Railways and Australian Identity

Keith Hallett

Description

"The powerful headlight probes the darkness; voluminous clouds of black smoke billow from the chimneys, steam erupts from the safety valves, a ruddy glow lights the cab as butterfly doors are jerked open, flashing rods and driving wheels are highlighted by the running lights and overall there is now a triumphant beat."
The railway is shown on maps as permanent way, however many lines are now abandoned. But the experiences of rail trips to distant places by train are, to many, deeply remembered events. This study acknowledges the essential economic effects of the rail network, but also celebrates the human responses, and when taken in overview, contributes to our continuing exploration of what it is to be Australian.
Keith Hallett has spent equal parts of his career as teacher and historian, but from early boyhood in the Dandenongs responded to the magic of steam echoing through the hills. A love of rail has underlined his work, and continues with his volunteer work on the Victorian Goldfields Railway, passing this love of trains to his sons and grandchildren.

Sujets

• Histoire
• New Zealand
• History
• Australia

Informations

• Publié par: Brolga Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780645586411
• Langue: English

Extrait

A regular passenger train on the Maryborough line, Victoria, 1966
Photograph: K. Hallett
Published by Brolga Publishing Pty Ltd
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Australia
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Copyright © 2022 Keith Hallett
National Library of Australia
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Keith Hallett, author.
ISBN: 9780645586411 (eBook)

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CONTENTS Chapter 1 Introduction Chapter 2 A Confusion of Gauges Chapter 3 An Urbanised Outback Australian? Chapter 4 Environmental perceptions Chapter 5 The Aussie Battler Chapter 6 The Second World War, A National Coming Together Chapter 7 Conclusion
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
W hen it comes to railways, profit and loss judgements fade into the background. Economics do not have heart and soul. It is indeed a dismal science. Economics do not explain why boys and grown men stop their affairs to watch and listen to passing trains. Nor does it explain why girls and women, perhaps not so enthusiastically, share in the pleasure of engaging with rail on nostalgic trips or excursions to places known and unknown. Economics do not explain the fan rail trips, the enthusiasm of small children to wave at trains, especially steam trains, the motorcades and the turnout of locals as rare steam trains pass slowly and majestically by. Nor does it explain the giving way to the impulse many of us share to count the wagons as they lumber by.
The railway is an efficient means of transportation, even in an age when road trains and B- Doubles are quicker and in some ways more favoured. As railways modernise, efficiency and economy are the driving forces for change. The Inland Rail between Melbourne and Brisbane promises to reduce transport charges by 20%. This is nothing compared to the charges faced by the early squatters and gold diggers. The early trains to the Australian goldfields reduced costs by up to 90%. Thus bullock drays and river boats have given way to the rail, to a significant extent and rail has given way to highways and to freeways. Today, it is estimated that by 2030, one ton’s freight per kilometer between Perth and Sydney is estimated at 8.40 cents per ton mile for road as compared to 3.95 cents per ton mile by rail. 1
There is an element that holds a fascination of rail on the Australian soul, and to some extent this study explores the links between emerging an Australian identity in the nineteenth and twentieth century and the contribution that rail has made on its national character.
It is easy to understand the enthusiasm that some show for railways. For example, Lloyd Holmes, a train examiner in post war years, wrote of his memories of the Victorian Railways H class 220 (Heavy Harry): “The clear night air carried that three cylinder exhaust plainly, it was slow and deliberate at first, as inertia was overcome. Then the tempo increased as the train ran down the dip past Loco, followed by a deep measured 1-2-3 beat as those 67 inch driving wheels fought curve and grade; then the loco ran on to that long tangent leading to Mangalore, The powerful headlight probes the darkness; voluminous clouds of black smoke billow from the chimneys, steam erupts from the safety valves, a ruddy glow lights the cab as butterfly doors are jerked open, flashing rods and driving wheels are highlighted by the running lights and overall there is now a triumphant beat.” 2

H220 Heavy Harry.
Photograph courtesy of Public Records Victoria.
No wonder many stopped their routines to enjoy the sights, sounds and smells of such creations. But this study is not focused on rail enthusiasm, but how these and other images affected to some extent the way citizens have understood themselves as a nation.
A review of how a trans-continental railway in three relatively recently colonialised English speaking nations gives clues as to the significance of rail to nationhood. Three nations, the United States of America, Canada and Australia all achieved this feat at a similar time.
In the United States of America, the Southern states early on indicated their wish to build the line at a Southerly latitude, but a more Northerly based company, the Chicago and Rock Island Company, began the line that was to unite that nation by steel rail. From its inception it revealed a nation divided. This line, which would cross the Mississippi at Rock Island, would potentially drain the river traffic which made the Mississippi a national highway that focused wealth to the South and to New Orleans. The civil war was not fought on the issue of slavery alone. The railway then was built through Iowa to Council Bluffs, with surveys altering the original survey to profit from sale and grants of land along the right of way. It was an early indication that profit drove the railway, caused national division, and was eventually backed by a national spirit of achievement that failed to comprehend the baser motives of profit and of exploitation of the people. Profit was the major driving force. It was hoped that when the line met the Western seaboard it would become the nexus for trade from Asia. But the grand vision declined as the Suez Canal opened shortly after, and sea traffic claimed the bulk of traffic directly to Eastern ports.
The Canadian federation came into being in 1867, a collection of Eastern states of three and a half million people, claiming vast territories, as yet unexplored by Europeans, and known to be inaccessible through unimaginable mileage of barren rocky shield, glacial lakes and steep, ragged mountains over which no pass was yet known. But there was a vision which in 1871 must have been seen as highly aspirational. A massive railway to the Pacific was a huge undertaking which came to the brink of financial failure several times before the last spike was driven in November 1885 in the remote mountains pass at Craigellachcie, high in the Rocky Mountains. It was to be a nation building challenge, not only to access trade from the Pacific Ocean, but to join British Columbia to the federation, and thus to prevent its union with the United States. The Canadian Pacific company was on its financial knees in 1880s when a widespread rebellion, led by Louis Riel, supported by an Indian rebellion, threatened the nation with a territorial breakaway. Troops were sent from the East and it was the relatively rapid deployment of troops over the yet unfinished railway that saved the nation. The Canadian Pacific not only united the nation politically, for the engineering feats across an uninhabited country was an achievement of which the young nation could be proud.
The Australian trans-continental railway hammered in its last spike in October 1917. It too was in a remote location, in the midst of the Nullabor plain. The sod turning ceremonies were made by national dignitaries, Andrew Fisher, Prime Minister, at Kalgoorlie and Lord Denman, Governor-General at Port Augusta, and the three rockets sent up at that location, unfurling flags of the United States, Britain and Australia hinted at loyalties that would be eventually shared by the general population. 3 But there was no national celebration. A telegram was sent to the British monarch to advise of the opening of the line and advise the King that the line might make Australia stronger in its war effort as it would be safer than shipping, always a threat during the First World war. But there was no “last spike” publicity that had galvanised public celebration as in the American nations. But it was not the war alone that dampened potential celebrations

The Last Spike — the Hon. Donald A. Smith driving the last spike to complete the Canadian Pacific Railway.
Craigellichie, B.C.: 7 November 1885. Photo courtesies of Archives Canada.

First train from Kalgoorlie
Courtesy of State Library of Western Australia 297706P
Perhaps it was appropriate to play down the accomplishment. Completing the standard gauge line, paid for by the new Commonwealth, presented Australians with a line that did not connect with the same gauge to any settlement apart from Kalgoorlie and Port Augusta. The trans-continental railway concept also failed to excite the States. Perth had delayed the necessary Enabling Act to build in Western Australia in order to win a better tariff deal from Canberra, and South Australia also delayed their Enabling Act in an attempt to bring the new railway southward to their capital. 4 The three partners, the Commonwealth Government, West and South Australia demonstrated that the State divisions within the Australian federation were significant. The Federation which came into being 1st January 1901 was an untried entity, and the States’ assertion of separateness, apparent from the earliest attempts to build railways, remained strong. A consignment from Perth to Sydney would need to be trans-shipped at Kalgoorlie, Port Augusta and Broken Hill. And at Sydney, consignments to Brisbane, Melbourne or Adelaide would have to be trans-shipped again. The link bore the disunity of gauge that plagued Australia from the inception of its rail network.
The completion of the trans-continental link was almost ignored in the popular press. The joining of the States by rail was reported on page six in an article by the Sydney Morning Herald i n which the elder state of New South Wales could not but miss the opportunity to make a judgmental statement against Western Austr