The economic depression of the 1930s saw mass unemployment across Australia with working class areas hardest hit. These depredations did not go unopposed as across the city pickets, occupations and protests were organised to demand jobs and welfare as well as disrupt and prevent the evictions of unemployed people.
There are two self-guided audio tours using the Echoes app available via Moreland City Council’s libraries.
Follow the link below to join historian and archivist Melinda Barrie as she takes you in the footsteps of Noel Counihan and the Brunswick free speech fight. From the theatres and soap-boxes; to riding atop street-cars and Counihan locking himself in a cage to escape arrest, Brunswick was a place of organising and dissent.
At the same link historian and author Iain McIntyre for Lock Out The Landlords, takes listeners on a tour of unemployed workers organising and anti-eviction resistance during the Depression – from urban communes to storming the Brunswick Town Hall and defending working-class families from eviction. This walk was originally held in 2009 and was recorded and edited by Nicole Hurtubise, produced by Jane Curtis and Community Radio 3CR.
Access both audio tours here. The Lock Out the Landlords walk can also be listened as a podcast below. For more see the Lock Out The Landlords: Australian Anti-Eviction Resistance 1929-1936 pamphlet.
Topics: Collection: Tags:
- Campaigning - Grassroots
- Civil disobedience
- Direct action
- History
- Movements_Campaigns - Economic justice
- Social justice