Australian
Screen

an NFSA website

Island Fettlers (2006)

play May contain names, images or voices of deceased Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people
Email a link to this page
To:
CC:
Subject:
Body:
clip Heat of the Pilbara – 'white with salt' education content clip 2

Original classification rating: G. This clip chosen to be G

Clip description

Blue skies, as the camera pans down, the frame rests on 'Wickham, Western Australia’. A Torres Strait man recalls how he came to work on the railway and stayed. As he describes his experiences we see film of black and white men working on the railway and relaxing in between work, with a song. He tells of how their bodies would turn white from the salt and of his regrets for not returning home. It’s too late now, he says.

Curator’s notes

In 1965, the building of a railway from Dampier to Tom Price began. The work on the Pilbara brought men from all different cultural backgrounds together. In this new place the men became firm friends, forging a relationship with each other that was akin to family. The many cultures that have contributed to the building of the nation of Australia we are reminded, are people who sacrificed a lot in order to not only survive financially, but went to great lengths to provide for their family.

Teacher’s notes

provided by The Le@rning FederationEducation Services Australia

This clip shows the Pilbara township of Wickham in its desert setting in Western Australia. Tom Saylor, one of those who came to Wickham from the Torres Strait Islands in 1965 to help build a railway, is interviewed and then tells the story of his experience in voice-over with subtitles. Black-and-white photographs show construction workers arriving by plane and building the railway. Colour footage with sound then shows the type of work the group performed and their recreation time. The music that accompanies the clip is a song sung by a group of Torres Strait Island workers, one of them playing the ukulele.

Educational value points

  • Torres Strait Islanders made an important contribution to the economic development of Australia during the 1960s mining boom. The history of the Torres Strait Islands features continuous migration but following the Islands’ annexation by Queensland in 1872 the movement of Islanders was restricted.
  • Torres Strait Islanders were officially permitted to travel to mainland Australia in 1947 to help fill a labour shortage in the cane fields. They also worked as fishers, agricultural labourers and railway fettlers. After the collapse of Torres Strait marine industries in the 1960s, many men, compelled to move to the mainland to support their families, found employment building railways to mines in Mount Isa and Weipa in Qld, and in the Pilbara and Port Hedland regions of WA.
  • Tom Saylor and many other Torres Strait Islander men contributed to the Hamersley Iron project, the successful completion of which set a benchmark for Australian construction and paved the way for WA’s growth and Australian economic prosperity. Over an 18-month period between January 1965 when construction started and August 1966 when the first shipment of iron ore left for Japan, Hamersley Iron constructed a mine at Tom Price, a port at Dampier, 400 km of connecting railway, and new towns at Tom Price and Dampier to support its operations. The building of this infrastructure assured Australia’s iron ore export trade with Japan and led the way for WA’s mining future.
  • The clip shows the building of the railway from Dampier to Tom Price, carried out according to technically challenging specifications and in the most demanding conditions. The standard-gauge railway track was the heaviest of its kind to have been built in Australia. Laying the track required a workforce of 1,400 men. This infrastructure was built in one of the most remote areas of Australia where summer daytime temperatures reach 50 degrees Celsius.
  • The story of the mining industry in the Pilbara is central to the history of Australia’s economic development since the 1960s. The region produced $5.9 billion in export revenue in 2005. The industry began when the world’s second-largest known reserve of iron ore was discovered at Mount Tom Price in 1962 after the Australian Government ban on the export of iron ore was removed in 1960. Today the iron ore industry based in the Pilbara employs approximately 9,000 people and Australia is the largest exporter of iron ore in the world.
  • The community of Torres Strait Islanders who were employed in the Pilbara in the 1960s as fettlers to build the railway gradually dispersed as the work was completed. They had been employed because Torres Strait Islanders had established a reputation as skilled and hard-working fettlers in other parts of Australia and also because of the lack of local workers. On completion of the railway many returned to the Torres Strait Islands but some, such as Saylor, remained in the Pilbara, maintaining traditions of Torres Strait Islander culture.
  • Rio Tinto Iron Ore, a transnational company that wholly owns Hamersley Iron’s operations in WA, has been engaged in negotiations with the traditional owners of the mineral-rich Pilbara region, a region almost the size of New South Wales. Six groups claiming native title have been seeking land access agreements with Rio Tinto Iron Ore as part of a wider claim for financial compensation for the use of their land.

This clip starts approximately 2 minutes into the documentary.

We see a shot of Wickham, Western Australia.

Torres Strait man They sent someone up to recruit all the boys. So I put my name down to come up to Western Australia. It was 1965 when we started to build the railway from Dampier to Tom Price.

We see an old photograph of all the men who worked on the railway standing in front of an aeroplane.

Torres Strait man When we arrived there was like, you know, we were all Torres Strait and we were happy to start on this. When we started the first day of work … that’s the first day we get the heat of the Pilbara. Hot. Your body just white from salt. Clothes is stiff like starch. It was very hot when we first started.

We see old footage of men working on the railway in the hot conditions.

Torres Strait man Because you were here to complete the track, to finish the work, you all joined like one big family.

Torres Strait man in footage OK boys, that’s it. Time for a break.

Island music plays in the background.

Torres Strait man You see your mates, you all enjoy yourself after work. You go and have a few drinks, a few talk. The next day, do the same thing. Getting hotter, but you still there doing your job. You got all Yugoslavia, all countries up here when you do a contract like this. Everybody enjoy themselves. You make friends, drink together. We’re not strangers, we drink together, make friends, no trouble.

We see footage of Torres Strait Islanders singing and playing the guitar entertaining their drinking friends.

Torres Strait man Well, it’s a long way from home. But once you’ve got a job and it’s something like this — because when you go back home, you can’t get a job like this. Yeah, I stayed here because — well, I was young and wild. But now I realise it’s too late, with your family and everything. I should have gone before, before those kids getting bigger but … I got a job so I’ll have to stay with the job, to support them.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer Heat of the Pilbara – 'white with salt' from the documentary Island Fettlers as a high quality video download.

To play the downloadable video, you need QuickTime 7.0, VLC, or similar.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before downloading the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

This clip is available in the following configurations:

File nameSizeQualitySuitability
islandfe2_pr.mp4 Large: 21.8MB High Optimised for full-screen display on a fast computer.
islandfe2_bb.mp4 Medium: 10.3MB Medium Can be displayed full screen. Also suitable for video iPods.

Right-click on the links above to download video files to your computer.

Thanks to the generosity of the rights holders, we are able to offer this clip in an embeddable format for personal or non-commercial educational use in full form on your own website or your own blog.

You must read and agree to the following terms and conditions before embedding the clip:

australianscreen is produced by the National Film and Sound Archive. By using the website you agree to comply with the terms and conditions described elsewhere on this site. The NFSA may amend the 'Conditions of Use’ from time to time without notice.

All materials on the site, including but not limited to text, video clips, audio clips, designs, logos, illustrations and still images, are protected by the Copyright Laws of Australia and international conventions.

When you access australianscreen you agree that:

  • You may retrieve materials for information only.
  • You may download materials for your personal use or for non-commercial educational purposes, but you must not publish them elsewhere or redistribute clips in any way.
  • You may embed the clip for non-commercial educational purposes including for use on a school intranet site or a school resource catalogue.
  • The National Film and Sound Archive’s permission must be sought to amend any information in the materials, unless otherwise stated in notices throughout the Site.

All other rights reserved.

ANY UNAUTHORISED USE OF MATERIAL ON THIS SITE MAY RESULT IN CIVIL AND CRIMINAL LIABILITY.

Copy and paste the following code into your own web page to embed this clip: