Clifton is a village on the coast of

New South Wales New South Wales (commonly abbreviated as NSW) is a States and territories of Australia, state on the Eastern states of Australia, east coast of :Australia. It borders Queensland to the north, Victoria (state), Victoria to the south, and South ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

, between

Sydney Sydney is the capital city of the States and territories of Australia, state of New South Wales and the List of cities in Australia by population, most populous city in Australia. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Syd ...

and

Wollongong Wollongong ( ; Dharawal: ''Woolyungah'') is a city located in the Illawarra region of New South Wales, Australia. The name is believed to originate from the Dharawal language, meaning either 'five islands/clouds', 'ground near water' or 'sound ...

. Along with nearby Coalcliff, the village began life as a

coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

-mining centre. It is situated on a narrow area between the sea and the

Illawarra escarpment The Illawarra escarpment, or officially the Illawarra Range, is the fold-created cliffs and plateau-eroded outcrop mountain range west of the Illawarra coastal plain south of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. The range enclose ...

. The electrified South Coast railway line passes through, but the station at Clifton was closed in 1915. It reopened on 4 July 1934 and closed for the last time on 27 November 1983, at the time of double tracking and electrification. The Sea Cliff Bridge, opened in 2005, restored the connection between Clifton and Coalcliff, broken by frequent rock falls onto this section of the Lawrence Hargrave Drive. The

bridge A bridge is a structure built to Span (engineering), span a physical obstacle (such as a body of water, valley, road, or railway) without blocking the path underneath. It is constructed for the purpose of providing passage over the obstacle, whi ...

lies parallel to the former "coal cliffs" and offers scenic views of the cliffs, the sea, and surrounding coastline.

History

In 1797, survivors of the ''Sydney Cove'' discovered coal in the 'Coal Cliffs'. Clifton was created with the construction of the Coal Cliff Colliery in 1877. It was situated on the southern end of the Stanwell Park Estate owned by surveyor

Sir Thomas Mitchell Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell (15 June 1792 – 5 October 1855), often called Major Mitchell, was a Scottish surveyor and explorer of Southeastern Australia. He was born in Scotland and served in the British Army during the Peninsular War. I ...

. A number of weatherboard

cottage A cottage, during Feudalism in England, England's feudal period, was the holding by a cottager (known as a cotter or ''bordar'') of a small house with enough garden to feed a family and in return for the cottage, the cottager had to provide ...

s with

galvanised Galvanization ( also spelled galvanisation) is the process of applying a protective zinc coating to steel or iron, to prevent rusting. The most common method is hot-dip galvanizing, in which the parts are coated by submerging them in a bath o ...

iron Iron is a chemical element; it has symbol Fe () and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, forming much of Earth's o ...

roofs had been built. The mine officially opened in 1878. In 1880, the School of Arts was established. Thomas Hale, the first mine manager, constructed a jetty out to sea and a slide down the cliff. This took coal to Hilda and Herga, two steam colliers built in

Glasgow Glasgow is the Cities of Scotland, most populous city in Scotland, located on the banks of the River Clyde in Strathclyde, west central Scotland. It is the List of cities in the United Kingdom, third-most-populous city in the United Kingdom ...

. Hilda struck a reef near Port Hacking in 1893. In 1878 the mine employed 73 men. By 1884 there were 150 miners, and coal production was 51,500 tons annually. Most of the miners lived, with their families, in Clifton. There was a post/telegraph office, school, (opened 1879), and James Farraher's Clifton Inn and in 1884 the press reported near 1000 residents, a large proportion of which worked at the mines. In 1879 a mail service to Bulli was established. The mine closed after storms destroyed the jetty and job losses crippled the village. In 1887 the railway line had reached Clifton from

. Before this time four-horse coaches would travel between Wollongong and Clifton, starting from Wollongong at 5 am. In 1884 an

Anglican Anglicanism, also known as Episcopalianism in some countries, is a Western Christianity, Western Christian tradition which developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the ...

and a

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Church were built. A public hall was built in 1885. In 1887 the railway between

and Clifton was opened. In 1890 the Coal Cliff Coal and Land Company Ltd took over the colliery. In 1893 the Clifton School was opened. In 1910 the miners at the Coal Cliff Colliery went on strike for ten months. Also in 1910 the school of arts building was built. The strikers supplied some of the required labour for this project. In 1919 additions were made to the Catholic Church and it was blessed in a

ceremony A ceremony (, ) is a unified ritualistic event with a purpose, usually consisting of a number of artistic components, performed on a special occasion. The word may be of Etruscan language, Etruscan origin, via the Latin . Religious and civil ...

on the first of March. From 8 to 10 May 1972, about sixty miners took over the mine at South Clifton in protest of its closure on May 5, ensuring the mine was reopened for a further period; all workers were returned to the payroll and promised work at other mines after the closure. The Imperial Hotel was established 1884 by Allan Broadhead as a miners Pub. It closed in November 2002 after the collapse of Lawrence Hargrave Drive (now replaced by the Sea Cliff Bridge). It has now been purchased and restored by Shellharbour Workers Club.

References

External links

* {{Wollongong suburbs Suburbs of Wollongong