The coal industry, as those who have worked in it will know, has been characterised by its ups and downs and industrial turmoil, but has emerged from its turbulent past as a strong and competitive industry, competing on the world stage with other major producing countries. While it is now the leading exporter of metallurgical coal and the second largest exporter of thermal coal, the industry had humble beginnings in Newcastle with convicts mining the coal under horrific conditions. Porter traces the development of the industry through the 1800s to the time of Federation and the early 1900s, through the dark years of the 1920s and 1930s and World War II and the following two decades. The industry emerged from World War II in a poor condition and with negligible exports, but by the 1960s was facing the challenge of becoming a major supplier to the Japanese steel mills, competing with the US producers who were the dominant suppliers. The competition between the underground producers in NSW and the emerging open cut producers in the Queensland Bowen Basin was also beginning and would become more intense during the 1970s. By the end of the 1960s, the Australian industry’s future as the leading supplier to the Japanese was by no means assured, but as the title of this book indicates, that decade can be seen as the time which marked the birth – or perhaps the re-birth – of the coal industry we know today.
