Frontiers of Labour: Identity and belonging in Australian Mining and Industrial Towns, 1850-2000

This project represents the first systematic historical study of an Australia-wide sample of mining and industrial towns. Using oral and written sources it aims to study historical patterns of exclusion and inclusion around the fault lines of class, gender, ethnicity and place. Mining and industrial towns generated wealth, employment and distinctive societies. Scattered studies have examined historical and sociological dimensions of individual localities, but there remains no overarching sysnthesis. new knowledge including a book publication, will enrich our understanding of the historical diversity of regional Australia, filling in the historical spaces between teh 'city' an the 'bush'.