Members of the Broken Hill Trades Hall and Victorian Trades Hall, as well as state and federal government agencies, got together this week for meetings to go through the archives to further strengthen the bid to achieve UNESCO World Heritage listing.
It comes after Broken Hill Trades Hall – as well as Victorian Trades Hall in Melbourne, as the proposed transnational serial nomination – was placed on Australia’s Tentative List to be considered for nomination earlier this year, and following some 14 years of campaigning.
Advisor to the Broken Hill Trades Hall Trust, Diana Ferry, told the Barrier Truth that by exploring and uncovering additional information about the building that could help enhance the nomination.
“The World Heritage listing is about built heritage. It’s about the building, it’s not about the collection within the building. But the collection within the building, the archives, all of these primary documents, are evidence that the activities that went on in the building actually occurred,” she said.
“We’ve been fortunate to have had Colin Long and Andrew Reeves come from Victoria to spend the best part of a week in Broken Hill helping sort out the archives. They’ve uncovered some real treasures of primary documentation and that is really important for telling the story and providing evidence for why the building is important.
“The archives are a crucial part of the bid in that we need to have a conservation management plan for those and work out how people will be able to access those records once it gets World Heritage listing, and make sure they’re preserved into the future.”
Barry Gamble, a UK-based independent World Heritage consultant who has overseen several successful nominations to the World Heritage List, was also on site across the week, making sure all of the criteria was being addressed in the best way possible.
Ms Ferry says having Mr Gamble at the meeting meant he could guide them on where the bid could be improved, with the work now including putting in place plans to complete all the necessary documentation about what’s required to conserve and manage the building into the future.
“To have in place conservation management plans and plans for how the public will be able to access the building, but also how it will be maintained and funded into the future, we’re at the beginning of that journey to really consider what that looks like, but we’ve made really good progress in this meeting,” she said.
“It’s about to go into an assessment process and as long as we have covered off all of the things that they will be assessing against and have a clear plan and direction into the future, that is the type of thing that the assessors will be looking for. We don’t have to have done all the work, but we have to at least acknowledge the work that needs to be done and have a plan for how we’re going to achieve that work.
“Another important part of the meeting was to consider succession planning for the building, so if the building has already existed for over 100 years, what can we do to ensure it is protected for the next 100 years? It will outlive the people that are currently working on the building, but it’s important for Broken Hill as part of our heritage listing as a heritage city, and to support this UNESCO World Heritage listing.
“The reason this building is so important, is that you cannot tell the full story of industrialisation and the birth of the labour movement and all of the conditions that were won and hard fought for for workers without including the Trades Hall.
“A really important part of that story is the internationalism, how we link with other Trades Halls around the world – how do we link to the Trades Halls in Argentina, Brazil, and other areas in Europe? That’s what we’re looking at now.
“We think we’ve got really good support across government and across the political divide, and we’ve been really fortunate to have such strong support from state and federal government, which has also been backed up at a local level by our Council and our current and previous Mayor, but also our state and federal members.”
It’s expected that the serial nomination will be made in full in 2026 and is hoped to be successful in late 2026 – early 2027.
