Page 299 - J Delaney - City of Cessnock Education and Schools

330.

RICHMOND MAIN SCHOOL

the coal outcrops and indicating as well, the areas of good 6oal holdings.
Many syndicates from various parts of Australia were formed to develop ' coalmines
in this new qnd expected great, coal area. One such company was a Melbourne
group who, in 1888 purchased a property known as the Richmond Vale Estate.
They called their company the Richmond Vale Colliery. In the "Newcastle Herald"
newspaper, in the issue dated 19th August 1890, the Colliery Manager, John R.
Riggs, announced that a test bore had reached a good coal seam at a depth of ·
795 feet. The company further advised that it intended building a railway to
West Wallsend to link up with its planned colliery.

However, the Richmond Vale Colliery Company found its mine was an · ·
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expensive op~ration. The sinking of a shaft extended the finances of the Company
so much that the Melbourne Branch of the Standard Bank of Australia was forced
to sell-up the mine to recover its advances. At the auction sale held. on 15th

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July 1897, Mr. John Brown, descendant of the original James and Alexander Brown,
miners and head of that family mining company which was still operating, purchased
the Richmond Vale Colliery, both •mine and assets. He immediately made an appli-
cation to the N.S.W. Government to pass an Act of Parliament to allow J. & A.
Brown Company to build a railway from its Minmi Raih<ay to its new lease and
possessions at Richmond Vale.

Meantime, on 1st August 1900, J. & A..' Brown had also purchased ·a portion
of the 'Stanford Greta' lease, which . they re-named "Pelaw Main Colliery". This
was situated on the coal outcrop and was much easier to mine and operate and
with much less expensive coal production than the Richmond Vale Lease.

Consequently, J • .& A. Brown Company concentrated on its Pelaw Main Colliery

and it was to this colliery that the Richmond Vale Railway first reached and
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conveyed coal. It was not until 1913 tha~ Richmond Vale Colliery (.now re-named
"Richmond Main Colliery") first prpduced and despatched coal by rail.

Production at all the South Maitland collieries working on the great
Greta coal s~ams, was always tinted with industrial trouble. The work at these
mines was very different to that which operated at other Australian coalfields.

At some mines the seam sloped sharply, sometimes as much as sixty degrees (66°1.
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The seam itself was very higb, ranging from sixteen (16) feet to forty (40) feet.