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The History of Brown Coal

The first recorded discovery of brown coal in the LaTrobe Valley region was in 1873.

Around 1886, Henry Godridge, a Morwell Bridge innkeeper, and William Tulloch, a builder and contractor of Morwell, prospected these outcrops independently. From this activity came the application for a mining lease on which the Great Morwell Coal Mining Company began operating in 1889. Set on the banks of the LaTrobe River, the mining company produced about 2000 tonnes of briquettes. In those early days the new resource could not complete with black coal, and the company was wound up in 1899.

In 1891, the Victorian Government Geologist James Stirling told a Royal Commission that he believed the deposits were the largest in the world. This was not a bad guess considering the little amount of boring done. The LaTrobe Valley's deposits are among the world's greatest concentration of brown coal with 112 000 million tonnes of brown coal been proved. Stirling visited Germany in 1901 and reported the use of brown coal was expanding enormously there. He brought back technical details of briquette manufacture. He saw a vision of the LaTrobe Valley dotted with collieries and factories, and he urged that Victoria's "magnificent beds" be exploited.

Although is was not until the early 1900's, Dr. Hyman Herman, the State Director for Geological Survey, began a broad survey of Victoria for resources of coal for large scale mining. Suitable large seams of coal were found at Anglesea, Bacchus Marsh and the LaTrobe Valley, with the LaTrobe Valley deposits most suitable for mining operations.

The most favourable areas, coal seams ranging in thickness of 60 metres through to 140 metres with an easily removed layer of sand and clay averaging only 15 metres deep were found. Boring at one point found the coal bed, only 27 metres underground to be 270 metres thick!

In the fifty years to 1917, only 120 000 tonnes of brown coal was mined. In the next 60 years, Victoria produced more than 300 million tonnes of coal.

By 1918, Victoria's population was 1.5 million people and manufacturing was increasing, an adequate and uninterrupted supply of electricity was essential. The Victorian Government passed legislation to appoint Commissioners to regulate and investigate the supply of electricity, particularly in the metropolitan Melbourne area, where a shortage of power was imminent.

In 1921, legislation was passed creating "The State Electricity Commission of Victoria (S.E.C.V.)". As a statutory corporation, it had the responsibility to generate and distribute electricity; to own and operate brown coal open cuts and briquette works; and to undertake ancillary functions.

In February 1921, under the watchful eyes of Electricity Commissioners, horse drawn ploughs turned the first sod on the site of the first permanent Yallourn A power station. Then in April 1921, teams of men, horses and drays and later steam shovels began clearing the soil to uncover the coal. Three years and two months later, on June 24, 1924, power began flowing down the transmission lines to Melbourne.

By 1928 this power station had an output of 75 megawatts.

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