Yallourn was designed in the 1920s as a garden town, laid out on "hygienic and aesthetic principles" embodying "the most modern practice." It became a thriving and close-knit community that was home to several generations of State Electricity Commission (SEC) workers and their families. By the 1960s, however, it was being portrayed as outmoded, "unattractive to modern housewives," decrepit, and obsolete. The town was no longer described as a model town but as an area that had to be cleared. This book brings to life the impact of the town and its demise on the individuals who lived there and on the community they created--a community that still exists vividly in memory and imagination.

CONTENTS:
Acknowledgements xi. Introduction p1. Chapter 1: Genealogy p7. Garden towns p8. Company towns p11. Electrifying Victoria p14. Preparing a plan p19. Chapter 2: Building a garden city in Gippsland p26. Designing model housing p26. Retreat to Brown Coal Mine and the Haunted Hills p30. Revising the model house p33. Housing policies under scrutiny p37. Inhabiting the houses p41. The architecture of Yallourn p44. Planting the garden city of Yallourn p45. Appearances p48. Chapter 3: Living and working in the Machine p52. Hierarchies p53. Industrial relations p62. Women and the machine p66. Children and the machine p77. Coal dust p82. Chapter 4: Control and resistance p84. Community spirit p85. Drinking and praising: the Yallourn Hotel and the Salvation Army p92. Political meetings p94. Educational and community facilities p96. ‘Reading’ the newspaper p101. Shopping at the Yallourn General Store p103. The Yallourn Civic Association p106. Chapter 5: Legitimate dissatisfaction p112. SEC reaction p123. Residents’ reaction p128. Towards a Yallourn Town Advisory Council p131. Chapter 6: Fabricating and prefabricating the post-war landscape p135. Towards an industrial region p136. The Morwell Briquetting Project p143. Moe, Newborough and the remaking of Brown Coal Mine p147. Post-war Yallourn p152. Chapter 7: Dismantling Garden City p164. Ethos, language and the authorised version p164. Parliamentary Public Works Inquiry p168. Organised opposition p174. A ‘human activity’ p176. ‘Save Yallourn … this may be your last chance’ p181. Yallourn on the move: resettling elderly residents p188. ‘That’s’ a Yallourn house …? p190. Chapter 8: Yallourn as Brigadoon p195. Sites of remembrance: a Newborough garden p198. Perpetuating 23 Banksia Street p200. A mural in a church p201. YOGA – Yallourn Old Girls’ Association p202. Telling the Yallourn stories p204. A temporary town? p212. The Yallourn Miniature Village: Yallourn as cultural heritage p215. Epilogue p219. Abbreviations, conversions p223. Notes p224. Select sources p237. Index p247.

ILLUSTRATIONS (selected):
Between pages 20 and 21:
An early view of Yallourn. Morwell Brown Coal Scheme, proposed township of Yallourn, State Electricity Commission of Victoria, 1921: A.R. La Gerche’s initial plan for the new town included parks, playgrounds, a lake and golf links. A streetscape showing newly planted deciduous trees and the staff hostel on the corner of Northway and Railway Avenue, about 1925. An early plan: ‘the cheapest workmen’s cottage’. Plan of a ‘better class villa’ (type 19). The Assistant General Superintendent’s house, built in 1929 and photographed in 1961. Huts at Brown Coal Mine, about 1926. Streetscapes forming Centreway looking towards Northway, about 1925.

Between pages 100 and 101:
The SEC Main Office, designed by La Gerche and located in the Yallourn Works Area, was in later years nicknamed ‘Gracelands’. The Yallourn open cut in 1928. Yallourn Power Station rises from the bush in ‘The Works Yallourn’ by Jesse Traill (watercolour, 1924).

Between pages 116 and 117:
Loading briquettes. Briquette presses. Floodwaters pour into the open cut, December 1934. Coal dust on the Yallourn Reservoir, 1937.

Between pages 132 and 133:
Dressed as briquettes and pylons, Yallourn Girl Guides reflect the town’s special identity, 1935. The dining room at the Yallourn Hotel. ‘At long last – Yallourn has a theatre’, seen from across the town square.

Between pages 148 and 149: The newly opened Yallourn Technical School. The Yallourn General Store from Broadway, 1937. Members of the first Yallourn Town Advisory Council and SEC officials at the Monash memorial, 1947.

Between pages 164 and 165:
Yallourn’s Olympic standard pool was opened in 1959. Yallourn on the move: one of the first houses removed from Banksia Street. A split-level house in transit. An SEC renovated house is resettled in Newborough. Masonry walls, large new windows and cedar boards painted mission brown are part of the makeover, with the orange tiled roof the only reminder of Yallourn. A relocated Yallourn attic house lives on in Toongabbie. The dormer windows have been added. The Yallourn open cut in 2001, from the lookout. There is no plaque to acknowledge the existence of the garden city Yallourn.

SURNAMES / FAMILY NAMES from the index:
A’Beckett. Alexander. Alston. Andrew. Argyle. Armstrong. Ashmead. Atkinson. Bachelard. Balfour. Bate. Bates. Bathurst. Bek. Benjamin. Bennett. Benson. Berman. Bienstock. Biggs. Binder. Black. Boyd. Brady. Bridge. Brill. Brogan. Brown. Burkitt. Burmeister. Calloway. Campbell. Carter. Chisholm. Church. Clements. Coates. Cobb. Cohen. Collins. Colvin. Comber. Connolly. Cook. Cordell. Cox. Crane. Cranney. Cresswell. Crookes. Culph. Curle. Cushing. D’Alterio. Davey. De Campo. Dell. Dening. D’Epinay. Dixon. Drummond. Edmondson. Edwards. Elliott. Esposito. Farroll. Fewster. Fidler. Field. Fishman. Fitzgerald. Fleming. Flint. Forrestal. Freestone. Frost. Gans. Gaskin. Gibson. Glen. Gloz. Godfrey. Godridge. Goodyer. Gower. Graham. Grant. Greenham. Gropius. Habich. Hair. Hall. Hamilton. Harper. Harries. Harvey. Hassett. Hay. Hayes. Haywood. Heath. Heinrichs. Heinze. Herbert. Herman. Hill. Hopkins. Howard. Huddy. Hunt. Hyland. Jenkins. Johnson. Kennedy. Kennelly. Kenyon. Kernot. La Gerche. Lawrence. Lawson. Le Corbusier. Liddelow. Lilienthal. Linaker. McCalman. McGoldrick. McGregor. McKay. McMahon. Marshall Hall Inman. Matthews. Mayo. Meakin. Medley. Melbourne. Meldrum. Menadue. Merritt. Merz. Mitchell. Moffit. Monash. Moncur. Morris. Mullins. Murray. Mutsaers. Nichols. Noble. O’Brien. O’Day. Onger. Ostlund. Padfield. Parker. Parry. Paterson. Peel. Pethybridge. Phillips. Price. Priest. Radley. Rainbow. Randall. Read. Reade. Roberts. Robinson. Marquess of Salisbury. Sandercock. Schulz. Scott. Seagar. Selby-Hele. Shepherd. Shoemaker. Sims. Singleton. Smith. Soilleux. Spaull. Spencer. Spittall. Squires-Taylor. Starling. Stephens. Stephenson. Stretton. Sullivan. Sulman. Tainsh. Taylor. Tibballs. Tippett. Troke. Twentyman. Tyler. Unwin. Wallace. Walsh. Watson. Webster. Wiggins. Wilson. Wolfe. Woods. Wragg. Wright.

FULL INDEX available on library computers: Electronic resources \ Indexes \ Yallourn

FROM THE INDEX (Place names, institutions, etc.):
Abandonment: announcement; distribution of facilities; opposition to; progress; trees; see also: Yallourn, temporary town. Back-to-Yallourn. Black coal mining, at Wonthaggi. ‘Born to die’ (film). Briquette industry. Brown coal: development of; differences in; reserves. Brown Coal Advisory Committee. Brown Coal Mine: general; character of; landslide; mine; political meeting at. Brown coal mining, at Latrobe River. Bushfires. Central Gippsland Trades and Labour Council. Children. Churches: general; mural. Clubs. Coal dust. Committee on the Future of Yallourn Township and Open Cut. Company towns. Country Women’s Association (CWA). Depression (economic). ‘Electric Spark’ (newspaper). Electricity industry: effects of World War Two; as expression of modernity; first plans for; progress; social value of. Employees / staff hierarchy / wages. Floods (1934). Garden City and Town Planning Association. Garden towns. Gardens. Great Morwell Coal Mining Company. Guide groups (Girl Guides). Hall. Haunted Hills: general; bushfire; character of. Hazelwood Power Station. Heath and Gower report. Hospital. Hotel. Houses: ageing of; complaints about; cost of; designs for; first; linked to employment; linked to work hierarchy; maintenance; model; moving of; ownership; prefabricated; renovation of. Housewives’ Association. Housing Commission: general; housing at Churchill; housing at Moe; housing at Morwell; housing at Newborough. Ideal Home Competition. Industrial relations, theories for industrial harmony. Kindergarten. Landscaping. Language: for abandonment; for coal mining. Latrobe Valley: general; housing; impact of abandonment; media representation; planning. Library. ‘Live Wire’ (newspaper). Local government: lack of; movement for; views of Communist Party. Machine aesthetic: concept of; Yallourn as example. Moe: general; housing; media representation. Monash Square. Morwell: general; housing. Morwell Bridge. Morwell briquette factory. Morwell open cut. Newborough, housing. Operation Snail. Parliamentary Public Works Inquiry (1970). Place, sense of loss. Post Office. Post-war reconstruction. Regional planning. Remembering Yallourn: general; through artefacts; through film; through reconstruction; through reunions; through song; through stories; through theatre. Resettlement: general; of elderly residents; moving Yallourn houses; subdivisions in Newborough. Royal Commission into Fires (1944). Salvation Army. Save Yallourn Committee. Scout groups. Shift work, effect on families. Social hierarchy: engineers in; military influence. Sports facilities.

State Electricity Commission: contribution to community facilities; control of political assemblies; control of sale of alcohol; control of town; control of workforce; encouragement of gardening; formation of; losses on running Yallourn; loyalty to; policy on housing; policy of self-government; post-war planning; privatisation of; program of abandonment; program of resettlement; promotion of community spirit; relations with residents’ associations; response to coal dust problem; response to growth of settlements; response to Royal Commission into Fires; response to self-government issue.

Strikes. Theatre. Town and Country Planning Board. Town planning: general; conferences. ‘Trafalgar and Yarragon News’, report on Yallourn. Traralgon. Women, educational opportunities for girls. Wonthaggi: black coal mining at; co-operative facilities at; Salvation Army at. Work: general; linked to residence at Yallourn. Workforce, origins.

Yallourn: beginnings; community spirit; identity; lifestyle; loyalty to; media representation; as model town; naming of; planning of; progress; remnants; site; temporary town; visitors to.

‘Yallourn’ (song). Yallourn Action Group. Yallourn Band. Yallourn briquette factory. Yallourn Civic Association. Yallourn General Store. Yallourn Glee and Madrigal Society. Yallourn High School. Yallourn Hospital and Medical Society. Yallourn Miniature Village. Yallourn Newsletter. Yallourn North, housing. Yallourn Old Girls’ Association. Yallourn open cut: general; fire. Yallourn Power Station. Yallourn Primary School. Yallourn Self-Government Delegates’ Committee. Yallourn Self-Government League. ‘The Yallourn Story’. Yallourn Technical School. Yallourn Tennis Club. Yallourn Territory Committee. Yallourn Town Advisory Council. Youth, lack of work.