Steel Town: The Making and Breaking of Port Kembla

Steel Town is about the social and political effects of largescale industrialisation in one New South Wales industrial town - Port Kembla - which in many ways exemplifies the changing economic base of Australia. Port Kembla slipped into national consciousness as the centre of a new, ‘modern’, industrial Australia in the 1950s. The town has now receded once again, this time behind the facade of suburban homogeneity and a developing ‘red light’ district status. The story of the town’s rise and fall, told before it disappears altogether, illuminates our understanding of the processes of industrial and social change.