A rare photograph of labourers near the Fergusson River in 1916. These ‘muck working gangs’ extended the railway from Pine Creek to the Katherine River without the aid of machinery. The project had begun three years earlier when the Commonwealth Government agreed to extend the existing railway as an incentive for the Vestey brothers to build a meatworks complex at Bullocky Point in Darwin. This image is featured in the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory's new exhibition Unruly Days: Territory Life 1911 – 1921, on now.
Text: Jared Archibald
Image: MAGNT Lot 3068.002
Published: 19 August 2018
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