‘Are you happy now?’: women gauge readers and postwar Victoria

Abstract Victoria’s State Rivers and Water Supply Commission employed more than 150 gauge readers in the postwar period. Theirs was a unique labour: not quite a volunteer role, not quite a career. Gauge readers were often the wives and daughters of farming men, and their remuneration was meagre. This article explores the informal remarks left by the gauge readers on the forms they supplied to the Commission and finds intersections that further add to the dynamic labour histories of postwar Victoria. This article argues that the gauge readers utilised the forms effectively to bargain for improved labour conditions, despite their geographical and hierarchical distance from the Commission’s central office in Melbourne.

the Commission and its gauge readers.This article introduces these gauge readers to the scholarship through their fleeting comments in their correspondences with the Commission in the period 1947-53.I argue that although the gauge readers occupied a narrow role within the Commission's hierarchy, they were nevertheless able to bargain for improved conditions -including requests for pay rises -and to communicate their concerns effectively through the informal remarks they left on the forms they supplied to the Commission.
The argument highlights the case study of the Hill sisters, especially Audrey Hill, who was a young adult during this time.Audrey's afternoons were concluded by a visit to Birrarung's height gauge at the edge of her parents' property, 'Henley', at five o'clock each evening. 4She dutifully walked down to the boundary of the property at the river's edge at the end of the day, passing by animals, shrubs, and mud, with a pen in one hand and a form comprising a single sheet of lined paper in the other. 5t the water's edge she stopped, mindful not to fall into the brownish fluid gushing below.There she encountered a height gauge: a graduated vertical post held fast at the bed of the river and emerging straight up through the waterline next to a bridge.From 1947 to 1952, Audrey was employed by the Commission to read the height of the river as revealed by the gauge each evening, record this data on the supplied form, and post it back to Melbourne at the end of each month.Those who took delivery of Audrey's data were also eager to learn about the river's peak heights, and instructed their form-fillers to 'also note when the river ceases to flow'. 6The Commission was based at the State Public Offices, at Treasury Place in Melbourne, with the surveying branch on Flinders Lane (Figure 1). 7he peripheral and tenuous nature of gauge reading has few equivalents.This form of labour demanded local knowledge and required daily observations.It was unsupervised and poorly remunerated. 8The data that the gauge readers provided to the Commission became vital to the planning and implementation of state-building infrastructure projects in twentieth-century Victoria, and especially following the Second World War; and yet it often went unrecognised in the Commission's publications and in the gauge readers' pay packets.This article shines a light on the unique nature of gauge reader employment, and focuses on how these mostly female labourers made use of the river height forms supplied by the Commission to argue for improved working conditions.It also considers the Commission's geographical centrality in Melbourne, as contrasted with gauge readers' relative rurality and consequent peripherality.
The forms provided to the gauge readers each month included a column for the recording of the river's height next to the date, written in feet.Next to this was a column where the clerk in the Melbourne office input the flow rate data through a conversion of the gauge reader's raw river height data.The third column along was filled with ticks where these data were crosschecked.The final, wide 'remarks' column is most intriguing, and it is the trails left behind in this section which act as the springboard for the arguments presented here.The form had three instructions printed vertically on its right edge.Instructions one and two related to the reading of the gauge: 'read the Gauge as nearly as possible at the same hour each day', and 'never record a reading not actually observed on the Staff.When unable to make a reading give reason'.The third instruction explained how the column labelled 'remarks' was intended to be filled: 'show, in remarks column, the extreme height of all floods, that is, if greater than the height observed at the usual time of reading.Also note when the river ceases to flow, and the gauge reading'. 9Figure 2 shows the standard forms.Strict adherence to the instructions would have required the reader to keep a virtually permanent watch over the gauge, rather than to visit it transiently at the end of each day.As we shall see, gauge readers rarely used the remarks section in the prescribed way.
In a majority of cases, the remarks column was left empty.Occasionally, fresh forms and additional postage stamps were requested in this space, and sometimes the gauge reader did indeed record peak flows not occurring at the usual reading time. 10ut most insightful are the fleeting commentaries that point towards tension at the edge of the Commission.

Remarks as letters
The Commission was active from 1905 to 1984, and some important headway had already been made on its history during this time.Most notable are the Commission's own works, Administration of Urban Water Supply and Sewerage; and the monthly journal, Aqua.11Secondary literature is scarce, though Joseph Powell's Watering the Garden State, E. Harris' article on the Commission's complicity in increasing salinity in the state's waterways, and the Public Record Office of Victoria's online entry are important. 12The Commission is fleetingly present in Geoffrey Blainey's History of Victoria, 13 and entries for the Commission's key movers and shakers are plentiful in the Australian Dictionary of Biography. 14These contributions are always insightful, but discussions of the gauge readers' lives are hard to find.Powell's writings on gauge-reading evidence the importance of their work to nation building, and bring attention to the central role the gauge readers played in informing major decisions in the metropole. 15Blainey similarly credits the Commission with bringing 'far more skill to the providing of irrigation'. 16While existing studies recognise the Commission's contribution to state-building at large, little scholarly concern has yet been given to the gauge readers.This article builds on the illuminations but shines a central light on the unique labours of those historic actors at the Commission's edges.
Being situated at the interface of environmental, labour, and gender histories, my study draws on the influential works of scholars such as Andrea Gaynor, Heather Goodall, Katie Holmes and Ruth Morgan. 17The collection Reading the Garden especially shows how womens' writings on the environment were bound by gendered conventions. 18In 2021, the journals Environment and History and International Review of Environmental History both produced special issues at the intersection of gender and environmental history.Environment and History, guest-edited by Morgan and Holmes, centred Australian histories in four articles. 19The important introductory paper in International Review by Morgan and Margaret Cook highlighted that 'where work happens, the nature of that work, and the very bodies that work are all gendered'. 20Their assertion is taken as a foundational axiom in this article.Gauge reading work was principally assigned to young women, and this influenced their interactions with the Commission.By centring the gauge readers and not the Commission, and by identifying instances where they effectively leveraged what little agency they did possess, I aim to advance our understandings of employment at the edges of the Commission, and labouring more generally. 21lready many scholars have made considerable contributions to the study of letter writing in the production of history.Christa H€ ammerle has established highly useful frameworks for critiquing begging letters and the often-meek social positions of the writers of these letters. 22For example, the women and the letters at the centre of her study 'are located at an interface between the normative regime and social practice, politics and the individual, the public and the private'.The women's justifications for penning the begging letters require 'references to humble individual circumstances'.H€ ammerle, building on Siegfried Grosse's work, cautions that 'one needs to recall the rhetorical rules that were then in force'. 23The gauge readers and their forms were located at this interface, and exploring the river height forms through H€ ammerle's lens reveals their authors' capacity to argue for improved working conditions.Rebecca Earle's Epistolary Selves is also essential reading on this point.In the introductory chapter, Earle lays out the myriad forms and functions of the written letter through time, and the book's collaborators draw attention to the opportunities and limitations of using the historical letter as a source of imagining the writer's self. 24In addition, Lindsey Earner-Byrne and Rebecca Jones have written extensively on epistolary history, producing articles that are built upon their analyses of large bodies of letters and forms. 25In her study on Irish charity letters, Earner-Byrne contends that the subaltern's specific knowledges became 'weapons of agency in the process of negotiation'. 26This is evidently the case at the Commission's edges, too, where local knowledge was valuable for achieving the Commission's ends.Grosse's and H€ ammerle's warnings to beware the 'rhetorical rules that were then in force' are useful to bear in mind in this analysis of the tone adopted by someone like Audrey Hill in her correspondence to the Commission.Despite all this, it must be stressed that the documents explored in this article are not letters in the usual sense.While it is useful to frame them as letters -given that they related information and requests from their senders to their recipients, and that they were the only means by which their senders were in communication with their recipients -the forms, much like the gauge readers themselves relative to the Commission in Melbourne, were in a peripheral position to the epistolary genre.They were situated at the edges, and not entirely enveloped within it.
Existing studies of the Commission and its functions have been effective in relating the broader objectives, achievements, and shortcomings of the commissioners, and their impacts on twentieth-century Melbourne's water supply.Yet the minutiae of employment at the Commission is often overlooked in these analyses.This article unites the extensive methodological works on epistolary history with those on gender history, above.Taken all together, this allows a closer and more critical appraisal of the gauge readers' social positions, and a more authentic assessment of the efficacy of their utilisation of the forms as a means of communication with the Commission's Melbourne office.

The Commission
At the opening of the twentieth century, no single state-wide body existed for overseeing Victoria's rural water supply.During this time, the management of the state's waterways was a much more locally variable and hodgepodge affair. 27By 1905, it became apparent that 'there was a need for a single, powerful and independent authority to coordinate and manage the State's rural water resources'. 28The earlier Irrigation Act 1886 (Vic) had led to new water supply schemes emerging across Victoria.But 'insufficient water conservation, inexperienced irrigators and poor financial management' saw many of these expensive ventures fail. 29In seeking to overcome these issues and amalgamate rural water management statewide, the Commission was established through the Water Act 1905 (Vic).Its powers and duties were extensive.They included 'the systematic gauging and recording of the volume and flow of rivers and streams and of the volume of lakes and lagoons and the effect of climatic conditions upon such volumes within the State'. 30Annual reports give a sense of the size of the Commission.They show yearly expenditure in the millions of pounds, and a network of employees across the state in the thousands. 31ver the decades, many of the Commission's duties changed.For example, the Commission 'was granted the control and administration of the settlement of returned servicemen and women on irrigable land' from 1917 under the Discharged Soldier Settlement Act (Vic). 32And, much later, the Commission -alongside the MMBW -would play a key role in the design and construction of the Upper Yarra Reservoir.Throughout, the Commission's key tasks remained the same.This was the case for the recording of river height and flow rate data.During the postwar period under consideration, the number of gauges being read daily across the state increased from 120 in 1947 to 164 in 1951, as the need to quantify, understand and ultimately protect Victoria's water supply grew. 33o how can the relationship between the commissioners in Melbourne and the gauge readers scattered across the state be understood?The first point to be made is that lines of communication between the two were not direct.Gauge readers' correspondences were mediated by clerks in the Melbourne office, who acted on behalf of the Commission and with a degree of autonomy. 34To be clear, the extent of their autonomy was principally limited to the sending of new stamps and blank forms to the gauge readers upon request, as well as the calculation of Birrarung's flow rate from the provided height data.While this may seem like a trivial point to make, I do so to stress that, even when the Commission was in its infancy at the turn of the century, and even when senior figures were addressed directly -as in a 1901 letter from Warrandyte gauge reader, Mr Sloane, to Ettore Checchi, engineer at the Department of Water Supply 35 -gauge readers did not have a direct audience with the commissioner.Clerks in the Melbourne offices read their requests and comments.Although these clerks left no traces of their identities in the archives explored here, the Public Service Act 1889 (Vic), leaves the likelihood that they were all men. 36he Commission's annual reports make almost no mention of the river gaugings.These unromantic tasks were carried out in the background while the grand damming and irrigating schemes were proclaimed in the front pages of the newspapers and the Commission's own monthly journal, Aqua. 37The gauge at Yering is merely a footnote in this history.The 1946-47 annual report is the only place it shows up: during that year 'seventeen new gauging stations were established as set out in the following table'.At the very end of the table: 'Yarra River at Yering'. 38The erection of the Yering gauge was part of the Commission's continuing expansion of its stream measuring capabilities.As more consideration was given to the construction of the Upper Yarra Reservoir in the middle of the twentieth century, quantification of the state's rivers increased in importance.These are useful pieces of contextualisation because the river height forms became a means through which the gauge readers could voice problems they were encountering.That these tensions were directed at the Commissioner but read by a clerk highlights the size of the department, and also complicates the image of the head office/rural employee dynamic.Rural gauge readers had very little access to or social capital within the Commission. 39The remarks column of their forms was the only means through which the gauge readers could make contact with it.
Long before the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission was formed, Ettore Checchi was introducing systems for recording Birrarung's flow rate and river height data.In July 1891, he shared that he had obtained 'three complete sets of sub-surface velocities … and two sets of surface velocities'.The engineer hoped to supplement these with river height data, 'to give continuous gaugings of the river'.Checchi concluded the letter with the recommendation that 'Mr.Sloane be appointed gauge reader at Warrandyte at a salary of £5 per annum'. 40This letter bears the approving signature of the Victorian minister for water supply, George Graham, and a postscript: 'Mr.Sloane inf[orme]d of app[ointmen]t', dated 25 July 1891. 41The year opened with Checchi's visit to Warrandyte to collect flow rate data and oversee the erection of 'a 10 ft.staff … fixed to the remains of the old bridge'.Checchi met with Sloane there and arranged for him to 'read the staff and forward returns daily, for 10/-per month'. 42auge readers were initially paid £5 per annum when Checchi introduced the role at the end of the nineteenth century, but by the outbreak of the Second World War this rate of pay had not risen in line with inflation.Summaries of the Commission's correspondences with its regional gauge readers reveal that the £5 rate remained all through the first half of the twentieth century until in 1944 G.J. Thompson recommended that 'the late rate of pay for gauge readers of £5 p.a. be inc[reased] to £8 p.a, with additional payments where warranted'. 43Thompson observed that many gauge readers were requesting individual pay rises, and noted that a system-wide approach was best.Before this remuneration overhaul, exceptions to the £5 base rate were common.While most gauge readers were receiving £5 per annum, some were paid £6, a smaller number still were earning £8, and at least two were carrying out additional measuring duties for £10 each year: twice the basic rate. 44By the time Audrey Hill was reading Henley's gauge in the middle of the twentieth century, her salary was the new £8 base.Women gauge readers besides Hill appear frequently in the records, including Miss Higgins at Winchelsea, Mrs Rowe at Dandenong, Mrs McLeod at Dunkeld, 45 and Mrs Williams at La Trobe River.All were paid the £5 salary in the 1940s. 46Importantly, the men who read the gauges were paid the same.However, many men carried out additional duties and wrote to the Commission for more money.For example, Mr Haynes at the Ovens Road gauge (Wangaratta) collected £10. 47By 1945, the Commission's internal correspondences are filled with agreements to pay individual gauge readers more. 48The high proportion of women gauge readers encountered in the archives aligns with Jo Little's and Karen Twigg's assessments of the gendered nature of rural work. 49This archive, taken as a whole, evidences a loose system of remuneration.The majority of requests for pay increases were eventually granted, though it is worth contemplating how this differed between men and women.The following section zooms in on the Hill sisters at the Yering gauge, and shows that their rate of pay only caught up to Haynes' five years later.

Case study: the Hills at Henley
While the grand postwar irrigation and damming projects were making front-page news, a much quieter history was playing out at Henley.I opened with the image of Audrey Hill collecting river height data on her parents' dairying property at Yering, where the family was well embedded in their local community.A notice in the Healesville and Yarra Glen Guardian in 1925 alerted readers to the upcoming auction of the Henley Estate.The estate comprised 605 hectares (1,495 acres in the original advertisement), was 'suitably subdivided into paddocks', and had 'a substantial bridge over the Yarra'. 50Clive Olaf Hill purchased the property in the 1930s and thereafter established a family.Hill and Hilda Margaret Petty married in 1935, 51 before raising four children, including Audrey and another daughter, Cynthia, who were employed as gauge readers with the Commission in their youth.The Estate was on Wurundjeri Country, and had previously been owned by the builder and businessman, David Mitchell. 52udrey and Cynthia lived country childhoods typical for the time. 53The sisters were teenagers during their period of employment with the Commission.Although their youth and their rurality implies a lowliness within the Commission's hierarchy, outside of this they had plenty of social capital, involving themselves in local events and being well embedded within their community.They participated in Lilydale events and were expected to help out on the property, before later marrying into farming families nearby and raising children of their own.Audrey was a keen tennis player, and the Lilydale Express recalled a doubles game played in an epic style. 54ynthia was a celebrated horse rider in her childhood. 55They were young rural women and so negotiating effectively in such a junior position was a considerable challenge.As we shall see, the Hills employed a number of careful strategies in their correspondences to leverage what little power they did possess.In a literature review, Jo Little summarised that 'the work of farm wives … was frequently taken for granted, generally unappreciated and almost always unpaid.Moreover, such work was not simply helpful in the running of the farm, it was essential'. 56More than this, labouring of this kind was helpful and indeed essential to the running of the state's infrastructure projects.The respondents at the heart of this paper exhibit a frustration at this under-appreciation and underpayment.
In the remarks section for the December 1950 form, Audrey penned a comprehensive request for a pay rise.It is tantalising to imagine the young woman fretting over the wording of the request, perhaps seated at the family's dining table, perhaps perched anxiously on her chair, perhaps seeking the right phrasing from her parents.Necessarily, there is an element of speculation in the conjuring of this image.Even so, Audrey's letter was eventually resolute and it -and the clerk's pencilled response -is worth reproducing in full (Figure 3): Owing to the lapse of time since the arrangement of salary was made for the reading of this Guage [sic.]I feel that an increase to be in the keeping with the value of money today should be considered if the reading is to go on.If you are prepared to increase the £8 a year to an amount which will be worth while bothering about, I will be happy to carry on. 57drey signed her name below 'yours sincerely', and two lines below this was the clerk's reply, from which this article takes its title: 'Are you happy now?'.Audrey must have been happy.She stayed on to read the gauge for another year and a half.Echoes of dissatisfaction with her remuneration up to this point are not so easy to find.The Henley gauge was first installed in 1947, 58 and Audrey had been reading it for almost four years (the first form bearing her signature being dated January 1947) before this apparently momentary decision to appeal for an increase: there are no requests or complaints of any kind elsewhere in the written record.Yet the postwar period in Australia heralded a notable increase in the rate of inflation and consequently buying power was significantly diminished.In 1950 inflation was a considerable 10 per cent. 59This must have been a factor in Audrey's request, and she refers specifically to 'the value of money today'.By the time Audrey had started her work for the Commission in the 1940s, the new £8 rate fell well short of the rate of inflation since Sloane's £5 payment had been initiated in 1901.Had Sloane's original £5 salary kept pace with inflation, Audrey ought to have been entitled to £18 per annum, almost twice what any gauge reader was earning at this time. 60n 1954 a notice appeared in the 'social and personal' pages of the Lilydale Express.Audrey had just become engaged to Neville Gilson of John Street, Lilydale. 61By then, she had already left behind her duties to the State Rivers and Water Supply Commission, finding much more profitable work with the National Bank.The couple 57 See Figure 3. 58     gauge reading as I do not return till late', and added that 'I have given the job to my sister who is in a better position to record it regularly'. 63By now, Audrey had already challenged the Commission on the point of her wage, and had found success in dealing brusquely with the Melbourne office.Cynthia continued with the gauge reading until April 1959, when her brother Russell replaced her. 64hen gauge readers were unable to record a reading on the form, they were expected to 'give reason'. 65What is impressive is the frequency with which readings were given without incident.In the archival materials interrogated here, it was commonplace for whole months to pass by without a single gap in the Commission's dataset.These were people who could reliably expect to be at home at the end of the day.Despite this general trend, there do exist some gaps.Examining these missed days and the justifications given by the gauge readers reveals the nature of the relationship between the Commission's Melbourne office and its employees on the outskirts.
In the remarks column for the May 1951 form, Audrey added, 'I am sorry there are omissions but my sister, who was reading it for me for a week, went away without leaving anyone else to carry on'. 66The following year, Audrey wrote in her apologies again: 'I am sorry I could not record the readings during one week; we were all away at the time'. 67Both of Audrey's comments followed the prescribed formatting insofar as they gave a reason for the omitted data.They also, though, both opened apologetically -something, which was not explicitly requested.Whether Audrey's regrets were implicitly expected by the Commission, or whether they rather reveal something about Audrey's gender, is not immediately apparent with just these two cases, yet looking elsewhere for trails of gauge reader subservience lends credence to the latter suggestion.Beyond the Yering gauge, other readers also wrote in their explanations for having omitted data.Mr Sloane wrote to Checchi that 'my brother must have taken it wrong'; 68 Guy Berry at Warrandyte noted how 'the Gauge Staff has washed away' 69 following a storm, preventing him from taking readings until someone could be sent out to mend it; and in an internal correspondence at Melbourne, a clerk noted that one 'Gauge reader was unable to read during the month'. 70he remarks sections are also filled with requests for additional envelopes, blank forms, and stamps.If these gained responses, the clerk's notes were always brief.'Written to say Nov. returned', 'book sent', 'envelopes sent', and, 'sent'. 71More often, the female gauge readers' comments went completely unnoticed by the clerks.The initial requests for new materials were framed with care, reminiscent of the formatting examined by H€ ammerle and others. 72'Could you please', 'very sorry', 'I was wondering if you could', 'I am sorry', 'hope this will meet with your approval', 'please could you'. 73All of these requests are demure and tremulous, and future work on this kind of labour should be attuned to the gender dynamics at play.The men gauge readers stationed along Birrarung were simply not utilising the remarks columns in the same way.Inordinate volumes of their forms were left blank, though occasionally observations were noted in line with the Commission's instructions.At a Warrandyte gauge, where Mr Campbell took the river height readings, 'nothing to report', and 'reading gauge daily þ O.K' are common entries. 74Like Campbell, neither Berry nor Sloane (above) apologised for having caused any inconvenience where their data were missing or when they made requests.Their remarks were direct and brief, and offer a counterpoint to the Hill sisters' writings.While requests for stamps and envelopes were frequent, the gauge readers' requests for pay increases dominated the Commission's correspondence records throughout the 1940s.There were at least nine individual requests for pay rises arriving in Melbourne from across the state's rural streams in 1945 alone. 75he begging letters point to the references that rural writers made to their lowly circumstances.Here, Audrey adhered to this pattern in her request.She appealed to the clerk's emotions, apologising for the inconvenience caused, before setting out to remedy it.When contrasted with the approaches taken by her male counterparts across the state in their remarks, it can be seen that this strategy was split along gendered lines.Whereas Audrey set out a relatively detailed note, the men, when making the same comments, did so within a single sentence.At least partly, gender should explain this difference in approach.
Importantly, it was not just the writers of the letters who determined the success or failure of the requests.The clerks themselves responded differently to the gauge readers.As I have shown, they usually did not respond at all.Even so, a nonresponse must still be treated as a kind of response.When they did write back, the clerks' acknowledgements were succinct.Aside from brevity, another factor to consider is the time taken to process the requests.Audrey's pay increase was confirmed at the end of January 1951, one month after her December 1950 form with the request note had been sent in.Lists of correspondences in the Commission's archive indicate that most gauge reader queries were processed within four days, and almost all within ten days.The above-average waiting time Audrey experienced in her request being evaluated is telling, particularly given that Mr Haynes at Wangaratta waited only four days for the same pay increase, in the same period. 76hese factors, in conjunction with the other evidence put forward throughout this article, points to an important distinction in how the forms were filled by men and women gauge readers, and how clerks interpreted and replied (or did not reply) to the forms.Whereas the Hill sisters wrote longer notes, and often followed the begging letters trend, the male gauge readers wrote much shorter requests, and were generally dealt with more expeditiously.In all, a gendered typology can be shown to emerge in the primary materials examined here.
Nevertheless, Audrey's request for increased remuneration provides a perfect coda to this history.She very effectively outlined her case, cited the 'value of money today', and signed it 'yours sincerely'.But here, now, there was no apology, no grovelling.To the contrary, her request for an increase that would make the job 'worth while bothering about' was confident, and her request for a pay rise was accepted. 77The implied threat -that if the request is not granted, she will not continue to read the gauge -caught the clerk's attention, and that the request was fulfilled speaks to the importance of her job in tracking Birrarung's flow rate data.The Commission's annual reports contain a breakdown of expenditure, and reveal that gauge readers' wages steadily increased through the 1950s. 78A brief sketch of the Commission's gauge reading budget shows that 'total revised annual remuneration in 66 cases as set out being £568 as against £384/10/-under old scale'. 79In January 1951, Audrey's request for a pay rise was noted; she would thereafter receive £10 yearly. 80

Conclusion
Daily recording of Birrarung's height and flow rate continue to this day.This is now achieved without the need for quotidian evening meanderings to the water's edgealthough, incidentally, some community data is also available on Melbourne Water's website thanks to 'more than 300 volunteers, who take daily readings from their own rain gauges'. 81State-wide water management schemes have significantly shaped Victoria today, but subaltern histories of the Commission's junior employees at its geographical edges are scarce.This article offers a first step in remedying this situation and in adding depth to the Commission's history.While this close reading of the Commission's river data has been illuminating, I have not engaged with the Commission's activities on the Murray River.The Commission was focused heavily on irrigation and damming works there at this time, and this certainly offers an intriguing avenue for future research.Of course, such a narrow focus on the stream gauging documents precludes me from exploring other regional centres such as Eildon and Camperdown.These were important to the Commission, but theirs are stories for another time.
In approaching an answer to the question raised at the start of the paper, I conclude that the remarks column in the provided forms was an effective channel through which the gauge readers were able to communicate not just the ordinary requests for additional materials, but also to express more complex concerns.The Hill sisters' remarks in particular were framed with an apologetic and subordinate tone when they were not able to read the gauge, but resolute -even threatening to stop work -when demanding a wage increase.While these communications are not begging letters in the usual sense, nevertheless the gauge readers employed strategies consistent with these to leverage what agency they did possess and argue for improved remuneration.The gendered nature of many of the gauge readers' relationships with the Commission's Melbourne office further complicates their already distant roles there.They encountered many barriers in their work for the Commission.Being situated so far from the Melbourne office, their concerns were sometimes ignored, and at other times delegated to junior clerks.That the readers were often youthful, with little social capital within the Commission's hierarchy, only adds to this perceived inconsequence.Despite all of this, the remarks section in the supplied forms presented a novel outlet through which they could communicate their concerns.They were able to leverage their positions using original and ultimately effective means.
married at the Lilydale Presbyterian church on Monday, 16 May 1955. 62Before commencing work at the National Bank, Audrey advised the Commission in May 1952 that she would delegate the task of reading Birrarung's gauge to her younger sister, Cynthia.She wrote in the remarks column that 'I find it impossible to record the