Airdate: Yakka: Australia At Work

Four part history doco Yakka: Australia at Work screens this week on ABC.

From working the land, to digging up minerals, from manufacturing to the services industry, Yakka: Australia At Work explores how work has shaped Australia from the Second World War to the present.

Each episode in the series is themed around a particular form of work.

Soil & Toil
In this episode of Yakka: Australia At Work, we explore how post-Second World War Australian agriculture seemed destined to continue the boom that had accompanied it for over 150 years. But, slowly, it had to adjust to a changing world in which Britain was no longer its main customer and it had to seek markets elsewhere. Domestically, agriculture became a political battleground in the 1960s and ‘70s when First Nations stockmen staged a walk-off on the Wave Hill Station and acted as a catalyst for the growing Land rights movement. By the 1990s, agriculture – like so many other Australian workplaces – was having to face-up to changing circumstances in a world dominated by Free Market economics. Farmers took up the challenge and embraced technological advances to become the most productive workers in the world. But with a changing climate, droughts have become longer and more intense, floods more catastrophic and yet, there are more mouths to feed. How will Australian farmers contend with this ultimate challenge?

Tuesday November 21 at 9pm on ABC