Italian GoldminersPrint Page

The monument commemorates the plight of Italian goldminers in the 1900s. 

At the 1904 Royal Commission into Non-British Labour, union leaders such as the Great Fingall’s Edward Heitman, testified that Italian miners on contract were particularly careless about working in dust and fumes and that they worked in areas where Australian workers would not. A further Royal Commission in 1905 reported on the ventilation and sanitation of mines, concluding that both were inadequate.

It was dust rather than fumes from explosives that was the deadliest, particularly at the Great Fingall near Day Dawn outside Cue. Its mechanical drills had no dust inhibiting water sprays, with the brittle dust from the quartz ore being freely breathed. Most of the hard rock miners were Italian contractors, keen to meet their daily targets.

When the 1911 Royal Commission on Miners’ Lung Diseases was convened, the testimony was heartbreaking. 85 deaths of Italians were reported to be indisputably associated with dangerous underground air conditions. It was a tragedy not only because of the young age at which most had died, but because of the impact the deaths had on families and friends, the grief sometimes encompassing entire villages.

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