The stories and experiences of Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders who helped build railways across Australia are now on show in a new exhibition, including photographs, video and objects, at the National Archives of Australia.

They worked on the large-scale railway developments from the 1950s through to the 1970s, the infrastructure on which the country still depends for mining and agriculture.

Rob Shiels, collection manager at the Workshops Rail Museum in Ipswich, said the indigenous workers had built up a reputation as hard workers, and earned high enough wages to be able to support their families, much like today's fly-in-fly-out workers in the West Australian mines - more than £78 a fortnight, when the average wage was about £10 a week. ''People saw it at the time as a way of bettering their lives and being able to send their money home to their families,'' he said.

''One gentleman said he had to leave for two years but he did it so that he could give his sons a better education.''

But there was nothing romantic about working on the railways, and the many photographs showing men lifting and carrying loads in the heat - often wearing not much more than stubbies and thongs - are in stark contrast to today's highly regulated, safety-first worksites.

The exhibition also looks at the lives of the families who travelled with the men to the camps along the railway tracks, or stayed behind while the men worked far away from their traditional land. But despite the hardship, Mr Shiels said that in the postwar years, the railways stood out as being a place of equal opportunity for workers.

''It's one of the few industries where there was no real division in terms of labour differences,'' he said.

''You earned the same as everybody else, and if you were skilled and clever and good, you could move up to be a leader … and there was no real colour difference.''

Exhibitions co-ordinator Victoria Gill said the National Archives had a commitment to telling the national story, and it was not a well known one.

''The thing that makes this show quite significant is there's not a lot of stories and exhibitions being told about the indigenous contribution on a national scale,'' she said.

''Australia and New Zealand both developed First World status off mining and agriculture, which mean access to trade, and if we hadn't had these rail lines, we wouldn't be where we are now as a country.

''And on top of that, because the railway was one of the first industries to integrate indigenous people into the labour force and they were allowed to be promoted and they worked their way up. And so they really integrated into the whole industry, that fed back into public opinion, and opinion then changed with the referendum, and recognition of Aboriginal rights, all around that same period.''

■ I've Been Working on the Railway is showing at the National Archives of Australia until May 18.