Click on any of the soundfields on the map above to play a story. Note: On location, GPS would trigger these stories automatically.
Portland NSW is no ordinary town and neither is this Soundtrail.
Nestled between the Blue Mountains tourist route with its picturesque villages and world heritage wilderness, and the rural landscapes of the Western Slopes towns of Bathurst, Orange and Mudgee, Portland is a town like no other in Australia.
Today it is known by many as ‘the town that built Sydney’ as for almost 100 years Portland provided the cement to build some of Sydney’s most iconic buildings.
In this sound-rich geo-located audio tour, you’ll meet the workers and their families who gave their all here, working in dangerous conditions in the limestone quarries or the huge and imposing plant. You’ll step inside the preserved industrial site, and go right into the heart of ‘the beast’.
Be immersed in the life, energy and mindset of generations of people who worked, lived and loved here. Walk alongside the lakes, once quarries, as voices bubble up from a not so distant past, or a past which like another country seems just out of reach.
As the town transforms again, and welcomes a new chapter and new faces, the Portland Soundtrail is the latest offering. Marrying local voices, archival traces or the journals of an unlikely observer, this is as vivid and visceral as you’re likely to encounter in sound walks today.
Discover not only how Portland made the cement here, but how Portland made the people.
Download Soundtrail/Portland app on your Android or iphone. Start in the carpark opposite the silos (you can’t miss them). Boot up the Soundtrails app/Portland and start walking.
Credits & Contributors
Produced, written and directed by Virginia Madsen and Hamish Sewell
Interviews and research by Virginia Madsen and Hamish Sewell
Sound Engineer, Andrei Shabunov
Readings performed by Jane Phegan and Lloyd Allison-Young
Original music by Lee Hardisty
Supported by the Portland Business Association and the Portland Foundations
Project steering team, Merryn Groves and Rich Evans
Local voices heard:
Tommy Fitzgerald, Bert Boyling, Herb Coleman, Suzanne Edwards, Sue Piggott, Cheryl Millmore, Father Paul Ryan, Robert Green, Kaylin Caddis, John Kearns, Ernie Jeffree, Kelly Crane, Dorothy Kearns, Yvonne Groves.
Readings from the diary entries by: Guy Fitzgerald [2000] and Mary Ryan [1943-45]. Mary Ryan’s diaries can be found in the Jessie St Library, Ultimo, Sydney
Supporting documentation: Portland’s Past. Insight to those lost in the Cement Works 1901-1993, Trove Newspaper archives and other historical sources.
Photographs supplied by:
Members of the Portland community, Suzanne Edwards, Michael Ryan and Fr Paul Ryan, Lithgow Library heritage collection