ABSTRACT
This chapter considers how ‘constructions of masculinity and femininity interact with what is valued and included as heritage’. It examines various ‘vehicles of memory’, including documentary and oral archival sources and more recently produced heritage assessments related to the past and present of the Eveleigh Railway Workshops in Sydney. The chapter presents memories of retired male workers who were employed at Eveleigh during the Second World War when the predominantly male workforce was augmented by women munition workers. It shows the unmarked masculinity associated with the site’s industrial operations with the way the male workers remembered the women munition workers in terms of their femininity, marking them as outsiders. The chapter reflects on the intersections between memory, place, and gender by reviewing how proposals for the site’s heritage interpretation naturalise and legitimate the ‘androcentric assumptions and messages’ identified in historic accounts of Eveleigh’s industrial significance and the gendered assumptions and values identified in the male workers’ memory narratives.
