Kurri Kurri's story, through its wiring
Planned from day one
Proclaimed on 25 October 1902, the town served the Stanford Merthyr and Pelaw Main collieries and is described as the first town in Australia fully planned before anything was built.
Its own power station
The Richmond Main Colliery power station supplied Kurri Kurri and nearby districts, and kept running for some years after the mine closed in 1967, until the district joined the main grid.
Industry came and went
The aluminium smelter ran from 1969 to 2012.
Who lives here now
At the 2021 Census, 83.0% of homes were separate houses, and ownership split almost evenly: 33.7% rented, 33.9% mortgaged and 29.5% owned outright.
New lines on the way
Ausgrid's renewable energy zone works rebuild about 85 km of sub-transmission lines from Kurri Kurri to Muswellbrook, with commissioning planned for mid 2028.
What an old Kurri Kurri cottage usually needs
Small miners' cottages from the town's first decades have been rewired by different people at different times. That's why an electrician will often start with the switchboard and a test of every circuit before quoting the job you actually rang about.
If the board is mounted on a black or dark brown panel made before 1987, it may contain asbestos. NSW says some old fuses on those boards, including Federal fuses, can have friable asbestos inside the carrier, which only a Class A licensed removalist can deal with.
A third of homes are rented, so landlords should know that any electrical fault in a NSW rental is an urgent repair.
What's yours to do, and what isn't
You can
- Reset a tripped safety switch once. If it trips again, leave it off and call an electrician.
- Unplug appliances one at a time to find one that's causing trips.
- Keep the space in front of the meter box clear.
Leave to a licensed electrician
- Any work on the switchboard or meter box.
- Rewiring or adding circuits in an old cottage.
- Dealing with fuses on an old backing board.
What we would do with a miner's cottage
Ask for a full safety check and a written list of what's original, what's been updated and what's unsafe. Fix the board and safety switches first. Extra power points and new lights are simpler once that's done.
Want a specialist to sort it?
Tell us the job and your postcode. We match the licence-checked local electrician who does this kind of work, and they call you. No ring-around, and your number goes to them alone.