Looking Back History Feature: The Hardie Girls (and boys)

The Hardie girls (and boys): Edith Robinson (left) and Elaine Broadhead with former employees of Hardies Rubber factory. The site is now the Thirroul Plaza Shopping Plaza in 2003.

By MICK ROBERTS ©

The “girls” working inside Hardie Rubber Factory 1949

ALTHOUGH it is difficult to imagine today, Thirroul was once a thriving industrial centre with brickworks, railway yards and textile factories employing many hundreds of local men and women.

A major employer of women was Hardies Rubber Factory, located on the site of the Thirroul Village Shopping Plaza, where sandshoes and waterproof coats were manufactured.

Seventy-two-year-old, Elaine Broadhead, who lived most of her life overlooking the site of the long gone factory, was one of the company’s first employees and spent 16 years as a machinist. She talked to me about the old factory in 2003.

“When I first started there at 15 it was a 45 hour week, nine…