Daniel A Elias is hoping to find old memories about Freo’s wharfies from old timers and their families.

A LOCAL historian researching a century of tensions on the waterfront is hoping old Freo wharfies and their families will be able to bring his ambitious thesis to life by sharing stories and ephemera from the key moments that shaped Australia’s maritime sector.

Daniel A Elias is studying at UWA and looking at the issue of how maritime workers, shipping companies and state institutions navigated the tensions between each other and across the globe.

“The history will explore four periods over a 100-year span,” Mr Elias said.

“Starting with the work stoppage of 1899, moving to the waterfront tensions during the post-WWI era, followed 

by the Cold War era and the advent of containerisation, and finishing with the waterfront confrontations of 1998.”

Mr Elias is hoping anyone related to people involved in those periods who has stories, personal correspondence, photos, poster, magazines, newspaper clippings, membership forms or anything else related, will get in contact.

“I want to make sure I keep the human life in my history, and the community’s contribution would go a long way in helping me achieve this goal,” he said.

Mr Elias can be contacted on freo.maritimephd@gmail.com