Torbane, New South Wales

Later a horse-drawn tramway and a rope-haulage rail track, over the southern end of Mount Airly, toward the railway line, was used.

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.

[10] Shareholders of Australian Kerosene Oil and Mineral Co. voted to voluntarily wind up that company in 1906.

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.

[16][17][18][19][20] From the siding, a steam-hauled standard-gauge private railway ran about three kilometres to the retorts site at Torbane.

[28] In May 1896, a cave on Glenowlan Mountain was where a Spanish man, who spoke no English, John Terossa, better known as the notorious outlaw 'Slippery Jack', was captured by police.

The closure reduced Torbane's population to around 35, mostly families of men seeking work elsewhere.

[33] The Torbane retorts were reopened in 1916, before finally closing in 1918,[34] during the time that COC was under the management of John Fell.

[35] It is likely that this later period of operation was facilitated by government subsidies paid for local oil production in wartime.

[36] Another company, Torquay and Anglesea Oil Co. erected retorts and other structures there in 1925-1926,[37][38] but the proposed operation seems not to have started production.

[39] The dismantling work, including lifting of the private railway line was completed by 1930, [40] the same year in which the Commonwealth Oil Company was deregistered.

[41] During the Second World War, Genders, the owners of the Great Cobar Colliery at Lithgow, erected new shale retorts at Torbane to produce petrol for their own vehicle fleet.

[42] The area, where the mines, retorts and villages were, is east of the Castlereagh Highway and north of Glen Davis Road.

There are ruins at Airly, including of some miners' huts that made use of natural cavities in the rock face and the village's German-style bakery.