Convicts & Colonials: Mining

Coal Mining
The Commandant of the Moreton Bay penal settlement Patrick Logan noticed coal seams in the riverbanks in early 1827 and, as discussed in Chapter 2, he mentioned in a letter in July 1828 that:

There are great quantities of Lime Stone and Coal on Bremer Creek about 45 miles from Brisbane Town. I think a number of hands might be usefully employed in preparing and transporting these articles…

Coal was also marked in three places on Allan Cunningham’s first map of the Bremer in late 1828. These were at present- day Tivoli; near the Town Reach; and between the Brisbane and Bremer Rivers. The same year, botanist Charles Fraser described the coal discoveries:

Numerous beds of coal, lying in veins of considerable thickness, are adjacent to the lime; they jut out from the banks of the streams, and fall into the Bremer within a few yards of its tide mark.

There are unsubstantiated claims that coal was mined in a small way during the convict era and this is likely, although probably on a very small, primitive scale.

The first verifiable coal mine in Queensland was on the banks of the Brisbane River at Redbank. This was opened by John Williams about 1843.

The first recorded coal mines on the Bremer were at Woodend Pocket. “Coal allotments” of about one hectare were sold in 1848 but were not very successful. In 1850, Samuel Sutchbury reported that only one was being worked, and this was by only two men, the coal being carried out by wheelbarrow. The opening to this mine is still discernible on the riverbank.

Several unlicensed mine openings had also been scratched out at this time at the “coalfalls” (near the suburb of this name) and at Tivoli.

Robert Jeffrey - Ipswich Pioneer

Brian Jeffrey submitted a biography of his ancestor to Bremer Echoes, a publication by the Ipswich Genealogical Society. This biography provides an insight into an early pioneer and the coal mining industry.

My great great grandfather was Robert Jeffrey (1824-1883), best known in the history of Ipswich for operating the ferry across the Bremer River before the first permanent crossing was erected in 1865. Described as of a retiring disposition, he features little in broader histories, yet he was part of the city’s fabric from the mid-1800s.

Robert was born in Dunipace, a village in the county of Stirlingshire, Scotland, on 2 January 1824. At age 25 he married a 22-year-old Highlands-born woman, Margaret McDonald. Some four years earlier he had fathered a child, John, by one Jane Allan and by the time of the 1851 census, Robert, Margaret and John were living in Alloa, a thriving river port on the north bank of the Firth of Forth where the main industry was coal mining, a hard, dangerous and poorly-paid occupation. Government sponsored emigration offered the chance of a better life and in 1855 the family joined some 400 like-minded souls headed to Queensland aboard the ship John Davies. Waiting at the wharf when they disembarked at Brisbane was one Walter ‘Wattie’ Gray, a resourceful entrepreneur who was intent on exploiting Ipswich’s rich coal deposits. He had bought from the Government three adjacent allotments about 50 metres above the Bremer on its northern bank just below what became known as Tivoli Hill, thus allowing sufficient area for a small mine. He hired 31-year-old Robert as its manager and two young single men, 20-year-old James Cuthbertson and 23-year-old James Bretian, as labourers.

Robert and his fellow employees would have found much needing to be done before the mine became operational later that same year. First, a vertical shaft of some 33 metres had to be sunk, about half of it through a layer of hard sandstone. Construction also had to begin on a number of on-site buildings, intended eventually to include a large store, the overseer’s house, a dwelling house for the workmen, and blacksmith’s and carpenter’s shops. A fellow passenger aboard the John Davies, Alexander Hunter, would recall seeing Robert and James Cuthbertson employed in the tunnelling operations in pursuit of so-called ‘black diamonds. The layer of hard sandstone above the rich coal seam afforded a secure roof to the workings and side passages on both sides of the shaft, allowing them to extend beneath the river. Oil lamps and candles provided illumination, while at appropriate points small unlined shafts afforded ventilation from the surface above. The coal was dug entirely by hand. In 1856, the mine’s output was relatively modest, but within two years it would be the major source of coal in the Northern Districts, producing some 2,200 tonnes in 1858

 

The coal was brought to the shaft in boxes running on simple tramways. The boxes were then hauled to the surface by machinery constructed for the purpose by an Ipswich local, ‘Mr Longland’, and conveyed to a wharf by means of another tramway. From there the content would either be tipped straight into coal barges lying alongside or left in a storage pile on the wharf. In late 1856 Walter Gray & Co. was advising ‘Steam-boats, Saw mills, Blacksmiths, &c’ that they could supply ‘coals of the best quality’ from the company’s mine on the Bremer.

In time, the company would appoint William Pettigrew as the mine’s Brisbane agent. Meanwhile, young John Jeffrey, 9 years old when the family arrived in Queensland, was reported to be assisting his father by serving as the ‘nipper’ who conveyed miners’ tools from the blacksmith in Bell Street to wherever they were required. Where the weight and size of his load allowed, John would row across the Bremer, but bulkier tools and equipment necessitated his taking the load by dray across sand flats at the foot of Ellenborough Street.

 

Mines located on or close to the riverbank had a particular advantage since riverboats could obtain their coal supplies direct from the source; however the convenient location also meant that mines were susceptible to the Bremer’s unpredictable moods. Walter Gray’s mine withstood  damaging floods in May 1857 but was less fortunate in October 1858 when flooding inundated the whole of the workings and destroyed the tramway, temporarily putting the mine out of action. Once restored, it remained a major source of coal in the Northern Districts, still producing almost 5,000 tons of coal a year in 1860, although its operation was eventually overtaken by a new mine at Redbank.

 

On 25 July 1856, Robert attended a sale at the Police Office and paid £25 for Lot No.14, an area of 1 rood (about 0.10 hectare) in the parish of Chuwar. He thus became one of the earliest residents on the isolated, heavily timbered and sparsely populated north bank of the Bremer; indeed some reports say he was the first resident and credit him with building the area’s first sawn-wood house. He would occupy the block for the rest of his life. Robert’s employer, Walter Gray, was also a keen buyer of multiple lots at the Chuwar land sale, sometimes in partnership with William Craies, the first manager of the Bank of NSW in Ipswich. Given Robert’s long-lasting association with coal (whatever his other future business interests, his obituary would still describe him as a ‘coal carter’), it would appear that he had an ongoing business arrangement associated with Gray’s and/or Craies’s and other mining interests in  Chuwar.