19 Aug 2024

Highlighting local legends as first Tunnel Boring Machine breaks ground

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We’re thrilled to introduce the names of our 2 hard working TBMs, ‘Zelda’ and ‘Gillian’, with tunnelling now underway on the 6.5km North East Link tunnels.

Zelda D’Aprano AO (1938-2018) was a lifelong activist for gender equality who lived and worked for much of her life in West Heidelberg.

Zelda was a key player in a long campaign by many remarkable women in fighting for equal pay. Her legacy as a fearless advocate continues to inspire efforts toward gender equality and social justice.

Dr. Gillian Opie is a neonatal paediatrician at the Mercy Hospital for Women, Heidelberg. Dr Opie also founded Australia’s first breast milk bank more than 10 years ago, providing sick and premature babies in Melbourne’s neonatal intensive care units (NICU) with safe, screened and pasteurised milk.

Both groundbreaking women from Melbourne’s north east, Zelda and Gillian were selected from hundreds of submissions of “local legends” as part of a TBM naming competition, with their names now adorning the massive machines that will dig the North East Link tunnels.

Tunnelling tradition dictates a TBM cannot start work until it has been given a female name, a sign of good luck for the project ahead – so the competition sought suggestions that recognise inspiring or ground-breaking women with a connection to Melbourne’s north eastern suburbs.

The tradition of naming TBMs after women can be traced back to the 1500s when miners and military engineers working with explosives for underground excavation, prayed to Saint Barbara for protection.

TBM ‘Zelda’ has now begun digging one of the 6.5 kilometre North East Link twin tunnels that will take 15,000 trucks off local roads and slash travel times by up to 35 minutes. TBM ‘Gillian’ will also begin tunnelling in the coming weeks.

Zelda’s Impact

West Heidelberg resident Zelda D’Aprano AO (1928-2018) was one of Victoria’s most prominent women’s rights activists, notably chaining herself to a building when an equal pay case was dismissed in 1969 and establishing the Women’s Action Committee. She fiercely protested against the gender pay gap and workplace discrimination.

Zelda followed in the footsteps of another important activist, Kath Williams. Kath was a trade unionist, before taking on the mantle of feminist after World War II. Her campaign of conviction was the major force behind the achievement of equal pay for women and was a huge inspiration to Zelda, who wrote a book about her.

Zelda’s contemporaries also included Mavis Robertson, best known for her pioneering role in compulsory superannuation, and Alva Geikie who worked with Zelda to protest the outcome of the Equal Pay case in 1969.

Other fearless women who made significant contributions to Victoria’s feminist movement include Vida Goldstein, the namesake of the West Gate Tunnel TBM.

Gillian’s Impact

Dr. Gillian Opie founded the Mercy Health Breastmilk Bank at Mercy Hospital for Women in Heidelberg in 2011. The Mercy Health Breastmilk Bank provides vulnerable infants with access to safe, screened and Pasteurised Donor Milk (PDM), with the aim of ensuring every baby has the best start in life.

Dr. Gillian Opie emphasises the significance of providing this service when a mother’s own supply is low, and how breast milk has unique infection providing properties that infant formula does not provide.

Since opening in 2011, the Mercy Health Breastmilk Bank has had over 400 milk donors provide more than 4,232 litres of breastmilk to thousands of recipients.

The service expanded in 2019, opening satellite sites at Monash Children’s Hospital and the Royal Children’s Hospital, and a site at the Royal Women’s Hospital.

North East Link