Australian Archives Research Articles

On Not Translating: Making History in the French Language Classroom

Published in 1930 by Angus and Robertson, Souvenirs d’une Parisienne aux antipodes was proclaimed the first Australian book to be published in French. A collection of three autobiographical narratives, the book tracks Marie Niau’s life, from the siege of Paris (1870–71) to four years on a selection in the Daintree in the 1880s. Heralded by the mainstream press as worthy of a place in Australian archives yet labelled ‘a delightful little French reader’ elsewhere, the composite nature of the book and its multiple enunciative contexts confounded expectations where both language textbooks and historical narrative were concerned. Drawing on Paul John Eakin’s understanding of autobiography as narrative identity transaction and Claire Kramsch’s concept of multilingual subjectivity, this article focuses on the performative potential of the book in Australian classrooms with respect to learner identity and historical consciousness.

Following the yellowcake road: exploring the colonial roots and routes of Australian radioactive minerals, 1900s–1950s

ABSTRACT Over the past 40 years, environmental justice activists and scholars have drawn greater attention to the disproportionate environmental burdens borne by marginalised communities. This includes the consequences of ‘nuclear colonialism’, a phenomenon defined as constituting ‘a system of domination through which governments and corporations target indigenous peoples and their lands to maintain the nuclear production process’. In this article, I seek to complicate this definition of nuclear colonialism by exploring the role of uranium mining in consolidating both British and Australian settler colonial power during the first half of the twentieth century. I will do so through an examination of Australian uranium’s roots and routes as both a manifestation and facilitator of settler colonialism in Australia between 1900 and 1955. Combining sources from both British and Australian archives, this article seeks to contribute to emergent scholarship on the colonial dimensions of mineral extraction in two ways. Firstly, by explicating the role uranium played in fuelling the extractive mentalities of settler colonial Australia. And secondly, by exploring uranium extraction’s contribution to the consolidation of the British Empire’s waning power in the mid-twentieth century.

Exemption and Nyungar Letters in the West Australian Archives

Rather than rewarding applicants seeking relief from the draconian 1905 Aborigines Act, Exemption Certificates in Western Australia became a bureaucratic weapon to enforce their rigid control through enforced prohibitions on alcohol for Nyungar people. Applications were routinely rejected, regardless of the applicant's way of life, which quickly deteriorated under the “care” of the Aborigines Department. At the same time, new laws further enforcing prohibitions through increased fines and imprisonment, meant few had any hope of release. This combination derailed the exemption process. The injustices were recently revealed by the Ancestors' Words: Nyungar Letter Writing in the Archives Project, which located activist application letters written by Ancestors of today's Nyungar families, letters which were held for many decades in archive files of the Aborigines Department. The files also contained devastating letters of rejection written by the Minister, his officers and local police. The Ancestors' letters of courage and their distressing rejections in reply are examined here in a powerful case study developed in conversations between two Nyungar Elders, the writer's granddaughter, and the project researcher. The study also reveals how the project's respectful return of letters to the Elders can restore these important stories from the past to the flow of living family memories, down the generations.

The Evolution of Turkey’s ‘South Asia Policy’: Continuities and Ruptures in Outlook, Roles, Actors and Constraints

Turkey’s South Asia policy remains an underexplored area of research in Turkish foreign policy literature despite a rich history of Turkish activism in the region. While bringing to surface Turkey’s perception of South Asia, this article utilises insights from foreign policy analysis literature to make sense of international and domestic drivers behind Turkey’s South Asia policies during and after the Cold War. Using primary resources drawn from Turkish, American, Indian and Australian archives, memoirs by retired Turkish generals and diplomats, and interviews the author conducted with retired Turkish diplomats serving previously as ambassadors to New Delhi and Islamabad, the article argues that Turkey has felt most motivated to be involved in the region when encouraged by and had the ability to coordinate its policies with its western partners. I highlight Turkey’s mediation missions in inter- and intra-state disputes in the region, attempts to shift its South Asia policy and discuss Turkey’s approach to various hot conflicts within and between states in the region. I finally provide the place of South Asia in Turkey’s recent ‘Asia Anew Initiative’ and seek to explain an actor-based evolution of Turkey’s South Asia policy under the AKP governments over the last two decades.

Plastics in Australian Archives: An Industry Survey Regarding Prevalence, Condition, and Preservation Strategies

ABSTRACT In recent decades, there has been an increased focus on the identification, storage, and treatment of polymer-based plastic materials in cultural heritage collections. While the need for the preservation of plastics in audio-visual collections is well established, there is evidence that unstable plastics are also associated with paper-based collections. This paper investigates whether libraries and archives need to direct preservation resources towards risks posed by plastics in paper-based collections. As there is no available documentation on the types and condition of associated plastics, Australian archives were surveyed using an online questionnaire. Respondents reported associated plastics in over 90% of archives, and ∼50% observed these to be in poor condition. It is concluded that preservation resources that are specific to vulnerable plastic materials in Australian paper-based collections need to be developed and communicated.

“Wholly an Australian Industry”? Establishing British Multinational Manufacture at the Bryant & May Empire Works, 1909–1914

The Bryant & May company is well known for its operations in Britain. Historians have paid less attention to the actions of the company overseas. The opening of a new Australian subsidiary factory in 1909 marked an early venture in multinational manufacturing within the British Empire. This article uses business records and newspapers from both the British and Australian archives to examine the day-to-day operations of this multinational, with a particular focus on the human dimension of the interactions between London and Melbourne. The Bryant & May case study reveals the evolving, sometimes tense, relationship between the “home” and “subsidiary” branches in the context of British imperialism and Australian federation in the years preceding World War I. Business, personal, and imperial relationships intertwined. While business historians have developed theoretical frameworks to understand why companies embark on multinational operations, work remains to be done on the longer-term operations of companies in particular political, social, and cultural contexts. We examine the building of the Empire Works match factory in Melbourne, the nature of transnational management, labor relations, and key production challenges up to the Interstate Commission of 1914. We reveal how Melbourne managers, sometimes against the inclinations of the London directors, were prepared to drive a hard bargain with local politicians and workers. Bryant & May successfully, and sometimes controversially, gained competitive advantage as a “local” company with access to preferential tariffs. This placed the firm in an ideal position to prosper when international trade was disrupted during World War I.

Prosecution Project: archive review

We scholars of criminal history often fetishise the archive. The Australian state archives hold extensive criminal and penal records, and so we make long journeys to visit our sources. There is the...

Radical Holdings? Student Newspaper Collections in Australian University Libraries and Archives

ABSTRACT University student newspapers have a long history across Australian university campuses of engaging with contemporary social and political issues, often reflecting a sentiment not represented in mainstream media publications. Student newspapers have a demonstrated engagement with radical thinking, dissent and political activism and are an important published record of historical discourses, contributing to a critically informed understanding of the society that produced them. This paper reports on a pilot survey of Australian university holdings of their student newspapers. Findings inform current and future student newspaper collection practices by university libraries and archives, including building ongoing relationships with editorial teams, and recommended improvements for access to this primary source material for future researchers.

Beautiful Botanicals: Art from the Australian National Botanic Gardens Library and Archives

The Australian National Botanic Gardens plays an important role in the study and promotion of Australia's diverse range of unique plants through its living collection, scientific research activities and also through the art collection held in the institution's Library and Archives. Australia's history of formal botanical illustration began with the early voyages of discovery with its popularity then declining until the modern day revival in botanical art. The Australian National Botanic Gardens Library and Archives art collection holds works from the Endeavour voyage through to the more contemporary artists of Celia Rosser, Collin Woolcock, Gillian Scott and Aboriginal artists including Teresa Purla McKeeman as well as photographs and outdoor installations.

Insights into the procurement and distribution of fossiliferous chert artefacts across southern Australia from the archival record

Following from previous research in Western Australia, this study explores the use of embedded microfossils—including bryozoan and foraminiferal fossil assemblages—to help identify source and distribution of fossiliferous chert artefacts from South Australian archives. Artefacts from key archaeological sites include Allen’s Cave, Koonalda Cave, Wilson’s Bluff, Ooldea and Kongarong. Preliminary analyses indicate a possible differentiation of fossiliferous chert types east and west of the Eyre Peninsula, from Otway Basin and Eucla Basin limestones, respectively. The widespread distribution and trade of fossiliferous chert is supported by ethnographic descriptions of the sources, procurement and trade as recorded by Daisy Bates, Thomas Draper Campbell and Norman Tindale. Further work combining biostratigraphy and lithology with archaeology and ethnography is needed to explore these ideas further.

Costumes and Choreography from Bodenwieser's Trunk: The Coat as Affective Memory

The Viennese modern choreographer Gertrud Bodenwieser's black coat leads to an analysis of her choreography in four main phases – the early European career; the rise of Nazism; war's brutality; and postwar attempts at reconciliation. Utilising archival and embodied research, the article focuses on a selection of Bodenwieser costumes that survived her journey from Vienna, or were remade in Australia, and their role in the dramaturgy of works such as Swinging Bells (1926), The Masks of Lucifer (1936, 1944), Cain and Abel (1940) and The One and the Many (1946). In addition to dance history, costume studies provides a distinctive way to engage with the question of what remains of performance, and what survives of the historical conditions and experience of modern dance-drama. Throughout, Hannah Arendt's book The Human Condition (1958) provides a critical guide to the acts of reconstruction undertaken by Bodenwieser as an émigré choreographer in the practice of her craft, and its ‘materializing reification’ of creative thought. As a study in affective memory, information regarding Bodenwieser's personal life becomes interwoven with the author's response to the material evidence of costumes, oral histories and documents located in various Australian archives. By resurrecting the ‘dead letters’ of this choreography, the article therefore considers how dance costumes offer the trace of an artistic resistance to totalitarianism.

Written Out of History: My Grandfather William Chapman and the Effects of War

This text is an attempt to trace the case history of an Australian soldier’s participation in World War One and the effects of war on an ordinary Australian family, whose roots are in 19th century England. Archival documents from the National Australian Archives, diaries of medical officers and soldiers, the Embarkation Roll as well as certificates of marriages and deaths are examined in order to document the historical facts which crossed the boundaries between private and public lives of ordinary people enmeshed in the history of their era.

Volunteers in Australian archives

Why do volunteers choose to contribute thousands of unpaid hours per week to Australian archives? This paper presents the results of a nationwide web survey that provides insight into the demographics, motivations and experiences of volunteers in Australian archives. The findings provide a representative overview of formal volunteers in Australian archives, determining ‘who’ they are, the value of the contributions they provide and the level of training and support offered to them. This study is a continuation of existing discussions about volunteers in Australian archives and represents an opportunity for the development of stronger relationships with Australian archival volunteers and, through them, the communities our archives serve.

Reconstructing the archive: Access, documentation, conservation

There has been limited research into the role of reconstruction in the preservation of Indigenous Australian archives, both those created within Indigenous communities, and those created about Indigenous people. Following a phenomenological methodology in which the research question is contested against real world experience, two case studies investigate the potential of reconstruction as a methodology in the conservation of Indigenous Australian archival material and the contexts in which it is created and used. First, a comparative analysis of metadata and documentation practices at the Warlayirti Artists’ Centre archive in Balgo, Western Australia, outlines the role of conservation in supporting the reintegration of access to artist-run archives. Second, an interview with the artist Brook Andrew documents how contemporary Indigenous artists create their own archives to disrupt received notions of identity, and to articulate the archival continuum into which contemporary Indigenous identity develops. This study develops a model of reconstruction to provide theoretical and practical guidelines for understanding the relevance and role of archives, and the significance of archival re-appropriation by Indigenous artists. This paper argues that, in supporting and enabling the process of reconstruction, conservators can work with Indigenous Australian artists to sustain their cultural past and collective memory in different material forms into the present.

Introduction to the Special Issue: Engaging with Indigenous Knowledge, Culture and Communities

[Extract] Next year, 2015, will mark the 20th anniversary of the publication of the ATSILIRN (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Library and Information Resource Network) protocols for libraries, archives and information services. In 2004, the profession was surveyed to gauge the extent of use of the Protocols and to discern their practical value and effectiveness, from the profession’s perspective. This led to the revision of the Protocols in 2005, with the inclusion of an additional section on the digital environment and the presentation of the Protocols online. In 2010, the Protocols website was again redesigned and in 2012 a pocket pdf version was made available on the website. The Protocols have remained much the same, throughout this period, acting as a broad guide and deliberately avoiding narrow technical prescriptions for practice. The ATSILIRN Protocols remind professionals of the presence of Indigenous Australian “materials” in Australian libraries and archives. They draw attention to the various sensitivities now associated with the collection and management of these materials.

Book Review: The First Woman Radio Astronomer, under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy, Ruby Payne-Scott

Book Reviews more generally throughout the volume, it would have been extremely useful had she at least brought the relevant bibliography up to date. A survey of this sort from 1987 is only valuable in 2013 up to a certain point; but to translate and re-publish without bringing either the analysis or the bibliography up to date seems a wasted opportunity. Closer proofreading by a native English speaker on several essays would also have been appreciated. University of Nevada, Reno H. D arrel R utkin THE FIRST WOMAN RADIO ASTRONOMER Under the Radar: The First Woman in Radio Astronomy, Ruby Payne-Scott. W. M. Goss and Richard X. McGee (Springer, Berlin, 2010). Pp. xxii + 354. €128. ISBN She loved bush walking, cats, and radio engineering; was briefly a member of the Communist Party of Australia; and discovered or co-discovered at least three of the four kinds of radio burst emission from the Sun. She was Ruby Payne-Scott (1912–81), the first woman radio astronomer in Australia and, very probably, in the world. Despite this, she is almost forgotten in the astronomical community, even its radio part. Reading this book raised for me several questions. First, why did Payne-Scott not leave a more visible footprint? The authors men- tion several contributing factors: her gender and lack of Ph.D. in a community where academic credentials were becoming common as radar work gave way to astronomy; several more prominent colleagues who were not very fond of her (although John Bolton later spoke highly of her work); and her definitive departure from the radio astronomy community in 1951, about four months before the birth of her first child. She never returned, taking up high school teaching when her children were 10 and 12. This meant that she was not around later to cite her own early papers! Less clear from the book is that rapid advances in radio telescopes, detectors, and data- processing soon swamped her contributions, which included early development of interferometry and aperture synthesis and the recognition that confusion was a more serious problem than low sensitivity for the radio telescopes of the time, as well as the discovery of and attempts to characterize the various types of solar radio bursts. Second, do we need to know more about Payne-Scott, her life and her work? The authors clearly think so, since they have worked long and hard to track down primary sources in Australian archives and to interview many people (often just in the nick of time) who knew her. The oddest omission, I think, is Frank J. Kerr (1918–2000) who appears on at least 17 pages and in several photographs of Payne-Scott but who was not interviewed and does not even make the index. Kerr was an active member of the Australian radar and radio astronomy communities, almost from the begin- ning, and later a co-founder of the University of Maryland radio astronomy group, where I knew him. Downloaded from jha.sagepub.com at UNIV CALIFORNIA SAN DIEGO on May 6, 2015

A delicate balance: Australia's ‘tilt’ to Pakistan and its impact on Australia–India relations

The Australia–India relationship has pivoted on more than the sale of uranium, and is not purely a narrative of neglect. While there have been some periods where bilateral relations received inadequate attention, the years 1947 to 1980 tell of a more complex story. During this time, many Australian diplomats and leaders worked hard to include India in Australia's foreign policy calculations. However, it proved difficult, arguably impossible, to negotiate a path for the Australia–India connection through the complexities of the India–Pakistan relationship and the strategic uncertainties of this most fragile of regions. Indian leaders, not without cause, constantly accused Australia of a ‘tilt’ to Pakistan. An examination of the Australian archives for this period reveals the inhibiting effects of the India–Pakistan conflict, particularly over Kashmir, on the development of a more fruitful Australia–India collaboration.

Records of the administration of Aborigines in Victoria, c.1860-1968

A large and historic collection of records of the Victorian government's administration of Aboriginal people is held by the Australian Archives at its Victorian Branch. These records were transferred to Commonwealth control at the time of the transfer of the functions of the Victorian Ministry of Aboriginal Affairs to the Commonwealth in 1975. They cover over a century of government administration, from 1860 to 1968, and consequently provide a continuous history of the life of Victorian Aborigines over that period. This article provides information about them.

Out of the Mouths of Crocodiles: Eliciting Histories in Photographs and String‐Figures

Whom and what do we touch, hear and see when we hold, listen and look at photographs? What histories are enfolded within photographs’ materiality? What elided pasts do they contain, and what possible futures can be negotiated with source communities by engaging with these artefacts in the present? In this paper I consider these related questions through an exploration of the nexus of relations, perspectives and histories enfolded within a particular glass plate (A6510,499) held in the National Australian Archives. Taken by the government anthropologist F. E. Williams in 1922 in the village of Ukiaravi, this portrait of the two young boys Kauei Ove and Kauri demonstrating a string‐figure is one of some ninety‐six glass plates produced by Williams during his eight‐month trip to the Purari Delta of Papua New Guinea. Viewed with communities, this photograph generated a series of conversations about a set of relations involving the mimetic faculties of Crocodile Monitor Lizards, the growth of knowledge through bodily transformation during male initiation, and various modes of history telling and making. In examining these relationships and the ways in which they unfolded around engagements with this glass plate, I contribute to discussions about the nature of fieldwork and the productive possibilities that connecting source communities to their photographic and archival legacies has for them, museums and the discipline.

Taking a history: The learnings that national health science forgot

This paper provides evidence for the importance of taking an effective history and considering regional differences before formulating national health policies. Qualitative study; the data collection technique included manual searches of rare book collections, a search of the Victorian Public Record Office and Australian Archives files and a local media appeal for information about iodine and iodine supplementation in Gippsland and other regions of Australia. Regional Victoria and Australia as a whole. A total of 17 community members from the Gippsland region provided information on taking iodine tablets between the late 1940s and the late 1960s. Information from the community members who took iodine tablets, archival material, published papers in journals on iodine deficiency disorder in Gippsland, government reports and meeting minutes regarding distribution of iodine supplementation in Gippsland. Taking an effective history is vital to planning national health interventions. It might not be adequate to just search electronic databases. A thorough search of archival and hard copy material and consultation with members of the population can help find key historical data that can inform better health policy action. There is strong historical evidence of dietary iodine deficiency in the Gippsland region and in a number of other regions across Australia. Government and health authorities should undertake regular iodine status monitoring in these regions. Considering regional difference is important when making national health policy.