History brought to life in a big way at Wollongong City Library

Libraries are a great place to go if you need to expand your mind, but you’d be forgiven for wondering what the big idea is with the gigantic pumpkin, oversized cucumber and enormous fish at Wollongong City Library.

The ‘Living Large’ exhibition features images of the biggest things the Illawarra has had to offer from the 1960s onward.

From enormous chokos to overgrown sharks, tall men to giant salad servers, the exhibition has it all.

Local studies specialist at Wollongong City Council, Jo Oliver, said the inspiration for the story struck from digitising old newspaper photos.

“We came across a series of photos of people with large vegetables and thought that would be a great jumping-off point for an exhibition,” she said.

“They’re very funny photos; you have people looking very serious holding enormous onions and carrots and things, I think for agricultural shows.

“We have more than 40,000 images on our public catalogues, so we searched for more large things and pulled the exhibition together.”

Some of the “large things” show a more serious side of the region’s history.

Images of large protests by coal miners, and another one against the Vietnam War, feature. So do images of large landslides, floods and bushfires.

The exhibition also features large things that are no more, like the Port Kembla smokestack, and newer ones like the Sea Cliff Bridge.

Jo said the images showed the changing physical and social landscape of the Illawarra through a more intimate lens than the usual social snaps or photos of dignitaries.

“Australia is the land of big things; it’s just our sense of humour really,” Jo said.

“The exhibition covers the whole gamut from lighthearted to more serious, and the photos are of everyday life.

“There’s one of a lady with her big cucumber in Warrawong in 1967 and she had a bib apron on that women always used to wear to work in.

“In the photos from the 70s you see the skivvies and the long hair on the men; there’s another one of a man holding a big onion in a white button-up shirt and tie; there are no tracksuits to be seen.

“It really captures what life was like.”

Jo thought viewers would be surprised by the high quality of the photos. Because they were all taken on film, many are of a higher quality than digital photographs from the early 2000s.

The library also has never-published negatives the team is preserving by digitising them – a treasure trove for local or family history buffs.

“They are so well indexed it makes it really straightforward to find things,” Jo said.

“If you know a photograph was published on a particular day, we are often able to supply more images of that event from the negatives and backups.

“It’s important to do something with them. If we take photos and don’t make them accessible, even to ourselves in our homes, they’re basically lost, no matter how many we take.”

Jo said the library had scanners and could help people who had slides, negatives or printed photographs they’d like to create a digital record on.

The ‘Living Large’ exhibition can be viewed at the Wollongong City Library from 10 June until 23 August, or online at Living Large – Wollongong City Libraries’ Illawarra Stories.

The online exhibition will remain up after the physical exhibition has closed, and earlier Illawarra Stories exhibitions can also be viewed on the website.

For any questions, or to collaborate on an exhibition, email [email protected].