarpment on the south coast of New South Wales. The church overlooked Lake Illawarra to the south and the city of Wollongong to the north. Fred Kirkwood knew the area well. He had been keeping that cemetery in impeccable condi­ tion for more than 70 years. It was his way of honouring the 96 men and boys who were killed in Australia's worst land disaster, the Mt Kembla colliery explosion of 31 July 1902. It was an event not in his living memory-he was born on 25 February 1909, but he had mined at Mt Kembla his entire 46-year working life. From the age of 19 he had become involved in preserving the memory of an event, described to him from his earliest years, that had left him with what might be described as the 'death imprint'. The Mt Kembla graves, with their faded lettering, told the story of 17 year olds David Stafford and Claude Pamay Mt Kembla: Australia's Worst Land Disaster, 1902 3 having their lives snuffed out, of Percey Hunt dying at the age of 60 along with his sons Percey, 20, and William, 18. Tom Morris had died at the age of 75, 25 days before the tragedy, but when the mine blew up his son George, 34, and grandson Frederick Smith, 14, went with it. Mary Dungey, who was to lose two sons in the Great War, went to the temporary morgue to identify the body of her Cornish-born husband, Francis. He had been decapitated and his head placed back in position. When the widow tried to hug him, the head fell away. The entrance to the old mine was still there, but the mine had ceased operation in 1970. It was silent now, apart from the calls of birds and the rustle of wind in the rainforest. The entrance to the shaft was sealed, perhaps to block out the howl of anguish said to come from the ghost of Mickey Bren­ nan, the one miner whose body was never recovered. There had been other tragedies since 1902. During Fred Kirkwood's working life 16 men had lost their lives in the mine. He remembered all of them. A man called Funnell had had his right arm pinned by a fall of coal in 1924. Itbeing necessary to get him out, a workmate had chopped his arm off with a shovel, but Funnell had bled to death before he could be brought to the surface. Mi: Kembla was not the only mine in the Illawarra to experience catastrophe. In 1887 the Bulli Colliery had gone up, killing 81 men and boys, making it the biggest land disaster in Australia at that time. It was hardly an unprec­ edented or unusual, or for that matter unpredictable, event and it was certainly not unfamiliar to many of the miners from the United Kingdom who took up tools in the Illawarra. An explosion in South Wales' Cymmer Old Pit in July 1856 had killed 114 miners. Another at Ferndale, South Wales, 4 Ignition in November 1867 had killed 178. A fractured pump bob at Britain's Hartley Colliery in 1862 had blocked the mine's single shaft and brought about the deaths of 204 miners from asphyxiation. Repeated explosions in the Richmond fields, Virginia, USA, killed 42 miners in 1836, 53 in 1839, 55 in 1855, 69 in 1867 and 32 in 1882. Despite these appalling cat­ aclysmic events, sons wanted to follow fathers, and their sons after them. It was, as Kirkwood said, 'in your blood', and if you were injured or killed, it was simply a matter of your number being up. Coal, with all its benefits, had long stamped itself on the history of Wollongong before Kirkwood came onto the scene. Explorer George Bass saw coal at Coalcliff as early as 1797. The outcrop was part of the Sydney basin, which came out at two other places: Newcastle and Lithgow. It was easily accessible at these places, though the area at the time had no natural harbour and the potential for coal mining was soon overshadowed by the developing industry in Newcastle. When the Australian Agricultural Company lost its monopoly on coal mining it also lost the right to restrict coal mining to the Newcastle fields. Coal began to be mined in the lllawarra, the first shaft going in at Mt Keira in 1849. The industry developed slowly. Mt Pleasant started in 1862 and the Bulli Coal Company started in 1863, using an ocean jetty. Four mines, employing a total of 182 men, were operating in the region by 1871. From that point onward, there was sustained economic growth and an increasing interest in the riches of coal min­ ing. Some of the colony's wealthiest and most influential people made speculative land purchases. In 1878 the Coal­ cliff Coal Company was formed. Three years later the NSW Government decided to build a railway to the Illawarra, the Mt Kembla: Australia's Worst Land Disaster, 1902 5 decision prompting a new phase of development and a rush of investment into the region. The Mt Kembla Coal and Oil Company was founded in 1878 with £100 000 in British capi­ tal. Its mine opened, with some ceremony, on 27 February 1883. The company's board was chaired by Ebenezer Vick­ ery, an enterprising individual who was to later win a place on the NSW Legislative Council. The NSW Government leg­ islated for a railway to be built from the mine to Port Kembla. Vickery estimated that the seam comprised 67 milliontonnes of coal and could produce some 3000 tonnes weekly for a period of 30 years. There were plenty of takers for jobs. In 1884 the Mt Kembla mine employed 198 men, including 60 who had been brought from Scotland and Yorkshire. There were huge riches to be gained. There were also risks, one of which was fluctuating coal prices, another being the questionable level of demand. The New South Wales coal mines were always plagued with the problems of overproduction. There was the question of how to transport the coal. The lllawarra lacked a natural harbour. In Rime at least some of these problems could be over­ come. The train line from Sydney was completed in 1887 and ocean jetties were erected at Port Kembla and further north at Bellambi. Other problems were far more intractable. There was always uncertainty about the dimensions and accessibil­ ity of seams. Nobody wanted cave-ins or explosions. On the other hand, nobody wanted to be denied an income either. For many men it was a choice between accepting risks and forfeiting the chance to earn a living. Miners were paid according to production, but by contem­ porary standards they were not well-off. They had to meet costs that workers a century later would expect the company to cover, such as supply of gunpowder and fuses, and timber 6 Ignition and erected supports to prevent cave-ins. There was no money to be made out of this, so these vital safety measures tended to be put in hastily. There was neglect of important health issues. Over time, many men became victims of lung diseases related to their exposure to coal dust. Many also disguised their health problems for fear of losing their job. There had to be an incentive for taking what on the face of it seem unbelievable hazards. Several kilometres under­ ground, miners blasted rock or coal and were obliged to calculate whether the hole was big enough to cause a cave-in, and whether the timber struts would be capable of restraining several thousand tonnes of weight that could shift position. Add the hazards of drowning, asphyxiation, fire, explosion, being caught in machinery or blown to bits by percussion and one wonders why anyone would have bothered with it. Methane, a by-product of the formation of coal, was invisible and odourless. When present in concentrations of four to 15 percent in air it formed an explosive mixture known as 'fire­ damp'. Carbon monoxide, known as 'whitedamp', was also colourless and odourless, flammable, potentially explosive and highly toxic. Carbon dioxide, known as 'blackdamp', simply displaced oxygen, causing asphyxiation. Whitedamp and blackdamp mixed with air become 'afterdamp, which could catch fire and explode. Collectively, these commod­ ities were simply referred to as 'gas'. Any gas in a mine spelt trouble. Then there was coal dust, which normallyd oes not present much of a hazard, but when thrown up in an explosion it would be suspended in air and surrounded by flame, making it potentially lethal. In major explosions, one lot of coal dust could explode and throw up another, creating a chain­ reaction of explosions. Mt Kembla: Australia's Worst Land Disaster, 1902 7 An obvious safety precaution, in the days before electricity was introduced, was to keep naked flame away from methane. But naked lights were taken into coal mines throughout the 19th century, beginning with candles, then replaced by tallow lamps, known as Scotch miners' lamps. This was despite of the fact that the Davy Safety Lamp had been developed in Britain in 1815, protecting the naked flame with a screen of metal.
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