Skip to main content
Advanced Search
Image Not Available for Collection of 399 photographic slides used for rescue hoist training
Collection of 399 photographic slides used for rescue hoist training
Image Not Available for Collection of 399 photographic slides used for rescue hoist training

Collection of 399 photographic slides used for rescue hoist training

Date1986-1990
Object numberANMS1104
NameArchive series
MediumMetal
ClassificationsPhotographs
Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Patrick General Stevedoring
Terms
    DescriptionThis collection of 399 photographic slides and one slide divider came from a collection of cargo handling equipment and records used at Wharf No. 5 in Darling Harbour. The photographic slides were used for training in the operation of a rescue hoist at the wharf.HistoryIn 2007 the cargo handling wharves at East Darling Harbour were closed for redevelopment. The site, once called the Hungry Mile after the great queues of unemployed workers who lined the docks looking for work during the Great Depression of the 1930s, was renamed Barangaroo, after the Aboriginal man Bennelong's wife, who was associated with the area in the late 18th century. As stevedoring operations moved to ports at Port Botany and Port Kembla, the Government of New South Wales determined that the wharves at East Darling Harbour should become an extension of the Sydney CBD with a foreshore park and business and shopping precincts. The Maritime Union of Australia undertook a campaign to recognise the Hungry Mile name, as an acknowledgement of the site's historical significance to waterside workers since the first formation of a maritime workers union - the Sydney Wharf Labourers Union in 1872. After maritime workers variously began organizing trade unions during the late nineteenth century in many Australian ports, by 1902 the two largest sectors of the maritime workforce, the seamen and the wharf labourers, or 'wharfies', had established their own national trade union organisations - the Seamen’s Union of Australia (SUA) and Waterside Workers’ Federation (WWF). As a major cargo handling point in Sydney, the East Darling Harbour wharves were the site of significant historical activity including the 1890 and 1928 maritime strikes, bans on Japanese shipments prior to the Second World War, and bans and protests against South African apartheid and the Vietnam War. The objects here record the final phase of stevedoring operations at East Darling Harbour.SignificanceThe Hungry Mile is an icon of the Australian labour movement. The closure of stevedoring operations in Sydney Harbour has been part of a significant transformation of a working port.