Coal River
Australia's post-contact history is dominated by the themes of convict transportation and convict labour.
The widespread use of convict labour in the new Australian colonies assisted the British government to develop and expand its growing industrial economy.
A principal reason for the location of a settlement at Coal River was to exploit the geological and natural resources that had been found there by harnessing the available convict labour sent to Coal River for secondary punishment.
Coal River Time Line
Prepared by Cynthia Hunter on behalf of Newcastle City Council, August 2001
| 1796 | Informal accounts reach Sydney of the reserves of coal at ‘Coal River’. |
| 1797 | Lt Shortland and his crew enter Coal River and confirm the coal resources. |
| 1801 | Formal identification of the great potential of the coal reserves and the river. First brief attempt to set up a coal mining camp. |
| 1804 | Formation of a permanent convict/military outpost to mine coal, harvest timber and prepare lime. A light beacon and gun emplacement built on the southern headland. Nobbys Island seen as a useful place for confinement. Aboriginal-European encounters. |
| 1814 | Expansion of the settlement in line with Governor Macquarie’s policies. Lumberyard developed. Coal mining extends away from ‘Colliers’ Point’. A farming outpost established at Paterson’s Plains. |
| 1816 | Marked increase in development of convict settlement from 1816 to 1822. |
| 1818 | Increase in trading envisaged. Macquarie Pier commenced, also other aids to navigation. Significant expansion of building program including hospital, stores, accommodation, gaol, church and windmills. |
| 1822 | Penal settlement moved to Port Macquarie. Variable convict workforce retained for public works such as road making, breakwater building, coal mining, property and tools maintenance, and so on. |
| 1823 | Beginning of era of transition from a penal/military establishment to a civil settlement with civil administration. Work suspended on the Pier. The built environment of the penal era gradually replaced. |
| 1831 | End of era of government-controlled coal mining and beginning of private enterprise mining by the Australian Agricultural Company. |
| 1830s | Work resumes on the Pier building, completed in 1846. Lighthouse built on Nobbys Island in 1857. Ballast and sand reclaim the foreshore. Building wharfage and harbour formation, and pilot facilities and navigational aids ongoing. |
| 1847 | Occupation of new military barracks. Lumberyard stockade reused for other purposes from the late 1840s. The barracks complex vacated by the Imperial military when the last convict workers left Newcastle in 1855. |
South Head later used for fortifications and colonial - and then national - military purposes. Newcastle East emerged as a complex rail, warehousing, industrial, commercial, residential and leisure precinct.
