Australian
Screen

Teacher’s notes

provided by

This silent black-and-white clip from the sponsored film The Australian Steel Works shows some of the final steps in the production of steel rails and fishplates at the steelworks at Newcastle, New South Wales. The opening scenes show lengths of semi-finished steel rails passing backwards and forwards through a rolling mill to achieve their final shape. Workers are then seen 'clowning’ for the camera before a length arrives to be cut with the hot saw. In the last sequence a visiting group walks past workers straightening fishplates. The clip uses intertitles.

Educational value points

• The scenes in this clip are typical of the silent industrial documentary film genre in which the intertitles briefly introduce a particular manufacturing process but the images carry the weight of description. Four camera angles are used to show the steel rail passing backwards and forwards through the finishing stand. One of the workers points to and demonstrates the cutting action of the hot saw to ensure viewers understand what is happening.

• The Broken Hill Proprietary Company Limited (BHP) steelworks seen in the clip was Australia’s first modern, integrated, coastal steelworks in which the blast furnaces, open hearth furnaces, mills and foundries were all connected on one site, and located on the coast rather than inland. The site on the Hunter River estuary allowed BHP to bring iron ore from Whyalla in South Australia by sea for processing and then to ship out its finished steel products.

• Opened in 1915, the BHP steelworks was a source of pride and wonder for Australians in general, and in particular for the Made in Australia Council that produced this film. The Council was especially proud that an Australian company was successfully overcoming the nation’s dependence on imported steel. Before 1915 Australia paid around £6 million per annum for imported steel. After 1915 it was exporting steel.

• BHP established this steelworks to produce steel rails and associated products, such as the joining plates known as 'fishplates’, for railways not only in Australia but in other parts of the world also. Even before production began the Australian Government had reserved 106,000 tonnes of the first year’s production of rails for the Trans-Australian Railway and for export to meet the demands of the First World War.

• Steel rails are not cast but are milled or rolled into shape. First, steel ingots are passed repeatedly through a cogging mill, coming out much reduced in thickness, close to the size of a rail. Because of the stresses involved, this must be done gradually. Then, as shown in the clip, the rail is roughed out and finished in another mill, passing repeatedly through grooved 'rolls’ to achieve its final shape. As it is milled, the rail expands longitudinally and must be cut to size.

• The footage shows the steelworkers working with dangerous materials and machines in hot demanding conditions and contrasts their working situation with the leisured visiting party. The steelworkers have no protective clothing or head coverings and are showered with sparks from the hot saw. There was no occupational health and safety legislation at the time and many employers regarded safety as the concern and responsibility of the workers.