AustLit

Note on origins

A number of sources suggest that Strikebound is based on an unpublished manuscript by Wendy Lowenstein, Dead Men Don't Dig Coal. Material was collected for the book (variously described as a novel or as a series of interviews in the style of Lowenstein's earlier Weevils in the Flour), but this process seems to have post-dated the film.

According to contemporary reports, the inspiration for Strikebound was actually material gathered for Lowenstein's book Weevils in the Flour:

The film's basis is a series of interviews that Wendy Lowenstein, mother of Richard, held with the three leaders of the miners and the women, as part of an oral history research project dealing with the Gippsland coalfields. From what Scottish migrants Agnes and Wattic Doig, together with miner Harry Bell, told her, came the factual elements of the drama.

From this originating material, Richard Lowenstein, who learned his craft at Swinburne College where the approach to teaching film-making concentrates on a collective rather than a compartmentalised approach, has fashioned a script that clearly came sufficiently close to reality to gather the approval of Wattie and Agnes Doig, who appear to deliver the film's prologue and epilogue.

Source:

Macdonald, Dougal. '"Strikebound" a Rewarding Political Film,' Canberra Times, 2 January 1985, p.21.