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The Working Life Collection

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Pigment Manufacturers of Australia
Melbourne's housing boom after World War II stimulated exponential growth in the production of associated products. One example was Pigment Manufacturers of Australia (PMA), opened in 1961 in Laverton by ICI, the British-Australian chemical conglomerate, to manufacture red, blue, green and yellow pigments and dyes for colouring paint, plastic and printing inks.

Protective air hood from the Pigment Manufacturers of Australia collection, c.1980. Source: Museum Victoria, History & Techonology Collection

When economic recession, reduced demand, outmoded technology and complex environmental regulations caused PMA's closure in 1990, the Museum collected the plant model, from which the factory was constructed, along with about 150 smaller items from inside the two main production plants. The collection's predominant motif - the protection of workers from hazardous chemicals and work processes - is revealed in the range and number of safety signs and emergency procedures, protective headgear and footwear, and emergency eyewashes and baths.

The ninety or so PMA plant workers, a diverse cultural mix including English, Irish, Scots, Welsh, Germans, Hungarians, Maltese, Polish and Romanians, and, from the 1970s, Vietnamese and Cambodians, were easily identified: their skin generally had a pigment hue that was difficult to scrub off. Bob Woods, who worked in the yellow pigment plant for ten years over the 1970s, recalls: 'If you were going out of a night time, to a party or a dance or something like that, you had to spend an hour under the showers, as hot as you could get it, so you made yourself sweat … to get the colour out of you, blue, red, yellow, to get it out of your skin'.

Further reading: W. E. Murphy, The Eight Hours' Movement, Vol. 1, (Melbourne: Spectator Publishing Co. Ltd, 1896), 70-72. A. Reeves, Another Day Another Dollar: Working Lives in Australian History, (Carlton: McCulloch Publishing, 1990). A. Stephen & A. Reeves, Badges of Labour, Banners of Pride: Aspects of Working Class Celebration (Sydney: Trustees of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in association with Allen & Unwin, 1986).

Maryanne McCubbin was Head Curator of the Australian Society Program during the development of exhibitions for Melbourne Museum. She has recently been appointed Head, Strategic Collection and Information Management at the Museum.

An essay in Carolyn Rasmussen, A Museum for the People: A History of Museum Victoria and its predecessor institutions, 1854-2000, Carlton North: Scribe Publications, 2001, ISBN 0 908011 69 5. Available at Museum Shops and all good book stores for $49.95.

Go to Museum Collections - Working Life for a general overview of this collection.

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