Shafts of an old mine

I have been to a place like no other in Gippsland. This story will, I hope, make a few more Gippslanders want to go there too.
Garden St, Wonthaggi, will lead you to a most un-garden like place. Be warned. It also will lead you deep into the past, and that is only partly a pun. At the end of Garden St you will find the parallel inclined shafts of the old East Area Mine, something all Gippslanders should see.
We all know about the giant open-cut mines of the Latrobe Valley, but we don't all realise that we also had shaft-mines, where men worked deep underground in positions of great danger and discomfort.
The black coal was very hard to win, where the brown coal was easier, and yet black 'steaming coal' was necessary for the railways which helped open up the whole state.
This column has carried stories about the Wonthaggi mines before, so I won't say too much about the actual history, yet they have an important past.
William Hovell found coal seams in the cliffs at Cape Patterson in 1826 while carrying out a series of explorations based on the settlement at Corinella.
Samuel Anderson, Victoria's first agriculturalist, brought coal from Cape Patterson to warm his home and to heat the forge without which no large farm could operate in those days. He was doing so by 1836, when Melbourne was just an encampment.
The first attempts to mine the coal commercially were made by Captain Cole. He brought a few hundred tons to Melbourne by ship but lost money in the process. This was in 1840. There was a Cape Patterson Coal Proprietary Association formed in 1847 but it, too, failed. The cost of moving the coal was just too high.
The Victorian Government needed local black coal very badly. As the mines around Korumburra, Jeetho, Jumbunna and Outtrim began to reach the end of their best deposits, attention turned again to the Powlett Basin. It had been known since the 1880s that the deposits there were extensive. The Korumburra area had been supplying about a third of the state's needs and the rest was imported, at great cost, from NSW. A 1906 miner's strike in NSW brought the whole problem to a head.
For a few months Victoria was even importing coal from India and Japan. Some trains were burning wood because there was not enough coal available. The economy of Victoria suffered badly.
In 1907 and 1908 the necessary decisions were made and the State Coal Mine was put into operation at amazing speed. The township was a tent camp at first and the miners and their families lived in very difficult conditions. The coal was taken by bullock wagon to Inverloch and shipped around to Melbourne. This was costly and inefficient and a railway line had to be built.
This line left the 'Great Southern Railway' at Nyora and ran down through Woodleigh, Kernot, Almurta, Glen Forbes, Woolamai, Anderson, Kilcunda and Dalyston to Wonthaggi. Though it has been closed for years the route can be easily followed. The line was built by the Nyora and Woolamai Construction Trust and then handed over to the Crown. It was a fairly rough and ready line at first, because speed in getting it open was vital. Trains took two and a half hours to cover the 50 kilometres of track.
The first coal to leave by rail came out of Wonthaggi on February 22, 1910, only seven months after construction began on June 18, 1909.
There were 12 mines at Wonthaggi. The coal was in two main areas and was heavily faulted into rectangular blocks. The 12 mines supported a township that was bigger in 1921 than Horsham, Hamilton or Mildura. It was a strong 'union' town and the people looked after each other with a community spirit that is still very strong today.
The mines were modern and well-managed, operating at good profit levels until the great economic depression of the 1930s. The Kirrak mine survived until 1968 but from the 1930s the mines were not profitable. There is a huge and interesting history to be told here, including disastrous explosions, enormous hardships and some amazing feats of engineering, and I will come back to all that. This story was supposed to be about the East Area Mine as it is today.
This is from a tourist brochure. "Large scale coal production began in 1910 when Number 5 mine was sunk to extract coal from a 1200mm (4ft) coal seam at a depth of 42m (139ft). A railway siding and screening and loading facilities were constructed to serve this mine and, later, Number 9 and 10 mines, McBride Tunnel and Western."
Western was only 800m from the sea and the working conditions were very wet and uncomfortable. Number 20 was the scene of the terrible 1937 explosion when 13 deputies were killed. They were carrying out safety work during a strike. The entrance to this mine is beside the road coming into Wonthaggi. There is a great deal to see above the ground on the western side of Wonthaggi today.
To see under the ground, you should visit the East Area mine. This had two inclined shafts driven 3.5 kilometres northward from the area open to the public today. These shafts ran through several seams of coal. The two shafts, one to bring out the coal and one to provide access for the miners, have been reopened as far as the first seam. This was where much of the filming of "Strikebound" took place.
The shafts ended at a fault where the coal dropped 600 feet, which is why the Kirrak mine was opened as a separate mine. Today the shafts can be followed for 335 metres, to the first seam of coal, at which point you are 180 feet underground, enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of my head.
Tour guides take you down the shaft, after a brief talk and after giving you a hard hat, which you'll need. They show you the tools, the pumps, the first-aid station and the incredible working conditions. It is an experience not to be missed, believe me. You don't need to be very fit, either, because at the end of the tour you are able to board the coal skips (little railway trucks) and after a signal is given along the original wires the great winch at the top hauls you slowly toward a postage-stamp square of light that is the entrance.
The whole trip is very safe now but there are maps and pictures on display which will soon show you the dangers that miners faced in the past. As I said, it is an experience we should all have.
I'll leave this rather disjointed story with one little tale I was told. At one stage a number of miners were recruited from the goldfields. One such miner was down in the East Area Mine on his first morning. He was appalled at the conditions. "How much have we earned this morning?" he asked his boss. "About a pound, I suppose." "Well, what is the train fare back to Melbourne?" "Eighteen shillings." "Well, that's enough. Goodbye".
I can understand his feelings. When you visit the mine - and remember that you will only go to the first seam, down a mere 180 feet out of the 1400 feet the shafts eventually reached, you will understand his feelings too.