Slab Hut Duckinwilla - a remnant of the Coal Mining Industry

Allan Slab Hut  (Queensland Heritage Register) 

The Queensland Heritage Register states:
The Allan Slab Hut at Doongul Creek, via Torbanlea is a basic, hand-built hardwood structure built sometime in the first decade of the twentieth century by Henry Price, an emigrant miner from Wales, as the home for his family.


Allan Slab Hut Duckinwilla (Queensland Heritage Register) 

The register details the history of the hut here
The slab hut was the first house the migrant Price family owned and it has been built from hardwood (ironbark or stringybark) from the property. Esther Price was a midwife and her husband worked in the coal mines.
Coal was first discovered in the Burrum River region in 1863 with three mines - Burrum, Riverbank and Torbanlea, producing about one fifth of the Colony's total production in 1900. The Burrum Colliery was the stimulus for the founding of the town of Howard (Queensland Heritage Register).
The circumstances of the miners were difficult partly due to Burrum mines being the last in Queensland to be unionized. The miners struggled to survive.

The Heritage Register states:
Mining was the only local source of employment and the mine operators dictated the terms of employment. A small number of favoured permanent miners were provided with a miner's hut, a four-roomed stringybark cottage, of which there were fourteen in Torbanlea. Families had an average of eleven children and whilst most miners usually had only one meal a day, they endeavoured to provide two meals a day for their children.

The slab hut construction used what materials were available put together using fencing techniques. Kerosene tins and hessian bags were used to make other miners' dwellings and many miners' lands reverted to the Crown when they could not make a living.

Q. C. Gauchalland Mine, Howard, 1920.William Billsborough (left) and Walter Putman filling a coal skip. Note the tallow lamps, low seam and the mining supports. Q. C. refers to Queensland Colleries, originally Queensland Coal.

Pit pony hauling a coal wagon at QC Gauchalland Mine, 1920.

Allan family property is freehold land, so indicates that they were somewhat successful (Queensland Heritage Register).

The Heritage register tells us:
Esther Price lived in the slab hut until she died in 1936. She planted a fig tree that now shelters the hut, which is situated amongst the remnant evidence of the orchards and market gardens that once surrounded it.

A. Proctor, D.Kerr, R. Keene and T. Rowston. No. 4 Mine Burgowan. (David Proctor Collection)

Each year on the third week of July, the Burrum Coal Festival celebrates the Heritage of Coal Discovery. The Burrum and District Museum also has an extensive display relating to the Coal Mining Days. It is open to the public:

Tuesday and Wednesday 9am – 12 noon
Saturdays 8am – 12noon.

References:
Queensland Heritage Register retrieved from https://environment.ehp.qld.gov.au/heritage-register/detail/?id=601934on the 30th August, 2018.

Tags #coal #mining #heritage #burrum #miners #midwife #discovery