Open Writing

The year 1949 was notable for two main events. It was the year when 23,000 miners in open cut mines in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia and Victoria went on strike. It was also the year when 90 students at Sydney Girls’ High School were studying hard for their Leaving Certificate examination.

The main effect of the miners’ strike in NSW was that there were many electricity blackouts which mostly affected industry. The effects on the domestic user were less serious as fewer electrical appliances were found in the home in 1949 than today.

Domestic refrigerators were uncommon, and those that existed were often powered by gas or even kerosene. Some households still depended on ice chests to keep their food cold.

Cooking was mostly done on a gas stove. Only very few homes could boast a modern electric range. Washing machines were almost unknown except for commercial use.

Other electrical appliances in common use today, such as coffee makers, electric mixers and electric bread makers, were only to be found in the imagination of some avant-garde designers.

But home lighting was always powered by electricity, as the use of gas lighting had been discontinued long ago.

It was winter when the coal miners’ strike began, so when the 90 Leaving Certificate students returned home from school, ready to begin their afternoon study sessions, the last of the daylight was already beginning to fade, and lights had to be switched on. But this was the time when the blackouts usually began.

I well remember the candles which sat on my desk, ready to be lit as soon as the lights went out. Candlelight can be so romantic when you are cuddled up with your boyfriend listening to suitable mood music, but when the flickering flames cast moving shadows on textbooks, making it difficult to distinguish individual letters or numbers (is that an 8 or a 3?), then study becomes a difficult and more than usually unpleasant task.

But trial exams were fast approaching, and we all battled bravely on as if our lives depended on it. And that was exactly what our teachers wanted us to believe. Sydney Girls’ High was a selective high school with an enviable record of excellent Leaving Certificate results over a period of many years, and it was our duty to uphold that record.

On the cold winter evenings when the electric radiators on which many families depended for heating could not be used, the warmest place was bed. But even in bed the studying continue, by candlelight of course. It is a never-ending source or wonder to me that none of my fellow students was ever incinerated. There were many times when I would gladly have set fire to the Latin text we were studying, Cicero’s De Senectute, Of Old Age, a most suitable text for 17-year-olds to study, wouldn’t you agree?

But even strikes cannot last forever. Some two months after large parts of the country had first been thrown into turmoil, the government’s patience ran out. Ben Chiefley, the Labor Prime Minister of the day, called out troops, who with machine guns, bayonets and rifles entered the coal fields.

The strike was broken within two weeks, but such action by a Labor government came as a shock to the coal miners who had believed Labor to be a party of the working class.

However, we students cared not one jot about how the strike had been broken and the ethics of it all. We were just grateful that we could once again study by good light and that our red-rimmed eyes would be restored to their normal beauty in time for the school ball.