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The Wave Hill walkout, covering the Wave Hill Station strike. Due to the large amount of
information from this one source, key passages have been selected for analysis. A summary
of the key aspects of the overall perspectives, arguments, ideologies and features of the text,
including the primary source documents used, is provided. In addition, a number of images
are included that support student learning, of which a representative selection have been
included for analysis. The topic is covered only briefly in Crossroads: Imperialism and race
relations (Cowie, 1982). See Source 7.36 for the full extract.
Source 7.36. Wave Hill Station Strike extract from Crossroads: Imperialism and
race relations (Cowie, 1982, p. 312).
In Case studies in Australian history, Chapter 11: The Wave Hill walkout (Stewart, 1986, pp.
192-204) is given as much space as the other chapters which also focus on a single episode in
history. Also constructed as case studies, a sample of the other topics include: events
surrounding Federation in 1901, Sydney’s rat plague at the turn of the twentieth century, and
the Vietnam Moratorium of the early 1970s. However, how widely spread this particular
chapter was used is open to debate. There is no information available to suggest whether it
was used extensively or not; however given one of the copies that has been sourced for this
research was owned previously by a pre-service educator, and the only chapter circled is
Chapter 11: The Wave Hill walkout, this does suggest that it was used as a case study in
classrooms. Other copies were sourced from university libraries. As this textbook does not
form part of the core curriculum content (noting that for this era, there was no core
curriculum content mandated for high school grades), it can only be a supposition as to how
often it was used. The type of textbook that Case studies in Australian history is means that it
was most likely not used as a core text, instead teachers selecting one or possibly two case
studies from the textbook to base a unit of work on, and to use as a type of black line master.
In order to present an in-depth analysis of representations evident in Chapter 11: The Wave
Hill walkout from Case studies in Australian history (Stewart, 1986), four extracts have been
selected. Each is representative of the larger discourses operating through the chapter, taken
from various parts of the narrative. One is from the background and lead up to the Wave Hill
Station Strike; two are during the Strike; with the fourth from the conclusion, after the Strike
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