Overview

Mine Type	Underground
Status	Closing / Closed
Commodities	Coal (metallurgical & thermal)
Mining Method	Split-shooting Bord-and-pillar
Production Start	...
Snapshot	Wongawilli Colliery is under Care and Maintenance and has not mined any coal resources since the Nebo mine was decommissioned on 30 July 2019. Wollongong Resources notified employees in early February 2024 that it was closing its Wongawilli mine.

Deposit type

• Sedimentary

Summary:

WCL Wongawilli Colliery contains three coal seams of potential economic extraction. These are the Bulli Seam, Wongawilli Seam and Tongarra Seam.

Wollongong Coal Wongawilli Colliery is located in the Southern Coalfield, which is the southern portion of the Permo-Triassic Sydney Basin and contains the Illawarra Coal Measures of Late Permian Age. Overlying the Illawarra Coal Measures are sandstones, shales and mudstones of the Narrabeen Group, which in turn are overlain by the Hawkesbury Sandstone, a massive quartzose sandstone unit. The Wianamatta Group, stratigraphically above the Hawkesbury Sandstone, is the top most unit in the Southern Coalfield.

Bulli Coal
The Bulli Coal is the most extensively worked coal seam in the Southern Coalfield, from outcrop mines on the coastal margins to current inland mines of South 32 and Glencore. The seam produces a hard coking coal usually needing beneficiating to two products (coking and energy) to obtain a marketable low ash coking coal. In the southern areas of the Coalfield the Bulli Seam has been worked extensively in the former Mt Kembla, Tom Thumb and Kemira Collieries and to a lesser extent at Wongawilli Colliery. The seam is poorly developed to the south / southwest in Wongawilli Colliery.

Wongawilli Coal
The Wongawilli Coal is generally about 9 to 11m thick across the Coalfield and consists of interbedded bands of (usually) kaolinitic brown mudstone (with occasional thin pyrite or siderite lenses) and coal plies. In the southern part of the Coalfield the lower section of the seam is economically mined but deterioration from thickening and increasing numbers of stone bands in the working section occurs northward in the Coalfield. The interval between the Bulli Coal and the Wongawilli Coal has an average of around 23m in the Wongawilli lease area.

Tongarra Seam
Occurs from about 16m below the American Creek Seam and has a potential economic mining section which is restricted to the upper split. The Tongarra Seam consists mainly of carbonaceous shale and mudstone bands with thin coaly plies and averages about 6.5m in thickness. In the southern part of the coalfield the Tongarra Seam has two splits, separated by shale and/or sandstone. The upper split varies in thickness from 0.94m to 3.58m and consists mainly of coal and coaly plies separated by carbonaceous shale and mudstone bands. The lower split is consistently thinner; varying from 0.15m to 0.89m but usually contains proportionally more coal plies than the upper split. The seam was mined in the Huntley and Avondale Collieries which have both closed.

Mining Methods

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Comminution

Crushers and Mills

Processing

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Production

Personnel

Job Title	Name	Profile	Ref. Date
.......................	.......................		Sep 9, 2024