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On The Job

Transport and Travel - WATERSIDE WORKER

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The Wharfie's Song

 MiddleMiddle  High SchoolSecondary

LiteracyAustralian Curriculum General Capability: Literacy

 

Waterside Workers1. Read through the following song:

All my life I've wanted to be a wharfie,
A wharfie that's all I've wanted to be.
I wheels me barrow, I wheels it with pride,
Paddy Murphy, Jimmy Woodster staggering by me side.
I thumbs me nose at all the pannos,
Down where the Cairns Inlet flows,
They'll sell you for a shilling
That's how they get their living,
They should have been in the police force years ago, Gord Blimey! they should have been in the police force years ago.


"The song was originally published in Ron Edwards "Big Book of Australian Folk Songs" and Ron writes: "The Wharfies Song was once popular with waterside workers up and down the east coast of Australia, and is based on the old music hall ditty about the barrow boy.

 

This version was collected from Cairns identity 'Tiger' O'Shane, who learnt it while working on the wharf. The names, and the locations would be changed by each singer to suit his companions and the area in which he was working. A panno is a pannikin boss, or more correctly a foreman stevedore" (Source: Union Songs)

2. Make up another verse to the Wharfie's Song and submit it to On the Job.

 

 

 

Online

The Living End: Roll On

MiddleMiddle  High SchoolSecondary

LiteracyAustralian Curriculum General Capability: Literacy

 

1. Listen to and watch the following video: The Living End: Roll On

https://youtu.be/k6LzowPdM8c

 

See the lyrics to this song here.

2. Using the lyrics, create a poster, using Edu Glogster, about this song.

Glogster Waterside Workers on strike

 

 

Australian Context - the History of the Waterside Worker

High SchoolSecondary

CriticalAustralian Curriculum General Capability: Critical and creative thinking
Personal and social capability
Australian Curriculum General Capability: Personal and social capability

Ethical Understanding Australian Curriculum General Capability: Ethical Understanding

 



1. This clip[s] shows scenes of the working conditions of the waterside workers in the 1970s, comparing them with scenes from a film illustrating the working conditions of the waterside workers in the 1930s. It opens with scenes of workers on the wharves in the 1970s followed by dramatised black-and-white footage from the Waterside Workers Film Unit 1955 production The Hungry Mile, which re-created the harsh conditions endured by workers in the 1930s. A voice-over narration includes lines from the poem The Hungry Mile [a Union song].

Australian Screen

Educational value points [ from Australian Screen]:

  • In this clip the filmmaker attempts to counter prejudice against dock workers in the 1970s by indicating how their unions had improved conditions from the slave-like conditions of the past. The growth of unions and industrial action in the late 1960s and early 1970s during a period of economic growth and full employment alarmed both business and governments. Of all unionists, dock workers were perceived as the most militant and quickest to go on strike.

  • The commentary and black-and-white footage indicate the severe and primitive conditions of work on the docks in the 1930s and later. Men are shown engaged in physically demanding labouring work manhandling cargo. Men were often injured carrying enormous loads during long shifts and were poorly paid with no job security. There were no changing rooms, no washrooms and no toilets. Horsedrawn vehicles such as the one shown were used well into the 1950s.

  • Footage of haggard men in a queue presents the humiliation endured by those who, desperate for work, had to take part in ‘the pickup’, in which a foreman would select 40 of the biggest and strongest men to load and offload a ship from a crowd of hundreds during times of scarce employment. This unregulated ‘bull’ system prevailed until the Second World War called the stronger men away, and was susceptible to favouritism and corruption from bribery.

  • Dramatic scenes are shown from The Hungry Mile, a film made by the Waterside Workers Film Unit in 1955, one of 13 documentaries made to dramatise and draw attention to the experiences of working people in Australia. It focused on the harsh experiences of those who worked on the wharves in the 1930s. The worn faces of the men, played by 1950s waterside workers and pensioners, convey the desperate need for work in the Great Depression years.

  • In the clip, lines are read from the ‘wharfie poem’ The Hungry Mile, a work by Ernest Antony (1894-1970) who tramped Sydney’s wharves during the 1930s looking for work. The poem conveys his familiarity with the conditions he describes and the language communicates his intent to inspire a desire for social justice in his fellow workers. Always part of the trade union movement, he contributed his poems to labour movement publications in the 1920s and 30s.

  • ‘The Hungry Mile’ was the name maritime workers gave to the mile of wharves between Darling Harbour and Miller’s Point on Sydney’s waterfront along which workers tramped each day seeking work in an industry that did not offer permanent work in the 1930s and 1940s. The Hungry Mile was also an urban slum area where generations of maritime workers and their families lived close to the wharves in rooming houses, rented premises and shared housing. (Source: Australia Screen)

The Hungary Mile

2. Look at the following video clip from 7.30 Report:

7.30 Report

3. Compare and contrast the two videos - the historic one showing the Waterside Workers in the 1930s and again in 2011.

 

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