Kemira – Diary of a Strike

Wollongong is not the first city to encircle itself around an industry, and nor is it the last. Corio Bay to Melbourne’s west installed public housing to house all the workers during the Ford factories’ halcyon days; Whyalla on the coastline of South Australia has been populated by workers who have operated its steelworks since 1900. The historic importance of Wollongong as a coal mining town is a fundamental element of Tom Zubrycki’s 1984 film Kemira – Diary of A Strike. In 1880 Wollongong was serviced by around 8,000 people, but when the coal mine was established, the situation was completely transformed. According to Jim Hagan and Henry Lee, “by the 1870s only about one in ten of the district’s inhabitants lived in the coal mining centres located north of the seaport town of Wollongong.” However, after two decades “more than four in ten did so, and the share rose steadily to stand at a peak of nearly seven in ten by the Great War.”¹ 

Wollongong thrived off the important coal industry as early as April 1857 when the “Osborne Wallsend Coal Mine was opened at a point about 100ft. above…Mt. Keira”.² Coal has shaped and defined New South Wales’ economy since its discovery by settlers and continues to be an integral component of the state’s economy today.³ Tom Zubrycki was working at Film Australia when he discovered an article on page three of the Sydney Morning Herald outlining that north of Wollongong in a colliery known as Kemira, 31 miners had received retrenchment notices – alarm bells began ringing in his head. Defying the pressures of their families and their communities, the group of men decided to stage a strike in the mine several kilometres underground. Zurbycki visited the port town with Fabio Cavadini as cinematographer – who had worked on his previous film Waterloo (1981) and would later make Rocking the Foundations (1985), a documentary about the green ban movement in Sydney. Together they captured the turbulent history unfolding in Wollongong which were indicative of broader political shifts occurring at the time. 

Kemira opens in the shrouds of darkness, save for the torch light of some miners that glance back at the camera. Shot by shot we jump between different film stock; colour, black and white; and what appears to be recreated and archival footage. A scratchy black and white shot reveals a hunched over miner in the clutches of two other men, before a match cut reveals a colour image of the men now desperately evacuating a mine. In the same sequence, archival footage shows gallant men who stand proudly encircled by crowds giving speeches and closeups that reveal the Women’s Auxiliary Movement marching together, illustrating the devastating consequences of the strikers’ movement for both men and women. This montage shows the historic and ongoing revolts of the working class in Wollongong, until a lushly coloured utopian-like extreme long shot of the city, viewed from above the mountain ranges, rounds out the sequence. This is the idealised image of Wollongong, and Kemira reveals that the struggle and turmoil experienced by its populace is divorced from this paradise.

Thanks to a drought experienced during 1983 and an increase to wages, unemployment was rapidly increasing and the Australian company BHP, who owned the colliery, believed it was unsustainable to continue to employ its workers. The film is set during a federal election when the then Liberal Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser would be challenged by the former president of the Australian Council of Trade Unions and Rhodes Scholar Bob Hawke. Throughout the film Hawke’s support of the miners is shown and after his election win, his promise that BHP would reinstate the miners was successful. Hawke would also later rescind on the Fraser government’s plans to dam the Franklin River in Tasmania before instituting a series of reforms that would institute the Hawke government. This was also the birth of the neo-liberal agenda in Australia including the decentralisation of wages that were mandated by the Industrial Relations Commission; instigating tax cuts for the rich and lowering the company tax rate from 49% to 33%, leading to a decrease in union membership during the Hawke-Keating tenure.

Statistics like unemployment were double the national average in Wollongong, making the coal industry even more important for families to pay their mortgages, buy groceries and simply get by with a job. Countless figures throughout the film recite the necessity of the mine for their welfare; a white, furry bucket hat-clad man with his arms crossed frankly addresses the inequity of the situation: “if you spoke to any man that’s been [at the strike] whose got women and kids and homes to pay off and wants a job and to be able to survive…when this sort of takedown happens it shows to me who runs the country…it’s not the government…it’s BHP.” This backlash against the corporate class is indicative of a turning point in labour history and class politics that was unfolding at this time.

6 October 1979 can be considered the very date when economist Christian Marazzi noted the shift from Fordism to post-Fordism, or the decentralisation of labour and production. It was on this date that the US federal reserve lifted interest rates 20 points, combatting inflation by placing the onus on mortgage owners. Australia soon followed the US, forecasting the dangerously high cost of oil by raising interest rates. Post-Fordism suggested factory owners could get workers out of their 40 year-long factory job with new and flexible work. However, in substantiating this change they had to look different to the Fordist model that preceded it and sacrificed class mobility in favour of something new. 

Zubrycki’s film captures the dawn of the neo-liberal era which is seemingly incomprehensible in the contemporary world. Time and money have become so inextricably connected that the sublimation of the two has led to a blurring today. British cultural theorist Mark Fisher uses the phrase “lateral networks” to describe an organisation of work that is decentralised. According to him, this system replaced “pyramidal hierarchies” in post-Fordist society.⁴ The outwardly reprehensive man quoted above illustrates that it isn’t the government that mandates the welfare of the workers but giant corporations like BHP, and this anonymity reduces workers’ ability to fight back. 

Perhaps something was in the air during this era of independent film production in Australia. Vis à vis Kemira, Richard Lowenstein would also release his social-realist docu-fiction hybrid homage to the Wonthaggi miners’ strike of 1934 titled Strikebound (1984) and starring Chris Haywood. Much the same as Zubrycki, Lowenstein’s film blends realism and recreation by using period costumes and the original mine as a set to demonstrate the achievements of trade union solidarity. Formally, Zubrycki’s film lends itself to these elements of Strikebound. Preceding Errol Morris’ 1988 film The Thin Blue Line by six years, Zubrycki expertly weaves explicitly subtitled “recreated footage” into his film. For example, at the start men are seen rushing to the mine before putting their gear on and descending into the mine. The film’s inclusion of a variety of media like radio and archival sources – including newsreels and television bulletins – bolsters its obsession with reproducing a nuanced yet authoritative sense of realism. 

Kemira takes place at a critical junction in western history when the post-Fordist and neo-liberal agenda was beginning. Seen today, its spirit resounds in ongoing trade union disputes across Australia – including the government’s recent decision to administrate the Construction, Forestry and Maritime Employees Union (CFMMEU) – and stands as a testament to the trade union movement, solidarity and not giving up against the big end of town.

Kemira – Diary of a Strike (1984 Australia 63 mins)

Prod Co: Kemira Productions Prod, Dir: Tom Zubrycki Ed: Ray Thomas, Gil Scrine Phot: Fabio Cavadini Mus: Elizabeth Drake

Endnotes