manager Robert Dawson, who stocked the property with flocks of Merino sheep. The wool produced by the company was to be exported to Great Britain to ensure a cheap reliable supply of British wool which at that time was being outpriced by German imports. However, it soon found that better land was available and, in 1830, a communication from the Secretary of State for the Colonies to Governor Darling notified the latter that the company was to be permitted to select land in the interior of the colony, in lieu of an equivalent area at Port Stephens, but retaining mineral rights to the latter. After an inspection in 1833, the company decided on two new areas. These were the Warrah Estate of , west of Murrurundi, and Goonoo Goonoo estate of , along with the left bank of the Peel River to the south of present-day Tamworth, New South Wales. The township of West Tamworth adjacent to the present city was the original company-owned business centre for the area. In 1856, Arthur Hodgson was appointed general superintendent of the company. The pioneering settlers of the area were ordered to leave and paid little from the company for their properties. Convicts soon became the companies largest type of employee, although those who had served a sentence, aborigines and indentured servants on seven-year contracts were also employed with the latter making up the bulk of initial employees. The AACo attempted to exploit convict labour to generate a profit. When the supply of convicts was facing potential limits in the mid-1830s, company directors attempted to source convicts from the city-state of Hamburg. It is one of Australia's oldest still-operating companies. Its headquarters are today in Brisbane and it has been listed (or relisted) on the Australian Stock Exchange since 2001. Coal The colonial government was not able to manage coal production efficiently. On 3 May 1833 the company received land grants at Newcastle totaling plus a 31-year monopoly on that town's coal traffic. The company became the largest exporter of coal from Newcastle for many decades. They also bought of freehold and of leasehold land on the South Maitland coalfields at Weston, near Kurri Kurri, where they built the Hebburn Colliery. Because of drought and depression during the 1840s mining created more profit than wool production did. By December 1903 the pit was sending a fully loaded train away each day. By 1912,