The entire village of Kembla Heights is a heritage conservation area under the Wollongong City Council Development Control Plan "Kembla Heights is the most intact mining village in the Wollongong Local Government Area with its simple, consistent late Victorian and early Federation period cottages".

Kembla Heights is within Dharawal country linking Mt Kemba (the men's mountain) to Mt Keira (the women's mountain) and west to the Cordeaux River Valley that formed a travelling route for Aboriginal people connecting the coast areas to the inland Bargo area.

Europeans began occupying the landscape for agriculture from the 1850s forming a rural collection of farms associated with the settlement known as American Creek.

The initial blast killed some instantly, but the majority died from Carbon monoxide poisoning which penetrated the tunnels from the incomplete combustion of fuel.

[9][10] Windy Gully cemetery was created on a half acre of company land to receive the bodies of the victims of the Mt Kembla Mine Disaster of 1902.