After this, Gittoes worked for a time mainly in Australia, in particular on the series of paintings and drawings, "Heavy Industry". Initially in 1989 he was invited by the Wollongong Regional Gallery to be artist in residence at the Port Kembla Steelworks in NSW. Between then and 1992 he worked in steelworks, mines, chemical plants, and a Bass Strait oil rig, in Wollongong, Newcastle, Broken Hill, Whyalla, and elsewhere, depicting the men working in these environments sympathetically against a background of industrial decline and difficult and dangerous working conditions. In doing this, he felt he was not only holding true to the Externalist idea of art, but also returning to Joe Delaney’s view of art “about a historic social struggle exuding pathos and humanity”.