Pod Insights ABC Rewind 01 | Dusted | The human cost of mining in Australia About this episode Van Badham explores the human cost of mining in Australia across the past 2 centuries. Gold may have made Australia rich, but historians are now digging up evidence about the devastating impact of the silica dust that surfaced with it.
Transcript 3,779 words · 11 speakers
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0:07 Speaker 00 Hi, I'm Van Badham. You're with ABC Rewind and this is Dusted, a three-part series about the impact of mining in Australia. From gold to coal to asbestos. From the 1860s right through to now. I'm a writer and an activist who knows more about the human cost of mining than someone my age usually does. I moved to the coal community of Willongong when I was a teenager and the job that put me through university there was typing up hours and hours of conversations with the old mining workers. The stories the miners told me were brutal, moving and had a profound effect on the rest of my life.
0:49 Speaker 01 And so he goes on, day in and day out, to toil for his life's daily bread.
0:59 Speaker 00 Now, I live in the Victorian goldfields, where the twin towns of Bendigo and Ballarat rival each other to be the epicentre of Australia's golden past. Sorry in advance, Ballarat, but this episode's about Bendigo. And it is gold.
1:18 Speaker 01 He's off to the mine, in the rain, hail or shine, that his dear ones at home might be fed.
1:30 Speaker 02 This is the Central Debra Gold Mine. It gets its name from central because it's right in the centre of town. And Debra is the name of the reef. It was named after the daughter of a prospector who first discovered the reef in the 1860s.
1:50 Speaker 00 We're going deep underground now. Down, down, down. To find gold in Bendigo's Central Debra Mine. And back in time, to the days when Bendigo had both the largest concentration of deep mines in the world and, what a coincidence, the world's largest concentration of sick miners.
2:11 Speaker 03 We will never really know how many miners died.
2:15 Speaker 04 That's it, lads.
2:17 Speaker 05 It was a huge number and they died in plague proportions.
2:22 Speaker 02 All right, ready to go?
2:26 Speaker 05 Bendigo had the unfortunate reputation of being the most dangerous place for miners' tyssus in the world.
2:36 Speaker 03 In 1905, one of the youngest miners to die in Bendigo from silicosis was only 24.
2:50 Speaker 00 As the cage rattles down the Bendigo shaft, voices from the present mix with ghosts of miners past. I mean, yes, some of these are the voices of paid actors because we can't interview the dead.
3:08 Speaker 02 Now, the source of the silicosis here in Bendigo was from the quartz.
3:15 Speaker 00 That's tour guide Bill Allen. He's not an actor, he's a miner, and while he might be from a very different era, rocks remain rocks and dust remains dust. It doesn't matter what year it is, if you grind down quartz, it still produces silica dust, and silica dust still produces lung disease.
3:41 Speaker 00 At the turn of the 20th century, this disease was also called miners' tyssus because the difference between tuberculosis and silicosis wasn't yet understood.
4:04 Speaker 06 Hello, my name is Kay McGregor. Welcome to the Bendigo Historical Society.
4:09 Speaker 00 This historical society knows all about dust. Not only does it have documents relating to miners' tyssus, like medical reports, sanatorium minutebooks, memoirs and membership certificates for miners' tyssus associations, it also has Kay McGregor.
4:26 Speaker 06 It would have been terrible to see it as a community, and I can actually quote from the autobiography of Fletcher Jones, and most people would know who Fletcher Jones was.
4:35 Speaker 00 Just in case you don't know who Fletcher Jones was, he was born the son of a Cornish gold miner, but he became a famous clothing manufacturer and retailer.
4:46 Speaker 00 His diary is one of the items in the collection because...
4:51 Speaker 06 He was born in Bendigo and he writes when he was a child, and I'll quote, "Between our home and the Golden Square State School, at least every third miner's cottage had a cotton sheet fixed between veranda posts, hiding a poor man with miner's complaint, seemingly abandoned to his fate. As children playing on the Golden Square footpaths, we could hear the men coughing up their lungs."
5:16 Speaker 00 Kay McGregor's great-grandfather died of miners' tysose at the age of 44. Back then, there was no government support, but...
5:25 Speaker 06 My grandfather died in 1899. In 1898, in the Bendigo Independent newspaper, there is an article that tells of the vocal and instrumental concert that was held last evening in the park in aid of Mr George Jackson, who has been laid up for a considerable time.
5:46 Speaker 06 So the community really, in those days, was very, very supportive of those who were struck down by this disease. I think they understood fairly well what the cause was. It was dust. That issue became much more marked once they started using drills. There was more dust in the air and the poor ventilation, of course, added to that issue. So it was written and spoken about a lot and there were lots of remedies proposed for that, putting in windsors between the levels. A windsor is a sort of a shaft that goes between the different levels in the mine to provide better ventilation. But of course, it's still happening today.
6:25 Speaker 00 This is why Kay wants these mining-related deaths recognised, so they don't happen again. For her, the dark past is the present and it's personal.
6:36 Speaker 06 I have four children, two of whom work in mining. In every generation of our family, there's been people working in mining since the 1850s in the Bendigo region. One of my boys is a geotechnical engineer and he actually helps to design mines. And my other boy that works in mining is an underground supervisor at a local gold mine at Fosterville.
6:57 Speaker 00 Is she worried about their health?
6:59 Speaker 06 Yes, I am afraid for their health. Well, I lecture them regularly on taking appropriate actions to prevent breathing in anything when they're underground. But of course, in mining today, it's diesel. There's lots of conversations about that. But it's a given now that mines are meant to be healthy places for people to work. So you would hope that all, you know, all the appropriate legislation is followed.
7:22 Speaker 00 You would hope. You would hope. But in the early 1900s, it wasn't.
7:30 Speaker 00 Miners always knew it was dangerous, but people needed the work.
7:36 Speaker 03 Well, from the Bendigo death registers, we can see that from 1875 to June 1906, 1,400 miners died from respiratory diseases. During the same period, 270 died from mining accidents.
7:52 Speaker 00 And there were plenty of those.
7:55 Speaker 02 12 fouls is not what anyone wants to hear, and that's an accident.
8:05 Speaker 02 When they, when they heard that, the miner driver would send the cage right down to the level where the accident had occurred and they'd start bringing the injured miners out.
8:13 Speaker 00 For historian Beris Penrose, one of the problems is silicosis can be confused with tuberculosis.
8:21 Speaker 03 Once you get silicosis, the dust scars your lungs and that predisposes you to other respiratory diseases like tuberculosis or pneumonia or bronchitis. And at that time, tuberculosis was quite common amongst miners who had silicosis. In fact, it wasn't really until 1902 that a doctor in England called Thomas Oliver was able to show that these people, these workers, had two diseases. They had the silicosis caused by the dust and on top of that, they had tuberculosis that was caused by the germ.
9:05 Speaker 01 The morning shift would start work at 8am.
9:09 Speaker 01 Conditions were dreadful. There was no minimum pay. Air had to be pumped down from the surface. There was barely enough to breathe.
9:22 Speaker 02 So this is our mine truck. So mine trucks here about 150 kilo. They can carry a payload of about 500 kilo. So they weigh over half, half a tonne. And the miners would have to push them by hand.
9:37 Speaker 02 So all the rock would be, would be loaded up into these trucks and they would push them along the rails from the work area down to the plat. This was normally done by a young boy, normally from the age of about 14. And this is where they started their mining career by, um, normally young boys, they would lie about, lie about their age. So they could get underground to work here in, in the mines.
10:05 Speaker 00 And if you get silicosis in these conditions, you're five times more likely to get tuberculosis.
10:12 Speaker 05 My name is James Lurk and I'm a local historian here in Bendigo. And I pride myself in having a reasonable knowledge about mining in Bendigo.
10:24 Speaker 00 One of James's books is about this particular gold mine, the Central Debra. But in this small part of central Victoria, the Central Debra is only one of about five and a half thousand.
10:37 Speaker 05 For quite a number of years, uh, we had the two deepest gold mines in the world here. Uh, one was at Victoria Hill and the other one was, uh, over, not far from where we are here in the Golden Square area. And, uh, these mines were, uh, 1.4 kilometres deep. And the, uh, depth of those mines meant that ventilation was a major problem.
11:08 Speaker 03 People had known for centuries that miners get lung diseases. That was a known thing. And even with the level of medical knowledge that existed at the time and level of technology, things could have been done to improve the conditions in the mines.
11:25 Speaker 05 And it wasn't until 1887 that Dr Stuart Cohen from Eagle Hawk, which is on the northern part of the Bendigo Gold Field, started to investigate the number of deaths as a result of miners' tisus and realised that it was really in epidemic proportions. And it was his work that inspired the Wilson Trust from the Argus to employ Dr Walter Summons to do a complete investigation of this scourge that was affecting Bendigo.
12:05 Speaker 03 Walter Summons did his study in 1906 of Bendigo miners. And of four of those miners, had the government implemented the recommendations, those people may not have had silicosis or tuberculosis. One of the people that he examined was a 33-year-old miner who started work in 1893. And by 1906, he had tuberculosis. For six months before Summons examined him, he had chest pain, weakness and loss of appetite. One 44-year-old miner started work in 1894 and by 1906, he had silicosis. One 25-year-old had been mining since 1898.
12:50 Speaker 03 He had a cough from the time he started mining and when Summons examined him, he had lost weight, he had pleurisy so badly that he had to stay in bed. And one 24-year-old miner was forced to stop work eight months before Summons saw him. He had a cough for years, he had lost weight, he had extreme difficulty in breathing and Summons said that he used to be strong and robust, but now his weakness was extreme.
13:20 Speaker 07 The health of quartz miners has long been known to be unsatisfactory. With the introduction of the machine drill, mining operations are carried on with greater rapidity and the amount of dust produced underground is largely increased. During these operations, there has also been a marked increase in the number of miners dying of lung disease.
13:44 Speaker 03 So, these are only four men who started work after the government's own inquiries had advised that the ventilation be improved and that the mines use water to allay the dust. And had they been introduced, when these men started work, they may not have contracted silicosis or tuberculosis and died a very young death.
14:17 Speaker 02 It was a matter of survival with, you know, the young, you know, the young boys, their fathers died at a very young age, whether they died of lung disease or they died of a mining accident. And then all of a sudden, they, they were the breadwinner, they were the man of the family and part of that, they had to help their mother provide for the family. And as a result, they ended up getting work here in the mines. And it was, it was a continuous cycle for many, many, many decades.
14:47 Speaker 00 In 1906, Dr Walter Summons linked this widening cycle of death to the ever-growing use of machine drills. In less than 30 years, the number of machine drills in Bendigo alone went from 5 to 270.
15:05 Speaker 00 It was a massive period of transition for the mining industry. The government acknowledged that there was a dust problem as far back as 1888, but it didn't follow its own recommendations for another 16 years. One of these recommendations was to use water spray to lessen the dust.
15:27 Speaker 05 Now, the first drill to be invented was done by a fellow by the name of Robert Gray Ford back in the early 1860s and it had water attached to it, a water spray.
15:45 Speaker 05 When the drill was being demonstrated to mining entrepreneurs and managers and so on, they thought, "Oh, this is a wonderful machine," you know, but it never took off. They said, "Oh, no, we'll stick to the old method, hammer and tap."
16:02 Speaker 05 And it wasn't until much later, in the 1870s, that rock drills became far more prevalent.
16:10 Speaker 02 Ready to go? All right.
16:15 Speaker 00 These drills are a stop on Bill Allen's underground tour. And when you get there, prepare your ears because they're still in working order.
16:24 Speaker 02 Here we go.
16:30 Speaker 02 This is called the widow maker drill. In the early days, they were also called rock bores. As you can see, it's a pretty heavy piece of machinery. These were called dry drills as they were drilling through the hard rock, grinds it down into microscopic particles. That dust then become airborne and that creates the silica dust, which the miners will then breathe in, that would get into the miners' lungs and that's where the silica cosis came from. Typically around the age of 35 to 40, that's the typical age that they died.
17:01 Speaker 05 And many of the rock drills that were being manufactured at that time didn't have any water spray or anything like that with them.
17:08 Speaker 03 In 1904, the Victorian Government brought in regulations that water had to be used underground when miners were boring holes.
17:18 Speaker 05 But that also had another problem with it because the dust was actually still held in the atmosphere of the mine, in the very dampness of the mine. And so miners still breathed in that damp air, which had these minuscule particles of quartz dust in it. And that was, you know, the thing that chafed the lungs to shreds inside.
17:48 Speaker 03 And some of the miners didn't use the jets and sprays.
17:54 Speaker 05 Whenever they were collarin' or starting a hole, very often they would turn off the water because it was so messy. When it was starting a hole, it sort of sprayed out and came all over you. So then they were dry-boring for a while, creating the same dust that was there, you know, 20, 30 years earlier.
18:16 Speaker 03 And on top of that, the jets and sprays needed pure water so that their nozzles weren't blocked. But a lot of the mines, they didn't have pure water available. The water that was there was so contaminated, it couldn't be used.
18:31 Speaker 05 So that sort of thing happened right through until the 1940s, virtually.
18:37 Speaker 03 And when politicians heard that some miners were refusing to use the jets and sprays, they developed a narrative that it was miners' behaviour that was central to the silicosis pandemic. That miners got silicosis through their own carelessness and their disregard for their health.
19:10 Speaker 03 Another issue was that their wages, miners' wages, were tied to their output. So that meant they were more likely to rush back into a dusty drive after there'd been an explosion, and they were less likely to use jets and sprays or other water devices if it cut into their production time, because that meant actually a wage cut for them.
19:49 Speaker 00 There are 17 levels in this gold mine underneath Bendigo.
19:54 Speaker 00 Even a healthy miner would take two and a half hours to climb out using the ladder if the cage wasn't working. And if you were sick, seriously, God help you.
20:05 Speaker 08 The issue of dust is a symbol of everything that's wrong in this industry.
20:09 Speaker 00 This is Pamela Kinnear. Her attraction to microscopic particles and how they influence politics and history has led her into the world of government policy. And that's a place where nothing about dust is ever straightforward.
20:24 Speaker 08 It's a fascinating example of piecemeal legislation.
20:30 Speaker 00 When silicosis was finally recognised as an occupational hazard, gold miners became eligible for workers' compensation. But coal miners didn't. They didn't become eligible because their lung disease was different.
20:46 Speaker 08 So basically, in the early part of the century, round about 1910, Australia enacted a general workers' compensation legislation, particularly in New South Wales.
21:00 Speaker 08 And that was to cover injury at work, anyone.
21:05 Speaker 08 Not very long after that, there was this huge dispute in the Broken Hill Gold Fields and the metalliferous mining industries. And the industrial action there really sort of highlighted the dust diseases that those kinds of miners were suffering. So in about, I think it was about 1920, an act was put in place called the Workers' Compensation (CILICOSIS) Act.
21:32 Speaker 08 Now, that CILICOSIS Act said, "This is important", but it excluded any miner that was covered by the Coal Miners' Regulation Act. So, meaning all coal miners. So if you were a coal miner, you couldn't get compensated under the CILICOSIS Act. You had to go through the General 1910 Act. But the 1910 Act said, "We will cover any kind of dust disease except for silicosis."
22:03 Speaker 08 So the miners were in this really weird situation where they either had to prove they had silicosis, in which case they had no recourse because they weren't covered under the Silicosis Act, or they had to prove they didn't have silicosis, in which case they were in this mess of an argument about whether or not anything they had was harmful.
22:25 Speaker 00 Because there's not as much quartz in coal mining, it was decided coal miners couldn't be getting silicosis. Employers claimed lung disease amongst their workers was more likely to be due to smoking or tuberculosis or from some random thing that they'd contracted elsewhere, which is totally normal and super likely. At one point, coal dust was even thought to be healthy.
22:52 Speaker 08 There were plenty of people back then who would say not only is coal dust inert, but there were some studies from the late 19th century that said it's not just that it's inert, it's actually quite good for you, it protects you against tuberculosis. And actually, you know, a good dose of a good lungful of dust isn't a bad thing, it's actually good for you.
23:14 Speaker 00 And it's absolutely inconceivable now, but the same wishful thinking was applied for some time to aluminium dust. Medical historian Dr Crane Fitzgerald writes about this in her book, Turning Men Into Stone.
23:29 Speaker 09 Yes, they started to treat miners with aluminium dust as an inhalation, as a cure for silicosis and a prevention which was complete rubbish. It was a Canadian invention, it's called a McIntyre powder. It was supported by the government, the unions and the industry and they said to miners, right, you know, this is going to fix your silicosis. So they clearly understood that it was still a problem even after TB was removed. So instead of spending money on decent dust control and ventilation, the mining industry built hermetically sealed change rooms and miners had to go in there and breathe in aluminium dust on their way to work.
24:16 Speaker 09 It's hard to tell how compliant they were. The fact remains that the government and the union and the industry spent money on something that wasn't going to help miners at all.
24:31 Speaker 09 The mine's medical officer, Jim McNulty, and all the public health doctors were against it from the start.
24:38 Speaker 09 And it wasn't canned until, I think, 58, quite late.
24:45 Speaker 00 Meanwhile, in the Bendigo Gold Mines in the 1920s, we're back in the cage at the change of a shift.
24:53 Speaker 00 I imagine it would have sounded like this. The blokes are tired at the end of their day. They nod to the next group as they come in.
25:01 Speaker 04 Here's what he knows. Good day, how are you? Good. Hi, Charlie. Hi, Tom. How are you? Yes, Freddie.
25:14 Speaker 00 They all know one another. These are tight communities. So what does this small moment tell us?
25:20 Speaker 03 I think it tells us quite a lot about our society, that industry is frequently protected because there's a fear. For instance, on the gold fields, the governments always protected the industry. They believed that if industry was forced to improve working conditions, improve ventilation, use water drills instead of the dry drills they were using, that would force the mines to close. There would be an economic collapse and there'd be mass unemployment. So although they didn't like people getting silicone and tuberculosis, they felt it was a lesser evil than the entire collapse of the industry.
26:07 Speaker 03 This, of course, you know, it's... Their theory was not grounded in fact.
26:16 Speaker 00 Yeah, no. But it is an undeniable fact that mining's still a central pillar of the Australian economy and provides employment that's crucial to the survival of entire towns. It took decades of hard-fought industrial struggle from mine workers, their unions and communities. But today's miners are looked after far more than they once were. In any Australian underground mine these days, there's regular testing of the air, huge ventilation fans and lots of other safety regulations. It's mandated by law. And miners no longer have to pay for their own protective gear.
26:59 Speaker 00 But still, still, the dust will not settle.
27:08 Speaker 05 It's often been said that history keeps repeating itself because we're not prepared to learn from history.
27:15 Speaker 03 Silicosis on the Goldmine in Feals was Australia's first industrial disaster. And it has continued to be a problem, right up to today.
27:27 Speaker 05 People had completely forgotten the effect that breathing in very fine rock dust, particularly quartz dust, was an extremely harmful thing. And unfortunately, that means that we've got the same problems occurring today as occurred 70, 80 years ago.
27:59 Speaker 00 Thanks a bunch to tour guide Bill Allen and all the fabulous staff at the Central Debra Goldmine. Thanks also to producer Lynne Gallagher and sound engineer John Jacobs. I'm Van Badham and this has been an ABC Rewind production. Please join me next time for part two of Dusted, when we turn to coal. My old university days are coming back to haunt me. Bye for now.
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