A blue asbestos mine opened at Wittenoom Gorge in Western Australia, operated by Colonial Sugar Refining (CSR). For decades, workers and residents were exposed to deadly asbestos dust with minimal safety warnings. The town became synonymous with mesothelioma, leading to its eventual closure and the largest industrial disease compensation case in Australian history.

The Wittenoom disaster spawned a body of 'protest poetry' and memoir that confronts the betrayal of workers by corporations. Poets like the late John Kinsella, an ecopoet, have used Wittenoom as a central symbol of the 'toxic pastoral,' where the beautiful Australian landscape is fatally contaminated by mining. The 'blue' of asbestos is a haunting counterpoint to the 'blue' of the sky in nationalist poetry, representing a man-made, airborne death. This event pushed Australian poetry away from romantic nationalism toward a fierce, ecologically conscious critique of the resources industry.