This certificate, issued to Albert Arthur Robert Wallbank (1909–1975) gave him the right to mine under the 1906 NSW Mining Act. Albert lived in Dudley in the heart of the coal mining district of the Hunter Valley of NSW but it is unlikely that he was intending to mine for coal. Gold was his target. […]
Although this object may look like a giant’s bangle it is in fact an integral part of the mostly forgotten game of clay–end quoits which dates back to the 14th century and was most closely associated with mining regions. The game involved the throwing of metal rings, the quoits, up and down a pitch with […]
They said the new mine shaft was so free of projecting rocks that you could not hang your hat on any part of it. It was March 1887, and two hundred guests were gathered for a bush banquet at the new Young Wallsend Colliery, near Teralba. They toasted the future success of the new mine […]
For over a hundred years at the Stockrington Colliery, near Newcastle, miners worked with pit ponies to ferry supplies into the mines and bring coal wagons out on their return. Often spending days, even weeks, underground the pit ponies lived in purpose built mine tunnel stables between their shifts. Name plates, like those shown here, […]
When Max Watters (1934-2020) was drawn to the simple beauty of this setting, the cows that once grazed the grassy paddocks at the Merton dairy, near Denman in the Upper Hunter Valley, were long-gone. Max was a lifelong resident of Muswellbrook, a twenty-minute drive from Denman. He lived his entire life in a modest timber […]
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