Brief History of Wollongong - 1796

- City of Wollongong - Illawarra Region - Bass and Flinders - Charles Throsby - James Meehani - Thomas Mitchell - Red Cedar - Coal - Dairy -

Tucked between the mountains and the sea, Wollongong in the Illawarra Region is only an hour's drive south from outer Sydney by road.

The City of Wollongong lies on that part of the New South Wales South Coast known as the Illawarra. It is 78 kilometres south of Sydney by road and 10 metres above sea-level. Its average temperatures for January ranges from 18 to 24C. and for July from 9 to l6C.; average annual rainfall is 1221 millimetres.
 
Development is mainly concentrated in a strip of agricultural land between the coast and the Illawarra Range. To the north of Wollongong the range approaches the coast, with the escarpment falling almost sheer into the sea in places. The low lands begin narrowly from there, widening as they move southward to a breadth of some 15 kilometres near Lake Illawarra.
 
Scenically, the district is varied and spectacular. The panoramas from the Illawarra Range, particularly from Mount Keira and from Sublime Point above Austinmer are quite striking.
 
It is thought that the Dharawal Aborigines inhabited the area before European settlement.
 
The navigators Bass and Flinders explored the coast in the Tom Thumb in 1796, landing at Lake Illawarra which they named Tom Thumb Lagoon; but the district was not traversed by white men until 1797. In that year the survivors of a wreck Sydney Cove were forced to make the treck, and while they were at it, they also discovered the first coal deposit in area, at what is now Coalcliff.

Red cedar was also found in the adjacent rain-forests, and cedar-cutting became an important industry. Cedar-cutters were active the region by the beginning of the nineteenth century. However for many years, owing to the ruggedness of the mountains the only approaches to the district were by sea and this inhibited early development.
 
In 1815, Charles Throsby and James Meehanin drove cattle into the Illawarra from Moss Vale on a report by Aborigines that there was good pasturage there. Throsby latter established a stockman’s hut in the area.
 
The first land grants were made a year latter in 1816 and the Illawarra and Berkeley runs were established by 1817. Other settlers soon followed and Primary industries developed, and settlement intensified as a result.

In 1834 the site for the town was surveyed by the Surveyor General Thomas Mitchell. The name Wollongong had already been decided as early as 1826 when a garrison was first established in the area. The name is of Aboriginal origin and is said to mean “sound of the sea”.
 
Wollongong Marina showing both lighthouses. Wollongong harbour is the only one in Australia to have two lighthouses.
Mitchell also surveyed the Mount Keira route down the escarpment and this was built by convict labour in 1835-6.

The site of Wollongong was chosen because, on a coast poorly endowed with natural anchorages, it had fewer disadvantages as a harbour that the other possible sites.
 
It had become the main cedar-port of the district in the late 1820's, and the first coal was loaded there in 1829.
 
Regular steamer communication with Sydney began in 1834 when the steamship “Maitland” commenced its regular service to Sydney.
 
Before this safe anchorage was built ships would unload their cargoes into smaller boats waiting in the bay. These craft would then come ashore on Brighton Beach. During a heavy surf this was hazardous and often had to be abandoned.  It wasn’t until 1844 when the wharves and a breakwater were completed by a gang of three hundred convicts that the process became less hazardous.

In 1849 the Illawarra’s first coal export left the harbour aboard the steamer “William the Fourth”. Coal mining began at Mount Keira in 1848, then at Bellambi in 1857, at Bulli in 1859, at Coalcliff in 1877-8, at Austinmer in 1878 and at South Clifton in 1891. Many other collieries have been opened, but a large number have also closed over the years.
 
At first, coal was transported by horse and oxen teams along dirt tracks to the harbour edge. Wheelbarrows then transferred the coal into the waiting ships. In 1862 the Illawarra Coal Company constructed a horse operated tramway from the mines. The horses were replaced by steam locomotives in 1884. A separate tramway connected Mt Keira Mines to the Port between 1859 and 1937. Both lines to Wollongong Harbour were closed down with the expansion of coal loading facilities at Port Kembla.

By 1868 almost seventy ships a month visited the harbour off-loading passengers and supplies of the settlement, and taking coal and agricultural goods, particularly butter, to Sydney. By 1870 the basin had become NSW’s third most important harbour.
 
Wollongong was still growing as a dairying and agricultural centre, and butter continued to compete with coal as the major export of the district across the rest of the 1800’s.
 
The Bulli Pass land route was explored in 1844 and opened to wheeled traffic in 1868.
 
The Sydney to Wollongong rail link was established in l887, and a branch line now runs to Port
 
The Pioneer Kerosene Works opened at Mount Kembla in 1865, and from Illawarra kerosene shale, came the first kerosene ever manufactured in Australia.
 
Wollongong was incorporated as a municipality in 1859. It was Australia’s first country municipality. In 1942 was proclaimed a city. In 1947 the City of Wollongong was amalgamated with the Shire of Central Illawarra, the Municipality of North Illawarra and the Shire of Bulli, to form the City of Greater Wollongong, a local government area covering 715 square kilometres.
 
The Illawarra Mercury (daily), established in 1855, is still published in Wollongong.

Mount Keira

Australia’s worst mining disaster occurred at Mount Keira in 1902, when an explosion killed 96 men; an earlier explosion at the Bulli Colliery in 1887 had killed 81 men.

Port Kembla

Originally known as Red Point, Port Kembla received its present name in 1892, as its jetty served the Mount Kembla mine. Land was first granted in 1817, but the first permanent European settlement was impossible until the establishment of a protective garrison in the region in 1826.
 
Heavy industries were originally attracted to the Wollongong area by the ready availability of coal, and are now mainly centered at Port Kembla.
 
Major growth followed the opening of the Mount Kembla colliery in 1882; and a railway link and a jetty were established the following year. Work on the inner and outer harbours began in 1898; more recent harbour improvements were carried out in 1960.
Rapid development also followed the opening of iron and steel plants in the early twentieth century. Refining and smelting works opened in 1909 to treat copper ore from Mount Morgan in Queensland. Blister copper from Mount Isa in Queensland was refined there from 1953 to 1959, and that from Mount Lyell (Tasmania) since 1965.
 
A metal manufacturing plant was opened in 1918, and a fertilizer plant opened n 1921.
 
In 1928 Hoskins, later Australian Iron and Steel Ltd, set up works to produce pig iron; Broken Hill Proprietary Company took over the company in 1935. Rolling mills were opened in 1938, a steel plate and hot strip mill opened in 1955, and a tinplate mill in 1957.

Shell Harbour

At Shellharbour on the southern side of Lake Illawarra, convicts burned shells to produce lime that was then shipped to Sydney.
 
A port was established there in the 1830's, and was used for the export of wheat until trade declined after the opening of the railway in 1891.
 
The merchant Robert Towns offered land for the settlement of immigrant families in 1843 and 23 families settled there.
 
The private village of Peterborough was established in 1851, and it was proclaimed a municipality in 1859. It had its name was changed to Shellharbour in 1885.

Albion Park

The Illawarra Light Horse Corps, the first of its kind in New South Wales, was formed at Albion Park in 1870.

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