Abandoned buildings that once processed material extracted from the quarry site are located on a flat area at the end of Quarry Road.

The buildings have fallen into disrepair since quarrying operations ceased, yet they add to the story of the site and will likely be adapted for community use.

Other quarrying relics are scattered around the site, such as machinery and fuel tanks.

The memories of Peter Milgate

With the transformation at Hornsby Park progressing, let’s look back at Peter Milgate’s time working at the ‘Quarry’ as it is also known.

Peter Milgate started working at Hornsby Quarry in 1967 when he was 17. At that time the Quarry was owned by Farley & Lewers. Mining had been taking place there since 1905, when it was owned by the Higgins family, and Farley & Lewers made the operation more efficient. A Crusher Plant was constructed at the end of Quarry Road to break up the larger chunks of blue metal into a finer gravel before it was loaded onto trucks.

When Peter started at the Quarry, he quickly found himself driving trucks, working with machinery and learning the skills of the job on the go. He said there were 25 to 30 men working there at the time, with a mix of nationalities including Australian, English, Scottish, Irish, Dutch, German and Italian.

“There were truck drivers, plant operators, drillers, a Crusher operator, weighbridge attendants, fitters, welders, a Quarry manager, foreman and a leading hand,” Peter recalled.

“The primary crusher was a rotary style crusher. Dump trucks would tip material into the ‘boot’ which fed into the primary crusher, then into a smaller, secondary, then through a series of screens before the product was fed onto the stockpile for sale.”

Peter remembered they would do about 27 trips a day from the pit floor to the crusher, with an average of 2,000 tons crushed per day. Blasting needed to be done to break down large masses to make them easier to process by the crusher, but “due to noise and other environmental restrictions, blasting was only permitted three times a month.”

In his time working at the Crusher Plant, Peter remembers darker times, with some accidents occurring at the site. There were also tough times during extremely wet weather when he had to shovel spillage under the crusher when the pit was flooded. Overall, he has fond memories of his time working there.

Peter left the Crusher Plant in 1978, after a couple of stints working alongside his father, Phil and his brother, Greg. He still resides in Hornsby Shire today.

To explore more of the history of Hornsby Shire, scan the QR code or visit hornsbyshire.recollect.net.au