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April 2023 – Melanie Cox
Recently in Tasmania, I found a workplace frozen in time.
The Blacksmith Shop at the Queen Victoria Museum (QVMAG) in Launceston, was built between 1909-1937 and remains almost exactly how it was left when tools downed for the last time in 1994.
Thinking of the extreme exposures to noise, heat, metal fume, cyanide, vibration (the list goes on), it was easy to write this workplace off as a thing of the past. Then with a twinge, I realised that this workshop closed just after I started work in Occupational Hygiene, which honestly doesn’t seem that long ago.
How far we have come that this workplace is in a museum! But while the Tasmanian tiger and the fossils in the adjacent galleries are long gone, are we still seeing elements of this workplace in the sites we visit today?
Huge kudos to QVMAG for keeping the workshop preserved and free of charge, as a stark reminder to us all to maintain the focus and pressure on improving worker health, safety, and wellbeing. “The longer you can look back, the farther you can look forward” (Churchill, 1944)
Main photo source: QVMAG
