The members of the Wonthaggi Historical Society cordially invite the members and friends of the Society to their Annual Dinner to be held on Thursday November 18th, 1999, at the Wonthaggi Hotel (Whalebone).

The speaker will be Jeff Bird, producer of the Gold Award Documentary film, "Black Gold, Kindred Spirits", on the State Coal Mine.

Dinner will be servd at 7pm, after sherry from 6:30 pm. Cost is $17.50 per head. Please contact:
Lynette Chambers
80 Broome Cres
Wonthaggi, Vic 3995.
Tel: (03) 5672 2087

The CFMEU is proud to publish At The Coalface: The human face of coal miners and their communities. This book is the result of the oral history project that retired coal miners Fred Moore, Ray Harrison and Common Cause editor Paddy Gorman have been involved in since 1986 when they set out to capture the stories of the men and women who worked and lived in the coal mining communities of NSW over the past 100 years.

Because Fred Moore and Ray Harrison spent a lifetime in the pits and with Paddy Gorman editing Common Cause for almost 20 years, they had the complete trust and respect of those they interviewed.

The 12 chapters include legendary mining leaders and rank and file activists who were the heart and soul of the mining communities. Their wonderful recollections are enhanced with the most impressive collection of historic mining photographs ever assembled in one book.

The stories in At The Coalface stretch back into the 1880s and they are told from the hearts of men and women who endured the harsh and deadly working environment in Australia's coal mines and the appalling living conditions of the early mining communities.

They are first hand accounts of struggle and survival, of courage and determination, of tragedy and triumph and of never giving up, even in the face of most daunting challenges.

This book recounts the experiences of people who in their own words tell of when they had nothing but their labour to sell, of how they supported each other to build their first modest dwellings and put a roof over their heads. They were given nothing. They struck levies from their meagre wages to bring a doctor into the community and to build the first hospitals, libraries, clubs and other basic community facilities.

They describe their childhoods. Some would be taken by their fathers into the pit on a Sunday afternoon to help him prepare his often difficult area of work for the following day.

There was no transport to work provided. Some had to walk miles to their mine carrying their heavy tools, often up steep inclines, in rain, hail or shine. When they arrived at the pit, they faced the additional walk to the coalface where they laboured in conditions so hot that many worked naked except for a loin cloth fashioned from a sugar bag. As they worked they swallowed coal dust that was so heavy at times, it would almost choke them. They took their food (crib) and water in tins because the pits were so rat infested that their food would be devoured unless it was well secured.

When the miners finished their shifts, they went home covered in coal dust. There were no bath houses until the 1930s and nowhere to change. When the weather was wet, women would sit up hours after their husbands and sons had gone to bed drying their clothes so they would have something warm to head off to work in the next day.

In this book they speak of the horrors of crippling and deadly injuries and industrial diseases. Injured and dead miners were carried out of the pit by their mates. Because there was no transport small groups would physically carry their stricken workmates often miles for treatment. If a miner was killed, someone would run ahead and inform his family. At some pits, the miners paid old ladies to provide boiling water and to wash the bodies of their dead mates and lay them out respectably.

Many recall the bitter and bloody fights against scab labour and the brutal clashes with police protecting the scabs, especially in the Great Depression. There is a particularly moving recollection by Jim Comerford who was at the Rothbury mine in December 1929 as a 16-year old boy when the police opened fire on locked out miners protesting against the use of scab labour. One miner, Norman Brown, was shot dead and many others were wounded. Jim Comerford's vivid description of that day at Rothbury and of the rampant "basher gangs" unleashed in an attempt to terrorise the mining communities, is a classic in labour movement history.

While the stories in this book are laced with memories of hardship, heartbreak and struggle, they are above all accounts of the triumph of strong and determined people in the face of the many ordeals dealt to them. Above all, they communicate the common thread of struggle that weaves a constant pattern throughout the history of mineworkers, nothing was ever given benevolently, everything had to be fought for. The profiles in this book are full of wit and humour, of compassion and enormous generosity. They are the stories of survivors who along the path of life gave at least as good as they got. They are tales told with complete honesty with no attempt to gild the historical lily.

They remind us of the sacrifices and courage of previous generations who struggled to ensure that successive generations of Australian workers would inherit a better industrial and social legacy than those who went before. Their proud contribution compels our generation to secure a similar legacy for those who will follow us.

The CFMEU is offering readers the first opportunity to purchase this unique book before it goes on general sale. There is a limited run of hard back copies of this historic first edition and they will be allocated on a first come first served basis.

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___ $39.95 for a hard back copy (add $5 post and handling)

___ $24.95 for the standard copy (add $5 post and handling)

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Return to At The Coalface, 3rd Floor, 361 Kent Street, Sydney 2000.