Chapter 4 - Work on the Railways - Rail, Tram and Bus Union of NSW

*On Wooden Rails <strong>Chapter</strong> 4 8/30/05 8:26 PM Page 143
Hairy Legs - <strong>Work</strong>ing the Lines
The Permanent Way
The perway repaired and maintained the line, a
continual job that was done in gangs of fettlers
(labourers or ‘hairy legs’) supervised by gangers
(foremen), over a given stretch or section of line. To
ensure that traffic could move safely over the section,
the perway gangs would constantly check for flaws,
wear, rotten sleepers, damage, sand on the track or other
obstructions that might endanger traffic.
James Docherty claims that the perway gangs were
permanent employees, not to be confused with ‘navvies’
who laboured under private contract on public works
like dams, bridge and railway construction. As Docherty
argues, “the navvies were men without women, billetted
in primitive all-male camps, frowned on by the wife of
the permanent fettler who lived a settled life in a home
provided by the department. There was no hob-nobbing
between the two groups, the wives of the fettlers saw to
that.” 1
While some of these distinctions may hold true, they are
too simplistic and nostalgic, and seriously discount the
lives and conditions endured by all members of the
perway gangs. The term ‘fettler’ and ‘navvy’ have been
used interchangeably in the industry and descriptions of
the work. Fettlers were not by any means, all married
men, living in permanent and cosy accommodation. All
accounts of work on the perway reflect that life on the
perway more often than not, involved isolation, rough
conditions and lack of amenities, with fettlers (and often
their families) camping by the line in tents or rough
mobile dwellings and shanty camps. While many ‘hairy
legs’ were single men, others shared the nomadic and
rough life with their families, who would live with the
fettler where and when the work took them.
<strong>Work</strong> on the perway was notoriously heavy, dirty and
long work, performed under extreme weather and
working conditions. Tales of camps of fettlers in the
‘middle of nowhere’, living in austere and crude
accommodation (more often tents issued by the
Department, or rough camps consisting of lean-tos,
humpy’s and makeshift shelter), in remote areas. The
tents were prone to being blown down in strong winds,
or catching alight from sparks from passing
locomotives, in addition to other conditions that
accompany ‘camping out’.
On Wooden Rails - Celebrating 150 Years of <strong>Work</strong> on the NSW Railways
On the Track, Bourke 1921
In reviewing their policies and results at the end of 1894,
the Railway Commissioners said that not only had they
improved the materials being used, but: “We have
supplied every ganger of fettlers with a tricycle to
enable him to move speedily over his section, and also
equipped the gangs over a considerable portion of the
lines with a new description of light hand car, to enable
them to move rapidly with their materials from point to
point” 2
These crude trikes were used to transport men and
materials over sections of the line and themselves
required considerable physical effort. For most of the
last century these were ‘human powered’ hand trikes,
later being replaced with fuelled and motorised vehicles.
Perway Gang, Darnick (Bicentennial Copying Project, State Library of NSW)
1James Docherty, unpublished Masters Thesis, The Rise of Railway Unionism, 1880 – 1905, Australian National university,
1973, p 36
2Annual Report of the Railways Commissioners, cited in Gunn, op.cit., p 228
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