Torbane was a privately-owned village lying within the area now known as Capertee, in the Local Government Area of the City of Lithgow, within the Central West region of New South Wales, Australia. There was also another village, Airly, nearby. Both villages were associated with the mining of oil shale. The mine associated with Torbane was known as the New Hartley Mine. and that associated with Airly was known as the Genowlan Mine. There were retorts that produced crude shale oil at Torbane. Both Torbane and Airly are now ghost towns.
History
Aboriginal presence
The area lies within the traditional lands of Wiradjuri people. There are Aboriginal heritage sites in the area.
Mining, oil production, and mining villages
Torbane takes its name from Torbane Hill in Bathgate, Scotland, and shares a similar etymology with Torbanite, a type of oil shale that is found there. It was the mining of oil shale that first led to the establishment of the villages of Tobane and Airly. The area is dominated by two mountains, actually mesas, Mount Airly and Genowlan Mountain, that rise from the broad floor of the Capertee Valley. Between the two is the Airly Gap. The mining was mainly on the eastern side of Airly Mountain, the western side of Airly Gap. The village of Torbane was on the western side of Airly Mountain, whereas the village of Airly was to its east. Airly and Mount Airly are supposed to have been named after Airlie Castle in Scotland.
Prospectors found workable deposits of oil shale and took out leases on the eastern side of Mount Airly, but apparently lacked finance and the leases were cancelled.The first mining of oil shale began in 1883, when a German syndicate, The Genowlan Shale Company, took up the leases and began to send the highest grade shale to Germany, for enrichment of town gas. The village of Airly developed as a result. The shale was hauled in drays to the railway at Capertee. Later a horse-drawn tramway and a rope-haulage rail track, over the southern end of Mount Airly, toward the railway line, was used.
A second mine developed to the north, with a separate rope-haulage line over the northern end of Mount Airly to a site near where the village of Torbane developed. This second mine was originally known as 'King's Mine'; it became known as the 'New Hartley Mine' when it was purchased by the New South Wales Shale and Oil Company, operator of the shale oil mines at Hartley Vale, in 1896. Forty vertical retorts and other structures were erected in 1900. Crude oil produced in the retorts was sold to the Australian Gas Light Co, for gas enrichment, but was also railed to the company's existing shale oil refinery at Hartley Vale, for further processing by fractional distillation. The retorts required coal as fuel, and this was obtained from the Wongawilli coal seam, which also outcropped at Mount Airly. Later, a tunnel, cut into the coal seam and passing right through the mountain, was used to accommodate the rope-haulage tramway, replacing the steep route over the mountain.
In the meantime, by 1903, the Glenowlan mine had been leased to the Australian Shale Syndicate and was being mined by the Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Company, operator of the old Joadja works, for the payment a royalty fee on each ton mined. The two mines—New Hartley and Genowlan—were mining the same seam of oil shale, and a dispute arose, which was won by New South Wales Shale and Oil Company. By mid 1904, A.K.O. & M. operations at the Genowlan mine had ceased. Shareholders of Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Co. voted to voluntarily wind up that company in 1906. The leases held by the Australian Shale Syndicate were sold to the British Australian Oil Company in 1910, and that company operated a mine at Airly, for some years thereafter, to supply the Torbane retorts. In April 1906, the assets of the New South Wales Shale and Oil Company were bought by the Commonwealth Oil Corporation. In 1908, it erected 32 new vertical retorts at Torbane, built to a Scottish design, the Pumpherson retort, while continuing to operate the 40 existing retorts.
There was a siding and railway station, on the Gwarbegar line, named Torbane, from which crude oil for refining and oil shale were dispatched. The siding opened in 1897, followed by the station (a platform and waiting shed), in 1900, which was enlarged in 1912. It closed in 1974. The station was located a little to the south of where the turn out for the rail loading loop of the Airly Mine is now. From the siding, a steam-hauled standard-gauge private railway ran about three kilometres to the retorts site at Torbane. Two locomotives were used on the branch line, ex-NSWGR 69x and 360x.