DEEPWATER RAILWAY STATION
CONSERVATION MANAGEMENT PLAN
SECTION 2• DOCUMENTARY EVIDENCE • PAGE 8

coronial jury returned a verdict of accidental death, but added a rider that children `should not be employed on railway works'.26

The 1880 Public Education Act required that children between the ages of six and fourteen attend school?' 27 Yet this provision was rarely enforced in isolated rural areas during the 1880s.28 The larger navvy camps in New England nevertheless boasted public schools. Like the portable pubs and stores that moved along the line with the concentrations of navvies, few of these schools survived the exodus at the end of the project. In fact, little physical evidence remains of any of the major New England construction camps.

Contractors and industrial disputes

David Proudfoot, who built the Uralla to Glen Innes line, was regarded as `just about the largest railway contractor' in Australia at the time of his death in March 1891.29 He was born in Scotland in the late 1830s and emigrated to Victoria with his family during the 1850s.30 Whilst his father started a contracting business in the new colony, David saw opportunities elsewhere and emigrated again to New Zealand, soon establishing himself as a leading business figure in Dunedin, where he undertook railway construction and other large engineering projects.

The Uralla-Glen Innes extension was Proudfoot's first major Australian project and his successful tender of £457,523 was the lowest of seven received.31 Although Australian railways were primarily funded and operated by the state; it is often forgotten that the actual construction (and the larger modifications) of the rail network was largely left to private industry, where profit was of prime importance and competition for public works was intense.

Likewise, industrial unrest arose in New England at the very first cutting built north of Tamworth by Amos Brothers in 1879, and further unrest followed on Proudfoot's Uralla-Glen Innes contract.32 The most highly organised and militant strikes in the region, however, took place on the Glen Innes to Tenterfield extension in early 1884. The contractors (Cobb and Company) attempted to reduce the navvies' wages. In response, the men struck and undertook a mass-march from Bolivia to Glen Innes to garner support for their cause, and camped at the latter town until the dispute was resolved.33 These strikes are significant as they all predate the formal organisation of railway construction workers in 1890.
Although the matter is unrelated, the workers who later maintained the Great Northern line in operation obtained support from Henry Parkes for their education.
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Sources
26 AE, 24 July 1883, p. 1.
27 For the compulsory attendance provisions of the Public Education Act see New South Wales Government Gazette (hereafter NSWGG), No. 135, 17 April 1880, pp. 1823-8, particularly clause 20.
28  A. Barcan, Two Centuries of Education in New South Wales (Kensington, 1988), p. 141.
29 Town and Country Journal, 4 April 1$91, p. 31.
30 See F.R.J. Sinclair, `Proudfoot, David', in B. Books, ed., The Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, 11 (Wellington, 1993), pp. 399-400.
31 AR, 1880, p. 8.
32 Tamworth Observer, 9 July 1879, p. 2. For Uralla-Glen Innes extension strikes see AE, 20 October 1882, p. 4; 14 November 1882, p. 1; 17 November 1882, pp. l, 4; 24 November 1882, p. 6; 1 June 1883, p. 4; Town and Country Journal, 10 March 1883, p. 442.
33 See GIE, 12 February 1884, p. 2; AE, 19 February 1884, p. 2; 22 February 1884, p, 6; 26 February 1884, p. 2; 4 March 1884, p. 2; 11 March 1884, p. 2; 25 March 1884, p. 2.