Harkaway Quarry - September 1988

These are photos of the Harkaway Quarry, on Noack Road, taken in September 1988. The quarry was a basalt mine (or bluestone mine - apparently Victorians call basalt bluestone) and was operated by Pioneer. Pioneer was taken over by Hanson in 2000 and the business was then rebranded. This area was home to many quarries - the most well known is Wilson Quarry at Berwick. You can see aerial photographs of some of the other quarries here.

As well as basalt other minerals have also been found at Harkaway and the neighbouring Narre Warren quarry. The Australian & New Zealand Micromineral News, Issue 9, June 2014 has an interesting article Minerals from the Narre Warren & Harkaway quarries by John Haupt and he writes - 

The Harkaway quarry was located in Noack road, Harkaway and was noted for the specimens of fluorapophyllite, now known as fluorapophyllite-(K), the only occurrence found in the Victorian basalts. It occurred as a druse of small equant crystals lining cavities up to 15cm across in the basalt. Natrolite, phillipsite and calcite occur with the apophyllite. The apophyllite was found in a small zone in fragmented basalt, 5 metres across and 10 metres high in the quarry and was quickly quarried out (Birch et al 1984). Calcite crystallised later than natrolite, forming attractive micros of calcite ‘teardrops’ on natrolite crystals.

My knowledge of minerals is very  sketchy, so I can't help with an explanation, however you can read Mr Haupt's article in full here.

The Quarry ceased operation at the end of 2009 or January 2010 - I have seen two dates listed. The January 2010 date comes from a blog, called 'Welcome to the house of Murray'  written by Jo Murray, who used to work at the Quarry. You can see some photos and read an account of her last day at work here. The site is currently unused and fenced off. There is a push from some locals to turn the quarry into a park. 

Breaking up the bluestone with a hydraulic hammer

Loading on to a truck

Another view of the loading process

A loaded truck going up, an unloaded truck going down

Unloading into the crusher plant

Another view of the quarry showing, what I presume is, the crushing plant

A view of the quarry. Easy to see why basalt is called bluestone when you look at the stratas at the top left of the photo.

This is the Harkaway Quarry, photo taken April 20, 1978. The A'Beckett Road quarry is top left. 

Dandenong Advertiser of September 23, 1915.    

http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article88661295

This report was  received at the Berwick Shire Council meeting held September 18, 1915 and may refer to the opening of the Harkaway Quarry.

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Quarries and Sand mines

This is a series of quarry photographs - taken in the 1960s and 1970s. Basalt quarries were north of the Princes Highway in Berwick and Harkaway and sand quarries were south of the Princes Highway in Lyndhurst and Cranbourne.

This is the basalt quarry where King Road becomes Robinson Road in Harkaway. It was taken December 1963.            

                                                               

These are the two basalt quarries south of A'Beckett road and west of Harkaway Road in Harkaway. The photo was taken in January 1978.

This is the basalt quarry in Noack Road in Harkaway and one of the A'Beckett Road quarries can also be seen.  Photo was taken in April 1978. I don't know when they started quarrying in Harkaway - the earliest reference I can find on Trove is from the Dandenong Advertiser of September 23, 1915. 

This is a report received at the Berwick Shire Council meeting held September 18, 1915. 

Dandenong Advertiser of September 23, 1915.    http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article88661295

This is Wilson Quarry in Berwick - another basalt quarry. You can read all about the history of the Wilson Quarry here. The quarry opened in 1859. It is now Wilson Botanic Park.  Photograph taken December 1963.

This is a quarry in Hallam, taken in January 1970. That is General Motors Holden Factory on the left and the Freeway now passes between GMH and the Quarry. The Gippsland Railway line is south of GMH and the quarry. The section of this railway line between Oakleigh and Bunyip opened October 1877. You can read more about this line here. I have no information about this quarry, but I suspect it was a sand mine.

Taken in January 1972 this is the Lyndhurst/Hampton Park sand quarry. It is now the 'Hallam Road landfill'. The South Gippsland Highway runs along the left of the photograph. At the bottom right corner is part of the Cranbourne Golf Club.

This is the sand mine either side of Thompson's Road in Cranbourne. Photograph was taken January 1970. The road on the left of the photo is Narre Warren - Cranbourne Road. They still mine sand on the south side of Thompson Road. Apart from Cranbourne there are still sand mines in other parts of the region, especially around Lang Lang and Yannathan.

This aerial is from February 1964. These are the sand pits below the racecourse at Cranbourne, some of which now form the Botanic Gardens. Just to the south of the racecourse, where Earlston Circuit is now, was the Earlston Sand Mine, who had their own railway siding, from around the mid 1930s.  I believe there was also a line that went from the sand pits to Camms Road level crossing to service the  Cranbourne Sand Company, from the mid 1920s.

The South Bourke and Mornington Journal of September 6, 1917 had an article about 'A new Industry for Cranbourne'.  If you can;'t read the article, above, click on this link http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article66192688 and it will take you to the article on Trove. Sand mining has thus been an industry in Cranbourne for nearly 100 years. 

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Berwick Quarry and the Wilson family

The Back-to Berwick Quarry Re-union was held on Sunday, March 29th 2009 at Wilson Botanic Park in Berwick. Past quarry workers met to reminisce and there were guided tours of the Wilson Botanic Park. A plaque, commemorating 150 years since quarrying commenced on the site, was unveiled by Les McDonald and Margaret Rossell. Les worked at the Quarry from 1947 to 1967 and Margaret is the President of the Friends of Wilson Botanic Park. Well known Shire of Berwick/City of Casey identity, Neil Lucas, was the M.C. on the day.

View of the Back-to Berwick Quarry from the top of the Amphitheatre.

The quarry was on land owned by the Wilson Brothers, William (1830-1907) and James (1833-1910), who purchased around 630 acres from the Crown in 1854. This land was bounded by the Princes Highway, Lyall Road, Hessel Road in the west to Harkaway in the North. Their sister, Anne (1827-1909) house kept for them. Initially they lived in tents until they built a small one room house, which was later extended and became Quarry Hills. The brothers grew wheat, potatoes and later went into dairying. When William married Euphemia Brisbane in 1859 the land was split diagonally with William’s land fronting the Princes Highway and James’s land facing Harkaway Road. James married Anne Lindsay in 1858 and Anne Wilson married James Buchanan, M.L.C., in 1859.

The basalt quarry at Berwick opened in 1859 when William Wilson gave contractors the right to remove stone. However the quarry expanded after 1874, with the building of the Gippsland railway line to Sale as it provided ballast for the line. Once the line was completed in 1877 William’s son, William Jnr (1860-1936) (pictured right) saw an opportunity to carry on the quarry, so he leased the quarry from his father and quarried stone for road making. William Jnr would drive one loaded dray carrying approximately two cubic yards or 2½ Imperial tons and lead another horse and loaded dray when he delivered the stone to local Councils. He established two crushing plants driven by a Marshall Steam engine. A spur line to the Berwick Railway Station was established in 1890.The rail trucks could convey ten cubic yards of rock and the railway allowed the product to be conveyed anywhere in Gippsland for the re-ballasting of the railway lines and road building. The quarry closed at the end of the First World War and the plant and the railway line was sold to a Cranbourne sand company. The Berwick Shire occasionally obtained stone from the quarry and had installed a small crushing plant for this purpose. In the late 1930s the quarry was leased by George and Ted Daniel. The Daniel brothers had been working a quarry at Lysterfield and when they took over at Berwick they installed a diesel powered crusher plant with a weekly output of 500 cubic yards of crushed rock. Daniel Brothers supplied the Shires of Berwick and Cranbourne. Due to various factors, by the late 1940s more capital was required and the quarry was sold to Bayview Quarries. Roy Ross, the owner of Bayview, installed an electric plant which crushed up to 1,000 cubic yards per day. In 1966, Bayview sold its interests to Boral, who operated the quarry under the company Albion Reid P/L.

During all this time the quarry itself was owned by members of the Wilson family and when it closed in 1978 the owner, George Wilson (1918-2003) and his wife Fay, (nee Duff) donated the 50 acre quarry site to the residents of Berwick for use a public park. The park was to be named Wilson Park in memory of George’s father, also called George (1867-1943) and his grandfather, James. Other land was purchased by the Council from the Andrews family who were descendents of William Jnr and his wife, who was also his first cousin, Annie Buchanan.

Aerial of the Berwick Quarry, before the development of the Wilson Botanic Park.

Work on the Park commenced in 1988, and the City of Berwick aimed to beautify the landscape, provide a place for relaxation and recreation and to create a botanic park with a collection of plants for botanic study. The final plan included an inner and outer trail loop one which focussed on the lakes and the other on the magnificent views, with all the trails being accessible to unassisted wheelchair users. After much work the one hundred acre (40 hectare) Park was officially opened on July 26th, 1992, by the Governor General Bill Hayden. Other features in the Park include a children's playground, a lookout tower, bird hide and Amphitheatre. There is an active Friends group, the Friends of Wilson Botanic Park, who support the Park in many ways - from staffing the visitors centre, fund raising, acting as tour guides, undertaking planting , watering, weeding and other plant handling activities. The Friends were also responsible for the organisation of the Back-to Berwick Quarry Reunion.

Anniversary Lake, Wilson Botanic Park.

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