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Australia's Age of Iron: History and Archaelogy

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"Australia's Age of Iron" is unique in drawing together the historical and archaeological information on the early development of iron smelting in Australia. Due to Australia's comparatively recent European settlement (since 1788) industrial archaeology has a short perspective and has been largely neglected until recently. This book provides the basic information on the earlist attempts at establishing an iron industry and a review of the archaeological investigations. Jack and Cremin give a short introduction to the iron extraction traditions which contributed to the Australian scene, and then trace the history of the history of the various 19th century attempts to establish iron smelting and manufacturing operations. They also provide accounts of the archaeological situation of each of the sites. They document how the the economic survival of the local iron operations, particularly smelting, was dependent upon government support due to the difficulty of the 'infant ' industry becoming competitive with the cheap imports from long established European and North American manufacturers. The book is well illustrated with maps, period photographs of the pioneer iron works and modern black & white photographs of the sites. While the it is comparatively short at xiv + 175 pages it is comprehensively referenced and indexed. It covers a great deal of material and fills a major gap in Australian industrial archaeology. It is expensive, but worth the money, as there is nothing else available in this area.