Joe Baker Mystery Cache
nighteez: The site has been totally cleared and the container lost
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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This cache is not located at the listed co-ordinates!
The listed co-ordinates are those of Port Kembla No. 4 Blast Furnace built by Australian Iron and Steel in 1958/9.
This is the fourth of a 6 cache series commemorating the Port Kembla Blast Furnaces. The full series will take finders to locations where six historical blast furnaces operated in NSW. These enterprises met with varying degrees of success.
This cache is not located at the listed co-ordinates!
The listed co-ordinates are those of Port Kembla No. 4 Blast Furnace built by Australian Iron and Steel in 1958/9.
This is the fourth of a 6 cache series commemorating the Port Kembla Blast Furnaces. The full series will take finders to locations where six historical blast furnaces operated in NSW. These enterprises met with varying degrees of success.
Blast Furnaces are sometimes known by the name of the person who first lit them. No. 4 Furnace at Port Kembla was first lit on May 28,1959 by Joe Baker a long serving senior foreman.
The cost for building this furnace was £10 million. At the time of its construction it was the largest blast furnace in the British Empire and was also known as ‘The Colossus of Kembla’.
In September 1962 No. 4 Blast Furnace broke the monthly production
world record with 92,680 tons produced compared to the 92,124
tons set by Bethlehem Steel Corporation, Pennsylvania, in May of
the same year. This was felt a very significant achievement as the record
was broken in September, a 30 day month, compared to May, a 31 day month.
September 30 was also a significant day, when the furnace and its operating team broke the daily British Commonwealth record with 3,393 tons produced.
The combined production of all 6 furnaces that have operated at Port Kembla has quite recently passed the 200,000,000 tonnes mark.
No4 Furnace’s contribution was 33,923,474 tonnes produced over 13122 operating days in 6 campaigns. The furnace last operated in 1996 – being shut down just days before the commissioning of No6 Blast furnace.
The furnace has since been demolished – only the hot blast stove shells remain.
I had intended that to find this cache, your journey would take you to Lithgow – the site of three historical blast furnaces. However, only those interested in the history need travel that far.
The first furnace at Lithgow was the Eskbank furnace blown in by Mr Rutherford in 1878. All traces of the furnace have now been long removed but the site is well documented. The ironworks was bounded by Farmer’s Creek to the north and by the streets now known as Tank St to the east, Read Avenue and Hoskins Avenue to the south. Historic Eskbank House is located nearby at S33 28.616 E 150 09.881 and can provide the interested visitor with a fuller insight.
The Eskbank furnace produced 8764 tons of iron in the years 1878-82. The production rate increased steadily to 4320 tons in 1882 – testament to the increasing abilities of these early ironmakers as they learned their craft. The venture failed to prosper because of the high costs in transporting the products to the Sydney market and because of competition from the Fitz Roy ironworks and its blast furnace at Mittagong. Both enterprises had to compete with cheap imported pig iron that often came from England as ballast on vessels transporting wool and other agricultural products to the factories and markets of England.
Accordingly, Rutherford decided to bring his blast furnace venture to an end in 1884. So as “not to be tempted in the future” he not only closed the furnace down but brought two carts of gunpowder and blew it up!
William Sandford bought the still substantial Eskbank ironworks from Rutherford in 1892 but construction of his first blast furnace on the still existant Lithgow site did not commence until 1906. The furnace blew in 1907.This was a time of rapid development in blast furnace engineering. Although the furnace was capable of producing 1,200 tons per week, it was already outmoded in design at the time of its construction. Sandford got into serious financial difficulties in late 1907 and the works passed to the Hoskins brothers in 1908. The new owners had ongoing success and a second, larger furnace of similar design was added in 1913. The years 1911-1914 saw major industrial disputes bit the furnaces and steelworks continued to operate until 1927. During those years, the relatively poor quality local ores became depleted and increasing amounts of coke were sourced from Newcastle and the Illawarra. Eventually the Hoskins moved their operations to Port Kembla to take advantage of market proximity, local coking coals, a port and the availability of much richer ores now mined from other parts of the country.
In every sense, the Lithgow furnaces were the most successful of the continent’s early blast furnace ventures and are the true forerunners of the six furnaces that have since flourished at Port Kembla.
To explore the history of the Lithgow blast furnaces and much more, interested readers are referred to the excellent publication “Furnace Fire and Forge” by Bob McKillop.
For those wanting to visit the historic Lithgow site, a good starting point for your visit is at S33 28.516 E 150 10.242.
To find the coordinates of the final cache location:
Let X = the average daily production (in tonnes) of No 4 Blast Furnace rounded down
ABC = (X + 303 )/4
Let Y = the average daily tonnage produced in September 1962 (rounded down)
DEF = Y - 3009
Ground Zero can be found at:
S 34 27.ABC
E 150 52.DEF
Finders should note the three digits on the back of the small photograph of the Hoskins’ Lithgow furnaces which is in the cache. These provide digits for the east coordinates of the cache commemorating No 6 Blast Furnace, "Jerry".
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
Ab uvagf