Coke kilns

Coke Kilns, Newnes Shale-Oil Works, Wollemi National Park

There is a big collection coke ovens (the remains of 90 are visible). These are the inner shell of an original rectangular bench. Locally mined coal was fed into these ovens and turned into coke. Coke was used to fuel the Newnes boiler plant and shale retorts. It was also exported to the Lithgow iron works and the Cobar copper smelter.

Words to walk with:
From To Working Men by Walt Whitman
House-building, measuring, sawing the boards;

Blacksmithing, glass-blowing, nail-making, coopering, tin-roofing, shingle- dressing,

Ship-joining, dock-building, fish-curing, ferrying, flagging of side-walks by flaggers,

The pump, the pile-driver, the great derrick, the coal-kiln and brick-kiln,

Coal-mines, and all that is down there,--the lamps in the darkness, echoes, songs, what meditations, what vast native thoughts looking through smutched faces,

Ironworks, forge-fires in the mountains, or by the river-banks--men around feeling the melt with huge crowbars--lumps of ore, the due combining of ore, limestone, coal--the blast-furnace and the puddling-furnace, the loup-lump at the bottom of the melt at last--the rolling-mill, the stumpy bars of pig-iron, the strong, clean shaped T-rail for railroads;

Oilworks, silkworks, white-lead-works, the sugar-house, steam-saws, the great mills and factories;