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• Bush dances to polling booths: Mechanics' Institutes' role in democracy Bush dances to polling booths: Mechanics' Institutes' role in democracy Tony Wright Published: June 18, 2016 - 11:05AM Kitchens across the district ran hot for days before the local bush ball – or even a modest Saturday night dance. The tables in the supper room at the Mechanics' Institute were required to groan: cakes, sponges and slices, sandwiches and pies, dainties that would make a heart specialist weep. Great urns of tea. In the dark beyond the door, country boys stashed bottles of stronger stuff among the tussocks, building confidence to ask a girl to dance. On stage a piano was thumped, a violin did battle with a squeezebox and an old geezer walloped his drums. Sometimes there was a concert at the Mechanics' Institute, and the warbling and joke-telling and tap dancing rolled back for a night the loneliness of the dark paddocks around. Mechanics' Institute. Such a strange name to a modern ear. We had no idea our country hall, a long time before it had been reduced to the mere setting for a dance or a concert, embodied an isolated people's embrace of enlightenment. Many Mechanics' Institutes – and there are so many of them still strung from one end of Victoria to the other we barely notice them – are little used these days for their original purposes. Still, in a couple of weeks quite a few of them, where there is no handy local school, will become polling places for the federal election. Should you find yourself at such a place, voting card in hand, take a moment. Here stands a half-forgotten but fundamental chapter in the Australian story of egalitarian democracy. Those old Mechanics' Institutes (known as Schools of Arts in Queensland, Athenaeums and other names that once meant the same thing), amount to a direct link to the desire of working men and women from the time of the Industrial Revolution to educate themselves and to grant their communities social and intellectual sustenance. The word "mechanic" once meant something other than the bloke tinkering with motors in your local garage. Mechanics in the 18th and 19th centuries were artisans – the skilled craftsmen and engineers who worked the machinery on which the Industrial Revolution was built. They were a new class of working people, eager to read and learn. In 1799, a Professor of Natural Philosophy at Glasgow's Anderson University, George Birkbeck, began working with local "mechanics" who were building equipment for his scientific experiments. Impressed with their thirst for knowledge, he began a series of lectures for them, which proved an instant hit. The first Mechanics Institute, which sprang from the popularity of these intellectually stimulating talks, was established in Glasgow in 1823, followed by another in London and a sudden stream of them across Britain. At the very same time, the movement leapt the oceans to Australia. The Mechanics' Institute movement came with lofty aims: "The diffusion of literary, scientific and other useful knowledge and the literary advancement of members and the community generally, through the delivery of lectures, a library of reference and circulation, a reading room and the formation of classes". It was a seductive idea to people spreading to isolated farms and settlements across a strange new land. From new cities to one-horse crossroads, from flyblown flat lands to high-country outposts, building lots were reserved, funds were rounded up and working bees arranged. Books were collected. Any citizen with an expertise in anything was invited to become a lecturer. Right through the second half of the 19th century and into the early years of the 20th, Mechanics Institutes – homegrown testaments to the belief that learning should be free to all – kept rising. The state of Victoria became the world capital of Mechanics' Institutes. Every self-respecting city, town, village or country district had a Mechanics Institute. There were around 1030 of them in Victoria by the 1890s – as many as all the other Mechanics' Institutes in all Australia's other states and territories combined – and about 500 are still standing. Some of them, like Melbourne's Athenaeum in Collins St, which began life in 1839 as the Melbourne Mechanics' Institute, or the Ballarat Mechanics' Institute (1852) are magnificent buildings. Most, however, are modest structures, often of weatherboard. All of them, at some point, had a free library and reading space. About half of those still standing still operate as libraries. Most also had, or have, a dance floor, a concert stage and a supper room. They were at once bush universities, early forms of TAFE and most of all, the social anchor of communities of all sizes. In many country districts, the Country Fire Authority's local headquarters nestles in a shed right next door to the Mechanics' Institute, as if here lies both the heart and protector of the place. Daniel Andrews might have done himself a favour by taking note. We know much of this because Melbourne historians Pam Baragwanath and Ken James, having spent years assembling the history of every known Mechanics' Institute in Victoria, have published a remarkable book entitled These Walls Speak Volumes. Within its 704 pages just about every Victorian can find the Mechanics' Institute that stands – or once stood – in their suburb, town or district, from Acheron to Yinnar and hundreds of places you've probably never heard of between. Those dances and concerts from my childhood were at the Condah Mechanics' Institute, and, glory be, it's there, too. These Walls Speak Volumes: A History of Mechanics' Institutes in Victoria, by Pam Baragwanath and Ken James, 2015. [email protected] ($100 including postage). This story was found at: http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2016/bush-dances-to-polling-booths-mechanics-institutes-role-in-democracy-20160617-gpkqq6.html