I've also been involved in community radio since 1987 and worked as a journalist for the ABC Radio’s Double J and Triple J.

They were both disputes I was directly involved in and these films are on Youtube. As well as The Deregistration of the Builders Labourers Federation-the Victorian Story 1986-1992. I've made the films The Occupation of Cockatoo Island Dockyard 1989. Underground about Lithgow Mine Rescue in New South Wales's Western Coal fields. I've produced four radio documentaries for ABC Radio National/RN: Bush Fires, Ups and Downs of Scaffolding, The Last Ship Built in the Dockyard, the HMAS Success built in Sydney’s Cockatoo Island Dockyard, the navy gave a me a sea ride on it from Hobart to Sydney. Annie was the granddaughter of an English Convict Thomas Batt who landed in Hobart/Nipaluna in 1830 and Irish woman Mary McCarthy, who arrived in 1830’s to Hobart/Nipaluna. Annie was a widow with 3 children when her and Antonio got together. It’s where my father Vic was born in 1910, the youngest of 12 children between Antonio and my grandmother Annie Batt/Phillips. It delivered mail to the mainly American Gold Miners of American Gully. It served as Cobb & Co way-station, which was immediately adjacent to the main coach route from Yandoit to Castlemaine. Antonio built it with my Uncle Henry Phillips and it was called Togs’s Place, they finished building it in 1906, in Yandoit, Central Victoria, in Dja Dja Wurrung Country. He came to Australia as a passenger on the ‘Northumberland’ when it docked in Naarm/Melbourne in1874.

I’ve decided to reactivate my blog named after the house built by my Italian grandfather/nonno Antonio Tognolini from Tirano, Sondria, Lombardia, Italy.

I'm a historian, geographer, teacher, writer, actor, musician & poet. I'm a proud and active member of the New South Wales Teachers Federation Union/Australian Education Union, & a member of the Greens. I've been a life long unionist since I was 16. I've also been a scaffolder, rigger, dogman, railway fettler (track worker) on Sydney's railways, and a ship's painter and docker at Sydney's Cockatoo Island Dockyard. I worked in a variety of blue collar jobs as a labourer including working for two years in General Motors Holden’s Melbourne car plants at Fisherman’s Bend and Dandenong.

Hidden Agendas by John Pilger