Book launch of Timber and Tobacco

byDr Criena Fitzgerald

Manjimup, an isolated town in timber country 300 kilometres south of Perth in Western Australia, was home to a vibrant Southern European migrant community.

These migrants initially worked out of sight in sleeper cutting camps in the surrounding dense bush, cutting sleepers on private land for local farmers and landowners from 1900, and working for the newly established timber mills. The men, mainly Yugoslavs and Macedonians (but often collectively referred to as Slavs), would dominate the sleeper cutting industry from the 1920s and the tobacco industry from the late 1930s. Despite this locally acknowledged dominance, their story has remained undocumented.

Dr Criena Fitzgerald
Dr Criena Fitzgerald
Dr Criena Fitzgerald
Dr Criena Fitzgerald
Dr Criena Fitzgerald

This book addresses a void in the histories of WA’s South West, where the contribution of these Southern Europeans to the timber and farming industries in the region has been largely ignored. Although poorly educated, the men and—by the 1930s—their families, utilised their rural background to successfully cultivate the land, often acquiring farms initially reserved for, occupied by and then abandoned by British Group Settlers.

As the WA tobacco industry faltered and ultimately ceased in 1962, those migrants who stayed in the area would diversify into other agricultural ventures or work in the timber industry or for the Forests Department. Like their local contemporaries, the children of migrants born and educated in Australia would move, with encouragement from their parents, to diverse occupations.

Self-funded and with few of the privileges accorded to British migrants, these immigrants from the former Yugoslavia and Aegean Macedonia persevered as sleeper cutters, worked as successful tobacco farmers and chose to make their home in Manjimup. This is the story of that endeavour.

The book tells the stories of Yugoslav and Macedonian Sleeper Cutters and Tobacco Growers in Manjimup from 1890 - 1962.

The book provides stories surrounding prominent families in our community that made our town what it is today.