23Working in Cessnock
Air conditioning in Cessnock 2325
Cessnock's July nights average 4.3° and its January afternoons 30.4°, so a system here works hard at both ends of the year, often inside a cottage a miner built long before anyone pictured one.
Cessnock grew out of the coalfields. Geologist Edgeworth David's survey of the Greta coal seam in the late 1880s set off the local mining industry, and the South Maitland coalfields filled the district with workers between 1903 and 1923. Kurri Kurri, 14 km east of Cessnock, was founded in 1902 to serve the collieries and was one of Australia's first fully planned towns, and its streets still hold many small miners' cottages. The typical one is a modest rectangle with a simple gable roof, weatherboard walls, a brick chimney on the outside and a posted veranda, and most were built by the miners themselves. The Bureau of Meteorology's Cessnock Airport station, with records back to 1968, averages a January maximum of 30.4°C and a July minimum of 4.3°C. At Nobbys on the coast the same months average 25.6°C and 8.5°C. The Hunter Valley around Cessnock is Australia's oldest wine region, with about 1,800 hectares under vine, mostly in Pokolbin, Mount View and Allandale.