Between 1880 and 1883 Robert Henry Reynolds, a land developer and general wheeler-dealer from Sydney, purchased under Mining Conditional Purchase (M.C.P.) several lots of land near Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia, underneath which he believed was mineable coal, and which he hoped could be subdivided and sold to become building blocks. By 1885 he had secured the land and he and 6 others put together a syndicate to open up the “Lower Coal Seam” between Leura and Wentworth Falls in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales to be known as the Gladstone Colliery.