LAST month, nay last year, a statue was unveiled in Kurri Kurri dedicated to the pit horses of a bygone era.
"A memory of those wild days of coal and the superb combination of man and horse to win the energy source of coal that was shipped all over the world," as described by Col Maybury of Boolaroo.
Mr Maybury sent a photo to the Newcastle Herald showing an old leather tag with the number seven etched in the centre, which his brother had purchased at an auction a few year ago.
"This battered old miners tag could tell a million stories," Mr Maybury said.
"It was the most important piece of mining equipment in the days of contract miners underground. In fact it was immediate dismissal if anyone was found guilty of tampering."
He said another tag purchased by his brother was sold to fund the statue at Kurri, which is why the installation features a number seven tag.
Mr Maybury worked underground at the Aberdare shaft in 1953-54.
"250 metres down in an old iron cage that carried men into the mine and four laden skips up," he said.
"At pit bottom sweating gallopers, young men, pulled the empties from the cage and pushed them up a 20 metre incline to roll down to the clippers."
Once clipped on, "endless steel ropes" would haul the skips some five kilometres into the mine. Reaching "clipping flat" before being "clipped off" and hauled to the contract miners who would fill the skips and attach their tag. Mr Maybury said that each mining pair would fill 20 skips per day and at the end of the fortnight would be payed a "handsome" 100 pounds.
"There, the heroes of the mine, the horses, took over."
Col said the horses were half draught "very stylish", "superbly trained" and controlled mainly by voice commands.
"They were well fed in the underground stables and spent their weekends in the sun and grassy spell paddocks above."
Once the horses carted the full skips back up to "clipping flat", the skips were clipped back on to the endless steel rope and hauled out. They were then disconnected, and handed over to the "down spragger".
"Who eased the skips under gravity and controlled by sprags," Mr Maybury said.
Sprags were short timber poles which the spragger would wedge into the spokes of the cart in order to control the speed.
"So into the cage and up to the surface where they came under the control of the weighman and his counter part the check weighman."
The check weighman, Mr Maybury said, was a union appointee who weighed the coal on a moveable section of rails.
"The weight was credited to the mining pair whose number was on the leather tag attached to the skip. So you can see why the miners tag was so important."
