The Bowen Consolidated No. 1 Colliery, which opened in 1919, has been added to the Queensland Heritage Register to show the evolution of the state’s coal mining history and the beginning of commercial coal mining in the Bowen Basin.

Located near Collinsville, the mine continued production until 1962 when it was superseded by the nearby fully mechanised No. 2 underground mine.

Commercial extraction of coal in the Bowen Basin began in the 1890s at Blair Athol, but early mines found it hard to make ends meet.

Intensive exploration in the now-famous basin began after 1907 with the crash of prices in the base metals industry, but it wasn’t until 1922 that the basin got its first rail line.

Those prospectors that survived the first hard years formed a syndicate – the Bowen Consolidated Coal Mining Company.

It was this company that began drilling at the Bowen Consolidated No. 1 Colliery and mining in 1919.

At first, two parallel tunnels were driven into the Garrick seam, enabling coal to be mined and enough cash to be made to sink another shaft into the Bowen seam in 1920.

In 1921, two vertical shafts were commenced, a winding shaft 4.3m by 1.8m to a depth of 11m and an upcast shaft 3.7m by 2.1m to a depth of 109m.

The surface of the mine eventually boasted an impressive collection of infrastructure, including headframe and gantry, winding house and plant, boilers, fan houses, power house and plant, bathhouse, mine manager's residence and office, workshop and sawmill – all of which are onsite today.

Coal output for the year to May 31, 1923, was 4136 tons. By the time the railway connection was finished in 1923, 26 miners and a similar number of surface men were at work at the mine and output was averaging 35 tons of coal per day.

Twin tramways were laid down the tunnels and serviced by a stationary steam-hauling engine, a compressed air water pump was installed at the foot of the tunnel, and the ventilation was improved by sinking a vertical shaft to an extension of one of the cross-cuts and equipping it with a double-inlet sirocco-type fan.

By 1926, when production in the tunnels of the Garrick seam was halted by a fault, a ventilation shaft had been completed to the Bowen seam.

In 1927, the colliery employed 54 men and had seven horses working with the underground teams. By this time the underground section of the mine had electric lighting, as did all surface buildings, and an Ingersoll Rand compressor to work the dip pump and the jack hammer machines.

Through the 1930s and 1940s the mine continued to be productive.

By 1956 the company had been taken over by Mount Isa Mines. Plans were made to sink a new shaft and the profit for the mine rose from £26,490 in 1955 to £103,667 in 1956.

The No. 2 mine was then started up and No. 1 was outdated.

Information from this article is taken from the Queensland government’s Environmental Protection Agency heritage register.