Members of the community, mineworkers, unionists, politicians, industry representatives and family members came together on September 14 at the Jim Commerford Memorial Wall to pay their respects to those killed on the district’s coalfields at the Northern Mining and NSW Energy District’s 28th Annual Memorial Day Service.
Sadly, a new name appears on the black marble wall amongst the 1793 already engraved, that of Craig Hugo.
Craig was a contractor who fell into a decommissioned mine shaft at the Austar Coal Mine in Cessnock on September 17, 2024.
Family and friends attended the service and were presented with a miners lamp in his memory.
It was a gift Joy Hugo said she would greatly treasure.
MEU General President Tony Maher gave the keynote address and offered sincere condolences to the Hugo family, saying his death had a devastating effect on his loved ones and workmates.
He said it was a sobering reminder of the dangerous environment of coal production.
“The wall before us represents the cumulative history of hundreds of years of coal mining in the Hunter. It tells the story of our region an industry from early colonial settlement and the exploitation of convict labour, through the Federation of Australia and into the modern era. It tells this story via the workers who were killed at work in our dangerous yet vital industry,” Tony said.
“Just as with Craig, each name on this wall represents a great tragedy – a spouse, parent, child or sibling who never returned home at the end of their shift. Their loss reverberates through the community and across generations, impacting on countless others in their absence.
“The age range of the deceased, from eight to 80, reveal an industry unrestrained by concerns about health and safety. The scale and frequency of multi-person fatalities is also striking, particularly when you take in to account the much smaller and tightly knit coal community of the time. They betray the perilous nature of the work, wherein miners were taking their lives into their own hands in a way that would be incomprehensible to us today.
“However, the wall also shows the progression in the fight to eliminate workplace fatalities from the very beginning up until today. The very first miners unions in Australia formed right here in the Hunter, ad-hoc arrangements springing up around individual pits, eventually morphing into the Lodge structure at the heart of our Union today.
“We must recognise that the greatest improvements to the safety of our mines have been in response to some of the lowest moments of our industry’s history. The MEU has fought hard to ensure that every name on this wall results in changes on the ground, through agitation, education and legislation.”
