Collinsville
Located around ninety kilometres southwest of Bowen on Biri country within the Whitsunday Regional Council's boundaries, the coal-mining town of Collinsville was known as Moongunya ("place of coal") before being officially renamed after Charles Collins, the Labor Member for Bowen from 1915 to 1936.
After the Kennedy Pastoral Districts was opened to pastoralists in 1861, government geologist Robert Logan Jack reported coal deposits on Pelican Creek, a tributary of the Bowen River in 1866. Still, it remained uninvestigated until the need for alternative sources for the coal shipped into the region via Townsville for the northern railways prompted a group of Bowen business people to form the Bowen River Coal Prospecting Syndicate. Other prospecting groups also took out exploration licences. They verified several coal seams before the newly-elected Ryan Labor government announced a commitment to open a State coal mine at Pelican Creek in 1915. A decision to open a coking facility for a proposed State steel works at Bowen followed in 1917 with a coal export facility touted when mining commenced in the 1920s. While the steel works and export facility failed to eventuate, the coal proved entirely satisfactory for the railway locomotives and coke from the Bowen works fuelled Mount Isa's ore processing plants.
When the railway connection to Bowen opened in 1922, the new mining township had almost one hundred lots sold. Within a few years, the population passed seven hundred, with a smaller population at the Bowen Consolidated Coal Mines company town of Scottville, four kilometres southwest of Collinsville.
Both towns became centres of union militancy after the Communist Party took over the leadership of the national mining union. By 1936, Collinsville had four Communist Party branches and one ALP branch. Collinsville miners' support was a crucial element in the Communist Party's candidate, Fred Paterson, 's election to Queensland's Legislative Assembly in 1944.
The Collinsville mine disaster (13 October 1954) saw seven men killed when an explosion dislodged 900 tonnes of earth in the Collinsville State Coal Mine's deepest section. It was Queensland's largest mine disaster since the underground explosion at Mount Mulligan in 1921.
Links to add:
Moongunya
Charles Collins
Bowen electorate
Kennedy Pastoral Districts
Robert Logan Jack
Pelican Creek
Bowen River
Bowen River Coal Prospecting Syndicate
Ryan Labor government
State steel works at Bowen
Bowen coke works
Mount Isa
Bowen Consolidated Coal Mines
Scottville
Fred Paterson
Collinsville mine disaster
Collinsville State Coal Mine
Mount Mulligan
