St Barbara’s Day Dinners are a regular fixture on the ATS annual calendar, but what are we celebrating and why exactly is St Barbara the Patron Saint of Tunnellers? Well, the answer is actually pretty gruesome…

St Barbara is thought to have been born in the mid-third century close to present-day Lebanon. Legend has it that when her father learned she had converted to Christianity, he had her tortured and eventually beheaded. Her martyrdom took place on the 4 December and as punishment for her murder, her father was struck by lightning and killed. It is this legendary association with lightning that gives Saint Barbara her contemporary connection to explosives and the tunnelling and mining professions.

Today, the legend still inspires tunnellers. In honour of St Barbara, every single TBM is given a traditional female name before use, and it is common, particularly in Catholic countries, for a small statue and shrine to St Barbara to be erected at the tunnel entrance.

In Australia, this tradition is still alive and well, as noted by Charles MacDonald, ATS National Executive Committee Member. “The tradition is very real and many tunnellers won’t proceed unless there is a St Barbara ceremony to initiate the tunnel,” he says.

“I was at the West Gate Tunnel in March 2022, Australia’s largest and most recent tunnel, and there, in front of this huge TBM called Bella (after Bella Guerin, the first woman to graduate from a university in Australia in 1883), there is a small statue of St Barbara.”

 A changing world – ATS takes the lead in making St Barbara’s Day more inclusive

While St Barbara’s Day has been celebrated for centuries in Europe, in 2018 a movement began within the newly formed ITA Young Members Group, championed by the ATS’s Jurij Karlovšek and Keith Bannerman to celebrate St Barbara’s Day in a format that was more inclusive. The resulting World Tunnel Day is now held in the first week of December to coincide with the Feast Day of Saint Barbara.

The goal is to generate interest in world class tunnelling projects and to promote the industry by holding celebratory events and posting photos, video clips and messages on social media using #WorldTunnelDay as Keith Bannerman, Vice Chair of ATS’s NSW Chapter and immediate Past President of the ITAym explains.

“We were interested in making this day appeal to a secular audience and people from other religions and cultures. Now in its fourth year #WorldTunnelDay has been a really successful way to connect across borders and celebrate all tunnellers’ passion for the underground.”

Whether you’d like to honour St Barbara, help celebrate World Tunnel Day, or simply catch up with tunnelling friends old and new, join us for dinner and book your ticket today: 

Click here to buy your ticket for the St Barbara’s Day Dinner in Queensland

Click here to buy your ticket for the St Barbara’s Day Dinner in Melbourne