Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

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This black-and-white, silent clip shows a sawmill township in the 1920s. It begins with an intertitle, 'Each mill has a little township of its own’. In the opening shot the camera pans across the township, showing wooden cottages and huts with smoking chimneys. More intertitles follow, 'The bachelors have separate quarters’, 'A strong characteristic of the mountain mill towns is the copious supply of excellent water’ and 'The healthy appetites of the mill workers is provided for at the boarding house which receives its supplies per the timber railway’. The clip includes shots of a cottage with a picket fence, the bachelors’ quarters, the township’s freshwater source, and supplies being delivered to the boarding house.

Educational value points

• The clip shows a sawmill township in the 1920s. Sawmill settlements were usually located in forests near sawmills and were often only accessible by a rough bush railway. Larger settlements sometimes included a school for children and basic recreational facilities built by the workers. After the Second World War, large mills were built outside forests and close to towns in response to the devastating fires that swept through Victorian sawmill settlements in 1939, and to a workforce that increasingly wanted to live in urban communities. This was made possible by improved road transport.

• The sawmill owner provided housing for employees, with the clip showing examples of such housing. The basic huts and cottages were constructed of rough-sawn timber, while the interior walls were lined only with hessian or newspaper. Large wooden chimneys, lined with corrugated iron and stones, served the dual purpose of a fireplace for warmth and a place to cook food. Living conditions were primitive, with no electricity or running water, although most households had vegetable gardens and kept chickens to supplement supplies.

• The settlement was segregated according to marital status. Single men were housed in small huts that were usually situated at some distance from the houses for married couples and families, who were accommodated in larger cottages. The minimum size of the huts for single men was laid down by the Australian Timber Workers Union.

• The clip depicts supplies being unloaded for the boarding house. Some of the larger mill townships had a boarding house that provided meals and short-term accommodation for employees and also doubled as a store. Household supplies were brought from outside and made available through the company store, which was often run on the notorious 'truck’ system, whereby employees received part of their wages in goods or in the form of limited credit from the store.

• In this period, timber railways conveyed timber from forests to bush sawmills, as shown in the clip, and from there to the state rail system. Railways also brought supplies to sawmill townships. Initially horses or bullocks hauled railway wagons, but from the 1870s animals were replaced by steam locomotives. The sleepers and rails were made of local timber, although steel rails were used on the busier sections and then on all lines once locomotives were introduced. By the 1940s road transport had superseded timber railways.

• In highlighting the township’s 'copious supply of excellent water’, the film may be trying to link the town’s position in the mountains with a healthy lifestyle. This in turn suggests that the film was made to recruit workers to the sawmill industry in a period when cities were full of urban slums that had limited access to fresh water. This is reinforced by the intertitle that refers to the 'healthy appetites of the mill workers’.

• By the second half of the 19th century, Australia had a well-established timber industry that supplied a range of markets, both in Australia and overseas. Logs were cut into dimensioned wood at sawmills, and this wood was used in construction and manufacturing, including house framing, joinery, flooring and furniture. Hewn (roughly cut) timber was used to make sleepers, beams and posts. Logs were also split for palings, shingles and fenceposts.

• From the Bush to the Bungalow is an example of an early documentary. In this period, films were silent and black and white. The size and weight of the cameras meant they were generally placed on tripods, and films tended to use long, static takes, such as those in this clip, with few close-ups. Intertitles were used in conjunction with the visual images to tell the story. This film was made to promote the timber industry and the images in the clip are designed to give a positive depiction of life in a mill township.

This clip starts approximately 14 minutes into the documentary.

This black-and-white, silent clip begins with an intertitle, 'Each mill has a little township of its own’. We see shots of the township, followed by further intertitles, 'The bachelors have separate quarters’, 'A strong characteristic of the mountain mill towns is the copious supply of excellent water’ and 'The healthy appetites of the mill workers is provided for at the boarding house which receives its supplies per the timber railway’. The clip includes shots of a cottage, the bachelors’ quarters, the township’s water source, and supplies being delivered to the boarding house.