What's Missing From The Picture?

Before workers' compensation became a function of government and insurance, communities created their own systems of care. Friendly societies such as the Odd Fellows helped members navigate illness, injury and hardship, embodying a simple principle: when misfortune strikes, no one should face it alone.

While researching Shattered: Episode 1 – Origins of Control, we came across a photograph from the official opening dinner of Lithgow's Blast Furnace on 17 May 1907.

The image records a moment in time and immediately transports us to another world. Long tables stretch across the room beneath flags and decorations. Civic leaders, industrialists and dignitaries gather to celebrate a new era of industry and progress. The future appears bright. Lithgow is on the rise.

Yet one thing immediately caught my attention. The room is filled almost entirely with men.

The photograph records the people gathered to celebrate the opening of the Blast Furnace. Their names were preserved alongside the image. Looking at it today, we found ourselves wondering about the people whose contributions were not recorded in quite the same way.

The dinner was held at Lithgow's Oddfellows Hall. Founded in England in the eighteenth century, the Oddfellows grew into one of the world's largest friendly societies. Members contributed to a common fund that provided support during illness, injury and hardship at a time when no government safety net existed.

By the early twentieth century, Oddfellows lodges could be found throughout Australia, including in industrial towns such as Lithgow. Long before workers' compensation, Medicare or social security, they represented one of the few forms of organised support available to working families when misfortune struck.

The photograph records a moment of confidence and optimism. What it does not record are the lives that would sustain that industrial growth in the decades that followed.

As we continued researching Lithgow, another story emerged.

A generation later, women entered industrial work in unprecedented numbers. During the Second World War, they worked in factories, on production lines and on night shifts to help sustain Australia's war effort. By the end of 1942, almost 6,000 people worked at the Lithgow Small Arms Factory, with thousands more employed in feeder factories supporting wartime production.

The town struggled to accommodate the influx. Tiny houses were shared by multiple families. Some workers slept in humpies at the showground. Others lived in tents among the nearby pine forests without water or sanitation.

Artists such as Dore Hawthorne documented what life looked like from the factory floor. Her Factory Folk paintings capture exhausted women travelling home after night shift, women working beneath factory lights and women balancing competing responsibilities at a time when they were essential to production.

One painting, Potential Absentee, particularly caught my attention. The accompanying museum notes explain that despite their importance to the war effort, women workers were paid less than men. In 1943, the Women's Employment Board examined wages and conditions and found absenteeism among female factory workers was more than twice that of male workers. Yet the answer was not equal pay. Women performing the same work were generally awarded only a proportion of the male wage.

Hawthorne appeared to be asking, what sat behind it?

The Small Arms Factory museum also records that between July 1940 and June 1941 there were 786 workplace accidents at the factory, with 58 workers requiring more than a month to recover. Women were working long shifts, travelling long distances, caring for families and helping sustain a nation at war.

Against this backdrop, Hawthorne painted a work titled Potential Absentee.

Her response was not to paint a statistic.

She painted a person.

The contrast is striking.

In 1907, a photograph celebrating industry contains almost no women at all.

By the 1940s, women had become indispensable to keeping that industry running.

For us, as we followed this story, the photograph became more than a historical curiosity. It became a reminder that history is often told through those who held power, while the experiences of others sit quietly in the background, waiting to be rediscovered.

Perhaps that is why Hawthorne's work still resonates. Long before algorithms, dashboards and performance metrics, industrial systems were already measuring labour, productivity and risk. Hawthorne's paintings remind us that there has always been a difference between what can be counted and what can be understood.

Sometimes the most interesting thing about an old photograph is not what it shows.

It's what it leaves out.