Down t’ Pit - article about our Hunter Valley mining ancestors for the Newcastle Family History Society Journal Sep 2024.

 My father is from a long line of coal miners, strecthing back at least to the early 1800s. His COLLINS family emigrated from Worsley, Lancashire, England to Plattsberg, near Wallsend, arriving in Sydney in 1841 on the ‘Adam Lodge’. Many men in the COLLINS family worked in coal mines around Wallsend, including Thomas, his son James, & James’ foster son Andrew COLLINS (my great-grandfather).

Andrew and his wife Rosanna KING moved from Plattsburg to Cessnock with their young family in 1915 to work at mines in that area. By the time their eldest son , my grandfather Andy, was 16 he was working with his father at the Bellbird Colliery south-west of Cessnock. 

The family story has it that Andrew and Andy were offered “a doubler” (working a double shift) on Saturday 1 September 1923 but they declined the extra time as there was a family event that evening. They finished work at 1pm and as was their routine, went straight to Peden’s Pub in Cessnock to wash the coal dust from their throats. As they walked in Mr Peden said to them, “What are you boys doing here? Your pit’s just exploded.” They had narrowly missed being part of the Bellbird Mine Disaster, which had its 100-year anniversary last September. There is a monument in the nearby Memorial Park to commemorate the men who were lost or injured on that fateful day. There had been a fire and explosion at the Bellbird Colliery where 20 men and their horses died from inhaling the gases which caused the explosion. A Mine Manager who ran in to help carry men out also lost his life. 15 bodies were brought to the surface before it was considered too dangerous to continue. The mine was then bricked up to allow the fires to burn themselves out, entombing the remaining men who would have already perished. Newspaper articles and the memorial differ in their total numbers of those men who died.

 https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/disaster/industrial/display/20293-bellbird-mining-disaster

In August 1927 a Joint Coal Board Medical Bureau was established to help guard the health of people working in the coal mining industry. There were offices at Newcastle, Cessnock, Wollongong and Lithgow. Workers were given an initial examination, with check examinations at two or three yearly intervals. I have my grandfather’s Bureau card (below), where he was photographed looking very dapper in a suit and tie. The card is around postcard size.

My father, Gerald Collins, also continued the tradition, working at Chain Valley Colliery,  Vales Point.My enduring memory of my father’s time working there was his “crib tin” (a metal lunch box) with union stickers all over it which always smelled of Minties. There was an empty Nescafé coffee jar in there that Mum kept topped up with the lolly. When Dad came home from work we would be allowed to have a Mintie if we had been well-behaved and then the crib tin was then be stored on top of the hot water system in a cupboard that we couldn’t reach. These tins were made onsite for each man by the boilermakers. This example is far shinier than Dad’s ever was.