Newsletter No. 12 - Blue Mountains Association of Cultural Heritage ...

GLEN DAVISRenowned mining historian andformer Glen Davis resident LeonieKnapman has launched her muchawaited history of Glen Davis.Leonie lived at Glen Davis in the BlueMountains from 1940 until it wasauctioned off and removed by 1954.Leonie has presented papers on thehistory of the township to groups andmining conferences around Australia,Tasmania, and in 2010 Greymouth inNew Zealand.After leaving Glen Davis inDecember 1954 Leonie thought oftenof the first 14 years of her life spent inthe beautiful Capertee Valley and thethousands of people who lived andworked in the town.Most of the hard times of the town’sresidents passed over the heads oftheir children and it was afterresearching the history of Glen Davisto write a book that Leonieappreciated their frustrations.Families were coming out of thedepression into a wartime situationand a life of rationing of petrol, tyres,food and clothing. This was furthercompounded by drought followed byalmost 30 floods.Leonie looked at what makes peoplechoose the mining life and live inremote areas foregoing the comfortsof life in the larger towns or cities.Men came from all walks of lifesearching for work and not all werefamiliar with the physical grind of themining industry and its drawbacks.The shale oil ghost town of National OilPty Ltd. Glen Davis and its peopleIn spite of the efforts of theCommonwealth authorities to shutdown the retorts they mysteriouslykept working to prevent theirdismantling. The authorities removedthe power fuses to force the retortsout of action but they were replacedjust as quickly and shale for theretorts seemed to appear fromnowhere.The day the strike ended was anemotional one. A large crowd offamilies and visiting miners waited asthe men emerged on electric locohauled transports. Unfortunately theirefforts and discomfort were in vain.The closure still took place. It was thelast straw for the residents whothought their homes and jobs weresecure.Today, over 50 years later, the valleyhas returned to farming and grazingas it had been since the 1800s, a farcry from the turbulent fourteen yearsof National Oil Pty Ltd.Glen Davis has been stripped of itstown status. It is as if the governmenthad tried to wipe it off the face of theearth.Book launched at Irish gaolWhile the Glen Davis works waspartly a response to theunemployment of the depressionyears of the 1930s the works took ona greater significance with the onsetof war when the vulnerability ofAustralia’s oil supplies was clearlydemonstrated. After the war GlenDavis was living on borrowed time.When the government mootedclosure of the company it sparkedstate wide controversy and workerstook matters into their own hands.On the night of June 12, 1952fifty two miners began a stay-downstrike lasting 26 days. It was thelongest stay in strike in Australianhistory.Lord Mayor of Cork, Michael O’Connell, Suzanne Voytas, ChristinaHenri, Roses from the Heart and Australian Ambassador to Ireland,Bruce Davis at the launch.Blue Mountains Family HistorySociety president, researcher andauthor, Suzanne Voytas hasrecently returned from Ireland,where her book Elizabeth 1828,the worst and most turbulent waslaunched at Cork City Gaol.The book details the lives of the194 Irish convict women, whotogether with 16 of their childrenwere transported on the shipElizabeth, which sailed from Cobb,County Cork on August 28, 1827.The biographies of the women,detail their achievements, theirstruggles to live in a foreign landand to be part of a new socialstructure while raising their colonychildren.Copies of the book can beobtained from Suzanne Voytas,details on the website:www.elizabeth1828.com RRP $35plus $10 postage.HERITAGE 18November - December 2010