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The Impact of DispossessionRailway Tents, 14lb Hammers and Assimilation

Employment in the railways was a major factor in bringing Aboriginal people to the Upper Hunter Valley and places such as Scone, Aberdeen and Muswellbrook were once the scene of numerous tents sited along the railway tracks. One Aboriginal man recalls that while there was discrimination against his people in the railways there was equal pay. He states:

We camped near Scone, I was 17 I suppose and Old Blue Stewart was the ganger. There was still a stigma about Aboriginal people and we were fighting for just basic individual rights. In the railways you were treated equal as long as you were prepared to sweat it out with others.

Here Aboriginal men worked long hard days on the end of 14lb hammers as labourers and fetters. The following photo was taken at Scone and shows Aboriginal men performing the arduous task of laying railway sleepers following the Great Flood of 1955.

Aboriginal men often lived with their families in the tents, which were hired from the Railway Department for around 5 shillings a week with optional extras such as wooden planks which served as floors and larger two room tents. There was no electricity and kerosene lanterns provided light at night, while food was cooked on fires. Despite employment in the white world Aboriginal people maintained a cultural sense of place and identity:

My father took Rob and I around Murrurundi, Bob Smith Mountain (named after my grandfather) and the Burning Mountain, before it became a tourist attraction, and the significance it meant to our people, my father and grandfather. And old grandfather Archibald who spoke seven languages and travelled through the Upper Hunter Valley in his younger days, took us and showed us where our people camped.

pp72-73

Source:
Wannin Thanbarran
A History of Aboriginal and European Contact in Muswellbrook and the Upper Hunter Valley
Greg Blyton, Deirdre Heitmeyer and John Maynard
Umulliko Centre for Indigenous Higher Education
The University of Newcaste
A project of the Muswellbrook Shire Council Aboriginal Reconciliation Committee