Qualla: Collinsville Mine Disaster

Collinsville Mine Disaster: Introduction

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Public domain. For weeks the floor of the mine had been trying to tell them something. Near the coal face, in the wet, low part of the workings they called the dip, water bubbled up through the ground, and in the days before 13 October 1954 the bubbling grew into what miners described as fountains. Drill holes spat their dust straight back out. Men found themselves short of breath and said nothing, because being short of breath underground was the ordinary price of the job. They were approaching a fault, and they knew it. What none of them could see was the thing the fault was holding back: a pocket of carbon dioxide, compressed for ages inside the crushed coal, waiting.

Image: Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd | Public domain

Collinsville Mine Disaster: The Outburst

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Public domain. It came in the early evening, around 5:50, in the deepest part of the Collinsville State Coal Mine, roughly a kilometre and a half from the mouth of the No. 1 tunnel. The fault gave way and flung out some 900 tonnes of coal and stone, and with it a flood of gas that was later fou...

Image: Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd | Public domain

Collinsville Mine Disaster: Seven Men

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Public domain. They are worth naming, because they were not a statistic but a shift, neighbours and workmates from a small town who went underground that day and did not come home. Alex Parkinson. Peter Miller. Henry Petersen. Frederick Ernest Walker. James Reid Logan. Arthur Shrubsole. Herbert...

Image: Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd | Public domain

Collinsville Mine Disaster: The Warnings and the Dispute

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Public domain. The disaster did not fall from a clear sky. For three years the miners and the State Government had been at odds over how the pit was run. In 1951 the government appointed Athol Lightfoot to manage the State Coal Mines, and Lightfoot pushed to mechanise Tunnel No. 1, the very tun...

Image: Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd | Public domain

Collinsville Mine Disaster: The Royal Commission

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Public domain. When the union asked that one of its own sit on the board of inquiry, that request too was refused. The Royal Commission into the disaster was established on 2 December 1954 under Judge Sheehy, with Walter Scott and Septimus Flowers and the Solicitor-General assisting. It was a s...

Image: Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd | Public domain

Collinsville Mine Disaster: Remembered Each October

Mon, 22 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd, Public domain. Collinsville did not let the seven men slip into the general blur of history. Every year on 13 October the people of Collinsville and neighbouring Scottville hold a memorial service for them. In a coal town, that date is not abstract. It belongs to the same web of memory as the p...

Image: Contributor(s): Queensland Newspapers Pty Ltd | Public domain