Windy Gully

Windy Gully

There has been no bigger disaster on land in Australian history; no other local community has had to survive the death in one day of 96 of its young and finest men; and, when combined with the Bulli mine disaster of 23 March 1887 when 81 died, no other Australian region has been so faced with the horror of sudden death as the mining villages of Illawarra. The Kembla disaster is unique in its magnitude.

It is also unique in its memory. No other Australian calamity has been remembered so tenaciously and so faithfully for so long. This memory is 13 years older than Anzac Day. Every year for 100 years the Kembla disaster has been commemorated.
Management ordered the digging of a mass grave in Windy Gully cemetery for the internment of victims. It has been an ongoing scandal over the years that no monument was erected there by the captains of industry, and a source of great satisfaction that on Thursday 1 August 2002 a monument, donated by BHP Billiton, was unveiled as part of the centenary commemoration. It was also good that the place of the mass grave identified, and now marked with four stakes.


				*The Silent Watchers* *Windy Gully*



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