Mount Kembla remembers 1902 tragedy
Mount Kembla remembers 1902 tragedy
July 31, 2008
Section: News
ONE hundred and six years ago today, in a small miner’s cottage in Mt Kembla, Phil Donaldson’s great-grandfather said goodbye to his 18-year-old pregnant wife and walked into the mine where he worked.
He also walked into an event which to this day remains the greatest peacetime loss of life on Australian soil.
At 2pm on that same day in 1902 an explosion heard from kilometres away in Wollongong ripped through Mt Kembla Mine, killing 96 men and boys – every third breadwinner in the small village.
Some men, including Mr Donaldson’s grandfather, scrambled through ventilation shafts to emerge alive, but the shock and devastation to the small community was huge, and the relief efforts from outsiders in the following weeks and years were insubstantial.
Every year during the Mt Kembla Mining Heritage Festival, which commemorates the disaster, a ceremony is held at Windy Gully Cemetery, Mt Kembla, where the majority of the disaster victims are buried.