Australian Fettlers Tales and more ..

Fettlers – so much romance and some hard yarns

Fettlers is an old name for railway track builders and a fettlers yard is where their collection of various paraphernalia were stored such a railway sleepers, rails, tools and the like.

Les Murray … Working Men

Seeing the telegram go limp

and their foreman’s face go grey and stark

the fettlers, in their singlets, led him

out, and were gentle in the dark

Building the railways

• http://railwaysongs.blogspot.com.au/2009/05/chapter2.html
  • The Dying Fettler 
  • They laid steel ribbons
  • Warren Fahey Fettlers Songs
• Patsy Adam Smith
• Adamstown – 1, 
• Bundaberg
• Dora Creek Murrumbidgee
• Eddie Mabo – a Fettler’s story – 20th Anniversary
• Fettlers Children – South Australia
• Fettlers Deaths & Widows
• Fettlers in the Pilbara
• Fettlers Photos
• Fettlers Sons in WW1 –1,  2,
• Fettlers Tales – 1, 
• Fettlers Text Book
• Finke Siding – Fettlers Cottage
• Ghan Fettlers Cottage – Photos of Fettlers along the Ghan
• Henry Lawson & Fettlers Tales
• Indian Pacific Fettlers 
• Ipswich Rail Stories
• Joe McGuiness – a fettler’ son
• Koori Fettler Tales from Wollongong
• Robertson Museum
• Michael Williams’ Fettler Dad

  • I’ll fight him for you Dad!

    Interviewee: Michael Williams

    MICHAEL WILLIAMS: Dad worked in the railway as a fettler. There was a particular time there when a new ganger came in and, as I sit and think back on it, it’s interesting in a lot of ways because he’d have been a reasonably young man himself at the time, probably in his 30s or early 40s, and he had a daughter attending school and he treated Dad quite poorly. Dad was the only Aboriginal person in the gang and he was certainly the oldest. At that time he would have been in his early 60s. He’d be calling Dad ‘boy’. He’d get Dad to do all the menial tasks that was usually left for what they would call ‘the nipper’ in those days, a young boy who started and was there to do all the running around, but he’d get Dad to do this. He’d also be niggling and sniping at him and making off-handed remarks.

    One of the things my Dad taught me in life was patience by example. I mean, he tolerated it and tolerated it. One morning standing around, and all the locals would come in — they’re all dairy farmers in those days and they would bring the cream or milk in to put on the train — so there would have been probably with the two or three gangs there, the station master and probably at least 15 to 20 locals, and finally Dad said to the ganger, ‘Let’s step outside the fence,’ ie outside of government or railway property, ‘And we’ll sort it out’. Dad was clearly pushed to the point of having to do something about this. The ganger was swaggering along behind and my older brother, bless him, was a 12-year-old boy pushing his father back saying, ‘I’ll fight him, I’ll fight him.’ So he holds a special part in my heart as well, my brother. The station master said to the ganger, ‘We know who’ll be coming back inside the fence,’ because Dad’s reputation as a boxer was quite legendary in the district. And at that point the ganger stopped. The interesting thing was from that point on the whole dynamic changed. Dad had called his bluff, and from that point on he couldn’t do enough for us.

• Torres Strait Islander Fettlers
• Xavier Herbert – Fettler