By Linda Cuttriss

ON THE morning of Monday 15 February 1937 as the Wonthaggi Citizens Band played outside the Union Theatre to summon a crowd to a public meeting, Victoria’s worst mining disaster struck on the outskirts of town. 

Miners had been on strike and with negotiations stalled the miners’ union had called the meeting to rally support for increased safety at the State Coal Mine.

Earlier that morning a team of 14 maintenance men descended into No. 20 Shaft to prepare for a possible return to work. Shortly after 10 am the overman sent one of the men to the surface. Moments later the earth shook beneath his feet, the shaft cage tore up to the poppet head and great clouds of coal dust filled the air.

Just before 10.30am a union bus pulled up at the Union Theatre. George Lees, leader of the Rescue Brigade, shouted from the step for members of the brigade to jump aboard. There had been a terrible explosion at No. 20 Shaft, and 13 men were trapped underground.

Miners rushed to board the bus and every available vehicle sped to the site. Soon a large crowd was gathered at the pit head watching in silence as the general manager, John McLeish, and three other men wearing gas masks, holding safety lamps and carrying canaries to detect poisonous carbon monoxide gas stepped into the cage and disappeared below.

After seven minutes they returned to the surface. Piles of rubble had prevented the cage from reaching the bottom. McLeish ordered the cage be dropped at full speed to compress the wreckage and provide access for the rescue team. 

The method worked and a small team led by Lees descended and was able to push into the main drive. The scene was utter devastation with wooden skips thrown about, steel rails twisted, heavy timbers smashed to pieces, huge boulders and large falls of stone. Canaries hadn’t died. There was a chance the men might still be alive.

By midday a full rescue team wearing Proto fully self-contained breathing apparatus went down but as they cleared the blockage at the base of the shaft canaries began to die. As carbon monoxide escaped, air flow was restored and volunteers were able to go down with picks, shovels and axes to help clear the way.

As a sense of dread descended upon the town, a special Sun newspaper plane left Melbourne for Wonthaggi. The aerial view of No. 20 Shaft taken that afternoon belies the destruction concealed underground but the photo of the harrowed faces of the rescue party surfacing at 4pm revealed much more. As they stepped from the cage, they looked away from the anxious faces waiting there as they knew there was no hope. 

News of the disaster quickly spread across the country. By Monday evening the front page of Sydney’s Sun newspaper reported, “Twelve men entombed in mine. Thousands waiting at Wonthaggi for news from below.” On Tuesday, Adelaide’s News splashed grim headlines declaring, “Bodies of Two Entombed Miners Recovered, both terribly injured by explosion.” On Wednesday, Melbourne’s Argus paid tribute to the brave volunteers, “100 Volunteers – And Every Man a Hero.” 

By the second day it was clear there could be no survivors. For the wives and children, the waiting was unbearable as they ached for their husbands and fathers to be found. 

Four days later, on Friday 19 February the Powlett Express wrote, “Families have had taken from them with shocking suddenness the society, the love, the help and the protection of affectionate husbands and fathers. That deprivation cannot be repaired.”

All 13 miners killed in the disaster were married men with children. On Saturday night, as the grieving families in Wonthaggi tried to comprehend their unfathomable loss, families in picture theatres across Australia watched the Wonthaggi Disaster unfold on the big screen as the week’s Movietone News showed before the main picture show. 

Scenes of rescue workers with haunted, blackened faces; strange masks, exhalation tubes; foreheads strapped with goggles or one-eyed lamps. A body carried on a stretcher to a waiting vehicle. Women crowded outside the mine office, looking through blinds for a sign of news. Exhausted volunteers, heads hanging down sitting in the gloom 700 feet below, waiting to surface as the cage went up and came back down.

The sensational coverage and graphic images of the disaster published in daily papers and newsreels was hard on the town, yet the national attention generated widespread public sympathy that helped raise significant funds for the families. 

The modest weekly payment received by the widows was a help but could neither ease the pain nor quell their fears for their children’s future. 

The explosion had life-long impacts on the families of the men who died. One young widow who went out to work to support her children, the youngest of whom was just six months old, was so busy working and raising her family on her own that she neglected her own needs and some years later after falling ill waited too long to see the doctor and died of a completely curable disease.

One of the first men to go underground after the explosion knew his brother was among the trapped men. The distress of finding him among the rubble never left him and decades later, the awful memories played out in the last moments of his life.

Philip Harper was just eleven years old when his father was killed in the explosion. For him, his mother and three siblings it was a terrible eight-day wait to learn that his father would not be coming home. On the 50th Anniversary of the No. 20 Shaft Disaster, Philip Harper published The Wonthaggi Coalfields: A story of the men and the mines. His detailed account begins in 1909, ends with the 1937 Disaster and questions the viability of the State Coal Mine that took his father’s life.

The whole town was deeply affected by the disaster. The Powlett Express on Friday 19 February explained; “The mine is the hub, the motivating force that shapes the lives of all of us, whether we work below or not. But when, at one fell swoop, thirteen valued members are snatched from our little community the blow is shattering.”  

Through the remainder of February funeral processions led by hundreds of miners weaved their way through Wonthaggi to the cemetery. In March as the coronial inquest got underway at Wonthaggi Court House, grief and mourning gave way to anger. One witness testified that he had passed No. 20 Shaft twice on the day before the blast and noticed the surface fan was not running. 

Wonthaggi miners knew No. 20 Shaft was a “gassy mine” and had not forgotten that in 1931 four men had been killed in an explosion there. The Inspector for Mines had subsequently recommended the surface fan at No. 20 Shaft be kept constantly running and stone dust (lime) be sprayed on tunnel walls, floors and roofs to smother coal dust. 

On April 1 the inquest’s nine-person jury handed down its verdict concluding, “death was accidentally caused by concussion produced by explosion force … caused by contact of a naked light with an accumulation of Methane gas and coal dust” and also found, “negligence on the Management’s part in not having the Mine inspected on that day in the same manner as on the ordinary working day shift”. 

Many in the town blamed McLeish for perceived cost-cutting measures. Pre-shift inspections were the responsibility of management and use of safety lamps with no naked flame light was mandatory. This had not been done. And the extreme force of the explosion could only be explained by a huge build-up of methane and coal dust from not constantly running the surface fan and not doing the stone dusting.

At the same time there were those who blamed the union for its seemingly never-ending industrial action against management no matter the issue, and that the explosion had been made possible because the mine was idle due to a petty dispute. Some even blamed the State Coal Mine itself, saying it had not been viable since its peak in 1931 and should have been shut down. 

Unrelenting questions and accusations throughout April forced the Government to conduct a Royal Commission to determine whether there had been negligence and to examine changes to safety regulations that would avoid such a future disaster. 

The union called for McLeish to be sacked for his negligence before miners would return to work. Many miners hadn’t worked for months and families were suffering. The Women’s Auxiliary spoke of the dire poverty of families and children going undernourished. The women blamed the attitude of management and questioned why their men should have to work under a management which had been found negligent.

When it became clear that McLeish would not be sacked, the union capitulated and after negotiations, the miners returned to work at the end of May with safety lamps required in every mine at the State Coal Mine except the wet Western Area mine.

The Royal Commission’s findings handed down in November found no negligence on the part of management but recommended changes to Victoria’s coal mines safety regulations including abolition of naked flame lights in all mines. 

It must have been cold comfort for the bereaved families that it took two catastrophic explosions in the same mine in Wonthaggi for the legislative changes in Victoria that led to national changes and made life much safer for every coalminer in Australia.

*****

In a paddock on the left as you leave Wonthaggi on the way to Melbourne the remains of No. 20 Shaft lie abandoned in the long grass. A tiny concrete shed, broken concrete foundations, winder footings, a pile of stone, a rusty tank. Faded green signs mark where the change room, lamp room, blacksmith and mine manager’s office once stood. A Parks Victoria sign warns of unstable mine shafts, and a shelter has interpretive displays of the State Coal Mine. 

Alongside the paddock near large cypress trees is a neatly mown area where the remnants of the ventilation fan at No. 20 Shaft is now a memorial site. Two plaques are dedicated to the memory of those who died in the underground explosions.

The State Coal Mine lasted 59 years and in that time took the lives of 85 men. All those who lost their lives and the families who suffered must always be remembered as a solemn part of Wonthaggi’s history.