Steel Town: The Making and Breaking of Port Kembla

Erik Eklund

ISBN 10: 052285026X / ISBN 13: 9780522850260

Published by Melbourne University Press, 2002

About this Item

The story of Port Kembla is the story od the 'big issues' of Australian history writ small on the lives of three generations of people.Teh book is in very nice condition EXCEPT where the previous owner has turned the corner of page 85/6.

Seller Inventory # 000435

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Steel Town: The Making and Breaking of Port Kembla
• Publisher: Melbourne University Press
• Publication Date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 052285026X
• ISBN 13: 9780522850260
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Very Good
• Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

About this title

Synopsis

The sun moves across the narrow coastal plain that borders the range to the north . . . It shows once separate places now merged into one suburban entity, a ribbon of residential, commercial and industrial development . . . There is a commercial centre whose tall metallic and glass structures reflect the light, and celebrate an industrial heritage. And to the south, an area where a mass of industrial buildings converge around a large harbour. This area stands as a telling symbol of the region's golden industrial age.

To most Australians Port Kembla is a grimy, polluted, industrial wasteland located down the coast from Sydney. Such images were formed over fifty years ago when industrial development in the town was at its height, and when the expanse of breathtaking coast had been colonised by the stacks and furnaces of heavy industry. Yet the vision of stacks and pollution from furnaces was never the whole story—there was always more to Port Kembla. Although these ideas persist even today, they obscure the real experiences of the people of the port.

Steel Town illuminates our understanding of the processes of industrial and social change. Port Kembla was unique in Australian terms—an urban environment where industrial society shaped local life and politics like nowhere else. This book explores the advent and implications of industrial society—and the impact of economic decline and deindustrialisation.

In his comprehensive and persuasive account of local life Erik Eklund draws together themes of migration, gender, class and identity. Using archival records, oral history interviews and company documents, Steel Town charts the relationship between economic change and the human experience of that change.

The story of Port Kembla is the story of the 'big issues' of Australian history writ small on the lives of three generations of local people. The legacy of industrial society is a mixed one; its experiences and consequences are full of contradictions. And that, of course, is the beauty of history.

About the Author

Erik Eklund is a Professor of History at Federation University Australia.