LYSTERFIELD QUARRIES Jack Smith Remembers

In presenting Jack's story the Rowville-Lysterfield Community News also warmly acknowledges the generous sponsorship provided by Boral to bring the history articles to our readers each month.

Jack Smith has been a quarryman for 40 years and is at present the manager of the Boral Quarry in Wellington Road, Lysterfield, having moved there after 14 years as manager of Boral's large operation at Montrose.

After leaving Dandenong High School with his Intermediate Certificate in 1956 at the age of 14, Jack commenced an apprenticeship as a wood joiner but lost interest after a few months. His father who was the manager of the Bayview Quarry at Narre Warren employed Jack to fill in for a worker who was going to be absent for a fortnight but 40 years later he is still happily working in a career he says "has been good to me". This despite a serious injury in his early years that would have deterred a lesser man.

Jack is a big man and even as a 14 year-old he was strong. "You had to be strong in those days. It was the accepted thing to leave school at 14 and get a job."

He learned the quarrying business literally from the ground up, progressing from wielding a shovel and spalling hammer to driving trucks, front-end loaders and bulldozers. There was no formal training then and safety provisions were poor. While breaking a rock with a spalling hammer (a kind of sledgehammer weighing 10 - 14 pounds) Jack knocked off a chip that flew into his right eye piercing the retina. As a result he lost the sight in that eye but after only a couple of months he returned to quarrying. Jack worked his way up to management level and was in charge at Lysterfield for several years in the late 1970s before his appointment to Montrose.

Quarrying in Lysterfield

According to Jack it is difficult to locate the early records of the quarries but it is believed that the first of them - the most easterly one of the three (Lysterfield Quarry) - was commenced by the Stewart family in 1923. The next quarry along was known as the Wellington Quarry and the most westerly (the one being worked at present) is known in the company as the Dandenong Quarry. Stewarts' Lysterfield Quarry and Dandenong Quarry were bought by Bladin who later amalgamated with Bayview. Albion Reid owned the Wellington Quarry and took over the other two. Finally the three quarries were acquired by Boral. The word Boral is an acronym for Bitumen Oil Refineries of Australia Ltd. Boral is a very large Australian-owned company with its headquarters in Sydney. Boral's operations are diverse but Jack has only ever worked in the company's quarrying division.

The two eastern quarries were closed down many years ago when it was feared that their operation would pollute the Lysterfield Reservoir. Now that Lysterfield Lake is no longer used as a source of water supply, Boral has been given permission to widen Dandenong Quarry which in turn will allow the quarry to be deepened to enable access to the better quality stone that exists at lower depths. There is a direct relationship between the width and the depth of a quarry as the sides must be terraced with a maximum height of 20 metres between each level. The terraces or benches must be wide enough to provide a roadway for trucks as well as a "berm", a space to catch any stone dropping from the level above it.

The widening process will also permit the reduction of the present scar against the skyline. This development will be welcomed by residents whose homes look out onto this vista. The quarry has now been excavated to a depth of 400 feet and drilling to a further 300 feet indicates deposits of excellent quality. However, the quarry will never be excavated to the full extent of these test drillings.

Geological Development of Rowville-Lysterfield

Millions of years ago the area must have been a huge swamp and layer upon layer of mud settled to a great depth. Later, from deep within the earth, molten rock was forced up "cooking" the mud stone and compressing it with incredible pressure. The resulting stone is the one quarried at Lysterfield and it is known as hornsfels. The molten rock cooled to become granite and intrusions of this have been exposed in various places around the district. A good example can be seen on the hill behind the Lysterfield War Memorial. Hornsfels is an excellent stone for asphalt but most of the stone at Lysterfield is used in concrete making. Basalt is considered to be the best stone but all of the deposits in the district have been worked out. Granite is not good for asphalt making and is more difficult to crush than hornsfels.

2,000 tonnes of grade-base hornsfels go through the crushers each day at Lysterfield but up to another 7,000 tonnes of "soft rock" used for land fill is also produced.

Boral has a fifty year lease on the site so, depending on the circumstances of the demand for the stone at the end of the lease, the quarry is likely to be closed in about 2050. The present plan for that time is that it will not be turned into a tip but will be developed with two lakes and linked to both Lysterfield Lake Park and Churchill National Park to create a huge area for public recreation.

Improved equipment and advances in technology have seen the workforce at the quarry reduced to twelve, about one third of what it was many years ago. The blasting procedure now is very sophisticated with between 100 and 150 holes being drilled by a complex machine. ICI delivers the separate components of the explosives and they are mixed on site and pumped into the holes. The blast is controlled by a computer which enables a split second delay between the detonations of each row of explosives. This ensures that noise and vibration are significantly less than in the old days.

Jack recalled that the quarry was often locally referred to as Mason's Quarry many years ago as a very large number of men from the extended Mason family worked there. Jack remembered the names of four of them: Nipper, Titch, Stan and Algy.

Jack's Other Life

Jack was born at Berwick as were his father and grandfather before him. His great-grandfather had set up business in the village as a barber, probably in the 1880s.

Jack's grandfather bought 24 acres in Harkaway in 1928 and the family continues to occupy the property. Jack and his wife Gwenda raised three children there - Angela, Stephen and Andrew. Jack's brother Syd lives next door and he and Jack have shared an interest from boyhood days that consumes most of their free time. Over a period of 40 years they have built up the biggest collection of foreign parrots in Australia. Increasingly, they have specialised in breeding Asiatic parrots, most of which are known as ring-neck parrots. They have become such experts in the breeding and raising of these birds that in 1992 they wrote a book called "Asiatic Parrots of Australia" to assist collectors to successfully raise these foreign species under Australian conditions. Between them Jack and Syd care for the birds in over 200 'flights' (cages 3-4 feet wide and 15-20 feet long).

Jack's interest in birds is found at the quarry too. A pair of peregrine falcons nest on the quarry face and each year their young are banded by a scientist from the Department of Conservation and Environment.

Interviewed by Bryan Power

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