In-Between the Flags: reflections on a narrative of Surf Life Saving Australia

Abstract

Why did the history committee of Surf Life Saving Australia (SLSA) invite me, a staunch critic of the surf lifesaving movement and an active surfer, to join the team that wrote the official centennial history – Between the Flags: One Hundred Summers of Australian Surf Lifesaving – of this iconic Australian institution and movement? In this article I critically reflect on my participation in SLSA's centennial history project and on my narrative contribution – ‘Managing Pleasure and Discipline: Clubbies’. In reflecting on my narrative, I highlight a fundamental tension in the discipline of history that centres on the subjective historian and the historian as author. The article comprises three parts. In the first I describe the origins of my involvement in SLSA's history project. In the second part I examine the production of my narrative focusing in particular on my sources. In the third part, I look at the editorial process to which my chapter was subjected and how I responded to the corrections and suggestions made by the editor and his editorial team. Finally, in the conclusion, I reaffirm the utility of deconstructionist approaches to history, and of historians as authors.