Mr Frederick Carson of Balclutha, speaks about coal mining in the Balclutha and Kaitangata areas.
Mr Carson says coal was discovered at Coal Point by Frederick Tuckett [in 1844 - though Mr Carson says 1840]. Coal was first worked at Wangaloa in 1850. In 1858, Dr Sewell [?] opened a mine at Wangaloa, called the Lesmahagow [?] mine. The first coal mined at Kaitangata was at Coal Point, in 1858. The coal from Coal Point supplied the steamer ‘Tuapeka’.
Later, coal was discovered on Miss Aitcheson’s property by Mr Love in 1869. In 1872 the Kaitangata Coal Company was formed. Mining operations commenced at the site of the present mine in 1875. It was fairly primitive mining, with poor conditions. The coal was shipped by the steamers ‘Pretty Jane’, ‘The Lady of the Lake’ and the ‘Takanui’.
In June 1876, the railway line from Kaitangata to Stirling was completed, at a cost of £26,500. The first coal transported by rail to Dunedin was carried on 19 June 1876. Mr Carson speaks about the price of coal at the time, annual output, and quality – he says Kaitangata produces high quality household coal. At the height of its operations, Kaitangata was one of the biggest mines in the country, with 300 employees.
The Kaitangata mine disaster of 21 February 1879 was an explosion that killed 34 miners. It was a naked-light mine at the time. Mr Carson says that over the last fifty years mining practices have improved a lot. He speaks about mining methods in the early days, when the miners used picks to extract coal. He then speaks about ‘small coal’, or dross.
There is then discussion on the establishment of mine companies. Sometime before 1880, Winter and Shaw sunk a shaft to a depth of 380 feet on the coal reserve (adjoining the Kaitangata Company mine). In 1880, Winter and Shaw and the Kaitangata Coal Company amalgamated. Work went on from then until 1898, when the Castle Hill Coal Company bought the Kaitangata Company. Mr Carson then talks about a court case on the payment of royalties by the new company.
He goes on to speak about mining in more recent times. In around 1925-1926 there was a mining conference in New Zealand, for which he wrote a paper on spontaneous combustion. He explains spontaneous combustion of ‘small coal’, which generates heat when stacked in piles more than four feet high.
He then gives more detail about the Kaitangata mine, which is all ‘board and pillar’. The coal seam is up to forty feet thick – he explains how this would be excavated. The interview concludes with Mr Carson commenting on the future of the Kaitangata mine. He says there is an area of 80 square miles of coal-bearing country between Balclutha and the Toko River, of which the surface has only been scratched.
[NB: Names are often difficult to hear due to varying audio quality, and Mr Carson's accent.]