"Coalcliff - Paradise Found"

For 100 years, the superbly scenic ocean-side community of Coalcliff, just south from Sydney, has been family home and workplace to about 1000 men who worked underground in Coalcliff Colliery or were skilled cokeworkers operating the coke oven battery of the Illawarra Coke Company producing high grade metallurgical coke for industry. Coalcliff had long been the site of the first discovery of coal in Australia, but the "century of coal and coke" which later followed has just suddenly ended and the lovely serene village of Coalcliff is now entering a new life of exclusive residential housing, with a beautiful beach, a superb tidal rock pool for safe swimming, a delightful park with children's play equipment overlooking the beach and pool, great recreational fishing and a lovely mild and sunny climate, plus fast road and rail access to capital city Sydney to the north and to the large provincial city of Wollongong to the south and with a backdrop of beautiful scenic cliffs with a verdant plateau above. Coalcliff has always been a wonderful paradise just waiting to be more fully appreciated and, now, it IS!!
This archival video compiles a selection of ABC national radio interviews with historically significant film and tape captured during Coalcliff's first hundred years of industrial success and its subsequent development into the paradise it has now fully become. Ah!! Memories!!