Quarry Industries share certificates.     Quarry Industries was the jewel in South Australia's quarrying crown, and Boral had never been very strong in quarrying or concrete in that state. Griffin had made an abortive offer for Quarry Industries in 1971-72. Boral had been severely rebuffed, receiving only 3 per cent acceptances and at the time Boral had not been at all popular with Quarry Industries. In 1980 Neal received a telephone call from Bruce Macklin, one of Boral's non-executive directors, saying he understood that Quarry Industries felt threatened by Pioneer, Bell Basic Industries or BMI, or a combination of them all. Macklin felt that it was looking for a 'Big Brother'. During the Christmas break of 1980, Neal went to Adelaide and met Don Laidlaw, who had been appointed chairman of Quarry Industries in 1979, to discuss the situation. Laidlaw had noticed that McMahon Constructions, a small public company in civil contracting, had been steadily purchasing Quarry Industries shares for about twelve months and had acquired about 10 per cent of the company. Laidlaw suspected it was acting for somebody else, because he didn't believe that McMahon was large enough to be interested itself. It turned out that the shares had been pledged to Robert Holmes a Court's Bell Basic Industries. Laidlaw had suspected that Holmes a Court was interested because, having recently acquired Bell Basic Industries in Western Australia, he was keen to expand into the eastern states in quarrying and concrete. During early 1980, Laidlaw had ascertained that Pioneer Concrete had also been buying up Quarry Industries shares. At that initial meeting Laidlaw asked Neal whether Boral would be prepared to buy 20 per cent of Quarry Industries to stave off Bell Basic Industries and Pioneer. Neal said, 'No, but if you would be prepared to sell 51 per cent of the company, I will talk to my chairman.' The upshot was that Boral made a takeover offer for Quarry Industries that was hotly contested by both Bell and Pioneer. Because of the high-profile personalities involved, the takeover received a lot of media coverage. Holmes a Court brought an action in the South Australian Supreme Court to try to stop Quarry Industries transferring shares to Boral. This was thrown out of court and Boral had 78 per cent of the company on the last day of the share offer. Pioneer then bought Bell Basic Industries' shares in Quarry Industries. Laidlaw believed Pioneer still wanted to buy the company. Not wanting to be seen to be competing against Boral directly, Sir Tristan Antico, Pioneer's chief executive, had come to an arrangement with Holmes a Court. Antico was confident in any event that Boral would buy up Pioneer's 20 per cent holding to tidy up the acquisition. Neal discussed this prospect with Laidlaw, who advised him not to bother, as he was satisfied that Quarry Industries could live quite happily with Pioneer as a minority shareholder. For a number of years, Antico, to show his annoyance at this, would get two Pioneer executives to nominate for the Quarry Industries board; the Boral representatives always voted against them. Boral had to handle this situation with some care because it had restricted voting rights in Quarry Industries' Articles of Association. The Boral representatives and Pioneer nominees would travel to Adelaide for the Annual General Meeting on the same plane, have lunch together, attend the meeting at which Boral would vote against the election of the Pioneer executives. Then they'd all get in a car and inspect the quarries before taking a plane back to Sydney - as Laidlaw comments, 'Having a day in the country to satisfy Sir Tristan Antico that they were looking after his interests'. It was not until Antico retired that Pioneer finally sold its shareholding in Quarry Industries to Boral in 1994.       Stonyfell Quarry One of the businesses Boral now owned, once Quarry Industries had been acquired, was Stonyfell Quarry in the Adelaide Hills. Establishing the date of the opening of the quarry is no easy task. The Record of Mines summary card from the Department of Mines states that it was opened in 1837 by James Edlin to supply slate and building stone. This would have been on a portion of the land now known as Stonyfell Quarry as various sections of land were used for different purposes over the years. These enterprises began independently and ad hoc, and often went undocumented. There are also several conflicting definitions of the area of Stonyfell Quarry, when differing names and dates surface.   The trolleys used in the early days at Stonyfell quarry, circa 1900.         In 1858, Henry Clark purchased a section of what is now part of the Boral quarry. He and his fiancé Annie Martin named the property Stonyfell, after the slopes in England called 'fells'. Here he planted the original Stonyfell vineyard. The principal part of the vineyard was planted in 1860, with 20 acres of Black Portugal grapes, and two and a half acres of muscatels. In 1880 the quarry was worked by hand-mining methods. Secondary breaking of the stone was also done by hand with spalling hammers. In 1881, Henry Dunstan, who by that time owned both the quarry and the vineyard, installed a steam-driven Hope Stone Breaker, and for the first time steam was used in South Australia for crushing stone. This would have gone some way to help meet local demand for metal screenings - aggregate used as a base in tar paving (for council footpaths), roads and concreting. The establishment of the Dunstan Tar Paving and Road Metal Depot at Kensington Park was equally innovative and timely, being ideally placed for servicing the roads of Adelaide, particularly the eastern suburbs. It was envisaged that the Hope Stone Breaker would relieve some of the burden of breaking all the stone by hand. However, it did not relieve the men's workload. Production increased with the aid of the crusher, but no one escaped the noise, the continuous knapping (breaking up) of the larger stones, the loading by hand or the dust, heat and rain. These were long days. The men would rise early, don their work clothes and boots (with metal protective plates), and set forth on foot with lunch bags from their small houses in the surrounding suburbs of Leabrook, Kensington Park and Magill. They would arrive at the Dunstan sheds and stables, harness the draught horses to wagons and move up to begin their day at the ochre rock face.   Quarrymen and Quarry Industries truck at Stonyfell quarry, circa 1920.         Quarrying was a dangerous business. A young Canadian, Thomas Keays, who later became an overseer at the quarry, wrote in a letter to his family in 1886: 'Having just got over the Colonial Eye Blight, I received a blow with a stone from the crusher'. In a letter a few months later, he mentions having passed the St John's Ambulance test, valuable knowledge to have in his line of work. Keays also complained of asthma symptoms which later claimed his life. Silicosis is a well-recognised disease resulting from exposure to dusts containing silica or quartz. Modern methods of dust control and employee protection have reduced exposure to such an extent that occurrence of this disease is now rare. Don Harris, whose father worked at Stonyfell, remembers visiting the quarry with his family and friends in a horse and cart in the 1910s. The greatest excitement of all was to be sped up the quarry slope in one of the empty trolleys as another one, fully laden with stones, came hurtling toward him, passing at a spur halfway, and then continuing down to the giant steel jaws of the crusher below. In 1939, Stonyfell Quarry amalgamated with the other Adelaide Hills quarries to become part of Quarry Industries. Stonyfell vineyard was sold to Penfolds Wines which still operates the vineyard today.           A view across the vineyard to Stonyfell quarry from the Observer 1921.     »»