Railways in Australia date from the 10 December 1831 when the Australian Agricultural Company officially opened Australia's first railway, located at the intersection of Brown and Church Streets, Newcastle, New South Wales. Privately owned and operated to service the A Pit, the Company's first coal mine, it was a cast-iron fishbelly rail on an inclined plane as a gravitational railway.
Using iron rails from England, the line was constructed commencing at the pit, down the hill to a coal-loading 'staithe' at the river. One ton wagons of coal were rolled down the railway, connected by rope to empty wagons at the wharf, which were pulled up the slope as the loaded wagons descended.
At the time, the railway was described as follows: "Once raised up the shaft, the coal was yarded or emptied into wagons; each of 1 t capacity. Loaded wagons were run in pairs down a self-acting inclined plane railway (two loaded wagons going down hauled another two emptied ones up). They were then pushed by hand, assisted by gravity, along a graded wooden trestle. It crossed a sandy area, now occupied by Hunter Street and the Great Northern Railway, to a loading staith at which small ships could berth while coal was tipped into their holds."
The AACo constructed a total of three gravitational railways: the second was in 1837 to service B Pit and the third was in mid-1842 to service C Pit. The gravitational railway from B Pit connected with the 1831 railway. The gravitational railway from C Pit, which made use of the last of the Government’s offer of cheap convict labour, feed onto an extended gravitational railway to reach the port. It is presumed that when the A Pit mine was exhausted in July 1846 its, railway was directly transferred to form the C Pit railway, although no hard evidence can support this thought. No physical evidence remains of the location of Australia's first railway.
On 10 December 2006 a plaque was unveiled on the southern shore of Newcastle Harbour celebrating this event. In November 2006 surveying company Monteath & Powys used a survey map produced by AA Company surveyor Armstrong in 1830, to relocate the position of the pit and railway. Other drawings and documents from the AA Company archives were used to verify the location. This became the basis for determining the location to mount the plaque.
Sea Pit Colliery, 1894. Photo: NSW State Archives
The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) (ASX: AAC) still trades, being a public-listed Australian company that, as at 2018, owned and operated feedlots and farms covering around seven million hectares (17 million acres) of land in Queensland and the Northern Territory, roughly one percent of Australia's land mass. As of July 2008 AACo had a staff of 500 and operated 24 cattle stations and two feedlots, consisting of over 565,000 beef cattle.
It was established as a direct result of the inquiry into the colony of New South Wales conducted by John Bigge from 1819 to 1823, who recommended that large grants of land be given to "men of real capital" who would utilise significant levels of convict labour to maintain these estates. The inquiry was initiated by the Earl of Bathurst and John Macarthur to protect both the system of land grants to wealthy individuals and also the transportation system of cheap prison labour to the colony. As a result of the Bigge Inquiry, a group of around 400 well-connected British investors with the combined capital £1,000,000 founded the Australian Agricultural Company in 1824. An Act of the British Parliament and a Royal Charter instituted the company with the right to select 404,686 hectares (1,000,000 acres) in New South Wales for agricultural development.
Among the principal members of this company were the Attorney-General and the Solicitor-General of England, 28 Members of Parliament, including Mr. Brougham, and Joseph Hume, the Governor, Deputy Governor and eight of the directors of the Bank of England; the Chairman and Deputy-Chairman and five directors of the British East India Company, besides many other eminent bankers and merchants of England. There were 41 investors based in New South Wales which included some of the wealthiest colonists such as the Macarthur family and Phillip Parker King.
The initial million acres selected under the founding charter extended from Port Stephens, embracing the Karuah River valley, to the Gloucester flats, and included all of the coastal region north to the Manning River. The company commenced its operations in 1826 with its first manager Robert Dawson, who stocked the property with flocks of Merino sheep. The wool produced by the company was to be exported to Great Britain to ensure a cheap reliable supply of British wool which at that time was being outpriced by German imports.
However, it soon found that better land was available and, in 1830, a communication from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Governor Darling notified the latter that the company was to be permitted to select land in the interior of the colony, in lieu of an equivalent area at Port Stephens, but retaining mineral rights to the latter. After an inspection in 1833, the company decided on two new areas. These were the Warrah Estate of 101,010 ha (249,600 acres), west of Murrurundi, and Goonoo Goonoo estate of 126,787 ha (313,298 acres), along with the left bank of the Peel River to the south of present-day Tamworth, New South Wales. The township of West Tamworth adjacent to the present city was the original company-owned business centre for the area. In 1856, Arthur Hodgson was appointed general superintendent of the company. The pioneering settlers of the area were ordered to leave and paid little from the company for their properties.
In 1828 the Australian Agricultural Company was given a monopoly on coal mining in NSW, denoting a shift from government control to private enterprise. The Company was granted 2000 acres of land in Newcastle where it operated mines in Newcastle and Hamilton. The mines in the colony of NSW had started their spread from the ocean fringe to west and the Upper Hunter. These mines were worked by convicts and immigrants from England Wales and Scotland.
Although the Australian Agricultural Company was granted a monopoly on coal mining, other mines came into operation into existence before the monopoly was agreement was terminated in 1847. Reverend Lancelot Threlkeld and William Brooks operated mines at Lake Macquarie while John Eales, John Christian and James Brown operated mines at East Maitland. With the Australian Agricultural Company monopoly at an end, mining developed in the majority of suburbs in Newcastle and Lake Macquarie. Mines were established in Cessnock and surrounding Maitland and soon operated throughout the Hunter Valley.
Australian Agricultural Company is today one of Australia's oldest still-operating companies. Its headquarters are today in Brisbane and it has been listed (or relisted) on the Australian Stock Exchange since 2001.
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