The Blue-Smock Girls (APPM, Burnie, 1960s)

The Blue-Smock Girls

(APPM, Burnie, 1960s)

Today’s nostalgia was often yesterday’s drudgery.

This poem is based on my personal experience

working at the Burnie Paper Mill

in the 1960s when I was fifteen years old.

Grey-haired women, who in their youth

Earned a living by sorting paper rhythmically

For eight hours at the Burnie Paper Mill,

Talk passionately about those good old days

When work was plentiful

And wages and conditions were good.

I must be suffering from false memories

Because I remember the conditions

Of those blue-smocked girls at the Burnie Mill.

It was anything but perfect.

We, in the mid-sixties, were factory fodder.

We were the lower order of Burnie’s society.

We were seen as an immoral bunch

Even though some attended church.

Our compulsory long, cold blue-smock uniforms

Told the world that we were the mill girls.

Outside there was the era of the mini skirt.

There was segregation among the mill girls.

There were those that counted and those who sorted.

For those who sorted, as I did, the only pre-requisite was

That we had to be strong, could spell our name

And knew how to write the word, “section”.

Many, like me, were probably semi-literate;

Then there were others who had topped their class at school.

No one cared as long as one could do the work.

We were like invisible ants.

Inside the dim-grey building with its opaque windows That blocked out the alluring world

There was no radio playing

To inform or stimulate the mind

And no Muzak to relax the soul.

This was the young Johnny Farnham and the

Beatles era;

Yet heavy-metal sounds permeated the entombed work area.

During work the clock moved at a mournful pace.

I thought many times that dusk should be approaching

As my legs and wrist were leaden;

The eyes itched and my back screamed out in agony.

The truth was that lunch was still to be had

And the day of drudgery of pulling paper

rhythmically from right to left –

Even though I was left-handed – had hardly begun.

Some of the girls, like me, were too young to vote

And were under the legal age of consent for a night of passion.

The only relief or mental stimulation we had

Was when the size or colour of the paper or its shade changed.

Those days were considered as the good days.

This was the time of the Protestant work ethic;

Time when RSI was not yet understood nor in vogue;

A time at the mill when girls were placed in groups

And each group, if they had not reported an injury

Over a period of three months, received a gift from management.

Those who did injure themselves were considered

To be letting the team down and thus were

ostracized.

On Friday mornings, many girls in blue had

Rollers in their hair and descended in herds

To the hairdressers in town during lunch hour

To return to the mill transformed by teased hair.

Even though the Vietnam War was raging

And our local youth were sent overseas,

The girls in blue were only concerned with the boys at hand.

A percentage of those who carried paper to the girls

Were polite foreigners called Dagos and Wogs.

Mill girls were considered loose if they dated one of them - by some of our respectful boys

Who often suffered from groping and meandering hands.

Work at the mill for most was seen as a transitional time

Between school and a romantic marriage.

Marriage was the ultimate goal for most

blue-smocked girls.

© Judy Brumby-Lake

(Part of this poem was published in Allan Jamieson’s THE PULP THE RISE AND FALL OF AN INDUSTRY)