Broken Hill: rethinking the significance of the material culture and intangible heritage of the Australian labour movement

Abstract

Taking Broken Hill as an exemplar of Australian, indeed global, labour heritage, this article, analyses the survival of labour heritage and union practices in the town that continues to the present. It examines the interpretation of successive layers of industrial and labour history as a means of revealing a culturally dynamic and enduring community with close connections to its built heritage. The authors challenge the application of two-dimensional and static models of heritage interpretations too often applied to contested heritage sites. The authors argue that Broken Hill is a community whose determined social and industrial character and distinct built environment has transcended changing patterns of investment and economic decline.

Keywords:

• labour heritage
• history and memory
• unionism

Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank Robert Kelly and Antoinette Dillon for permission to reproduce images, the Barrier Industrial Council for access to their archival collections relating to mining, engineering and construction unions and also staff at the Charles Rasp Memorial Library, Broken Hill for their support during the Monash University National Centre for Australian Studies Outback Oration public lecture series.