NB:  This is work in progress and WILL contain ERRORS - beware!

  Compilaton is in progress by LachlanHunter/JGB.  This compilation may later be split more into separate localities.

INTRODUCTION

The Swansea Pensinsula, also sometimes referred to as the Wallarah Peninsula, is an area of at least thirty square kilometres widening out south of Swansea Heads, which has a lot of historic coal mining activity and many features of geological interest.

The strongest mining developed out from Catherine Hill Bay where a picturesque miners style village still survives.  Until the time that this mining ceased, not long ago, this area was claimed to be the longest continuous coal mining operation in Australia.  A second concentration of mining activity closer to Swansea has been a tapestry of smaller operations and the history of these has never been fully compiled.

Swansea Head might have been where coal was first dicovered.  Coal was first discovered in Australia by Mary and William Bryant and other convicts who were escaping from the penal colony of Sydney.  This party eventually reached Indonesia in an open boat, only to there be betrayed back into the clutches of the notorious Captain Bligh and English authority.  The escape party discovered coal when they landed for water not long after departing Sydney Cove and heading north.  It could have been at Swansea where they landed and found coal, although the Hunter River mouth or Glenrock Lagoon south of Newcastle are generally considered more likely possibilities than Swansea Heads.

Coal mining on Swansea Peninsula began accidentally, in 1800.  Captain William Reid was sent north from the Sydney settlement to investigate reports of coal at the mouth of Coal River (later named Hunter River).  He mistakedly landed at Swansea Heads thinking it was Coal River (whence the locality being now known as Reids Mistake) but found coal anyway and took a cargo of it back to Sydney, from what is now called the Pilot seam.  Coal began to be worked close to Swansea at the Murrays Mine in 1863, probably mining the Wallarah seam about 2 km north of Point Morriset on the Lake Macquarie shore; and in 1883 probably from a discovery of the Fassifern seam in a quarry near Swansea which was first opened to provide breakwater stone.  Further south, mining had commenced at Catherine Hill Bay on the Great Northern seam in 1873.   For more than a century the seam mainly worked by the Wallarah Colliery was the Wallarah seam, but in the 1990s the Wallarah Colliery finally ceased working the Wallarah seam and confined its operations to the Great Northern Seam.  The last mine to be developed, the Moonee Colliery, was opened in the Wallarah seam at Catherine Hill Bay in 1892.  The mine was developed at the site of the earlier "F" pit entry of Wallarah Colliery of the 1940s, and hence was not an entirely new mining area.  By the late 1990s however, Moonee Colliery had also decided to switched to working the Great Northern seam instead of the Wallarah seam.  Wallarah colliery was placed on care and maintenance in 2000 and never reopened.  The Moonee Colliery experienced various severe difficulties and challenges and was finally closed in 2002. 

 

 

SPECIAL INTERESTS

One of the writer's special interests is fossils, especially the fossil trees of the coal measures.

Whatever fossil tree horizons are present might be expected to be found along the coast, and less easily so along the Lakes shorelines (often with less dramatic outdcrop exposure).  But what about in mining and exploration records - what do those tell us about the fossil trees of the region?  This is being enquired into via contacting the companies.  In general, although numerous holes have been drilled by the coal mining industry the actual chances of drill core happening to pass through a stump or a tree large root, and thus any standing tree horizon detected appears to be slim.

One large and recent exploration effort in the Lakes area has been the "Wyong Areas Coal Joint Venture" (WACJV), which has been exploring the Wyong Coal Development Areas under licence of the NSW Government since 1995.  This JV has been working on the Wallarah 2 Coal Project (W2CP) which aims for the underground extraction of up to 5 Mtpa of export quality thermal coal via a longwall mine which will have a life in excess of 40 years.   The project's exploration area has been as below:

Location of the Wallarah 2 Project area

The most recent and most extensive exploration carried out in the Wyong area has been that for the Wallarah 2 Project and this occurred mostly between 1996 and 2002.  That exploration involved the drilling of approximately 350 HQ boreholes.  Such coal exporation drilling is very often on a regular grid basis, and for this project the drilling intensity was in places down to a 500m grid.  An area extending from south of Morriset in the north to the Yarramalong Valley in the south and from the village of Yarramalong in the west to The Entrance in the east, in the order of 350 sq km, was covered. Although many boreholes were not fully cored from the surface all bores were cored from well above the top of the Newcastle Coal Measures to at least the Fassifern Seam. Seams below this horizon are of no economic interest for coal mining in this area. No fossil tree horizons were noted in any of the bores drilled.

Geologist Keith Bartlett (pers. comm.) who was the Project Geologist for this project between 1996 and 2004 informs that nothing suggesting fossil tree horizons were noted in any of the bores drilled.

 

SWANSEA HEADS

Herbert (1994) in diagrammatic section of the Newcastle Coal Measures depicted three horizons with tree stumps rising from coal seams.  One of the best known such occurrences is on the coast east of Swansea.

At Swansea Heads, a petrified forest is preserved in rhyolitic tuff (Reids Mistake Formation) above the Lower Pilot Seam.  Nashar (1964) noted the Upper and Lower Pilot Seams to be dipping at a very low angle (4-8 deg) to the SSE.  Silicified tree trunks occur in the 20-25 feet of what she referred to as  "chert" between the seams: "This chert is traversed by numerous vertical stems of large trees which have been replaced by chalcedony.  In some cases they are partly coalified" (p.59).  She also states that the trees may be traced into the Upper Pilot Seam.   David (1907) had described this locality and noted unusual fossilised resin globules in volcanic ash around some of the trees.  He reported tree stumps in growth position protruding up to 10 m into overlying tuff at the nearby Government quarry.

 

In the prospectus of a geology field camp run by Newcastle University to observe and understand the development and facies distribution of coal measure rocks in an area of rapid subsidence near a foreland thrust margin the Swansea Heads location was scheduled as: "Coalified and silicified tree trunks protrude from the top of the Lower Pilot Coal into overlying tuffaceous rocks. The trees appear to have been killed off by a sudden volcanic ash flow.  At this location we measure the azimuths of the fallen trees in order to determine the blast direction." 

 

Foster and Hashimoto (2005) covered this location as "Stop 2: (Long Excursion 13^th September 2005) Life and Death of the Petrified Forest at Swansea Heads",  drawing on the work of Diesel (1986, 1987) and Little (1998) .  It is suggested that the eruption was probably a pyroclastic surge similar to the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption.  About 8 m of tuff is present above the 1 m thick Lower Pilot Seam.  A freshwater swamp environment hosted a sub-arctic forest (Diessel 1986).  Evidence for the flora present includes numerous Dadoxylon stumps and trunks, which rarely exceed 20 cm in diameter.  It is postulated that deposition of the tuff unit.  All trees appear to have been felled, with both loose trunks and inclined stumps present.  Orientation of the inclined stumps and horizontal trunks suggests a west to southwest-directed blast in the area.  The excursion guide states that the volcanic textures of Reid’s Mistake Formation have been interpreted by Diessel (1987) to suggest that the volcano was approximately 20 km away.  There are several tuff layers present.  Gradual re-establishment of vegetation occurred, with shale grading to coal of the upper Pilot Seam in the cliff.   Peter Buckley who went on this excursion for Geological Survey staff has supplied the two photos herein of cliff face and rock platform views.  The stump in the rock platform views must be one of the largest ones present, since site description has it that the fossil trees here "rarely" exceed 20 cm in diameter.

 

Subsequent to knowing about the Geological Survey excursion notes that cover this locality, another excursion was learned of which has even further details on the site.   This was an excursion entitled "An overview of the Newcastle Coal Measures" which was lead by C.F.K. Diessel and A.C. Hutton, in connection with the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the Society for Organic Petrology in 2004.   Also, Diessel had earlier on done a "Late Permian Newcastle Coal Measures - Excursion Guide" (Diessel 1980b).  In the 1980 guide Diessel stated that the tree trunks are rooted in the underlying coal and often penetrate serveral metres into the overlying tuff.  It is not uncommon for coal seams to have stumps in their roofs.  The Nobbys, Great Northern, Lower Pilot, and some other coal seams in the Newcastle Coal Measures carry stumps in their roofs (Diesel 1963, 1980).  What is uncommon is for the tree preservation to continue upwards for any distance.  

 

The further information, slightly summarised, from the Diessel and Hutton (2004) guide is as follows:

 

The Reids Mistake Formation, situated below the pilot station, is an 8 m thick deposit of volcanic ash
that terminated peat formation in the Lower Pilot Seam. The tuff/coal contact is littered with both felled trees and upright stumps.  The Reids Mistake Formation combines both distal pyroclastic flows and ash falls on the basis of which four major units are distinguished.  Notes on these four units are:

Unit 1 - Forms the immediate roof of the Lower Pilot Seam and is composed of parallel bedded vitric to crystal tuffs that comprise 2-20 cm thick beds. These are cross-laminated and show surface undulations, such as ripple marks and minor cut-and-fill structures indicating lateral movement from the northeast.

 

Unit 2 - Displays extensive dune and antidune development, which has been accentuated in many places by the ramping-up of subsequent deposits against earlier bedforms. The bedding surfaces show distinct hummock-like pattern. Pinch-and-swell structures and cross-bedding are common. This unit is thought to represent a pyroclastic surge mode of emplacement.

Unit 3 - This is not exposed at this locality but is known elsewhere.  It consists of a 0. 5 to 1. 5 m thick massive and coarse pyroclastic interval with irregular lower but relatively smooth upper bounding surfaces. The coarsest portion with fragments of aphanitic volcanic rock occurs near the top of this unit.
The unit is interpreted as a non-welded ignimbrite, probably another surge deposit.  Similar as Unit 2 it shows wavy to contorted bedding, hummock-like surfaces, dunes, antidunes, ripples, cross-bedding, pinch-and-swell structures and climbing megaripples.   Thin beds with pronounced grain size separation are draped over bed forms, and accretionary lapilli occur in the upper portion of the unit.

 

The coalified and largely silicified tree stumps which are present at this locality extend from the coal into the overlying tuff.  They are rooted in the Lower Pilot Seam and most of them penetrate for 0.5 to 1 m into the overlying vitric tuff.  At that level many of the trunks snapped off and became embedded in the
volcanic ash.  The mean thickness of the trunks above the root system is 25.4 cm (s = 13.9, n = 42) and mean spacing is 2.90 m (s = 1.40, n =30).  Most of the downed trees point in a westerly to southwesterly direction (mean azimuth = 260o, n = 65) and some are still attached to the stumps on the ground.

Of considerably smaller size than the fossil trees are coal inclusions in the tuff that commonly range in size from a few micrometres to several millimetres. They appear to have been entrained as peat or plant fragments into the pyroclastic surges and flows near the contact with the underlying coal and are either scattered throughout a tuff bed or, more rarely, occur in defined bands. The inclusions consist of two kinds:

(1) Inclusions of coal clasts contain all the macerals common to a high volatile bituminous coal, except that the coal has been thoroughly impregnated by silica in the form of common opal, and to a lesser extent some other minerals.  Fluorescence microscopy reveals that little replacement of organic matter has actually occurred.  Most of the impregnating silica either fills desiccation cracks or occupies the central cavities of spores and pollen that display little compaction.

(2) Inclusions of peat derivatives display flow structures and are not unlike some hydrogenation residues. Both white light reflectance and fluorescence intensity of the material vary.  Reflectance values range from 0.40% Ror, which is less than the vitrinite reflectance of the Lower Pilot Seam of 0.75% Ror, to 1.15% Ror.  Although the precise mode of formation of these inclusions is not known, it can be assumed that softening and pyrolysis of vegetable matter and peat were involved in their formation. Both white light and fluorescent mode images show signs of heat effects in the form of an uneven distribution of
reflectance and fluorescence intensity values.

 

 

JUST SOUTH OF SWANSEA

 

 

David's work at Government Quarry, Swansea (to be re-scanned)

 

For starting the present compilation David's work was broadly known about (e.g. see 

The Enchanted Professor ) but nobody locally could be found who knew of where David had worked exactly and the above "Fig. 49" was not seen till April 2007, and still the original has not been read.  Independently the existence of a 'fossil forest' beneath the Great Northern Seam was inferred, and it was further reasoned that this might correlate with the fossil forest horizon at Fennel Bay.  As can be seen from the above figure, David had inferred all that long ago.   There are apparently references by David to large tree remains in the Government quarry, and this hasn't all been seen or worked out yet.

 

Besides the full details not being compiled yet for fossil trees, there is also much evidence of earlier mining just south of Swansea for which no full information has yet been compiled by anyone (so far as is known).  Some of the geology close to Swansea may be uncertain, including seam correlations.  For example, Britten (1969) wrote that in the Swansea area "the seam worked as the Great Northern Seam is more likely to be the Fassifern Seam".

 

As noted by Nashar, and also known as a frequent stop for geology excursions, open cut workings for the Wallarah Seam occur close south of Swansea and contain many plant fossils, and the strata there show impressions of countless small logs in all orientations.   And at Quarries Head more interesting exposure of the Reids Mistake Formation with fossil trees occurs.

 

     

 

At Quarries Head, south of Swansea Heads, trunks appear to be rooted directly

in or upon the Lower Pilot Seam (Diessel 1984)

 

 

The chief colliery name applied to the area closely south of Swansea which has been mined is "Wallamaine Colliery".   In the 1940s this area passed to Mr W. "Art" Mawson who developed in all a total of eight coal mines across the Newcastle, Maitland and South Coast fields, and by some accounts came to employ a total of some 800 miners at the peak of the Mawson Group activities.  Mr Mawson was a Swansea hotel-keeper and businessman.  In association with Newcastle architect and town planner, Mr Frank Stone, he also planned for 300 acres there to become a model settlement named after himself - "Mawson".  The area named as Mawson was about 3 km S of Swansea.  There is a Mawson Trig and Mawson lookout, and this high area affords magnificent views over Lake Macquarie and the Watagan Mountains or Sugarloaf Ranges to the west, and of the coastline stretching to the north.

 

 

View north from Mawson Trig area, showing the Swansea entrance channel,

and Swansea Heads at the seaward end of the channel.

 

The full record of land and mineral rights dealings is not compiled but a major development was that a company Wallamaine Ltd. (initially Silver Valley Minerals) by 1968 had acquired the land and mineral rights of the Mawson Group.  This was a still-coal-mining focussed subset of future planning as real estate development planning was also proceeding concurrently.  The planned "Mawson" housing development went ahead in the 1960s, however the residents later on objected to the name and in 1965 it reverted to an older name as "Caves Beach".  On the coal mining lands, Wallamaine Ltd (Silver Valley Minerals) planned further mining and did re-open part of the Swansea open cut under the name of Wallamaine No. 6.  The ultimate aim at the time was to install sufficient infrastructure as to be able to export coal directly to Japan, by-passing Newcastle.  In the colliery holding there were supposed to have been proved 14 seams of coal and the intention was to build a port capable of handling 150,000 tons capacity bulk carriers.  The mining venture was to be a joint operation with a Japanese consortium.  Open cutting was re-commenced in part so that sandstone from that source could be used to construct a large breakwater at Spoon Rocks, which was to be protection for a planned port.  Also an entry to the Australasian seam was commenced from near sea level at Spoon Rocks.  Wallamaine had a period of activity in 1970-1975 but the overall project did not proceed successfully and the port facilities were never fully constructed.  Wallamaine was fully absorbed by Silver Valley Minerals NL (who were originally uranium explorers) in 1981.  As a new consortium operator, the Newcastle Wallsend Coal Co. later submitted a new colliery proposal to revive and expand both underground and open cut workings, however this too failed (stated to have failed through inability to gain government approval but the details have not yet been sought).  This joint venture involved Peko-Wallsend, Marubeni and Silver Valley Minerals.  The old mining name 'Wallamaine' was itself finally extinguished as a company name after purchase by Gordon Pacific Limited in 1987 (with the company name then changed from Wallamaine Limited).  Following this reverse takeover of Wallamaine Ltd., and the name change to Gordon Pacific Ltd., the company business changed in 1988 from that of a mining company to a development company proposing for its land south of Caves Beach a 5 star hotel, shopping area, marina, residential areas, a 12 million dollar botanic garden, health farm, educational establishment for the hospitality industry, a country club, a conference centre, etc. (Caves Beach/Cams Wharf Integrated Resort).   Gordon Pacific commissioned an advertising documentary THE DREAM OF CAVES BEACH to promote this $500 million development for the area.  The brief was to address historical and environmental issues in an endeavour to influence the general perception of the effects of larger scale development.  The commission went to Gold Coast PR company Newtons Pty Ltd.   It later appeared that the 1988 Integrated Resort as proposed had not been adequately financed and could not be achieved as envisaged.  Gordon Pacific was delisted from the ASX in 1992.  Mr Noel Gordon was residual major shareholder, with Ross Investments buying in from 2002.  

 

 

Mining history details for the "Wallamaine Colliery" area south of Swansea

 

The few details mentioned above for the area south of Swansea are probably not very indicative of the full mining history of the area.  McNally (1997) is the best introduction to the fuller history between when mining commenced in the 1860s and the last production of any significance in 1975.  There are about twenty mining operation names in all, within an area of about twelve square kilometres.  The earliest mine was the Morriset Colliery, 2 km SW of Swansea (?1862/3-1902, owned by Murray Brothers).   This is at the northern end of the Wallarah seam outcrop along a ridge slope that extends from there southeasterly.

 

Along this line of outcrop there was later worked the North Wallarah (? -1916), Wallarah Extended (1920s), North Wallarah No. 1(1937-1947), North Wallarah No. 2 (1936-1942?), North Wallarah No. 3 (1937-1942?), Aberfield Colliery (?-1937), Northern Rivers No. 1 (1945-1948), Wallamaine (1948-1955), Wallamaine No.4 (1955-1965?), Wallamaine No.6  O/C (1968-1975), and Wallamaine No.7 (1960?-1968?) mines.  No details on these mines or their owners/workers, or exactly what work was conducted, have yet been sought via local historians or other possible sources, and even their dates of operation are often uncertain.  Production at all the 'Wallamaine' area facilities was apparently increased greatly in the 1940s at the encouragement of the Joint Coal Board in order to address the postwar coal shortage, however much of the JCB records appear to have gone missing and sustained enquiries to trace them have so far been without success.  In the late 1940s the Bureau of Mineral Resources also gave its help to this effort, to assist exploration, and the BMR records of such work, to better identify open cut resources in the Wallarah seam, likely survive.  The outcome of that work was likely the Swansea open cut which is centred about 3 km south of Swansea bridge (active 1950-1957).

 

The mining ventures associated with Mr W. A. (Art) Mawson, already referred to above, may have begun with him taking over the lease of the Northern Highway Colliery (1931-1944) after its closure.  This is within the area of workings 2 km south of Swansea bridge which first commenced to be mined in 1883.   This area of workings at its western side is cut through by the Pacific Highway, whence the name of the Northern Highway Colliery.  The full number of named operations known in this area of workings is:  Northern Highway Colliery (1932-1944), Northern Highway No.1 (1945-1948), Northern Highway No. 2 (1940 under some uncertain name, 1943-1946), Swansea-I colliery (1883-1890), Normaine (1946-1958) and Wallamaine No. 5 (1955-1958?).  

 

In the 1990s Pacific Highway deviation or straightening and improvement works exposed some old workings south of Swansea  (Kopandy and Francis 1991, McNally and Francis 1996).  In one place this showed old Wallarah seam pillars and goaf under only 2-3m of cover.  The coal or waste had caught fire here and it continued smouldering for many years, providing a point of curiosity for passing motorists.  At the "Swansea Bends" the horizon of the Wallarah seam is immediately beneath the Pacific Highway.  The seam is well exposed in an open cut below Mawson Lookout about 500m east of the highway.  Subsidence cracks, above the old Wallamaine No. 7 workings, occur at surface between the highway and the lookout.

 

By 1944, Mr Mawson's Northern Highway No. 2 mine (later renamed Normaine Colliery) was intending to work the Fassifern seam.  The Fassifern seam entry was planned for immediately west of where the later Swansea High School now stands.  Details have not been obtained but the extent of the workings in the Fassifern seam here are likely minor.  Also, there has been some controversy, apparently, over some instances of seam naming or correlation near Swansea (in workings or only in corrections from bores one wonders?).   The strata dip up gently towards Reids Mistake headland.  An open excavation above the headland, Swansea-I quarry (1883-1890), was commenced originally as a breakwater stone quarry but coal was discovered in it, believed to be the Fassifern seam.  The nearby Normaine Colliery (1946-1958) also was working along the outcrop of the Fassifern seam. 

 

At the same area as Normaine Colliery a large diameter (0.75m) bulk sampling drill hole was put down in 1969-70 to sample the Australasian seam, at a depth of 158m.  After the hole reached the seam, geologist Dick Sanders was lowered down the hole where he dug out 12 tonnes of coal by tunnelling into the seam.  Geologists don't usually do such hard or difficult work but the story goes that no miner would tackle this task (Sanders 1982).  Proposals to extensively work the Fassifern or other lower seams in the area (Croft and Associates, 1981) never went ahead.   Instead of proceeding with mining the lower Fassifern seam as contemplated in 1944, Mr Mawson's enterprises instead concentrated on the then "Wallamaine colliery" which was an eastwards extension of the Wallarah seam mining done earlier in the 1930s in the North Wallarah Nos. 1-3 and Northern Rivers No.1 mines.   Where Mawson's Wallamaine colliery commenced working was likely the site later known as Wallamaine No. 4 in 1955-1965.  This eastwards mining of the Wallarah seam was up-dip and there was apparently some early experimentation done here with the hydraulic mining method (no details found but should be at least mentioned in JCB records, check JCB annual reports).

 

 

 

CATHERINE HILL BAY

 

 

Catherine Hill Bay village, long regarded as the finest preserved

example of an early NSW coal mining community.

 

 

The key to the early development of coal mining at the Bay was

 that coal could be shipped to Newcastle from a substantial jetty.

 

 

Catherine Hill Bay, showing the collier MV Wallarah loading.   Late 1990s.

  (Photo: Coal Mines Australia Ltd. - COAL)

 

 

Care was needed for the ship not to be swept onto the rocks.

 

 

The jetty in stormy weather.

 

 

 

The coal preparation plant above the jetty (demolished 2003)

 

The Great Northern Seam outcrops in the cliff face near the coal loading jetty.  The seam is about fourteen feet thick, with a two foot shaly split near the top.  It overlies hard sandy shale with abundant Vertebraria.

Great Northern Seam outcropping in cliff at Catherine Hill Bay.  (Photo: COAL)

 

 

Examining the seam in 1873.

 

 

Sealed entrances to the old workings of the New Wallsend Coal mining Company

(Photo: E. Tonks)

 

The Great Northern Seam is separated from the Wallarah Seam by up to 50 m of Teralba Conglomerate.  In this conglomerate, and immediately above the Great Northern Seam, Nashar recorded that there can be seen "crushed trees, which now have the form of flattened masses of brittle, bright black bituminous coal, six to twelve inches in width and one third to one inch in thickness ..".   The Great Northern Seam is dull but clean coal, rich in inertinite, as is typical of coal that occurs in close association with thick pebble conglomerates in the upper part of the Newcastle Coal Measures (Diessel and Hutton, 2004) .

 

Other notes from the Diessel and Hutton (2004) excursion guide are that the seam here is erosively overlain by the Teralba Conglomerate.  In contrast to compaction-related syndepositional tilting of principal bedding planes in the Merewether and Redhead Conglomerates, such planes of the Bolton Point and Teralba Conglomerates do not display any angular discordances but are conformable with the underlying coal.  In the nearby mine workings, and elsewhere, remnants of a partially eroded shale and sandstone sequence have been found in the roof of the workings.  It is assumed that the conglomerates were deposited on an already pre-compacted peat, resulting from the loading of earlier roof sediments that were erosively removed prior to the emplacement of the conglomerate.

Isolated layers of bright coal (vitrain) have been derived from the wood  and bark tissues of uprooted and transported trees.  That is likely what Nashar's earlier report of "crushed trees, which now have the form of flattened masses of brittle, bright black bituminous coal, six to twelve inches in width and one third to one inch in thickness .." refers to.    Diessel and Hutton add that the coalified tree trunks are often oriented normal to trough axes, which suggests that they rolled down the slip faces of the gravel masses.

 

For this location, Diessel and Hutton also note that a set of dolerite dykes are exposed on the wave-cut platform. The dykes display strong columnar jointing normal to their walls and vary in thickness between 0.5 and 2 m.   They may also show chilled "glassy texture" margins.

 

Currently the most curious report from the Bay is this: "Whilst snorkelling off Catherine Hill Bay, south of Newcastle, I happened to see embedded in the cliff face a polystrate fossil. This was a fossilised tree trunk that was orientated vertically in the cliff face and was perpendicular to the strata, which were near-horizontal. The tree trunk was quite large in diameter and quite long, extending up a significant length of the cliff face. I would estimate that the fossil was at least 5m in length. Unfortunately, I am lead to believe that this specimen has since eroded away (I saw it nearly 30 years ago)". [http://webdiary.smh.com.au/archives/phil_uebergang_comment/001165.html].   Now this is quite interesting.  Is there or was there offshore at Catherine Hill Bay a 5m high standing tree in the strata? Could this writer have glimpsed trace of another fossil forest, under water?  No other similar reports are known of.  At the last workings of the Wallarah Colliery, the downcast shaft for men and materials reached the Wallarah Seam 70 m below surface, the Great Northern Seam 128 m below surface and the Fassifern Seam 166 m below surface.  So the Fassifern Seam (which elsewhere may be a level with associated standing stumps, pers. comm.) at Catherine Hill Bay should be about 38m below sea level.  This is quite deep, so could the stratigraphic level with any 5m standing tree be within the Awaba Tuff?

 

Local enquiry to follow up on this matter resulted in the information (David Poyzer, pers. comm.) that at low tide fossilised remains of tree stumps can be seen on the beach at Ghosties Beach south of Catherine Hill Bay.  These had been pointed out by a ranger from the Lake Munmorah State Park. 

 

Structure contours from Catherine Hill Bay south to Wybung Head are near meridional in trend (Britten 1969) whereas the coastline extends very slightly eastwards to the south at Ghosties Beach.  Thus exposure on that beach could well lie just below the Great Northern Seam.

 

Might these trees correlate with the well known fossil forest on the western side of Lake Macquarie at Fennel Bay?  The Fennel Bay trees are thought to be associated with the Fassifern Seam (local geologist, pers. comm.), however on the western side of Lake Macquarie the separation in level between the Fassifern and Great Northern Seams greatly lessens and in places the two seams there may be separated by as little as 3 m of Awaba Tuff (Britten, 1969).

 

In the British Association for Advancement of Science's 1914 "Handbook - Maitland" Edgeworth David wrote the first chapter "Geological Features of the Maitland District" which includes some far ranging observations, including a few on fossil trees.  He remarked that fossil trees were known in in the roof of the Great Northern Seam [these are not upright however], as a "fossil forest of Dadoxylon (2 to 3 feet in diameter and 120 feet high)" in the cherts and cherty shales [where are these?]; in the cherts with erect fossil trees passing down into the coal of the Lower Pilot Seam, "which has their roots spreading of at least 16 feet from the trunks in the upper coal", and as fossil trees "just visible at the top of Nobby's Seam".   He considered that "In the case of almost every seam in the Newcastle Series, evidence of fossil trees occurring in close association with one another, just as one might have expected them to have grown in a forest, is to be traced."  He noted that one of the best and most persistent of these horizons for fossil trees is that which he termed the "Awaba Horizon", occuring at "a depth of ten to forty feet below the floor of the Great Northern or Catherine Hill Bay seam."  It does not appear that David actually knew at that time of any trees on this expected horizon around Catherine Hill Bay but his correlation certainly agrees with the sightings mentioned above.  David stated that for the trees of this horizon they were "best seen at Fennel Bay, near Fassifern, where they occur mostly between tide marks, [and] have been described by the late Rev. W. B. Clarke. Their diameter ranges from about eighteen inches to a little over two feet".

 

FOSSIL FOOTPRINTS

 

 

Trackway found in the roof of the Wallarah Seam.

(Photo: Brian Andrews. V & A Brown, Coal & Allied Archive, University of Newcastle. )

 

In 1979 a fitter and part-time university student, T. Cowling, discovered these Labyrinthodont footprints in the roof of the mine.  The trackway was inspected by Professor Konrad Moelle of Newcastle University and paleontologist Greg Dean-Jones.  Similar amphibian tracks have been found on two occasions in the roof strata of the Bulli Seam of the NSW south coast.  Portion of the tracks were forwarded to the Australian Museum.

 

 

Coal mining history around Catherine Hill Bay

Coal mining work commenced at Catherine Hill Bay in 1873 and continued almost constantly until 2002.  This made the area for a time the longest continually operating minesite in Australia.  The village at Catherine Hill Bay was originally named Cowper.  

The first major colliery name was the Wallarah Colliery.  Later on the Moonie Colliery existed from Catherine Hill Bay southwards.

After a little early mining at Catherine Hill Bay by the New Wallsend Company, the 1880s became a boom period for coal mining and a well capitalised company, the Wallarah Coal Company was formed in London in 1888

A number of different owners operated various pits in several locations.  Most of the mining has been underground but some small open cuts were also put in.  In recent years there have been two collieries continuing around Catherine Hill Bay, the Wallarah and Moonie Collieries; and a third one under the same ownership further west, the Chain Valley Colliery.  A washery and coal jetty at Catherine Hill Bay serviced all of these.

In early times at least five small mines were commenced near Catherine Hill Bay, named "A" to "E".  These commenced from 1889 but by 1906 only two, "B" and "E", were being worked.   Initially a village, named Mine Camp, was laid out around "A" pit and by 1891 about 1,000 tons of coal per week were being hand won here with about 160 employees.  Later on this pit entry area was all but abandonned only after a few years (possibly due to a goaf fire?) and a newer settlement further south became known as Middle Camp.  Most of the plant was later situated around the mouth of "E" pit, which was located just northwest of Middle Camp.  The workforce in 1906 numbered 320, and output capacity had increased to 1,000 tons per day.  The bottom 1.8m of the 3.8m Wallarah seam was worked by bord and pillar.

The "B" pit was the principal producing area from 1901 till 1914, after which "E" pit was the centre of all activity.  Work in the "B" pit area was resumed in the 1920s and the workings had been extended westwards under the Pacific Highway by the 1930s.

In 1957 the Wallarah Coal Company was taken over by J&A Brown, Abermain Seaham (JABAS) Collieries, which later became Coal and Allied Operations Limited.

In later years the working thickness of the Wallarah Seam became 2.6 m at Chain Valley Colliery and 3.6 m at the other two collieries (i.e. most of the seam being recovered).  For The Great Northern Seam it is 2.4 m at Chain Valley Colliery and Moonee Colliery, and 2.8 m at Wallarah Colliery.  Later seam working thickness at Moonee was 3.1 m, of a total seam thickness of up to 4.5 m for the Great Northern Seam.  Elsewhere the maximum thickness of the Great Northern Seam is a little over 7m.

The first mining was of the Great Northern Seam.  This mine, which loaded directly onto an earlier jetty, continued for only a few years and ceased in 1877.   It began in 1873 when the New Wallsend Company excavated a tunnel just above the beach level near the jetty.  The mine employed some 70 men by 1874.

Another coal company, Pope Hardie and Co. (later the Lake Macquarie Coal Co.), sank a shaft in July 1875, but nothing eventuated.

In 1888 the Wallarah Coal Company developed a new workings 4 km northwest of the Bay on a hill approximately 100 m above sea level.  A new jetty was constructed and a railway line was laid between the colliery and the jetty,  This colliery became known as the “A” pit but it was shortly followed

by other small openings nearby, “B” to “E”.   Of these, the E Tunnel pit was to become the main focus for surface plant in later years.

 

Views of B Tunnel mine entrance in 1894 (E. Tonks collection).

Views looking down and up the B Tunnel incline, 1894  (E. Tonks collection)

 

Extent of the Beulah Estate, which in 1912 provided the basis of an extended

Wallarah Colliery holding.  The positions of the B and E tunnels are shown.

  (J & A Brown-Coal &Allied Archive, A7663/x, University of Newcastle)

 

 

Local layout in 1908.  Middle Camp is near the D tunnel pithead area, and Mine Camp is at the 

B tunnel north of there.   (Schools inspectorate sketch - researched by Mary Martin)

 

 

Showing A, B, C and E tunnel entrances to the Wallarah Seam (main headworks

developed at E), and the lesser known D pit area.  The C pit only worked an outlier 

of the Wallarah seam and lasted only a year or two in the early 1890s (Wright 1973)

 

 

The first Mine Camp ("Angels Rest") settlement being built, in 1912.

 

 

Northern end of the Bay, showing Middle Camp stretch of housing there in the 1950s.

Note also the very wide rock platform.   (Lake Macquarie City Library 02188)

Early shaft at Catherine Hill Bay, D pit area, 1894.  The D pit development is something

of a mystery, comprising two 1875-1877 shafts 0.7 km north of the jetty which were

sunk down to the Great Northern seam.  There is record of a few pillars formed by

1898 but there is no recorded production.

The E pit mine and northern end of Middle Camp dwellings, 1947.  

(Lake Macquarie City Library 4693)

Middle Camp, the E Tunnel pit head, and a coal train leaving for the Bay, 1952.  

The Tunnel B mine camp is off to the lower left.  (Lake Macquarie City Library 4692)

E Tunnel pit head buildings, 1890s  (Department of Mines) 

The E Tunnel mine power station buildings.

 

In 1963 the “E” pit was closed and the railway at Catherine Hill Bay ceased to operate.   To focus of mining of the Wallarah Seam moved westwards.

In 1955 the Wallarah Coal Company accepted an offer from J & A Brown Abermain Seaham Collieries Limited (JABAS).  Five years later, JABAS merged with Caledonian Collieries (Howard Smith) to form Coal and Allied Industries. Shortly after acquiring the colliery, the new owner commenced a new decline in the west of the holding, towards the eastern shore of Crangan Bay.  Production from this new area commenced in 1958.  The decline is 750 m in length.  Two vertical shafts were constructed, the  downcast for men and materials shaft to 170 m in depth.  This serviced workings on the Wallarah Seam (70 m below surface), Great Northern Seam (128 m below surface) and Fassifern Seam (166 m below surface).

A new coal preparation plant was built at Catherine Hill Bay 1964, and in in 1975 the old jetty, of timber decking and piles, was replaced by one of concrete decking and steel piles.

 

he 

Coal preparation plant, built in 1964, bearing the Coal & Allied logo.

 

The Moonee Colliery was originally opened as “F” Pit in the 1940s but was developed as a separate mine after the closure of “E” Pit in 1963. The Colliery was modernised in 1982.

 

Coal and Allied which had taken over J. & A. Brown was in turn taken over by CRA in 1993.   In 1994 CRA sold off to the Wallarah Joint Venture (mainly Coal Operations Australia Ltd) the mines, the washery, and the jetty and ship used to move the coal to market.  Coal Operations Australia Limited (COAL) later became a subsidiary of BHP Billiton.  Management of the Joint Venture further changed as a result of mergers and acquisitions and the remaining operations passed to LakeCoal.   Wallarah was placed on care and maintenance in 2000.  

 

Moonee Colliery was finally closed in 2002.  The Moonee operation also had a decline of 750 m length, providing access to the Great Northern seam, and one vertical upcast ventilation shaft.

 

The coal preparation plant was demolished in 2003.

 

 

 

KNOWN INTEREST GROUPS WITHIN THE AREA

 

Various historic material on Catherine Hill Bay, a little of it copied here, has been extensively amassed by the "Friends of Catherine Hill Bay" (q.v. for further material), which consists of the local progress association and a dune care group.  Their contacts are:

 

 

 

 

REFERENCES

 

 

Britten, R.A., 1969.  The Moon Island Beach Sub-Group.  Pp. 346-359 in Packham, G. H. (Ed.)   The Geology of New South Wales.  Geological Society of Australia.  654 pp.

 

Brownlow, J.W., 1979.  Discussion: The Reids Mistake Formation at Swansea Heads, New South Wales., Geological Society of Australia. Journal, 26(6), p319-322.

 

COAL, 1995.  Coal Australia.  Australian Mining & Resources Journal.  Vol.1, No.4, pp. 19-25.

 

Croft, J.B. and Associates, 1981.  Environmental Impact Statement for the development of an underground mine south of Swansea NSW (3 volumes).  EIS prepared on behalf of Newcastle Wallsend Coal Company and Wallamaine Colliery joint venture.  [Copy is held at Lake Macquarie Library].

 

Danvers Power, F., 1912.  Coalfields and Collieries of Australia, Melbourne.

 

David, T.W.E., 1907.  Geology of the Hunter River Coal Measures, New South Wales, Geological Survey NSW, Memoir G4.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1963.  Petrological study and observations of some coal seam roof rocks at Chain Valley colliery.  Joint Coal Board N.S.W.  Report NR 63/4.  (Unpubl.)

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1966.  The determination of the direction of transport of fluviatile arenites by orientation analysis of the detrital mica. Sedimentology 7: 167 - 177.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1969a.  Notes on the geometry of the Sydney Basin at the beginning of Triassic time. In: Diessel, C.F.K., Abstracts of the 1st Newcastle Symposium 1966, "Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin", The University of Newcastle, 7 - 8.

 

Diessel, C.F.K.,  1969b.  An attempt to explain the termination of Late Permian coal formation in the Sydney Basin. In: Warne, S.St.J., Abstracts of the 3rd Newcastle Symposium 1966, "Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin", The University of Newcastle, 45 - 46.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1975.  Coalification trends in the Sydney Basin, New South Wales. In: Campbell, K. S. W., Papers from the Third Gondwana Symposium "Gondwana Geology ", Canberra, 1973, Australian National University Press, pp. 295 - 309.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1970.  Paralic coal seam formation. In: The assessment of our fuel and energy resources and requirements. Institute of Fuel Conference, Brisbane 14: 1 - 22.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1980a.  Newcastle and Tomago Coal Measures. In: Herbert, C. and Helby, R.E.  A Guide to the Sydney Basin. Geological Survey of New South Wales, Bull. 26: 100 - 114.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1980b.  Late Permian Newcastle Coal Measures; Excursion Guide, Day 1, Stops 2 - 4. In: Herbert, C. and Helby R.E.  A Guide to the Sydney Basin. Geological Survey of New South Wales, Bull. 26: 459 - 472.

 

Diessell, C.F.K., 1983.  Tuffs, Tonsteins and Palaeosols in the Coal Measures of New South Wales, Australia.  Dixieme Congres International de Stratigraphie et de Geologie du Carbonifere, Compte rendu, Madrid.

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1984. Excursion Synopsis for Excursion Number 2, Eighteenth Newcastle Symposium on Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin, Department of Geology, The University of Newcastle.

Diessel, C.F.K., 1985.  Tuffs and tonsteins in the coal measures of New South Wales, Australia. 10th International Congress on Carboniferous Stratigraphy and Geology, Madrid 1983, Proc. 4: 197-211.

 

(Diesel 1986 and 1987 - Yet to be added)

 

Diessel, C.F.K., 1992.  Coal-Bearing Depositional Systems. Springer Verlag, Berlin - Heidelberg - New York - London - Paris - Tokyo - Hong Kong - Barcelona - Budapest, 721 pp.

 

Diessel, C.F.K. and Hutton, A.C., 2004.  An overview of the Newcastle Coal Measures.  Excursion guide at the time of the Twenty-first Annual Meeting of the Society for Organic Petrology.

 

Foster, D.B. and Hashimoto, R., 2005.  Field guide - The geology of the Newcastle area. Geological Survey of  New South Wales.   24 pp.

 

Herbert, C., 1994.  Cyclical sedimentation in the lower Newcastle Coal Measures.  Advances in the study of the Sydney Basin, 28th Symposium.  Pp. 134-141.  Department of Geology, University of Newcastle, New South Wales.

 

HLA-Envirosciences Pty Limited, 2003.  Final Mine Rehabilitation and Closure Plan, Wallarah and Moonee Collieries, Catherine Hill Bay Coal Preparation Plant.  Prepared for LakeCoal Pty Limited.

 

Kopandy J.E. and Francis, C., 1991.  The Swansea Bends deviation project.  Proceedings, 2nd Conference on Buildings and Structures subject to Mine Subsidence, Maitland NSW, August 1991.  Pp. 229-237.

 

Kramer, W. , Weatherall G. , Offler, R., 2001.  Origin and correlation of tuffs in the Permian Newcastle and Wollombi Coal Measures, NSW, Australia, using chemical fingerprinting.  International Journal of Coal Geology, 47 (2), p115-135.

 

(Little, 1998 - To be added.)

 

Loughnan, F. C. and RAY, A. S., 1978.  The Reid's Mistake Formation at Swansea Head, New South Wales. Journal of the Geological Society of Australia, 25(8), pp. 472-481.

 

Nashar, B., 1964.  Geology of the Hunter Valley.  Jacaranda Press.  96 pp.  Martin, M.  Catherine Hill Bay, a development history.

 

McDonnell, S., 1999.   Search of Old Collieries in the Catherine Hill Bay Area.   Unpubl.

 

McDonnell, S., 2001.  Longwall mining beneath the Pacific Highway, Moonee Colliery - An overview.   Moonee Colliery.  42nd Australian Surveyors Congress.  20 pp.

 

McNally, G.H., 1997.  Two Centuries of Coal Mining on the Swansea Peninsula: a History of Wallarah and Wallamaine Collieries.  Proceedings of the 31st Newcastle Symposium on Advances in the Study of the Sydney Basin.  Department of Geology, University of Newcastle.  Pp. 29-36.

 

McNally, G.H. and Francis, C.L., 1996.  Mine fires in abandoned shallow underground workings, Newcastle Coalfield, NSW.  Proceedings, 7th ANZ Conference on Geomechanics, Adelaide, July 1996.  pp. 820-826.

 

Perry, W., 1989.  Management of a Coal Mine operation in a Sensitive Coastal Location. In: Proceedings of the AMIC Environmental Workshop, Ballarat, October 1989. Australian Mining Industry Council, Canberra.

 

Sanders, R., 1982.  Australasian seam sampling down a difficult shaft.  Abstracts, 16th Newcastle Symposium, pp. 42-43. 

 

Snelling, A. and John Mackay, J., 1984.  Coal, volcanism and Noah's Flood.  TJ in depth Journal of Creation, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 11-29.

 

Wallarah Coal Company, 1892, 1922-23, 1925.  Various Records (Minutes Book, Ledgers, 1925 General Meeting, Notes).   Mitchell Library. MSS 3876/10,11,12, 14.

 

Wright, H.J., 1973.  The Wallarah Colliery Railway, Catherine Hill Bay.  Australian Railway historical Society Bulletin.  February 1973, p.30.

 

Ziolkwski, W., 1978.  The Geology of the Swansea - Fraser Park Area.  B.Sc (Hons) Thesis, University of Newcastle, Newcastle (unpubl).