page_title: Wendy Richardson
section_title: Windy Gully
hierarchical_section_title: Wendy Richardson / Biography / Windy Gully
caption_attribution_description: English: The Dendrobium Mines Football Team marching past the memorial to the 96 men and boys who died in the Mt Kembla mining disaster, 1902.
context_page_description: Wendy Richardson, OAM is one of Australia's most popular playwrights, best known as the author of Windy Gully. Richardson lives in Mount Kembla near Wollongong, New South Wales. She is very active in the local community, working with disabled and disadvantaged youth, assisting those in need, teaching Sunday School and participating in historical and literary events.
  Richardson describes herself:
  "I'm a teller of tales. I weave them out of what I hear and observe – some of them are true. I write about ordinary people who never consider themselves courageous or outstanding and who have led such extraordinary lives."
context_section_description: It was while studying at Wollongong University that Richardson wrote her first play, Windy Gully, which was commissioned and performed by the Theatre South Regional Theatre Company, directed by Des Davis, in 1987. The subject of Windy Gully is the mine disaster which took place at Mount Kembla on 31 July 1902, in which 96 men and boys lost their lives. Every family who lived in the village lost a relative. In many families, fathers and sons died. The bodies were buried in Wollongong Cemetery, Mount Kembla Cemetery and in an unmarked communal grave near a cricket field in Windy Gully.  In describing how she came to write the play, Richardson said:
  "I was beginning to understand what the coal cost in terms of human life and I knew that those outside the mining community needed to be reminded."
  Windy Gully proved very popular, going on interstate tour of mining towns in Queensland and New South Wales and being performed at the New Theatre in Sydney in 1989. There was a third season at Theatre South in 2000. Windy Gully was published in 1989 by Currency Press. Des Davis writes of Windy Gully: 
  The huge and many faceted event that was the Mount Kembla mine disaster is distilled to two hours on the stage and the human dimension of it is made accessible to an audience."
  The anniversary of the disaster is commemorated annually with a church service at the Mount Kembla Soldiers and Miners Memorial Church, a parade and Mining Festival. Richardson was later to serve on the committee to organise the Mount Kembla Mining Disaster Centenary Commemoration in 2002. Songs from Windy Gully are published at the Mount Kembla Mining Heritage website and Illawarra Unity the journal of the Illawarra Branch of the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History.
  Windy Gully was followed by Slacky Flat written in 1988, which toured the South Eastern Region of New South Wales and was performed at Theatre South and at the Regional Theatre Festival in Penrith.
caption: Miners marching past the memorial to the Mount Kembla mine disaster, July 2006
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