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Wangaratta, Textile Town
It is 1919, the end of First World War, and a group of Wangaratta businessmen come together with a big idea: to build a woollen mill to create jobs, keep people in the town, draw workers and families from afar, and make the town prosper.
They start a share float and one of the men, William Callander, comes up with a bold plan to promote the project. His two daughters Alma and Lena take to the skies in an open biplane, seated on kerosene tins, to scatter leaflets across the region. The Wangaratta Woollen Mills is born, and soon becomes the largest mainland woollen mill in the nation.
It was the success of its textile industry that took Wangaratta from small country town to major rural city. But Wangaratta’s story as a textile town also reflects the making of modern Australia. It traces the path of post-war migration and the accompanying growth of Australia’s economy.
Following the Second World War Australia's prosperity began to boom and thousands of Europeans settled here. It was in this atmosphere, in 1946, that a Canadian company, Bruck Textiles, comes to Wangaratta and creates a population explosion, employing thousands of workers from places as diverse as Poland, Italy, Holland and Wangaratta itself.
Some of these workers' stories are presented here, as well as interviews with employees of Australian Country Spinners (formerly Wangaratta Woollen Mills). Photographs of the factories are also presented, along with moving image postcards of the industrial processes.
Newspaper - The Weekly Times (publisher), 'Opening of the Wangaratta Woollen Mills by the Premier', 1922, The Weekly Times
Courtesy of The Weekly TImes
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This page from The Weekly Times, dated Sept 8, 1922, is a report on the opening of the Wangaratta Woollen Mills by the Premier of the time, Harry Lawson. The photographs, numbered on the page, are described as follows:
1. View of the Mills 2.Reeling 3.Twisting 4. Opening Ceremony by Mr Lawson 5.General view of the interior 6.The Can Drill Box 7.The Cheese Winder 8.Mr Firth (Manager) 9.Employees
Wangaratta Woollen Mills Limited began in 1919 with a share float by local businessmen to create employment and attract workers and their families to the town. One of the men, William Callander, comes up with a bold plan to promote the project. His two daughters Alma and Lena take to the skies in an open biplane, seated on kerosene tins, to scatter leaflets across the region.
By 1922 the Wangaratta Woollen Mills was operational, and its powerhouse supplied all the electricity to the town of Wangaratta.
The Woollen Mills were famous for the quality of their woollen yarns, and in the 1950s became involved with synthetic yarns. Well known as a factory with a family atmosphere, and often employing many members of the same family, the Mill had many sporting and social clubs. The Mills became Australian Country Spinners (ACS) in 1991.
Photograph - 'Staff Wangaratta Woollen Mills, 1940s, Collection of Gordon Williams
Collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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These photographs, one taken sometime in the 1940s, the other two in the 1970s, show workers at the Wangaratta Woollen Mills.
Photograph - 'Staff Wangaratta Woollen Mills', 1970s, Collection of Gordon Williams
Collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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Photograph - 'Staff Wangaratta Woollen Mills', 1970s, Collection of Gordon Williams
Collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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Photograph - Cliff Bottomley (photographer), 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
These images by various photographers are taken inside the Wangaratta Woollen Mills, sometimes featuring workers. They are from a personal album created by Gordon Williams, a former workers at the mills, and therefore some information, including some of the dates and creators of the photographs, is not known.
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - Dacre and Pauline Stubbs Photo (photographer), 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
Collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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Photograph - Wangaratta Woollen Mills Factory Interior, Undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photograph - W.C. Grieve (photographer), 'Women's Football Team, Wangaratta Woollen Mills', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
The mills employed many women. This photograph features one of the Wangaratta Woollen Mills' sporting teams, a woman's football team.
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Photographs of the Wangaratta Woollen Mills.
Photograph - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills', undated, Collection of Gordon Williams
From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
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From the collection of Gordon Williams, courtesy Ian Payne
Film - Sophie Boord, 'Post-War Migration and Bruck Textiles', 2011, Rural City of Wangaratta
Courtesy of Rural City of Wangaratta
Film - Sophie Boord, 'Post-War Migration and Bruck Textiles', 2011, Rural City of Wangaratta
-Well, I arrived in Wangaratta in 1962, as a 12-year-old kid.
-I never felt like a migrant.
-Well, I think Wangaratta's virtually sort of a model for Australia, the way it's happened, to be honest.
NICK PAOLA: My father came here after the war. A few months later, he obtained the job with Brucks. And he was there for the next 10 years.
-It being after the war, and we'd just had a hell of a kerfuffle in Europe, and my brother, my oldest brother, he had migrated to Australia in 1951. And the letters he wrote, well I thought he would be a millionaire next year. You know, the way he was saying how good it was. So, my brother and I, we talked, and we worked on it and we finally migrated here. And here, there was also plenty work, and this was at Brucks and the Woollen Mill.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
-My brother had started a few weeks before me. And he was there until he retired. My other brother worked there for a little while. And other members of the family, aunties and uncles, have worked there, as well.
NICK PAOLA: Well, there's a lot of migrants that they came to Brucks from Bonegilla. After the Russian invasion in Hungary, my father was coming to Bonegilla. And he met a lot of Hungarian migrants, refugees. He met some of them and he took them back to Wangaratta, which then, eventually got a job with Brucks.
-And there is old army barracks here in town, and people will tell you that's where they stayed when they first came to Wangaratta from the migrants centers. They were sent and they stayed there and worked at Brucks.
[VEHICLE REVVING]
HENK ZEINSTRA: Wangaratta was a textile town.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
-I started off in what they called, at Brucks, the finishing room. That's where the big rolls of material get put though the machine to make it more shiny, and smell better, and all that.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
-It was actually quite good.
-I liked it, and what it, of course, is. You learn and you try it. I didn't know anything about textiles. But that doesn't take very long. You soon learn what you have to do.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
-The skilling would be purely whatever was required to do that job. And that was your task, and then you would just methodically go at it day in and day out.
-At first you have to learn the technical terms, you know. They say something and they say, what is that? Explain it to me, what that means. And it takes a bit of time. But you weren't the only one because I would say about, well 3/4 of the work force was migrant stock. Yeah, there was plenty of them. Italians, and Germans, and bit of everything.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
-Czechoslovaks, Yugoslavs.
-From all countries. It was like the United Nations.
-All the different languages was the interesting thing, because of course, in the '50s and '60s there wasn't a lot of support systems for non-English speaking people.
-If you had Italians that would speak their language, another country people would speak their own language. But if there was an Italian and a Pols or Yugoslav, they would speak English to understand each other.
-Now when I think back, we probably could have done a lot more but, it was really learn English or else type thing. We had a polish lady as training officer and an Italian man as a training officer in the weaving side of our mill.
[NON-ENGLISH SPEECH]
-There was a lass in Wangaratta whom we used to call in to do some Italian translation. If ever we had manuals from the machinery manufacturers overseas, sometimes we had a German man there who could do some translation for us. Or if there were any individuals that needed extra support, those sort of facilities were founded. Back in the '50s and '60s, even in the early '70s as I recall, must have been quite difficult for people of, sort of a home language to come in and pick it all up.
-Everybody worked well together. I look at those people as, they put out a very good contribution to, not just to Brucks but to Wangaratta as a whole.
-There's certainly no hiding it. There's certainly not much dislike because on Sunday you see him again at the soccer field. Why make arguments? You know?
-Irrespective of which country or culture you come from, and everybody sort of got together as part of the community. There was a lot of mateship among everybody. It was quite good.
-It was. It was a little, sort of a gel pot of what the future of Australia became.
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In this video, former employees of the Bruck Mills in Wangaratta discuss what it was like to work there in the 1950s-1970s, in particular in terms of post-war migration.
Film - 'The Woollen Mills: A Second Family', 2011, Rural City of Wangaratta
Courtesy of Rural City of Wangaratta and Arts Victoria
Film - 'The Woollen Mills: A Second Family', 2011, Rural City of Wangaratta
-For a young guy straight out of school, it was a totally unbelievable environment. We had 675 people working three shifts. It was just flat out. It was just go, go, go all the time, and it was really dynamic.
-When I came here in '76, it was really fun.
-We had a great group. And we had a good boss. And we just had lots of fun.
IAN PAYNE: Everyone seemed to know everybody. My recollections are the foreman, supervisor certainly had more of a sympathetic ear and let's say a kindness towards their employees. Probably they're related. I don't know.
ROBYN ANDISON: Lots more people, but everyone was a lot closer.
DULCIE WILKINSON: We had a very big social club and done lots of things together. We had a tennis club, a chess club, cricket club, billiard club, and the mill had their own tennis courts.
And every year we had a picnic. We'd go out and have races for the kids and the adults. And Miss Woollen Mills. And then we started to have a children's party for Christmas.
ROBYN ANDISON: I can remember going out to what was the Wangaratta drive-in and having Santa and getting a present, having your name called out. It was really good.
DULCIE WILKINSON: Everybody looked out for everybody. If somebody was sick, you'd all go to see how they were and if they needed anything. To me, it was a second family.
[TEXTILE MACHINERY BANGING]
MALCOLM ANDISON: Wangaratta Woollen Mills has been a major employer in the town all this time.
IAN PAYNE: There was a phenomenal number of people that owe their sheer lives I guess, or their upbringing to textiles in this town. There's no doubt it's a textile town. No doubt about that.
[TEXTILE MACHINERY BANGING]
[PEOPLE TALKING AND LAUGHING]
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Courtesy of Rural City of Wangaratta and Arts Victoria
This video explores the place that Wangaratta Woollen Mills and Australian Country Spinners had in the lives of those who worked there. Present and former workers are interviewed.
Film - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills', 2011, Rural City of Wangaratta
Courtesy of Rural City of Wangaratta and Arts Victoria
Film - 'Wangaratta Woollen Mills', 2011, Rural City of Wangaratta
-We grew up here in Woollen Mills, Woollen Mills, Woollen Mills, really, because grandpa, of course, was one of the instigators. He and some others had tried to get the idea of a Woollen Mills or some factory off the ground. Young people of the town needed employment, and a lot were leaving. I think grandpa actually thought it was a good idea if they got all these folders printed out and threw them around the town.
My mother, Elma, and her sister, Lena Callandar sat on kerosene boxes in this little open plane and threw these folders out, or posters, or whatever they were. And from that, they raised a lot of money. From there, they were able to get the Woollen Mills off the ground. It's great that it's still going, and that's the main thing for the employment in the town.
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Courtesy of Rural City of Wangaratta and Arts Victoria
When a group of Wangaratta business men decide their town needs a woollen mill they start a share float. One of the men, William Callander, comes up with a bold plan to promote the project.
His two daughters, Alma and Lena, take to the skies in an open biplane, seated on kerosene tins, to scatter leaflets across the region.
In this video, Lena's daughter Lorraine Vaughan talks about the beginning of the Wangaratta Woollen Mills, and how central they were to the creation of Wangaratta as we know it today.
Film - Sophie Boord, 'Factory Floor: Australian Country Spinners', 2011
Courtesy of Sophie Boord and Arts Victoria
Film - Sophie Boord, 'Factory Floor: Australian Country Spinners', 2011
[Woollen Mill sound scape] [No dialogue]
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This video is a meditation on industrial processes involved in textile and wool manufacturing, featuring a montage of observational footage taken on the factory floor at Australian Country Spinners.
Australian Country Spinners, once known as the Wangaratta Woollen Mills, has been central to Wangaratta's economic and social fabric since 1922, when it first opened, supplying electricity to the whole town.
Australian Country Spinners is the largest worsted spinner in Australia and produces a wide range of industrial yarns using Australian Merino and Crossbred wools.
Victorian Collections acknowledges the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
peoples as the first inhabitants of the nation and the traditional custodians of the lands
where we live, learn and work.
