Pit Pony Hoof Pincushion - 1902

In 2008, while researching for the exhibition 'Thunder in a Cloudless Sky' for the Mt Kembla Heritage Centre, I heard of and became fascinated by the story of a pincushion made from the hoof of a pit pony that was killed in the Mt Kembla mine disaster of 1902 . At the time the hoof was not on display and could not be loaned for the exhibition. In the following years, time and again the story of this incredible object would draw my attention while researching for a pit pony display, conserving archaeological pit pony horse shoes for National Parks and Wildlife Service, and interviewing retired wheelers/coal miners. However, it wasn't until Wollongong's Virtual Museum featured this amazing object as part of their online heritage stories that I finally got to see what it looked like. Later I was able to see the hoof in real life for the first time at an exhibition put on by the University of Wollongong Library called 'Mining the Landscape'.

Perhaps it's the macabre nature of the object, or the depth of love demonstrated between man and his horse that captured my imagination. I imagined the wheeler searching for his horse in the aftermath of the disaster in which he was lucky to escape with his life. In the dark dusty tunnels he stops short and discovers the dismembered leg of his beloved workmate. Bending down to pick it up, he lovingly inspects it and decides right then and there he must take it and do something with it as an in memorium token to his treasured horse. I wondered at what point did he decide to make it into a pincushion and if he had entertained other items before deciding on this practical use? I've since learned that several other horse hoof pincushions exist in the world. I imagined him sitting down to remove the hoof from the leg, industriously cleaning it and drilling the holes along the edge all the while choked with emotion and perhaps this young man's mother lovingly helped him fashion it into a pin cushion. My curiosity would love to know the pattern of the fabric chosen for the top that has long since disappeared. With all the trauma surrounding the disaster, the loss of work mates and so many neighbours, perhaps it was in a way therapeutic to fashion something useful from such a painful event. I wondered too at the conversations that were held around the pin cushion as it passed on through the family until it reached the collection of the Illawarra Museum. We'll never know the full story of the pit pony pincushion, but the fact that it exists and survives to this day is incredible.

Detail from the 1903 Report of the Royal Commission into the Mt Kembla Mine Disaster

Eighteen year old Donald Brisbane was the son of an Irish born coal miner, Joseph Brisbane (1854-1926) and his Scottish born wife Sarah Morrow (1858-1942), he was the third of seven living siblings. The family had come to Australia from Scotland in 1881 and initially settled at Joadja Creek shale mine near Berima, New South Wales, where Donald was born in 1884. By 1886 the family had come to stay in Kembla Heights. They settled in the house on the northern side of the company owned Kembla Heights general store. Donald's father Joe would work at Mt Kembla Colliery until his death aged seventy two. Donald and his siblings attended Mt Kembla public school. As soon as he was old enough to get a job at the pit, the very day after he turned fourteen years old, Donald joined his father and the men of the village working at the colliery. By 1902 Donald's job at the coal mine was working as a wheeler. Wheelers were usually young men in their late teens or early twenties waiting to "get on the coal" who were trained to work with the horses to haul coal from the mine. That Thursday morning was a typical winter's morning high up on the mountain, crisp, clear and nippy. Donald and his father Joe had left their home and walked about two miles (3.2 Km) to work with a metal water bottle and crib tin each. Every underground worker foolish enough to bring his lunch in anything other than a metal tin was bound to loose it, either to the rats down below or to his hungry horse. Donald's horse had been stabled overnight in the above ground stables and well fed. The horses worked hard and were fed hard. All twenty eight pit ponies working that day had been readied by the hostler or groom, their shoes checked and a bag of chaff attached to their collar for a well deserved brake later.

Young Donald had hooked his horse with up to as many as six empty skips and began supplying the coal miners with the "empties" to fill with coal. The skips traveled along a network of railway line that was laid right up to each working place. Later Donald and his horse went back and collected the skips full of coal from the miners and took them to the endless rope road, where a thick wire rope powered by an engine at the pit top constantly turned. There young clippers, some as young as fourteen years old, clipped the full skip onto the moving rope and the skip would be carried off to the surface for weighing. Back and forth all day they traversed the dark tunnels, Donald giving his horse voice commands and sometimes helping to push the skips through steep places or help keep the wheels on the rails along tricky curves.

Image of wheeler with a pit pony from Illawarra Images

The tunnels followed the coal seam up hill and down, on the down hills the wheelers had to slow the ​​skips down using sprags as there were no breaks on the skips. Sprags were lengths of wood or metal that were jammed into the wheel to stop it from turning. Depending on the steepness of the road and the weight of the load, one or more sprags were used. You had to be quick because if you missed a sprag or if it broke, the skips would race off and crash into the horse in front. Even if the horse got out of the way of the careening skips, the horse was still hooked on to the skips so it would get dragged behind, either being seriously injured or killed.

Using sprags to slow a coal skip down - image finglevalleyhistory.com

Horses have better hearing than people, and sometimes it was they who saved the wheeler. At times a pit pony would refuse to enter a working place causing the wheeler no end of trouble trying to get the job done or face the wrath of the miners waiting on the skips. The miners were only paid for how much coal they got out, not the time it took to get it out, so a steady supply of skips was crucial. The wheelers, however, soon learned to trust the horse's instinct as more often than not, there'd be a rock fall in the area that could have cost both their lives. Donald Brisbane had had a few close calls with rock falls in his time, one injuring his foot (South Coast Times 16.2.1901). In those harsh conditions horse and man relied on each other and formed a close bond. During the disaster, some pit ponies helped saved men by guiding them out through the pitch black tunnels, others died alongside them unable to escape the deadly carbon monoxide gas. Some men were anxious to save their horse but to do so would have been certain death. Donald Brisbane made it out alive through an air shaft near the mine manager's residence but his horse did not. When he returned to the pit to look for his mate, all he found was the leg with the horse shoe still attached to the hoof.

Donald Brisbane was to marry Lizzie, Marian Elizabeth Hemmingson, in 1906 and raise a large family together. He left Kembla Heights to work at North Bulli colliery. Donald died on the 26th of March 1935 in Sydney, aged just 51 years old. The pit pony hoof pincushion remained in his family until it was donated to the Illawarra Museum in 1976.

The 31st of July 1902, remains the blackest day in this mountain's history. It cost the local community 96 of its men and boys, fathers, husbands, sons and brothers, as well as the lives of 18 pit ponies.

Updated 19.9.2017