Sixteen-pound hammers, fettlers, shanties and railway tents: demographic movement of Aboriginal people from rural to urban areas of central-eastern New South Wales in the assimilation era, 1940-69

This chapter provides a brief history of Aboriginal urbanisation, with a particular focus on the trials and tribulations of Aboriginal people who relocated from the North Coast and New England districts of eastern New South Wales to Platt's Estate in Newcastle and Teralba at Lake Macquarie in the Hunter region. Drawn from colonial archival records, contemporary literature, film documentaries and Aboriginal oral tradition, this work specifically focuses on the lives of Aboriginal people against a backdrop of the assimilation policies of the paternalistic New South Wales Aboriginal Welfare Board from 1940 to 1969. How did these policies impact on Aboriginal people at Platt's Estate and Teralba? Finally and most importantly, this paper recognises an invaluable contribution to the Australian economy by Aboriginal people; the Aboriginal men who provided muscle and sweat as fettlers in the railways and as labourers in heavy secondary industries, and the Aboriginal women who cooked the meals and nurtured the children