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Local History Sites

Glendale Colliery (1933)

Description

Great Depression spawns opportunity

During the Great Depression men took whatever work they could find. In "Lowood, the First Hundred Years" it notes that train loads of men came through Lowood to unload ballast onto the railway tracks.

Coal seam discovered

Among them were two out-of-work coal miners named Simpson and Dodds who, in mid-1933, noticed sandstone on Schiefelbein's Hill at Lowood that was similar to the Walloon coal series.

They predicted the likelihood of a coal seam, got permission to sink a mine and scrounged all sorts of equipment discarded by other mines to get started.

Coal mine opens

In October 1933 the Queensland Government Mining Journal reported the opening of the new mine known as Glendale Colliery. It was located south-east of the railway line near Vernor station.

               

In December 1933 The Mining Inspector's Annual Report stated: "B. Dodds and party, who have been prospecting near Vernor railway station, in the Lowood District, have driven a tunnel onto a small seam of coal, but so far they have been unable to find a market for their product."

Efforts go unrewarded

The miners were refused a production quota from the Coal Board, probably because of the coal's unsuitability for industrial use. They were able to sell coal by the sackload to local blacksmiths and Munro's butter factory in Lowood but eventually the mine was forced to close.