The proud boilermakers and shipbuilders who carried their huge union banner through Sydney's streets almost 100 years ago might have been surprised by their modern-day equivalents.

''Think of the Mardi Gras parade today,'' Paul Brunton, the senior curator at the Mitchell Library, says. ''Both the union marchers and the Mardi Gras paraders were showing pride in what they were, and how they are a [valued] part of society.''

For the past two months, a team of 18 conservators have painstakingly restored the union banner of the once mighty Sydney branch of the Federated Society of Boilermakers, Iron & Steel Ship Builders of Australia.

Read the rest of this story, by Steve Meacham, at this link to www.smh.com.au