Rosewood History

A Rosewood Miner Remembers The Job He Loved!

© Jane Schy 2025

Raymond Lester Schreiweis was a lifelong coal miner and he is a long time resident of Rosewood. I was thrilled when Lester contacted me, generously offering his assistance with information on the local coal mines and miners.

We arranged to meet on Friday, 30th January. There were three of us present: Lester Schreiweis, Jane Schy and Joe Colthup.

Lester shared more than information with us. He shared his memories of a lifetime of hard work in the job he loved. He recalled the mates he worked along side of and the camaraderie they enjoyed in the Rosewood colleries. These memories are indelibly etched and I have no doubt that Lester often finds himself back mining again in quiet moments. Thank you Lester. It was a privilege.

The following is a transcription of our discussion.

Lester begins…

My first name is Raymond and the biggest problem came in with computers. I’m known as Lester. I only had one bloke who tried to change it. He called me Les and I never answered it. 

There are only a few of us left.

Jane: Have you lived in Rosewood all of your life Lester?
All but one year. My father slipped on a log and broke his spine up at Mt Colliery. That finished him in the timber up there and we came to Rosewood. I came here when I was one year old. I knew nearly everybody who was here. I knew the sound of a car going up the road and I’d say, “That’s Mr. So and So.”

Jane: Where did you live?
Matthew Street. When I lived in Matthew Street I had a pet crow. He was a lovely bird, and did he love watermelon! Us kids used to go up the back and hide but he’d find us, and he turned Catholic. He turned Catholic ’cause we lived just opposite the church. He used to go over into the church and I’d have to go over and coax him out. One morning they reckon the priest was talking and he looked over and Jimmy crow was sitting on the candle. (laughter) He came to say giday. Pop took him down to Amberley and let him go. I couldn’t keep him out of the church.

When I went to school I knew that there were 17 mines around here. 

My father (John Raymond Schreiweis) had a couple of trucks carting coal. There were other trucks around, but he used to go to the station here and the rail motor would come and there’d be 20 or 30 guys from Ipswich off the train. Some of them would go to this truck or that truck, and about 15 or 18 of them would all climb up into the body of Pop’s truck in the middle of winter, and away he’d go. He’d go to Lanefield and some of them would jump out, then he’d go to the Bluff and they’d all get out there. In the middle of winter standing up in the back of the truck.

Jane: They were tough men.
Yes, well it was a tough job those days. It was, but I loved it! I really loved it! Everybody looked after each other. Everybody knew each other. 

Jane: What year did you start mining?
I started at Normanton in 1955. I’ve got every pay packet I ever got. I haven’t seen one for a while now. I had a bloke give me a hundred dollar note the other day. I said I never knew what they looked like.

Walloon Road, that was a mud road when I was going to work on my pushbike. I can remember in wet weather it was two wheel tracks. One day Mrs Rea was coming into town in her old car (canvas top) and Mrs Courtice (used to own the paper shop at one time), she was going out to golf. Mrs Rea jumped over to one track and had to make a new track. Mrs Courtice should have done the same so she could pass but she didn’t, she just sat there until she hit the car. I was just riding past on my bike at that time.

Jane: You would have gone over the old Mason’s Bridge.
Yeah, the old wooden bridge. We used to play around under there. There were tadpoles under there, yeah…

Joe: I am interested to know. Did that gully follow the path it takes now, down and across John Street and past your place? Was that the natural water course?
The natural water course came down the main street and went through Drakes. I don’t know where it ended up down here, but at the bottom of this street (Albert St) there used to be a little wooden bridge. Not in my time, but I have seen a photo of it. 

On the corner there was a big cement slab there. Old Dai Berrell (a miner) used to live there in what was an old shop. In those days my father would go around town in his truck and Jack would put his camp gear in and Bill would put his camp gear in the truck and we’d go down the coast. We’d chuck Bill’s out there and Jack’s out there. I think Dai Berrell must have been in a flat because he never had any camping gear. When we pulled up there in the truck (at Dai’s), Pop and I walked in the door on the side. There used to be a skillion right out to the footpath. Yeah, righto, what have you got Dai? He walked straight to the table and he had his big box of beer. That was his most important thing. He picked it up and the bottom fell out of it and crash! He turned around and said, “I’ll have to clean that up when I come home.” (laughter)

Jane: Normanton was on Boughen’s property wasn’t it?
Yes, well it’s Boughen’s now, they bought it. Shirley Boughen is a Wyatte. That was their family home. That was the Wyatte farm, but later on her father-in-law bought it. That was Len. He was a wild guy. I got on well with Len, he was my under-manager. Norm and Len Boughen used to run the picture theatre and there was nearly a fight outside every night (laughter) and I’ve seen many a fight up at the mine.

I was there until we had the ’74 flood. In ’74 the mines in Ipswich got flooded and we took Haigmoor miners and put another shift on. That was in 1974, but for years we were fighting a fire. When it was originally found it should have been shovelled out, but no, we’ll put a stoping up. Coal is porous. You can’t put a stoping up and stop a fire, and every time that fire got out it was one step closer. In the end they’d say, well, we’ve got to dig into the coal walls and put the stopings into the side. That didn’t stop it. Then they got a special spray-on stuff, a seal that they could go right along the wall of coal, over the stoping, and right along the wall. Hmm, that’s good, but when the fire got to it and burnt that, it was very toxic. So that was all wiped. By the time that we finished I could feel the heat on my face going down the tunnel. It was all around the tunnel. They had railway lines and they had sheets of steel on top of the roof, and they got a hole bored, and they poured cement down. But then they had no communication. By the time the bloke down getting the cement yelled out to the bloke at the top of the tunnel, and he yelled to them, “Woah! stop!” well…

Jane: How many years did that fire go for?
Oh that took a long time for that to happen. In fact we got married in 1961 and I came home to no work because of the fire. There was no work. I tried to get work at other mines for a few weeks and couldn’t. Some did. So it was back in the early ’60s. 

Then in ’74 was the flood. We had the Haigmoor guys. It was not too long after we took that group on that the authorities came along and stopped us. Then we went open cut for 5 years up there. It didn’t actually close until ’79. So I was there from 1955 till 1979. 

Jane: What time did you start work Lester?
Four o’clock. They had daylight saving trial. That nearly killed me because it made it a 3 o’clock start. We couldn’t get the kids to bed and oh, it was a murder! It was murder! You know I like tennis, and I’d be watching the tennis, and here we are at 8 or 9 o’clock at night and they’re down there at 10 or 11 o’clock and I thought, well, what have they gained? They’ve lost an hour. I can’t see the point of it.

Jane: When I think of my grandfather, who was an Ipswich miner, it seems that miners had humour and larrikinism that always shone through.
Oh larrikinism. You’ve got one there. There was one fella known as Wocka. He believed that his father had a lot of money and they tell me he dug the whole yard over looking for it. Wocka would do that. They put him on night shift, so he wore Wellington boots so the snakes wouldn’t get him coming back home. (laughter) When we were mining on contract, seven wagons was wages. I always wanted ten. Wocka would get four a day.

Jane: So you were paid by the wagon?
By tonnage. 

Jane: You didn’t just get a wage?
Depending on what you were doing. I was on contract. There was an also a cost of living allowance. I wanted to do every job that was in the mine, and I ended up getting my Winding License, my Deputy Ticket and my Open Cut Ticket. I touched them all. Underground, when I was on contract, you were on tonnage. Every three months we had a “cavil”. You couldn’t stay in that space forever, because that fella might think it was better, so every three months you swapped your jobs. Pull it out of the hat and see where you go.

Anyway, I was driving a heading, the main heading, which was 15 feet wide and six feet high and I had that much rock (measured about 2 feet with his hands) in the middle of my coal, which was painful. I had about 3ft.-4ft. of coal on top and about 2ft. of coal underneath. The best was left underneath. They decided they’d give me a workmate, and they gave me Wocka. So my immediate thoughts were, I’m gonna have to work twice as hard to get a wage because of Wocka. So Wocka had been in the mine all of his life, and when he walked into the bord he said, “You work that side and I’ll work this side.” I thought, yeah, I might be ten feet in front of you by tomorrow. (silent pause) You know, it broke my heart when we got our wage ’cause he said, “Oh that’s the best wage I’ve ever had.”

Well, with that amount of rock, sometimes I earned more in moving rock than I did moving coal, and the rock had to be put to one side, packed, and you were paid by the yardage with rock.

Jane: So that’s how you mined, by hand or by shot? Did you blow it up?
Yep. Yep. 

Jane: That’s very dangerous Lester.
One time (you had straight face right) you gotta sump in and then you do side shots. I had already sumped in. You get as as far as you can so you can bore up the side, just give it a bump, chuck it over. You might use 3 or 4 plugs to sump in because you want it soft and you want to dig it out, but then when you’re on the sides you might only have to put a plug in and bump it over. Well I did that. We had no wagons. There was a delay in the railway. So you prepare it. I did a side shot there… I put one prop up here…so then I did a shot on the other side…. and by this time it was about 9 o’clock or so. They came around and said, “We’re not getting the train this morning so we’ll have to put your brushing on the roadway. We’ll have to take you away from there.” Well, I had all of this coal, two shots fired, waiting for a wagon to come. What happened? The inspector came that day. He put my name in the book. I had too much coal lying. You know, it’s a coal mine and apparently I had too much coal lying! (laughter)  

Jane: Lester, did you have your own section to work?
Yes, yes. I think it was roughly six metres wide they were, and you had to shovel from one side over to the wagon or over to there. When I was in that big stone they actually put a little curve in for me because I was on top of that stone, and I had to shovel it twice to get it to my wagon. (sigh) Oh man, I don’t know. 

I said to the manager one time, “It’s killing me. This stone was growing.” The further we went up that mountain the more it grew. I started off with about 5in and I was into about 2 feet. He said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I’ll give you a day’s day work tomorrow and you just move the stone.” Right. Well I spent all the next day moving stone, which was good for my pay at the end ’cause I had yardage and it allowed me so much coal.

In that particular section, we had 1000-1200 cwt wagons, but they went and bought 1400-1500 DD wagons. In this heading I had these one ton wagons. The next morning I had six of them filled by 9 o’clock. Oh man, I into it! (laughter)

One time there was a shortage of wagons and you’re wanting to fill out coal ’cause that’s your wage. So I got caps, and I stood these caps inside the wagon, and I went all the way around it. This gave me this much more (about 12 inches) coal that I got into the wagon. I forget how much it weighed and I don’t know if they deducted all the weight of the caps. (laugh)

We had a long wall but today it’s all long walls up North; it’s all hydraulic systems in the mines. We were just man. labour, wooden cogs behind. We were chopping timber out behind us to let the roof fall, and on the long wall we were only three foot high, working on your knees with a little pan 18 inches wide and 6 inches high behind you rattlin’ with the chain. You took anything from 8 to 10 yards. All there’d be was a chalk mark there, and a chalk mark there. You went from there to there. There’s already a crack across the roof there from yesterday, and you want to get under new roof. So your aim is getting under new roof, get a slab up, then you’d work left or right. And you’d take 10 yards. That’d be 15-20 ton for the day. That was different see. We used to just pop it, shovel it, and we had a conveyor behind us. If we did have a band of stone, we had to throw them over the back as well. 

Jane: How far away from you was someone else?
Well sometimes you could be driving a roadway here, and this fellow has already gone up there, and so as to get the circulation of air through the place they might say to him, you drive a road through there (across to the other road). What they did then is (tap tap tap) and you’d hear him knock and knew he was going to fire a shot, so be ready. But once he got closer, you’d know that knock was pretty close and you’d get out of the way.

Jane: That really was dangerous work.
It was. Now in the same section of this heading where I was they were preparing a new long wall, and for airway they were coming through, but they worked on top of the stone. They got ready and let me know that they were going to shoot. Well, they were so far through, that when they fired, all the coal came in my way. Well, I into it! (laugh) They were upset because they fired it and it come my way and I’m into it. (laughter) With that, see they were on yardage getting a dollar a yard, and I was on something like 8s 6d a ton, and I was into it!

Jane: You were a hard worker. You didn’t muck around.
Yeah. Sloosher!

Jane: Was that your nickname?
No. Sloosher was ’cause I was always going flat out.

When we were working the bord and pillar, we were only working 4ft 6ins- 5ft high so you couldn’t stand up. When you were wheeling the wagon on that hill, you couldn’t hold the wagon coming down that hill, so most of them put a sprag in. You’d push it, and it would skid, and you’re able to control it. I made up a board, a 3ft x 2in board, and it used to go in and I had a piece of steel coming out that had a flange on it. My board used to go in and that steel went in behind the wheel. I’d stick it in and go flat out. I’d sit on that board and that was my brake. Away we’d go! (laugh)

When we used to drive a long wall, you know where the water tower is? You go out Walloon Road, you go over the railway line, just as you past the railway line, there’s a high house on your right and a little track on your left goes up to the water tower. (Opposite the golf links). We worked right across there and it got lower and lower and lower, and by the time we got over to where we were ready to stop, it was so low that we couldn’t crawl over the conveyors. It had what was called a hungry board on the back so the coal wouldn’t go over the back. It was so low we couldn’t crawl over that. We had to go down and around. I’ve cut two foot props. I’ve got one for a souvenir, 2ft. high. I tell you what, I can’t get on my knees now. 

You’ve got one on your list, Trevor Domrow and his father George. We used to have knee pads. Some of us used to make them out of leather and put rubber in them. Some of us cut a bit of car tyre and so forth. Anyway, one day Trevor was there, we were working together. “Come on Trevor hurry up!” He had his knee pad and he was shaking the coal dust out of it. He said, “These were made for comfort not for speed.” (laugh)

We worked a long wall of about a 100 yards, and we’d go right through until we ran out of pans, then we’d come back. We were supposed to leave a block in between for a pillar. Ah, here I go again. And then sometimes, “Oh we’ve got an extra order, so go another couple of yards.” We’d go another couple of yards and sometimes we’d poke through into that one.

There’s nothing better than a sharp bit. You had your long drills and you used to put the bit in and put a spilt pin in to hold it. I always had a sharp one. One time we must have been short of drills because we had to share this drill. It used to come into me and it’d be as blunt as old Mick you know. I thought, well I’m not gonna muck about pushing my innards out boring. I had my own tip and I’d slip it out, take theirs out, put mine in and bore my own holes, and put theirs back in again.  

One morning, 5 minutes before we were gong to start work, poor old Wocka came into me and said, “Will you sharpen my bit?” You had to have a special stone to sharpen these bits. I looked at it, and it was so worn that I said to Wocka it would take me half an hour to get that sharp. Oh I don’t know. They’d bore and bore and bore, and you know it was so easy to just keep touching them up, but they’d let ’em get that blunt.

Jane: Did you have to wear safety boots?
Put it this way, we had to wear safety boots with steel caps right? Now you’re working on your knees, so what happens? Everybody’s toes wore through and steel caps were lying everywhere. They weren’t in their boots, they fell out. (laughter).

We had one bloke from England, Arnold Wrigley. He was our Deputy. He used to get clogs sent out from England. They were just a pine sole with a horseshoe on it and leather top. How long did the pine last working on coal? Up in behind the horse shoe it just chewed it out.

I can go back before that. I can go back to when we were wearing sand shoes and we’d have what’s called a sprag. It’s a hunk of steel, 2ft long, 1¼ inch round, with a pin through it. We used to stick it in the wheels of wagons for a brake. If you missed you’d quickly grab it and shove it in because when they’re coming out of a tunnel, you had to quickly grab the rope off, but you had to put sprags in because it was down hill. All the other mines, uncoupled the wagons, weighed ’em and tip ’em. Well ours had to go from the pit head down to the gantry, so they’d leave them all coupled together and we just used to slide ’em across the scales. The old arrow was fluctuating all the time, and half the time I’d think he’s guessing the weight. He’ wrote it down with a piece of chalk and then entered that in the book.

We had one fellow, Des Wass, on a horse pulling wagons, and he used to go along and give it a push with his foot. Well his sandshoes only lasted two or three weeks. 

Jane: What about your lights?
We had fairly good lights. They were battery lights, 7lb in weight. I weighed one. They would last 10 hours. You’d put it on the charger for the night and go and get it. Lots of people wouldn’t take number 13. I didn’t mind. I took 13. Before we had a sealed battery we had an unsealed battery. A CEAG battery. They used to leak. I got a terrible acid burn on my back. I had a bloke with his billy of tea pouring it on my back, washing my back to get the acid off. When you were on your knees and bending over it was terrible.

Jane: When you started at Normanton, who were the proprietors?
Syd Trewick. I read somewhere that it was Syd’s father before him, but in my time it was Syd Trewick (also manager), Len Boughen and Les Boughen. They were the three. Now Len was the under-manager and Les was the winch driver. 

Yeah, it was funny. There was a big argument up there at one time and I knew absolutely nothing about it. The fire broke out and we had to work on the fire, and there was going to be nobody on the pit head because Les Boughen was only a day man. He wouldn’t do night shift. So there was nobody on the pit head for night time. There was no phone communication. I didn’t know that there was a big argument over the fact that I had to be the one on the pit head because I was a winch driver. So Les did 12 hours day, I did 12 hours night. I saw all the lights of the town go out and I saw them all come on in the morning. (laugh) I had to be there because they had a phone from below to the surface, but no phone outside for communication from underground.

We had what’s called a “main and tail”. The main and tail is a main rope with a tail rope. The tail rope goes right up into the workings in the back road, comes around and back to here. Now we’d hook that end onto a rake (line of wagons) and the other end onto the rake, and we’d go all the way inside. I’d take it off the empties and over onto the full ones, and we’d bring them out. The main and the tail. That was a double drum, big winch. I’m only a lad at the time, I’m just a rope rider and I don’t think I had any tickets or anything whatsoever. 

There was only Les Boughen on the surface with the winch driver. There was Cedric Johns. I don’t know what happened to Cedric. He married Len’s daughter June. Then Wallace Rea came and he was the engine driver. One day Wallace was sick and he was going to be away for at least two weeks. Syd said to me. Can you drive that? Yeah I can drive it. I drove it for two solid weeks and the inspector never arrived and he paid me the winding rates. I thought Wow! Winding rates!

Jane: How often did the Inspectors come?
Oh every 3 or 4 months, maybe 6 months. They used to make a mistake and ring up and say they were coming today. So we’d fix this and that up and get the water running.

Now I can tell you a story of Len Boughen. The seam was 6 feet and it’s always supposed to be 6 feet where you walk. So they put a crown up, so there’s that much less than 6 feet. So the inspector complained that it wasn’t 6 feet. It hadn’t been brushed to 6 feet. So Len employed two men to dig a 6 inch hole in the floor between each crown. That was Len. Imagine walking along it! (laugh)

You know I worked from the pit head, and when we got those one ton wagons (they were army wagons), the mine got pressed sides put on them, like a big tub put on them. For the linking system they just got a piece of 1¼ inch steel and they made a great big hook, and that was on the wagon. Then they got – let’s say – 6 links of a chain. One link went over one side, then there were 4 or 5 links, and one link went over the other side, and that just linked them together. These wagons had a big steel buffer on them. Sometimes they’d knock together and the link would drop off. And when I was working on the pit head sometimes… “Ya right? You got the rope on?” “Yep”.  Righto. You start pushin’ and away she went. Two wagons that had been unhooked – away she went down the tunnel! Oh man!

I did that one day and I had a terrible dream that night that I cleaned someone up. I dreamt that the wagons went down, there were sparks flying everywhere ,and Les Beutel, the Deputy, I hit him and he was no more. They made me shovel him up and I shovelled up two wagons of mince. Oh what a dream! He was a big fella. (laughter)

Les Beutel was the Deputy at Normanton for the contract side of things. Arnold Wrigley was deputy for the long wall system and Lionel Freeman was deputy on night shift. 

On night shift at Normanton, on this long wall, when we put up our timber, it was a 6ft slab. We’d put one prop in the middle and one prop behind. They were every 3 ft., a metre apart, for 100 yards. If you can picture that yesterday, the same thing yesterday, under those two props is the conveyor, a chain conveyor, 18 inches wide for 100 yards. Sometimes they might go 80 yards and put a 20ft one up one side and had the main one in the middle. 

Well what happened was, the night shift would come along and they’d have to get the chain in the right spot. Undo it, take that chain and leave the chain in the pan. They’d move it from this spot and put it over between that and that, and they had to reassemble that chain conveyor for tomorrow. They had no knock-off time. They had a job to do, and if somebody didn’t come, they had to stay there. Sometimes we’d go to work in the morning and they’d be just going home.

The old conveyor belt. We wound a possum up. We used to have possums down under ground. One went round the tension end one time. Flattened him out.

I can remember, when times were getting tight, they wouldn’t employ anyone if someone stayed away. They’d say, “How about staying back for a few hours?” You’d already been there 8 or 10 hours and you’d stay. They’d give you a sandwich and a drink and they’d say, “Stay a bit longer, just a bit more hey?” You’d go home around 7 or 8 o’clock. I had no phone to ring the wife to say I was coming late and she never ever worried about me. Oh yes… it was hard you know.

Jane: What was your knock off time?
Around two o’clock.

Once they had done the props, we had cogs behind. They were sawn 6 x 4’s. They’d do a cog and they’d put them every so far along behind, then in behind that again. We had to chop out all of those props that were still there because the roof had already cracked and you wanted it to fall to take the weight off the face. Yeah, that was a scary job. That really was. 

Joe: How much of a roof would come down?
Oh I can remember looking 20ft up a crack and you could see a piece of sandstone half the size of this table like a razor blade. You’d think, if that slips down it would cut me in half.  Ah.. it was scary at times.

I can remember we got a long wall ready and the next morning, before we got there, it had fallen down and landed on the face, the whole lot, before we started. All they did was go in behind it again.

I never mentioned the cutter. We had a coal cutter, three of them. The coal cutter is a chain saw. The body of it is as long as this table (6ft) and about 30“ wide and 18” high.  It was on a skid. One of them had a big wheel underneath inside for the rope, the other one had a wheel on each side for the rope. This one was called an AB cutter. It was a beautiful cutter. There was a chain that would go right out out 2 metres and its had teeth up and down all the way round. The first thing is you had to “jib in”, so you got a rope around there and you’re just slowly pulling it in. Once it got to a certain place, you put the pin in. Then you took the rope and you went way up the face and you got a prop, something that’s longer than what the roof is. Sometimes you’d dig a little bit of a hole in the floor, or you’d dig a hole in the roof, and you’d put the rope under it. She’s right, anchored! And of course the rope had a ratchet. You could go fast or slow and she’d cut from one end to the other, 6 inches underneath.

Well, when the miners came to work, they used to go up the paddock where there was a bit of a clay patch, and they’d get a bit of clay and thump it and make it into a bit of a block. They’d cart that down with them and then they’d bore a hole close to the roof, because that top section really stuck to the roof, then bore in. They’d put half a plug, roll up a bit of clay, shove it in, jam it in to make it airtight, then pop it, pop it down. Then you’d get into it and shovel. Oh dear, oh dear, I’m mining again.

I miss my neighbour. We’d go over there and talk and we’d have tons of coal on the ground (laugh). He was over the road, Noely Hayes, he’s gone, been gone a few years now.

I can remember Ron Boughen (senior) saying to me when the mine was dying, “I think I’ll start a shop and as long as I put 14% on everything, I’ll run a shop. Next to the theatre on the bottom side was a little tiny electrical/radio shop, which was Les. Les’s house was there and it had a little mowed yard there. He had the first TV in the window of the shop when they came in, and everyone in the town used to go and watch TV. I’ve actually got a little tiny torch he gave me with Boughen’s Radio Service on it.

Jane: Where did you go after Normanton?
In ’79 I got a job immediately and I went to Tarong. We had to get 30,000 ton of coal out of Tarong to send to Swanbank to design a boiler to burn their rubbish, absolute rubbish! The only reason that mine was there was Bjelke Peterson. It was rubbish! Anyway, we got that 30,000 ton out. That took 11 weeks.

When I went there I was Open Cut Examiner (OCE) and we were doing a trial slot. After I fired the shot I had to go in and make sure the shot had gone off. One day when I went in I saw this rock (pictured at right) and said to myself there was no way I was leaving that there. 

I was being paid by Blair Athol Mine. I didn’t find out until it was over, and I immediately stopped and finished. I walked out because the mine wasn’t registered, and because it wasn’t registered I was a nobody. I was very fortunate that they had a law that you could be out of the industry for 12 weeks and they would carry that over, so I was able to get all prior money owed at today’s price.

After I left for Tarong, Normie Rule was at my door looking for me. I didn’t know that cause I’d already left. So the minute I came home from Tarong I went straight up to Normie Rule, to Oakleigh.

Normie Rule used to come to work in a Combi van type thing and he’d bring 4 or 5 men with him to the mine. When I went to Oakleigh there were seven, all relations, all had tickets. They already had a deputy who did the early morning start and inspections. They didn’t want that. They only wanted a 7 o’clock start. When I went there the Deputy went on holidays and I was Deputy, but it was only for the 5 o’clock start. At 7 o’clock they took over. There was Normie and he had a brother Gordon. Gordon was the eldest. Gordon retired, went to Caloundra, went fishing, and all they found was the boat. He fell out there somewhere.

So I’d been underground, then I went open cut, then I went up to Tarong and opened up the open cut, and when I came back to Normie I went back to underground. I sort of felt I went back a long way. I was only there about 9 months. They all said, “You’re the only one here that’s got any brains, you’re going.”

I went from there to Aberdare. Aberdare was a mine that had shut down, but they got a big order from Japan and they wanted to reopen and go open cut. In the first six months there I had earnt more than I had in 9 months at Oakleigh. So I was very pleased I moved. That was wonderful down there. 

I was ’79-’80 at Rule’s. I went to Aberdare from ’80 to ’87. From ’87 they opened up a new mine at the back of the drag strip near Willowbank and I was in there for 10 years. That was Idemitsu Mine. There was a big outcry, they thought we were going to go through the cemetery.

When I left there in ’97 there was just a little note put up on the wall. There’s a new contractor coming. Apply to him for a job.

Open cut examiners were mining union, employed by the company, looking after company interests. But by ’97 there was a new contract coming up. Instead of giving it to the old contractor, they gave it to a bloke in Perth who was a gold miner. He had never seen coal in his life before and he’s gonna come and mine coal. The group of men there working in the open cut had just got their open cut tickets, so this mob employed them. The open cut examiner is working for the contractor, not the mining company. They worked it to suit themselves. What happened? They were gone in two years. Two years and they folded up.

That was very wet country. We were flat out keeping 80 toners afloat. We had to have at least 3 feet of rock to put a road on top of it, They were gonna come and put 110 toners out there. Yeah. Two years and they were gone. They went right down to the highway, and there’s a bridge there near the cemetery, and they had security guys walking over that bridge day and night because they thought it was going to slip into the open cut.

We had beautiful coal there. As we went to the South we had a band of white sandstone, and you know that developed into bentonite as we went down. We then ended up with a contract for bentonite. They’re still selling bentonite out there now. All our bentonite was carted down and put on JNJ Resources’ property. He started up a business and it’s being bagged for oils spills, kitty litter and all of that kind of stuff. That’s Bentonite Clay Resources I think it’s called. As time went on that bentonite was being paid for as it was sold. We had shut down by this time, long gone. Indermitsu gave it to one of the higher ups in the company for something like a dollar over the table, but he had to fill the hole in. And he was smart enough that he was getting all of the toxic waste from Brisbane tipped into it, and it’s being slowly filled. So he did a good thing there. He’s died since and doesn’t know anything about it.

In ’97 I got kicked out and I could not find another job. I got all my long service, sick pay, holiday pay, all that stuff I had prior to ’79. I was able to get it all chucked over because I was within that 12 weeks, and I got it all paid at today’s rate. I couldn’t get a job and every dollar you spend you’re down a dollar. I had a good super fund and I thought, ah well, we’ll put a super fund in and take an allocated pension out. Today I’m still living on the same money that I got when I finished in ’97. I have applied for a pension 3 times and it’s now 33 weeks since I last applied.

Out there, it was great out there, but the manager, he learnt it out of a book at Singleton and came up here. He used to get a marquee put up every Friday and get a chef from Ipswich to come out, because every Friday Mr. Idermitsu used to send out 10 or 12 of his buddies to come and have a look at his mine. The manager would say, “How can we cut costs?” I said, “Get rid of that BBQ.” Imagine what it would have cost? Oh dear.

Jane: Lester, do you remember the 1949 strike?
In ’49 I would have been 8. In the ’49 strike my father had 2 or 3 trucks, and it was called essential services. They had to supply essential services. The trucks would come down to the police station and there’d be a about 10 or 12 trucks all parked there and the coppa used to come out on his motor bike and side car and he would lead us off. My father’s truck, was a Super White from America with the left hand drive….. I’d come home early from school at 2 o’clock cause I wanted to go with. Because his was a left hand drive, I’m out the right hand side aren’t I? As we went, the first place would have been the Ipswich hospital.

Jane: I believe the miners from here kept the Ipswich hospital running.
They kept the Ipswich hospital, Ipswich Gas works, Ipswich laundry services, then you went down to Wacol, up on the hill, Wolston Park. A truck load had to go there. They were on the back and they would drop off and we’d just keep going. I can remember we were going through Goodna and I remember seeing a little car. The woman fainted and went off the road. Of cause I saw it, I was out the right hand side!

Pop used to have a sign on the back of the truck, “Warning left hand drive. Watch for automatic hand and air brakes.” He used to have an automatic hand. If you flipped it it was a stop sign, and if you pulled the little lever and put it out, it was a turn. Pop’s was up in the corner. It was brass inch square rod. He used to flip it. It used to shoot out and he’d have to lean over to pull it back in.

Pop always had the dog with him. He had Red Setters. Oh that dog let off a stink one day and Pop yelled and shouted at it and growled at it. If ever it did it again it would creep into the corner. (laugh)

I always called him Pop. The kids always called him Pa. He was my greatest mate you know. I lived up the road and I could never pass without saying hi, how are you?

Something wonderful just happened to me recently.

(Lester showed us an old photo of him standing besides his father’s new Austin truck in 1955. Written on the door was Neath Coal Carter – For all your sand, gravel and loam.)

I was only about 16 then and I put an ‘A’ off an Austin on the bonnet of the truck. Just last week I went into Facebook and Marketplace. As I was going though Marketplace I happened to see a photo of an old truck. What struck me was the rust hole in the bonnet. So I contacted the girl and said I’m not interested in buying the truck but I’m most interested in the vehicle, particularly about the hole in the bonnet. I said my father had a truck and I put an “A” on it. She sent back and said there was an “A’” on there but her partner took it off in case somebody pinched it. I couldn’t believe my eyes. I looked at that truck and said to myself…is that my father’s truck? That’s 70 year old.

They were just down here at Karrabin near the school. The woman said you’re most welcome to come down and get a photo. Well we went down; I took my son with me. I sent her a message and said I’d dearly love to get a photo with the “A” on it. Her partner came home and we put the “A” on it and took the photo of me standing beside it, just as I was in the original photo I have. No motor, no gear box. It had been there five years. Where did it come from? It was just an ornament in a yard in Booval. So it must have been around the area all that time.

When that truck was brand new we’d go to Churchill. There’s a big white stone on the footpath (Warwick Rd) with a house number on it. My father wanted to get that stone but the council said no. There wasn’t a house anywhere in existence there, only a barbed wire fence. My father and I used to go through the fence, down to Deebing Creek and we’d shovel on a load of sand. I only just had my license and I was driving that truck up there and coming home. Man did we shovel some loads.

You know where all the water is there at Colleges Crossing? The big pool? We used to shovel gravel there. We shovelled seven loads of gravel out of there one Saturday. We took those 7 loads to a house in Ipswich and (they claimed there was no foundation there) they just spread it out and put a tennis court on it. The tennis court is still there today.

My father had a Super White carting coal. He had that for 15 years. He said he didn’t know whether to do the old White up or get a new Leyland. He’d always wanted a Leyland. He sold the White, bought this Leyland. Well she was the biggest bomb on the road. He was using 5 gallons a day more than the other trucks and he wasn’t game to get out of a gutter in case he screwed an axle off. He got rid of that and went and bought the Austin.

There were quite a few carters around the town for coal. Henry Crocker used to cart from over the other side. His ramp was on the other side of the line down past the school, and he used to employ his brother Eric to drive. Eric Cooper was another truck driver. He used to come from Ipswich on a little bantam BSA bike. Dave Barram was also a coal carter.

Jane: I see you have a list?
I wrote down some names while I could think of them. One fellow I only knew as “Zan”. I don’t know what his surname was but there were Poles who used to come from Ipswich.

Trevor Domrow. Trevor got killed in Ipswich in the mine. When we were working the fires, very rarely you’d see Syd down below, and if he did he’d be humming and humming. He used to hum tunes all of the time. Anyway, we were down working on this fire and he said, “Another bucket of mortar Trevor”. Away went Trevor. Well, we were there wanting cement doing these besser blocks. Where’s Trevor? We waited and waited and waited for Trevor. Trevor went all the way to the surface and got a bucket of water. Syd had said he wanted a bucket of mortar. (laughter) Oh dear, oh dear, we had some funny times.

If you can picture a roadway and extend it as far as you see, but it’s got a dip in it. So if your’e looking down here, you can’t see the bottom. You’ve got to get down there to get under that dip. Well, to direct the air around all of the roads we had doors. Danny Howell was bringing a rake in (that could be around eight wagons with the horse). He’d open up the door and he’d come through and he’d let the door go. The door, with the air, would clamp shut and you’d feel the thump. When I felt the thump, I bent down and “Yeah, Danny’s comin’.” So Wocka’s sitting beside me and he bends down and has a look. He’s been in the mine all his life. He said to me, “What’s that you can see shining?” I shook my head. It was Danny’s light of course. So I said, “That’s the horse’s eye you can see shining.” (laughter) You know he turned round and said, “Isn’t it funny you can’t see its other eye shining too?” (more laughter) You couldn’t believe it! We had some fun times!

One time the same bloke was limping and he told Syd that somebody had pinched his socks. “I don’t think anybody would pinch your socks,” says Syd. Three days later he pulled two socks out of the toe of one boot. (laughter) Another time he went to Syd and said, ‘We’re gonna have a baby, I’d like some overtime.” Well, I don’t know if he got the overtime, but it was three years before the baby was born! (laughter)

Now Neath Colliery was where the Seventh Day Adventist church is on Langdon Road. That was a kerfuffle. Mr. Langdon lived there all his life. After he retired and moved they called the road after the person who bought his place. We all objected. It can’t be them, it’s gotta be Langdon, so they changed it. Neath pit is up that road.

Back in those days they could come in prospecting and they could take 5 acres of your land. For that land property owners got 6d a ton for what was coming out. 

United No 8 mine was owned by Binnie’s in Ipswich. When you’re gonna climb Tallegalla hill, they had an open cut on the bottom of the hill. You’ve got the rubbish tip on the East and you’ve got United No 8 mine to the West of it. There’s still a couple of big sheds there. That’s where you started climbing. Jimmy Elmer was the manager there when that shut down. 

Ernie Weigand was manager of Arnot’s/Arndt’s at Lanefield. In my time it was owned by Joynson’s (Rosewood Colliery). My father could have had the contract to cart coal from there to here and he wouldn’t take it on because it had been surveyed for a railway line. 

We’ll go back to Normanton. Normanton was Syd ,then after Syd his son Lyle took over as manager. Then after Lyle, No 8 shut down and Jimmy Elmer came over to us. We did have another bloke in between that.

When we shut down and went open cut they had an old washing plant. There weren’t very many washing plants. Cochrane’s put one in and it didn’t last long. It was very early days. Nobody else. There was one at Arndt’s up on Lanefield Road. You go past the high school and keep going until you come to the first lane, Perrin’s Road. You go up Perrin’s Road and come in behind the farmhouse and over into the paddock there. I don’t know if you can still see something standing up there. There was a washing plant there. So then we went open cut.

When we were working open cut, Haigmoor got shut in the ’74 flood. They had a washing plant. So we had something like 6 or 8 trucks carting out of the open cut to Haigmoor and washing it. We had two trucks of our own and the drivers were Noely Hayes and Danny Bates. Those two trucks carted to the Lanefield washing plant. That coal came back to where the gantry was and was tipped into the railway wagons there. They claimed that those two trucks paid all the wages from our process. That went on for 5 years.

“Tup” Edgeworth, I think it might be Eric, he was the pay Clerk at Rosemount. Now there was a tragedy at that mine. I remember going to that funeral. George Williams was an employee there. They had a saw bench for cutting props and he’d go up Saturday and take the kids with him, and they’d play around there while he was sharpening the saw. They’d give each other rides and of course they went too far and they came to George and said Trevor went down the hole. George never grabbed a light or anything. As far as I know he used matches and went down and picked him up and carried him all the way up. Yeah…(silent pause)

Bill Donohue, he was a miner. He built one of the shafts. Now Bill, he lived in a high house in Matthew Street. Well his neighbour was painting his house a very light colour. Bill said (I worked with Bill)  he went and got a mirror and shone it just past where he was painting. He dipped the brush and went over it and Bill moved the mirror over to there. He said, “I had him all over the wall.” (laughter)

My Uncle Gordon Schreiweis and another bloke put a tunnel down at Roughrigg No 5. Rob Krause’s farmhouse on the Marburg road is beside it. You’ll see a big muck heap there. Harry Nuffer was the winch driver and he was Gordon’s father-in-law.

That mine later became Better Coal Co. How I know that is when my father got out of trucks carting coal and chasing jobs, he then went to Smithfield which is down Keane’s Road. You go down there and over the bridge and Smithfield is down there. Dad was down there for a while and then Jim Cochrane gave him a job driving the loco underground, so he had the last 10 years up there with Jim.

Jimmy Cochrane’s son Don got his ticket and was running the mine. Don got very sick and my father and I went and visited him just before he died.

(Lester noticed my clock) I love clocks. I built Grandfather clock. I wanted a Grandfather all of my life. I bought 2 cedar logs probably 35 years ago to make a grandfather clock. I was doing a job out at Mulgowie and there were all these branches and things they said to just push into the gully. I asked if I could have it. They’d been on the ground 20 years. I took that home and I reckon 90% of my clock came out of that. I cut one of my logs because I wanted a cedar back. They wanted $300 for a piece of ply with a cedar veneer on it. So I cut one log to 9ml and I had a 9ml back on it. The whole thing is cedar.

We’d better get back to it.

First of all Ned O’Donnell. Ned O’Donnell was a tragedy. My father carted from the Bluff for 15 years, which is way up at the Smith farm. There were 3 tunnels up there and one of them was a flat tunnel straight into the mountain. The loco used to bring the coal right out to the pit head, whereas the others were on an incline. Up there was a bad roof, there was a fall. Ned was underneath it. I can remember my father telling me. He’s in the coal and you’re just digging and digging. “My fingers were cut to the bones,” he said. “I got to his face and next thing there was another fall.” Yeah… Ned died.

You know, I can remember when Pop was carting from the Bluff in the wet season, he had to have his own road, and the mud was about 6 inches high on the sides and you were just stuck in those two wheel tracks when you went up and down. There was one little section that was very steep and it went up to a sharp turn and up again. Pop was carting down. They wanted a load of gravel up there one time. Here he is trying to get up this pinch, and I’m only a kid, and I was there with a big rock. As he went forward I kept on jamming this rock up behind the wheel.

Where that was, there was gate, and there was an old man by the name of Jack Merritt. He lived in just a little separating room. That’s where he lived. Jack used to walk down to the gate and Pop would give him a lift into Rosewood. One night at Pop’s place at 40 Albert Street, Pop said, “Can I hear someone calling out?” Pop went out and there was Jack was sitting in the gutter, drunk and calling out ‘Ray!” He wanted a lift home. (laugh) Jack always sucked a pipe and he used to put a bottle top over the top of it with a heap if holes in it. Sometimes he used to suck it upside down. Whether it was for the flame to go up to keep it going I don’t know.

Another at our place, Normanton, he was an Ipswich guy, and he was Polish, Arthur Warsaw. Then there was  Elwyn Stitz and there was Wallace Rea.

Jane: Oh you’ll have to tell me that poem you mentioned the other day Lester.
The lad was Tony Conway. He asked, “Wallace, will you do me a lyric song to the tune of the Pub With No Beer?” Wallace liked writing things. He used to sit at the winch and write things.

I know of a fellow named Tony
Who’s five foot ten and rather boney.
He comes to the mine and he bashes his spine.
He leaves his job and he sleeps in the gob.
But he’s always there when Syd brings the pay
Up to the mine on every Friday.
Now come all you young fellows and listen to me
If you don’t do all your jobs like Tony you’ll be.

Tony was most upset. (laughter)

Jane: What was the gob?
There’s “gobs” and there’s “cundies.” A cundy is a back road up behind a row of a road and packing, up the back. The gob is where we threw all our waste.
There were “frogs.” That’s a join in the railway line.
We had “sprags.” A sprag was what we put into a wheel for a brake.
There was “dolly” that we used to hook onto the back of a wagon and clamp the tail rope to it.
We had “slabs.” That was roughly cut 2inch x 6inch, 6 foot long slabs that we put on the roof.
Then we had “props.” A prop should be I inch for every foot of length. A 3 ft prop should be 3 inches, a 6ft prop should be 6 inches.
You had a “crown.” That was, say 12 inch tree cut in half. We put the flat side up, we put our props at each end of a crown. They were every 3 ft. in a roadway.
“Caps.” A piece of wood  up to 1 inch thick, 14 inches long and 6 inches wide. You put a slab up, you put a crown up, you put a prop up, and you’d be an inch too short. Ah, you want a cap and you put a cap up to fill the gap. Some mines used to have wedges and we’d put them up.
We had “dogs” too. Dog spikes. You put them in to keep the railway line in place.
“Tumbler.” That’s where we used to tip the coal. “Screens” and “Shakers.”
We’d do “brushing.” We’d taken the coal out, say 4ft. It’s gotta be 6ft. so we’ve gotta brush 2ft. of stone off to make the high road.
“Main and tail.” The rope haulage system.
“Bord and Pillar.” Take out coal from a seam and leave a pillar to support the roof.
A “drag” is another one. We used to put that on the back of the wagon. It was 4ft. long and if the rope broke the wagons would come back on that, and it’d chuck them all off the road and stop them all from running back down the tunnel. Had to put that on going up the tunnel.
We had “brattice” which was hessian bag. It came in rolls like lino. That was for directing air.

Now back to another one on my list. Alex Schumann. He owned property behind Mt. Marrow quarry and rocks used to keep rolling down. They tried to push Alex out but he was determined to stay there. It’s the same thing. Alex dies and the son sold it.

Frank Dickens. I don’t know where he worked but that’s my mate’s father. I think he might have been at No 8. Reg Dickens was at Normanton. I got Reg a job 3 times. In those days it was last on first off. Reg got well up the list, but in our dying time things got bad and lots had to go. Reg lost his job. Then we’re struggling, there’s not enough of us. Maybe we could do with one more. I said I got a good bloke, Reg. I think I got him a job 3 times you know and he’d just leave and go to the council, then he’s come back. In the end when we did shut down and went to open cut, he got transferred to Haigmoor washing plant.

Brian Smith. He is Oakleigh. He was my neighbour and he’s gone now. His father was Claude Smith. He came to Normanton in his last working days.

Then there was Jimmy Paidley. Also Victor Robb. Vic was always into politics and I didn’t know until I went and had a look a the memoriam at the Congregational Church that Vic was on there. He came from Ipswich and was good friends with Arnold Wrigley.

Billy Bygraves. He’s my age and I haven’t heard from Bill for quite a while. He’s on the coast. We worked together.

Merv Schefe. He was my neighbour. He was the Deputy at United 8. The Deputy was not allowed to drive machines around. His job was looking after men. The driver of the shuttle car didn’t turn up one day so Merv said, “I’ll drive it.” The shuttle car. It’s very low on 4 wheels, you fill it up with coal, you go to the conveyor and shoot it out on the conveyor. Well Merv decided he’d drive it for the day and went over a lump of rock which threw him up, his head hit a roof bolt and he broke his neck. He was paralysed after that. He’s gone now.

Charlie Stewart. He was the Manager at Lanefield Colliery. Charlie is long gone. 

Up at the Bluff, I don’t know his first name, surname is Bell. He was known as “Ding Bell.” That’s all I knew him by. 

There was Tom Evans. Tom was Pop’s mate. He was the manager at the Bluff (Lowfield) also Smithfield. He got Pop the job carting from the Bluff. Pop used to cart coal from way up the Bluff down to Lanefield. If you go up Bassett Road, you’ll see the brick shower room on the left, and you’ll see the muck heap where Lanefield was. Beside that there used to be a ramp where my father used to tip. Now if you went up the road to the next house, you wont see anything now, but I can remember there (and way before my time) was the remains of a steam engine from an old mine. Goodness knows what it would have been called.

If you go out Laidley road and continue on to where the sand and gravel is, that was an old sawmill. On the opposite side there’s a hole in the ground full of water. There used to be a shaft there. I understand that they used to have a petrol motor there driving a pump and a bloke went down and gassed himself. 

Moving on, you go past there a few hundred yards and you’ll see a big mullock heap. That would have been an old mine there. That would be Clydebank No 5. All the Lanefield ones were owned by one owner, an Ipswich owner. The Binnie’s owned quite a few mines. 

Harry Else. He was at Normanton. For a while he used to pick me up to go to work.

Robert Eden. These were only boys that were working on the gantry down there. His father Charlie Eden was the deputy at Rosewood Colliery. Later on we had an amalgamation and Rosewood Colliery all came up to us. When Charlie came up to us he was a deputy and he was on a higher wage. Coming up to us, no deputies there, so his wage was put down.

Ken Clare. He’s my Uncle. He married my father’s sister. He jumped around a lot of mines but he ended up at Normanton.

Lew Schneider. He’s way back when I was living at home, which is prior to 1960.

Les Williams. He was in William Street. He used to walk up past my place so he must have gone to Rosemount. For a while he was a truck driver carting coal. He had what was known as a Ford Thornycroft, a 6 wheeler. He could never start it cold mornings. My father used to go over and back up to him and push him along. You wouldn’t see the 2 trucks for smoke and away he’d go.

Lenihan’s, have you got the Lenihans? Pat was a later comer to Normanton than me. His father Tom had a crook back so Tom was given a job on the loading point, stopping and starting the loading point. Tom was a fellow if he sat down he would go to sleep. So I’d go and sit beside him and yawn and next thing Tom’s there like this (head down eyes shut). I went to him one day and said, “Tom, Len just went past did you see him?” “No I didn’t see him.” “Well he saw you, he’s just going past.” Len was the under-manager. (laugh)

Malabar – now Malabar, it had seams of bentonite in it. 

Now over at Roughrigg. They ended up getting a contract for bentonite. The bentonite contract increased and they didn’t have enough. They gave them a Saturday shift. My father was one of them. Go over to Malabar and fill as much as you can and send it up to Roughrigg to try and fill some orders. They used to get it out of Malabar.

Our open cut mine at Ebenezer had bentonite and then it petered off and went back into sandstone again. All of our bentonite went to JNJ’s and it was all stacked… 2 or 3 big stacks. When Ebenezer mine closed it got given to one of the office clerks. He wanted all that brought back because he was only getting paid for it as he sold it. I know there were lots of court cases over that bentonite. In the end John Seppanen said it will be him that will be the contractor to cart it back. They’ll pay for it. I don’t know whatever happened to it. Now, there’s a big bentonite mine at Miles and John bought that mine.

Roughrigg. It became Better Coal Co.

Then there was United No 7 and No 8. They were owned by Binnie’s in Ipswich. If you go over Tallegalla hill and you come down and don’t take the Marburg turn, go along a little bit of a straight, you can see where someone has planted thousands of trees. That’s where United No 7 was. United No 8 was at the bottom of the hill. It later went open cut.

Caledonian. You know where Mt Marrow quarry is? It’s down below that. There was a railway line, 2 ft gauge, that came from there through private property to a railway siding. They had an old Fordson tractor made into a train and Gordon Yarrow was the driver.

If you mined under a road, you’re only allowed 4 metres wide. I caviled up along Blake’s Road twice. Every three months they put your name in a hat and I was on that road twice. Because I was beside Blake’s road, I could only go 4 metres wide. Les Beutel was the deputy. I remember he wrote on one of the slabs one day up at my place – “Sloosh’s gutter”, ’cause I love fishing. (laugh) 

(Looking at the book, “Winning the Coal”- Bob Hampton & Wendye Gratton)
No 8 is the biggest shovel and there were Nos 6 and 5. We used to like a No 8 when you were on the long wall cause it was big, but you couldn’t lift it. In 3ft high, the first thing we had to do was go into the workshop, heat that there, stick it underneath something, and pull the handle down. If you didn’t do that your knuckles would hit the roof. You’re on the floor and that shovel is sliding all day. I tell you what, in twelve months time you had a big shovel and it was a light shovel. Oh boy, nobody should pinch your shovel!

Jane: You would have worn shovels out?
Oh yes. I can remember I cracked mine and I went into the workshop and I braised it. Len didn’t think it was a good idea and I can remember on the tally board …that’s another one, tallies…I found it one day. “Lester brazed his shovel today,” and he put the date up.  He didn’t think it would last.

Some tallies had your numbers on and some had your initials on. (Lester’s photo at right)

That reminds me. Just before my time, a lot of guys were always arguing, “I sent up 8 wagons and only 7 came up.” “I sent up 8 and only 7 came up.” Somebody was always missing a wagon. Turns out a bloke (name omitted) was taking their tally off, throwing it in the gob, and putting on one of his own. Those tallies went missing until one day somebody found the tallies and that bloke was transferred from Normanton to Normanton No 2.

When I was mining long wall, coal is only porous when it’s dry. It’s all wet when you get to it, in fact it had a bit of slime on it sometimes. I had this white line. Tomorrow you take another 6 feet, this white line starts to grow. You take another lot and it grows. I thought to myself, I know what that is. They go all round the country boring. I remembered when I was a kid, you’d see lights up there at the Bluff and you’d think they’re up there boring for coal, seeing where the best seams are. They’d fill the holes up with bentonite when they finished to keep everything out. I had reached a bore hole. It had seeped through that line of coal to where I was.

I found many dinosaur footprints in the roof, 27 inches long, at Normanton. 27 inches was the middle toe. They were always facing North and were anything up to 15 feet apart. And there were some little ones as well. I tried to dig one out one time but it all broke up. You couldn’t dig it out. At the same time as the University were going to come and take a plaster cast of it, they found one in Ipswich so many million years older. That was probably the third or fourth seam down. We had all different seams.

Underground we took the whole seam. It was up to us to throw the stone out. Then they got washing plants which took the stone out. Whenever we were working the open cut it was different. In the seam of coal you might have 6 inches of coal and a little band of stone, another 6 inches and a big band of stone. It was all jumbled. 

In the open cut you had a grader driver and a dozer driver. If it was coal, you’d put the dozer on it. You’d get him set up and get him to put his tyne at a certain angle at a certain depth, and he’d rip all that coal. We’d take all that coal off, then we’d come back to the little band of stone. The grader had 4 or 5 tynes on it and it would rip the stone, push it into a heap, and load that stone off. We still had a washing plant to clean it, but we didn’t mine the seam like we did underground.

Rosewood Colliery was down the bottom past the showgrounds, past Hospital Road, and a couple of hundred yards up past the scrub, nearly the start of the golf links. In that corner there. When Rosewood Colliery closed those miners came to us. We went open cut and I was put down as engineer’s assistant. We used their workshop. The inspector came one day and the mine wasn’t sealed off so he wrote that no-one was allowed near that tunnel mouth. It had to be sealed. Try and do it. Nobody is allowed near it but you’ve got to seal it! (laugh) Jimmy Elmer was our manager up there said “Silly old fool I went down there and lit a cigarette.” (laugh)

Jane: Were you allowed to smoke underground?
No, but there was very little gas underground in Rosewood. We worked too shallow here. That’s why it’s open cut. They can take so much overburden off, whereas Ipswich, Ipswich was so deep. 

Joe: How deep was Normanton?
At Normanton it was 400-500 feet deep. One of the foremen at the open cut had been at other mines. He said to me one day “We found a petrified dinosaur in the material. My instructions were, “Get rid of it all or we won’t be mining here tomorrow.” Talk about history!

Oh Jim, Jim. All the mines are surveyed, and when the surveyor came along he had a tape which was a steel wire. Every so often it had a little thing clamped on it, which was probably a couple of yards or whatever the measure was, and they’d take it up the road and the surveyor would measure. After that he’d draw up a map of underground. If you went to the Mine’s Department you’d get a map of where they worked every mine here.

Anyway, one time, the surveyor was there, and I can remember Jim went up the road and he had to go through a bag, and because he had to go through a bag, he didn’t go to the end of the road. He just stopped there and kept on pulling the wire and and pulling the wire until he thought… that’s about it. He yelled out a subdued…. Yeah! ….to make it sound like he was further away than he was. Goodness knows what that road looked like. (laughter) You wouldn’t know if you had the right length on it or not.

Jim…. Jim used to sell conveyors and things to New Guinea and he’d use our junk and stuff, supposedly bought it off the mines and he’d do it up. One day I went into the workshop and I wanted to cut a piece of steel. I had a small roller off the conveyor that I’d lay the steel on. When I gave the steel a pull, my stand fell over. Hello, I couldn’t turn the roller. Jim had taken my good roller and put a ceased one on there. (laughter) The drive head would be full of holes and he’d put some sort of putty all over it, smooth it all out and sell it to them. Ah…Jim.

One day the blokes played a joke on me. They sent the rake down and they had a dead snake wrapped around the drag. As soon as the rake came in I’d put my hand in, grab the drag and I had to put it on the back of the full ones going up the tunnel. But there was a snake wrapped around it. Oh yeah, I knew it would be dead. So I thought, you’re not just going to catch me! I used to take the rake in on the main and tail. and inside was Dessie Wass. He had the horse and he used to take ‘em from me, in further. He was a funny guy and he used to swing his head around sideways and say, “Giday Schriesie, how are you today?” Anyhow, I left the snake there. Well Dessie, he hooks the horse on and he got one leg half into that wagon and sees the snake. Well he was throwing caps at that thing, he was gonna kill it. (laughter)

Jane: I read about the temperature underground being 76-78 degrees. That would be the old measurement, and was it because of the airways?
That was the old scale. That was when you got so far in and they hadn’t kept the air up to you. If you got to that temperature you were only allowed to do six hours for the day. But once you got to that, they put you somewhere else.

There was another law for wheeling. We had to wheel our wagons from our place to the “lie” (where the empties come in and full ones go out), the change over. When you took a wagon, you’d undo the coupling and just hang it on the wagon on the side. When you came back you’d put the coupling on and join it on. In Ipswich they got paid for doing that. We never ever got a pay to hook a wagon on.

With wheeling, at something like 200 yards, you got paid extra if it was over 200 yards. I know I hit that couple of times and they’d just put you somewhere else. They wouldn’t pay it.

The brattice. They used to pull it down sometimes and pull it up to keep the air moving around. When we had the long wall, that was our circulation. 

That’s another one (funny story). My mate Reg found a tin of old paint and it was used for marking the length of rubber conveyor belts. Anyway, nosey Reg, he lifts the lid off it. Oh it was rotten! He quickly put the lid back on it. I know what I can do with that! Well, on the long wall there was a man each taking 8 or ten yards, then another man, and another man, and there were about 8 down the wall. Well Reg goes into the wall, takes this lid off and waved it around. The first man yelled out, then the next man, then the next fellow, then the next, all along the wall. (laughter) We had some fun! 

You know I found a pay envelope in Ipswich one time. It was empty. It used to be written on the outside of the envelope and I looked at it and I thought, wow! There’s a lot of things there I didn’t get paid for. They used to get paid to put a crown up and paid to prop it out. We never ever got that, we just did it you know.

Jane: You mentioned earlier about communication?
We had a lot of telephones underground, just between us and the pit head. When I used to send a wagon up the tunnel, there used to be two rakes come out at a time. A rake is anything from 7 or 8 wagons. So two would come out. I put the rope on, the empties come down, put the rope over the full ones, and I used to take the phone off the hook and hang it there and I’d yell out. Les Boughen, having a radio shop, he had the phone through a wireless. So he’d hear me say. “Eight on. Take up.” So he’d pull ’em up and then I’d get to the 8 wagons. “Stop. Let her back.” And I’d put a sprag in this one, and these would come out. ‘Hold it!” And he’s stop and I’d uncouple it and put the drag on. “Take her up. Eight on.” He’d hear that through the wireless.

The communication with the main and tail was through a bell. There were two wires, all the way in, just above me. I had a little seat that I used to hook on the side of the wagon and I’d hop in the front wagon, and away we’d go. If a wagon came off the road or I had to stop, I had a plate of steel  about 8 inches long, and I just had to short it across those two wires and it would ring a bell and they’d stop. I’d just give him another bell to start or two to let it back, and you’d have to bust your gut to lift it on. 

One time there I lifted wagon after wagon. When they put those big wagons on, the old small wagons had a lot of play in the wheels and our rail lines were up and down, and the wheels went up and down. But with those big wagons, they had a bearing on each side, so if the line went down, the wheel would stay in the air and it would run off.

Oh man…. in the end, when I was pulling them with the loco, I used to have a slab, and if it was the back end come off, I could put the slab on the front of the wagon and up onto the roof, and I’d give it a pull, and the wagon would tilt and I’d pull it up over the top of the line and let it back again. But if it was the front end, you’d have to use the slab to lift it. They’d say, “How’s your back?” “What’s wrong with your back?” (laugh)

Mountain View. My father got a job carting coal there. His already had his younger brother employed there driving. He said to his brother, you can have that job, and he went and bought a brand new British Dodge and he got all of the fancy pin-striping put on it. The bloke who was going to do it had the shakes. When he did it, that man, he said, dipped his long haired brush and drew a line as straight as you could get. (laugh)

Mt Elliott. It’s not really Rosewood but it’s Rosewood area. A lot of Rosewood men would have gone to Mt Elliott. (Looking at map) Jeebropilly. Quarry road. That’s our loop line. That’s a funny story….. We’ll put a railway line in. We’ll pay half each. The line’s half in. Jeebropilly pulls out of it so we pay to put the line in. Then because they pulled out of it, we can charge them rent to use our facilities to load the trains. So we charge them for years. The loading facility is on their side. We had a massive big conveyor there loading trains and they had big stockpiles. But later on, as we shut down, they started coming back into all this area. Then they sued us because the railway line was on top of their coal. 

That was way back when I remember they were starting to sue people. When I was at Aberdare one of the trucks put his body up and forgot to put it down, and he pulled the wires down. Rhondda Colliery down there, they had no power for 5 hours, so they sued us for no power.

(Indicating on map) That was Mt Elliott right there. That was the underground. 

Joe: There used to be a little dam there.
Yep. I can remember one time the bloke that owned all that thought he would stop evaporation, and he put foam all over that dam until one day when there was a big whirlwind and there was foam for miles. That is where New Hope started their open cut. That is where it grew from. They got all of this. It just kept on growing and growing.

Jane: Smithfield. Is that at Ebenezer?
Ebenezer. Oh it might be on the edge of Ebenezer. We always regarded Ebenezer as “the rabbit had to cut his lunch to cross the paddock”. That’s the sort of country that is. If you go out Mt Walker Road, go over the two bridges and look up to the left you’ll see that’s Lowfield 1 or 2. That mine was full of water, and up on the hill is my cousin and her husband. He put down a bore and has unlimited water. He just had to go into the mine. That was a wet mine. They were out there pumping all the time.

The mine I was looking for is another Smithfield. There’s the river and you’ve got to cross the river to get to it. Come out of Rosewood, down Keane’s road, across the river and you’ve got Smithfield.

Tom Evans was the manager of the Bluff when Pop got there, and he lived beside Pop. Pop was a lover of snakes. He wouldn’t hesitate at a snake. Tom asked Pop to go with him to check the mine. So out they go and the bridge was in flood and they had to hang onto the rail to cross the river. On top of one of the posts was a little snake. Pop just grabbed it and shoved it in his pocket. So they came home and they were all around the table over at Tom’s place leaning on the table. Pop, all of the sudden he thought… the snake. Tom’s wife Jean was next to Pop. Pop got it in his hand and the tail was sticking out, so he just put his hand on the table next to Jean’s. It was moving against Jean’s hand. He looked at her and she was going redder and redder and redder, until she looked down. (laughing) Can’t we talk some tales hey?

Pop picked a snake up one time and threw it into the body of the truck and when he got up to the Bluff it wasn’t there. He came from the Bluff all the way down to the bottom to tip. He backed up the ramp and here’s the snake wound round and round the tail shaft. Don’t know how giddy he was! (laugh)

I’ve got a big carpet snake in my shed. The last skin I got was 13 feet long. He’s been there for years. 

Where did we get down to? I’ve got one you wouldn’t have. It’s not actually a mine but it was a shaft that was put down to the coal. (Looking at the map) If we go on the Marburg line, instead of going Two Tree Hill, you went around Hansens road straight down to the end. It’s a bit hard to tell because you’ve got this mountain along here. From Hansen Road, Syd Trewick sent two men somewhere over there and they put a tunnel in. See here’s the Bluff, it was coming into this side. Syd also sent two miners over this side to come back the other way. They wouldn’t have met though, too far apart.That mountain’s fairly wide there. It’s only a tunnel in onto the coal.

When we stared amalgamating, Normanton Colliery became Consolidated Collieries. When they amalgamate your sick pay, holiday pay and all this sort of thing is paid it to you all up. You haven’t had that holiday but you’re paid because this new lot’s coming in and we have a different name, and you’re starting off again. I had hundreds of days sick pay paid to me. 

When we went to Ebenezer, they still had the same system. They would pay the sick pay but they changed it. Rather than it building up to a hundred days, every June you can apply for some of your sick pay, but you’re not to go below 30. So every June you’d get a lot of guys s got 10 or 15 sickies a year. At one time, when I first started, you only got 1 sick day for every so many days work. Poor old Brian Berlin, he’d take his sickie every 31 days. He took his sickie and it wasn’t paid. He was one day too early. (Laugh)

You must have Ian Calder? Ian was a lovely boy. He was my age. He got out of mining and he went cementing. One of his jobs was something like a $10,000 cement block, and it was put on the wrong block. He poured it on the block where they showed him to put it, but it was the wrong block. Ian passed on and because we were good buddies, I heard through the grapevine from his rellies…he’s got a mate Lester. Make sure he finds out that Ian’s gone. Poor old Ian.

Arndt’s pit – If you go out Laidley road, there’s that swampy waterhole on the side of the road. Past the high school, along the flat and on that flat before you get to Perrin’s Road, there’s a swampy waterhole. Up there at that mine, they were only running the washing plant from Normanton. From the washing plant, all the reject went back into the open cut. Slurry…what are we going to do with the slurry? Oh we’ll just put it down a tunnel. That tunnel had a lot of water in it. So what does that do? The water rises and there are bores around the place. Oh…it’s pushing up out of that bore. So you see that big swamp hole. They’ve tried to seal it off and they can’t. All the slurry down there is pushing the water up.

(Looking at a map)  As you come out of Rosewood, look up on the hill and you’ll see 2 houses straight across from Arndt’s mine`. Down the bottom was a bore and we had a pump on there, pumping water from this mine up to the washing plant 24 hours. We had the motor off a Jenbach little loco from underground running the pump. I had to keep that pump fuelled, watered and look after it. I had to go in there every day until one day this little bloke came in, “I want this thing out of here. I don’t want that thing in the middle of my yard. I want it out of here.”
“Hang on a minute mate, who are you?”
“I’m Mr Schreiwe.”
“Well, the place is owned by Freemans.”
“No I own it.”
So I told him if he had any complaints to go to the office. Mr Schreiwe had bought it. We moved that pump over to the fence and we jumped the fence and put a bore down. That’s where that water is coming from now. They couldn’t seal it off and it’s weeping there. It’s terrible water.

When we were doing that pump, now and again it would break down. Before we got that pump we had a piston pump. Over night with poly pipe.. thumping… it broke a join, and when we came in the morning we were about  2ft short in between the join, so they did away with the old piston pump and we got this bore pump put down. There was so much water there we only had to put one pipe in. It was a 2 inch pipe with a mono pump, its a rubber screw inside of a screw. The shaft is only held by 4 grub screws. No water…what’s going on? Old Pat Watson, our engineer, came from United No 8, and they made me engineer’s assistant. Pat was a funny bloke. The first thing he does is undo the 4 grub screws, and the shaft goes straight down. Well Pat panicked, because the pump had screwed off and it was just hanging by the shaft. The pumps gone! Oh! I’m going to Brisbane! He went to Brisbane, bought a pump, came back, put this pump in. Quick, we’re running out of water. Well when he put it in, we had too much shaft. Pat was in a panic. My mate Reg was still down the bottom doing up the nuts, and he cranks it up! I screamed my head off I did. That shaft flew over. I was screaming, “Reg don’t get up! Don’t get up!” It would have taken his head off. Oh man I was cold after that. Oh dear, oh dear, that man….

Anyway, we had to move it over to the other one and that’s where the bore is leaking now.

Jane:  You mentioned a Jenbach diesel loco?
I’ve got a Jenbach diesel. Austrian. I’ve got 99% of one. My dream is to get it going, but will I or won’t I? I’d love to get to it. I drove one for 7 years underground. It was magnificent pulling coal. Man it was great! You sat sideways in the loco, you drove it sideways. It ended up we got a second one, and my mate Reg drove it. We knew you could flood the surface with coal so we used to get as many wagons as we could. We’d take 30 wagons in, load ’em, and we’d take 30 wagons out. We’d just send them up. By 9 o’clock we could relax a bit because they couldn’t keep up with us. (laugh) Oh, we had some fun you know. Two locos together pulling coal. Yeah, I loved it!

Pictured (above left) is a photo of a model of a Jenbach JW15 diesel loco like Lester and his mate Reg drove. Two years after the underground mine closed, Lester was given the task of retrieving the locos. They had been in water and were in terrible condition (above right).

Jane: Did you eat underground?
Yeah, yeah. My billy. I’ve still got my billy. It was a 5lb grease tin with a bottle top soldered on each side and a rivet put inside with a wire handle, and det (detonating) wire went all the way around it. Still got it.

At Normanton we had to make our billy of tea before we left and take it with you. I used to wrap a big heap of bag around my billy to keep it warm and then the rest of the day you had cold tea. But at all the other mines they used to send down an urn at 9 o’clock.

We used to have geli boxes down below. You weren’t supposed to keep geli down below but you’d take it down and keep it till you used it. So one of the guys he bought a combination lock. I looked at it and it had letters on it. I thought it can’t be too hard, it’s probably either “Fred” of “Bill”. So I put in “Bill” and it fell open. Was he sour because the first thing I tried, it fell open! (laughter)

Another name. Frank Podolak, about 1960. I was at the rubbish dump one time and there was an old dirty piece of chain and a lock. I looked at it and thought… I know what I can do with that. I took it to work. We had billy’s because of rats. Frank always had a Gladstone bag. I got Frank’s bag and put this chain and lock through it and put it up over the crown and I put a piece of wire through it and twisted it up. He didn’t know it was twisted wire holing it up there, he thought it was a chain with a lock on it. When it came time to go home, all hell broke loose because he thought his bag was locked to the crown. Oh we played jokes. (laugh)

Do you know what slum gum is?

Jane: No

Have you seen the sappy looking gum that comes out of trees? That was it. One day there a piece on a slab about 7 inches long and I thought… Wow! So I got it and I stuck it on the side of my nose and I went over to Billy and I said, “Hey Bill, have you got a hanky?” He turned around and looked at me…Oh dear we had some fun! That was Normanton mine.

There was a bloke at Ebenezer mine whose surname was Pigeon and whenever they called him on the two way it was “Ooh ooh, ooh ooh” and you got it all day! I always wanted to get a donkey and play it on the two way. (laughter)

Our meeting concluded after a very interesting and enjoyable several hours spent together.

A few days later Lester phoned with some more names.

Ian Calder, Pat Watson, Cyril Jarvis, Leon Jarvis, Eric Petes, Lawrence Kelly, Jacko, Bertie Yarrow, Pat O’Reilly, Percy Freeman, Peter Wright, Basil Court, Gordon Horne, Peter Cosgrove, Harry Else, Blue Jennings, Lionel Schefe, Rolly Gillam, Melvin Goodwin, John Sbeghen, Joe Sbeghen, Les Williams, Roy Williams, George Williams, Harold Bassett, Noel Bassett, Arthur Williams, Keith Dobbs, Bill Freeman, Doug Freeman, Les Kanofski, Kevsin Kanofski, Ivan Grimsey, Fred Kleidon, Lal Ahearn, Des Wass, Pat Rafter, Barry Berlin, George Berg.

Lester said, “Last night I thought of a name. It would have been from when I was about 7 or 8. Harold Primus. He was actually our neighbour. I know he was a Deputy at Normanton. How I know he was in the mine is that Len Boughen was part owner. When Harold had a heart attack and died, Len brought his boots and billy down and put them at the gate next door.”