Waratah lime kiln ruins, Vic

Waratah cemetery, Vic

Waratah lime kilns in 1926

Wool Bay lime kiln ruins, SA

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Before cement became a common building material, lime was widely used for mortar in brick and stone buildings and plaster render. Limestone is calcium carbonate (CaCO3), which is made up from the deposits of seashells or bone from millions of years ago. It can be a soft white substance (chalk) through to a very hard substance (marble). Most commercial limestone deposits are a softish brown rock. Crushed limestone itself has many uses. Limestone is turned into lime (quicklime, or burnt lime) by roasting in a kiln. The chemical produced is calcium oxide (CaO). Quicklime is caustic, requiring careful handling. A further process involves adding water in a process known as hydrating, which produces hydrated, or slaked lime. Hydrated lime is less caustic than quicklime, therefore easier to handle, but is less effective per unit weight than quicklime, therefore less economical.
Lime has been a very important material since ancient times, used in the construction industry for mortar and as an ingredient of whitewash. It is also widely used in the refining of metals, particularly steel making, in agriculture, in the food industry, and in the manufacture of cement. In fact it is one of the most widely used chemicals.
Today lime making is a large industry, requiring immense investments in capital equipment to operate competitively. However even in the 1950's lime kilns employing only a handful of men operated profitably.

Waratah, Vic

It was also used in industry and in agriculture to treat acidic soils. The high quality lime from Walkerville, a tiny settlement on the sandy shores of Waratah Bay in South Gippsland, was some of the most sough after in Victoria. In 1878 mining of limestone began at the end of Waratah Bay from Sandy Point and by 1882 the township of Waratah was well established under the cliffs and looking for all the world like a Cornish village, with access only by sea.
Around the turn of the 20th century, Waratah was one of the busiest places in South Gippsland. The remnants of the burnt-out lime kilns still cling to the cliffs of Walkerville South. Remnants of the township were the limeburners and their families live and the jetty from which the lime was shipped, still remain. In its heyday the Waratah lime industry supported about 80 workers and their families who lived in cottages and were served by a general store, a post office and a coffee palace. A highlight of the Walkerville North-South Link Track is the Walkerville cemetery where the graves of people from early settlers' and lime-burners' families may be seen. Most of the epitaphs on the weather-worn headstones are still legible and tell evocative tales of the people who lived, worked and died in the district.
Built in 1878, the lime burning kilns at Walkerville had solid stone retaining walls constructed to protect the kilns and provide space for bagging. The bagging sheds were originally covered with corrugated iron roofs. An account was written in 1902 describing how men worked here, shovelling burnt lime from the hearth through a brick archway which led to the base of the kiln. "All the fuel had been completely burnt, and the man, each time, drew out a shovelful of lime, and emptied it into a bag fixed on a frame beside him. As each bag was filled, he wheeled it away, and placed it with a heap in another part of the shed."
The four rock and brick kilns at Waratah Bay were built into the cliff face in the shape of an up-turned bottle 2.4 metres in diameter and originally 7 metres tall. The top of the kiln was destroyed in the 1950s when the road to the nearby lookout was constructed. The kiln itself was filled with rubble. Limestone was quarried at the Bluff, 400m north of the kilns along Limeburners track. It was then carted to the top of the kilns by horse-drawn trolleys running on iron rails.
Layers of limestone and firewood cut from nearby forests were stacked in the kiln. As wood supplies dwindled, coal or coke was used. The fuel was lit and burned continuously for several years, with layers of fuel and limestone added at the top. Quicklime (calcium oxide) produced by this controlled burning over 2-3 days, dropped to the bottom of the kiln where it was collected and bagged.
Walkerville had no road access in the early days, so a long jetty was built to enable bags of lime to be transported by ships to Melbourne and other destinations. The line trucks were loaded at the bagging sheds and drawn by horse along the pier tramline. In the course of a morning or afternoon, about 300 bags of lime would be loaded on board the ships that were bound for Melbourne. By 1894, over a million bags of lime had been shipped to markets in Melbourne, Sydney and the Gippsland Lakes. At it's peak, the lime industry supported a town of 500 people. Falling demand and high transport costs eventually killed this industry, and Walkerville died. The lime kilns were closed in 1926. Had the Corinella & Blackwood or another railway actually reached Walkerville, the industry might have lasted much longer. Walkerville is located 188kms south-east of Melbourne.

Wool Bay, SA

The mining and burning of limestone was an important industry to Southern Yorke Peninsula from the late nineteenth century until the 1950s/ limestone was collected, burnt in kilns and shipped to Adelaide where it was used in mortar in the building industry. The Wool Bay Stansbury district became the main supplier of lime for Adelaide's buildings.
The plans for the kiln were brought back from England after World war I. A brief report in the Yorketown "Pioneer" of 28th May 1921 reads: "Wool Bay - the new lime kiln for Miller's Lime Co has been visited by the Directors and is now at work". The kiln was a new design and was intended to burn continuously. But, possibly because the site caused draught problems or perhaps because the original plans altered, it was never burnt successfully.
By July 1908 three lime kilns were operating at the foot of the Wool Bay cliffs. In 1910 three more kilns and a blacksmith's shop were built at the top of the cliff. A small railway line took the trucks full of bags of limestone down to the jetty. Traces of these kilns and the lime-ash discarded from them is still visible today.
The lime industry declined in the 1950s largely due to competition from hydrated lime imported from Melbourne. The kiln remains as a unique piece of architecture, a monument to the early stonemason's craft and a reminder of the time when Wool Bay was an industrial area and its port one of the busiest on Southern Yorke Peninsula.
There were several other lime kilns operating on the Yorke Peninsula area and lime industry was an important part of the Yorke Peninsula. Surface stones were cracked for burning in the kilns which were originally fired by wood. Kilns were established 200 metres north of Coobowie after 1876. There were also two lime kilns which operated on White Hut Road at Corny Point for about 9 years, from 1954. HC Pitt owned the three lime kilns in Stansbury which later grew to nine including a set towards Weaners and another at Paddy's Well. The total capacity of the kilns was 31,000 bags. Other companies to setup kilns included Bridges and Perce Daniell which built kilns until there was a string of kilns in an arc around Stansbury and Wool Bay to Coobowie.

Ipswich lime kiln site, Qld

The limestone in Ipswich was formed during intervals of volcanic activity. Material from the weathering of basalt was deposited in freshwater lakes, which once existed in the Limestone Hill area, and this became limestone. A convict lime kiln at Ipswich is marked in early maps. It was still useable in 1849 when a bricklayer named Edhouse used it to produce lime to build two cottages in East Street. The kiln was located just inside what is today the grounds of 'Claremont' on the edge of the railway embankment. It was probably destroyed when the railway line was built to Brisbane in 1875.
Although we don't know exactly what it looked like, most lime kilns of that era were built on the same basic principal. In England, many simple kilns were constructed on building sites. The typical English kiln was often dug into the ground or into the side of a hill. It was shaped like an inverted cone and was lined with bricks or rock. At the bottom was a grating of loose iron bars. The kiln was loaded with layers of limestone pieces and fuel which would have been wood in the early days. The limestone was burned as the quicklime was formed, it dropped through the grating and was removed through a side tunnel. More limestone and fuel could then be added at the top.
Allan Cunningham said 300-400 baskets of lime were produced at Ipswich in 1828 and sent to Brisbane Town each week. An Ipswich contractor William Hancock built another kiln in 1864 on Limestone Hill near Cunningham's Knoll. This kiln still exists but it is now in ruins and scarcely recognisable.
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Nubeena convict lime kiln, Tas

The largest town on Tasmania's Tasman Peninsula is Nubeena (population 500), on Wedge Bay. Coal used to be mined on the north-west of the peninsula in convict times, and the ruins of the mine, including barracks, convict quarters and the lime kiln, are just north of town.