Lithgow: Where Australia Was Forged
Before The Mines, There Was Country
Before furnaces, before rail, before coal, there was Country.
For tens of thousands of years, the lands around present-day Lithgow were cared for by the Wiradjuri people through systems of law, knowledge and responsibility that long predated European settlement.
The arrival of European settlers in the early nineteenth century brought a radically different worldview. Land was surveyed, fenced and divided. Its value became increasingly measured through ownership, extraction and production.
Pastoral expansion, mining, rail and industry transformed the region, but they were built upon the dispossession of First Nations peoples whose connection to Country endures today.
As we explore the history of Lithgow and the industries that helped build modern Australia, we acknowledge the Wiradjuri people as Traditional Custodians of this Country, pay our respects to Elders past and present, and recognise that the story of industry sits within a much older story of Country, culture and survival.
Darwin’s Window into a Changing World
When Charles Darwin travelled through the western escarpment in 1836, he described the valley as “a broken and stony country of great desolation.”
He saw geological wonder — ancient time revealed in stone.
But beneath his gaze lay the raw materials of a revolution: coal, iron, and clay.
Within decades, the quiet valleys Darwin crossed would roar with human ambition.
He read the earth’s story; we rewrote it for profit.
Darwin saw creation. We saw capacity.
Professor Emeritus Greg Patmore
Professor Emeritus of Business and Labour History, The University of Sydney
Drawing on decades of research into labour history, co-operatives and mutual organisations, Professor Greg Patmore reflects on the communities that built modern Australia. Through the story of Lithgow, he explores how people responded to danger, supported one another, and laid the foundations for the systems of care and responsibility that continue to shape Australian working life.
The Birthplace of Steel & Industrial Risk
In 1875, William Sandford founded the Eskbank Ironworks, producing the first pig iron made in Australia. By 1907, Lithgow’s Blast Furnace was rolling out steel rails — marking the first successful commercial iron and steel production in New South Wales, an inland proving ground for an industry that would later consolidate at Port Kembla.
But the fire began here. The valley filled with miners, brickmakers, furnace workers, and engineers. Whistles marked the rhythm of life. By the 1930s, Lithgow was one of the most industrialised valleys in NSW — small in size, immense in output. Men and women forged the bones of a nation with their bodies.
And they paid for it.
The Valley of Smoke and Solidarity
Industry in Lithgow was never safe by default. Coal miners, ironworkers, and factory hands laboured in environments where risk was normalised and injury expected. In response, a fierce union culture took root — not as rebellion, but as survival.
The Lithgow Ironworks strike of 1911–12, miners’ stoppages, and repeated industrial disputes were not ideological theatre. They were collective attempts to draw a line between productivity and human cost.
From this solidarity emerged a crucial moral insight:
Injury at work was not personal failure — it was a shared responsibility of industry and state. That idea did not originate in Parliament alone.
It was forged in towns like Lithgow.
The Valley on Alert
When war came, Lithgow became essential — and vulnerable.
The Small Arms Factory, established in 1912, became one of Australia's most important defence manufacturing sites.
By the end of 1942, almost 6,000 people worked at the factory, with thousands more employed in feeder factories supporting the war effort.
The town struggled to keep up. Families shared tiny homes. Others lived in humpies at the showground or camped in nearby pine forests without water or sanitation. Workers arrived from across Australia to meet the demands of wartime production.
The pressure was immense.
Between July 1940 and June 1941 alone, the factory recorded 786 workplace accidents, with 58 workers requiring more than a month to recover.
Women entered industrial work in unprecedented numbers, helping sustain production while often receiving less pay than men performing comparable work.
The valley was camouflaged from the air. Blackout conditions and air-raid precautions became part of daily life. No bombs fell on Lithgow, but the possibility was never far away.
For those who lived and worked there, the war was not something happening elsewhere. It was woven into everyday life.
The Factory And The People
Yet the story of the factory did not begin and end with war. Over more than 80 years, Lithgow's workforce applied its skills to an extraordinary range of civilian products. Sewing machines, sheep shearing handpieces, medical implants, handcuffs and countless other precision-engineered items demonstrated the versatility of the workforce and the depth of engineering expertise that existed within the valley.
The factory's greatest legacy was not simply what it produced, but the generations of skilled workers and families who built a community around it. Long before innovation became a buzzword, Lithgow workers were adapting, redesigning and solving complex engineering challenges.
The Whistle That Ruled The Day
For generations, Lithgow lived by the sound of a whistle.
Three minutes before the start of each shift, the steam whistle sounded across the valley, warning workers it was time to be at their machines.
At 4.06 pm each weekday, it signalled the end of the working day.
Its reach was remarkable. On a clear day, the whistle could reportedly be heard as far away as Hartley. Locals recalled that whenever it sounded, dogs across the town would begin to howl.
In an era when many families owned neither a watch nor an alarm clock, the whistle became Lithgow's timekeeper.
Children heard it from schoolyards. Shopkeepers heard it from their counters. Families listened for it knowing the day's work was done and people would soon be heading home.
The whistle did more than mark the hours.
It regulated the rhythm of an industrial town and became one of the defining sounds of life in Lithgow.
Image: Lithgow-produced sewing machine, demonstrating the versatility of the factory's workforce and the transition from wartime production to civilian manufacturing.
From Lived Harm to Law: The Road to 1926
The catastrophic State Mine explosion of 1916, which killed twenty-eight men, forced a reckoning. It made visible what workers had long known: that industrial progress without protection exacted an unacceptable toll.
Over the following decade, these lessons — drawn from coalfields, furnaces, rail yards and factories — shaped reform.
In 1926, under Premier Jack Lang, New South Wales enacted the modern Workers’ Compensation Act, establishing a compulsory, state-based system that recognised injury as a social and economic responsibility — not an individual misfortune.
Lithgow was not where the Act was drafted. It was one of the places that made it unavoidable.
Like Broken Hill’s role in mining reform, Lithgow’s industrial experience — its injuries, strikes, deaths, and solidarities — formed part of the human evidence base upon which the law stood.
The first steel forged here was industrial. The next was moral.
Wallerawang: The Danger We Couldn't See
The dangers of industry did not end when explosions became less common.
At Wallerawang Power Station, generations of workers helped power New South Wales. The station supplied electricity to homes, industry and the expanding state economy.
Yet many worked surrounded by materials later recognised as deadly.
Asbestos was widely used throughout twentieth-century power stations to insulate boilers, turbines and steam systems. Many workers handled it without understanding the risks they faced. Some would only learn decades later that the dust they breathed carried consequences long after their working lives had ended.
The history of workplace harm is not only a story of sudden catastrophe.
Sometimes it arrives slowly.
Through illness.
Through waiting.
Through the delayed recognition that the cost of progress was borne by human bodies.
Lithgow & Wallerawang Powerhouse Workers was originally commissioned by Delta Electricity in 2005 as part of its community relations program. Through oral histories with former workers, it captured memories of life inside the power stations, including recollections of asbestos exposure and unsafe workplace practices before the introduction of modern occupational health and safety laws. The project was subsequently shelved and remained unpublished for almost twenty years before Marje Prior finally published it in 2024.
Marje Prior stands with retired Wallerawang Power Station workers at the 2024 launch of Lithgow & Wallerawang Powerhouse Workers, returning these stories to the community where they began. Together, they preserved an important chapter of Australia's industrial history through the voices of those who lived it.
Members of the Wallerawang Social History Group gathered to share memories, photographs and personal accounts of life at the power station. Their collective effort reminds us that industrial history is not only about infrastructure and production, but about people, families and communities whose experiences might otherwise be lost.
From Visible Risks to Hidden Harms
Today, workplaces are increasingly expected to protect workers in both mind and body. Alongside physical hazards, employers must identify psychosocial hazards and take reasonable steps to eliminate them or minimise their risks.
A century ago, danger was often immediate and visible: fire, collapse, machinery and explosion. Many workers also endured exposures that would only be understood decades later.
The challenges of our own time can be harder to see. For some, injury is compounded by isolation, prolonged uncertainty, complex processes and systems that can lose sight of the person at their centre.
Yet history also tells another story. Across generations, people have cared for one another, organised, adapted and called for something better. The resilience that helped build communities like Lithgow and Wallerawang continues in those working to create systems that uphold safety, fairness and human dignity.
The Valley Today: Transition, Safety, and Renewal
The furnaces are silent now. There remains — the Blast Furnace, State Mine, and Small Arms Factory — stand as testimony to what was built, and what was endured.
Lithgow today is in transition.
The region is reshaping itself through renewable energy, grid infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, and public services. Coal remains part of the present, but not the future.
Hydrogen, pumped hydro, battery storage and solar are rewriting the valley’s relationship with power.
Importantly, today’s largest employment sectors include Health Care & Social Assistance and Public Administration & Safety — industries where protection, prevention, and responsibility are not optional.
Workplace safety is no longer a side issue.
It is economic infrastructure.
What Lithgow Taught Us
When we first came to Lithgow, we believed we were researching the origins of workers' compensation. That question brought us here, but it did not stay here.
As the documentary unfolded, we found ourselves following rail lines, industries and communities across Australia. Every place added another layer of understanding. The further we travelled, the clearer it became that no single town could explain what happens after work changes a life. Yet each town held part of the answer.
Lithgow revealed how modern Australia was built through industry, ingenuity and hard work. It also reminded us that progress has always carried a human cost. The stories preserved here are not simply about mines, furnaces and factories. They are about families, communities and the generations who adapted, endured and cared for one another when work changed everything.
That understanding continued to grow in Mount Kembla, where remembrance has become part of the life of the community. It deepened again in Cobar, where history, distance and care revealed connections we had never expected to find.
Every place we visited challenged us to ask better questions, not only about work itself, but about the people whose lives are shaped by it.
Looking back now, we no longer think Episode One is simply about the origins of workers' compensation. It is about something much broader. It explores how Australians have responded across generations when work has brought both prosperity and loss, and how communities have continued finding ways to care for one another long after the headlines have faded.
Lithgow was where we began to understand that Australia's history of work could not be told through one place alone. Every community we visited revealed another chapter. Together, they became something larger than a documentary. They became the beginnings of what we became to think of as a Museum of Work.
The journey continues.
