The Whitsundays is known as the gateway to rad reef experiences but an hour or so inland from those dazzling blues you’ll find a dose of the Outback.
It’s Collinsville but don’t let its quiet streets fool you, the town has some seriously incredible stories to unearth.
Do you know what the town is famous for? You don’t have to crook your neck too far to find out.
It’s coal and pit ponies!
As you enter town, the first clue is a majestic statue cementing the importance of these incredible animals in the town’s century old mining heritage.
Then there’s the colourful murals that splash the streets, the Pit Pony Tavern and even an interactive mining museum, The CoalFace Experience but to really get down and dirty with its history, a visit to Number One Mine Site is a must.
Ray Wallace guides visitors through the remnants of this once bustling mine site.
“It started in 1919,” he said. “Everything is as is when it shut down in 1964 when they actually just walked away from it basically.”
The entire site was steam driven up until about 1953 when electricity took over and Ray saw it all working in this very mine as a surveyor from the ripe old age of 18.
He’s a wealth of knowledge on the place!
“The pit ponies were used from the very beginning,” he said. “They were used to pull the skips out to the main dips where the coal was put in the winch and brought to the surface.”
Those skips were of course hand shovelled to the brim by their human comrades.
“They had to fill 10 of them which is 10 ton in their 8-hour shift but they had the opportunity to fill a lot more and a lot of them went up to 20 skips a day,” Ray explained.
“It was a good life,” Ray explained. “You knew everyone and the miners themselves, they had a great comradeship with each other.”
Ray’s a real custodian of Number One Mine Site working in mining for a massive 36 years following in the footsteps of his Father and Grandfather.
“I was born and bred here,” he said.
A highlight of the tour is the impressive crane like structure that Ray simply calls the poppet legs.
“These were actually brought down from Charters Towers and they were transported here by horse and dray in 1922,” he explained.
It would pull the cages into and out of the deep mine, over 350 feet down.
“I find it fascinating that operating in those days it was all manual labour basically,” Ray said. “The actual mining was done by hand, pick and shovel and all hand loaded in to the skips.”
The tour concludes with what was once the beating heart of the mine site, the power house built in 1947.
Gems of Collinsville’s rich mining history are sprinkled in every corner of town. Take a picture with the majestic pit pony, visit the interactive CoalFace Experience or take a tour of the Number One Minesite with Ray.
