Cars. Utes. Tools. Tractors. Caravans. Beer. Entire industries built over generations — gone within decades. We're putting them into a book.
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Reserve your copy of the first edition — just your name on the list.
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Millions of minutes of Industrial South have been watched by the people who remember the Australia we cover — the factories, the brands, the machines that built this country. They've left thousands of comments. They've named the plants where they served their time. They've told us what year they started, which shed the apprentices swept, and what the gates sounded like at knock-off.
This book gathers it all into one volume. The companies that built Australia, the families who ran them, the foreign boardrooms that ended them — and the moments it all came apart. Holden at Elizabeth. The foundries of Toowoomba. The refineries that kept us moving. The tools, the workwear, the ice cream trucks of an Australian summer.
A record of the country that made things — before the men who remember are gone.
There was a time when Australia was one of only a handful of nations on earth that could build a car from the ground up — design it, engineer it, press the steel, cast the engine, and drive it off the line. The Kingswood. The Falcon GT. The Valiant Charger. The Torana that ran Bathurst. Every one of them built by Australian hands at Elizabeth, Broadmeadows, Tonsley Park and Fishermans Bend, and every one of them parked in an Australian driveway by Sunday. Then, on a grey October morning in 2017, the last Australian-built car rolled off the line at Elizabeth, and the workers clapped, and then it was quiet.
The cars are still loved. The factories are gone. The towns they built are still there, mostly — but the streets are quieter, the pubs have shut, and the men who once knew which shift was on by the sound of the gates have grown old. This is the story of how the country that built the cars it loved forgot how to build them at all.
My first job 15 years old 1985 1989 fitter & turner there all gone bless you fellas
My father who is 63 this year still has my Grandfather's entire Sidchrome tool collection. They've never broken, cracked, deformed or flaked in almost 80 years… One day soon I will inherit them, and will continue to pass them down the family line.
My Father worked for Clyde Engineering for 43 years. He retired and they gave him a watch that turned his wrist green about a year later, no pension, no recognition of his 43 years as a craftsman.
Victa gone, holden gone, ford gone, valiant gone, hills hoist gone. AUSTRALIA GONE
Industrial South tells the stories of Australia's lost industries — the factories, the brands, and the decisions that ended them. Watched by the tradies, fitters, farmers and truckies who lived it.
First edition. Just your name on the list.
Noted. Thank you for helping keep the memory alive.A confirmation is on its way to your inbox. The book follows — we'll write to you the day it's ready.
Reserve now — we'll write to you the day the book is ready.