Please join us for an informal conversation with Daniel Blatman, eminent scholar of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies. Like other historians of the Holocaust, Blatman argues that Israel is currently committing a genocide in Gaza. “I have been engaged in researching the Holocaust for about 40 years,” he writes. “I never imagined in my worst nightmares that the Jewish state would bomb starving children to death”. What is the role of historical research in the context of the unfolding genocide? And what does this moment ask of us, as historians and other scholars?
Our discussion will be organised around two of Prof Blatman’s recent pieces in Haaretz:
If you would like to attend the discussion, please come having read these two short articles and bring questions for Prof Blatman. Staff and students all welcome.
Bio: Daniel Blatman is Professor of Modern Jewish history and Holocaust Studies. He has worked on the history of the Jewish labor movement in Eastern Europe, the Holocaust in Poland, and on Nazi annihilation policy at the end of World War II. His publications include: For our Freedom and Yours, The Jewish Labor Bund in Poland 1939–1945 (2003), Reportage from the Ghetto, The Jewish Underground Press in Warsaw Ghetto (2005), and The Death Marches, The Final Phase of Nazi Genocide (2011).
Sponsored by the Powerful Stories Network, the Sydney Staff and Students Workshops on Anthropology, Research and Methods (SSSWARM), and the Discipline of Anthropology
Dr James Findlay, Lecturer in the History Department presenting to students at Canley Vale High School
Last week, the History Department once again celebrated the successful completion of our History Extension Mentoring Program, a cornerstone of our Social Inclusion Program. As the second iteration of the program since its relaunch in 2023, we have been privileged to continue working with schools such as Canley Vale High School and Corowa High School, while also making connections with Hastings Secondary College, Port Macquarie, Woonona High School, and Gymea Technology High School.
The aim of the program is to address the underrepresentation of students from low socio-economic, regional/rural and diverse backgrounds at the University of Sydney, and in history courses especially. The program initiates and strengthens connections between partner schools and the University and is structured in such a way as to be of service to our partner schools, responding to the needs of both students and their teachers. By familiarising high school students with the University, the program aims to foster the aspirations of students from disadvantaged communities by introducing them to University life – while supporting their learning at high school.
The History Extension program in the HSC consists of two parts – ‘constructing history’ and the ‘major project’: a 2500-word research essay on any historiographical topic of their choosing. For most students, this is the most significant historical work they have done. Our program provides a number of workshops to support students both academically but also pastorally through developing these extended works, with each session constituting an hour long talk from a member of staff in the department and an hour of mentoring with their volunteer mentors from our undergraduate and postgraduate history cohorts.
Featuring four sessions over the course of a year, the program paired HSC students studying the History Extension course with a University of Sydney History student volunteers as a mentor for their major project for the unit. With projects ranging from a historiographical investigation of goth subculture to revisionist accounts of colonialism, the project both gave these students vital support through this challenging unit, while building a relationship with a mentor who can support them through the various trials and tribulations of the HSC.
In reflecting on the four sessions, we have held across the past six months; this has been an incredibly valuable experience for mentors and mentees alike. For mentor Lizzy Kwok, “The mentoring program was an incredibly enjoyable and fulfilling experience! As much as we meant to “teach”, I learnt so much from younger students who had such a wide variety of interests — from medieval England to imperial Russia.” Across the board, not only was this a chance for mentors to further engage in historical studies but translate their passions into something greater.
For the students, connecting with both mentors and historians in the department has offered a chance to demystify the university ‘institution’ which can often feel quite far away. This was not only a chance for engagement with the university, but an opportunity for their ideas and voices to be heard.
Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences School of Humanities History at Sydney
Refugees, Migrants, and Visitors: A long history of Indigenous Mobility
Elizabeth Ellis | Princeton
Tuesday 3 June 2025, 3:00-5:00pm followed by a reception
What does a deep historical view reveal about Indigenous migration and movement in North America? And what can North America’s Mississippian past tell us about how Native people confronted colonial empires in the eighteenth century? This talk will focus on the patterns and practices of Indigenous migration, naturalization, and refugee acceptance that helped Native peoples along the Mississippi river survive imperial invasion. By examining both forced migration and voluntary relocation, we can see how early modern Indigenous nations confronted the new American empire in the age of Revolutions.
Elizabeth Ellis is an associate professor of history at Princeton University where she teaches early American and Native American history as well as Indigenous studies. Her first book is “The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South.” She is currently researching early Native American iconography and working on a collaborative project on eighteenth-century painted deer hides (minohsaya). Liz also writes about contemporary Indigenous issues and political movements. She is a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and she serves as the tribal history liaison for her nation.
Venue: The Chau Chak Wing Museum, University Place, Camperdown Campus Click here for map
This event is part of a three day symposium on Indigeneity, Mobility and the Age of Revolutions sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame (USA). For more information about the symposium, please contact Sam Fisher at Samuel Fisher sfisher1@nd.edu or Michael McDonnell at michael.mcdonnell@sydney.edu.au.
Symposium Program Schedule
Events take place in the Chau Chak Wing Museum (CCWM) at the University of Sydney unless otherwise noted.
Tuesday, June 3
9:30 – Pasifika Sydney Walking Tour with Talei Magioni (optional – details to come)
12:00-1:00 pm – 50 years of Papua New Guinea’s independence(optional)
Dame Meg Taylor speaks with Professor Ben Saul in “Looking back and looking forward: 50 years of Papua New Guinea’s independence.” Room TBC, New Law Building (F10), Eastern Avenue, University of Sydney, Camperdown campus. Free, but separate registration required.Click here for more information and registration.
3-4:45:Keynote Address: “Refugees, Migrants, and Visitors: A Long History of Indigenous Mobility”
Professor Elizabeth Ellis, Princeton University
With a response by Leila Blackbird
5:00: Reception
6:30: Dinner, Camperdown Rydges Hotel Restaurant
Wednesday, June 4
9:30-10:30: Australian Association for Pacific Studies Plenary Session (co-sponsored by the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies, University of Notre Dame): “Stori and Sovereignty: Marking the 50th Anniversary of Papua New Guinean Independence.”
Miranda Johnson, “Revolution, Rupture, and Resurgence: Concepts in Indigenous and Other History-Writing”
2:30-3:00 – Coffee
3:00-5:00: Panel 2, “Expanding the Age.”
Samuel K. Fisher, “Good Foreigner, Bad Foreigner: Gaelic Contexts for the Age of Revolutions in Ireland”
Claudia Haake, “Writing as Witnessing: Sioux Leadership after Displacement to Reservations, 1860s to 1890s”
Victoria Bonilla-Báez, “Desnudando Uruguay: Survival through the death of the Indio and the appropriation of El Gaucho”
5:30-7:00: Dance Protest: Project Banaba Exhibition and Cocktail Event – CCWM. Hosted by the Australian Pacific Studies Association
7:30: Dinner: Glebe (tbd)
Thursday, June 5
9-10:30: Panel 3, “Travelling through the Age.”
Kate Fullagar, “Coming Home to the Age of Revolution”
Bruce Buchan, “The Enlightenment’s Enslavement of the Indigenous Dead: The Mobility of Human Remains in the Early Colonisation of Australia”
10:30-11: Coffee Break
11-12:30: Panel 4: “Life and Deathways in the Age”
Annemarie McLaren, “‘Something mysterious and sacred’: Catholic Baptism and Aboriginal People in Early Colonial New South Wales, Australia”
Lyndon Fraser, “Reflections on Mobility, Death, and Cross-Cultural Encounters in Nineteenth-Century Aotearoa/New Zealand”
12:30-1:30: Lunch
1:30-3: Australian Association for Pacific Studies SessionCelebrating Pacific Lives and Voices in Australia. Featuring Katerina Teaiwa, Kate Fullagar, Solstice Middleby, Talei Mangioni, and Victoria Stead.
Location: Business School, Belinda Hutchinson Building, Lecture Theatre 1090.
3:30-5: Concluding Discussion
5:15-7: Book Launch (optional) for Lisa Ford, Kirsten McKenzie, Naomi Parkinson, and David Andrew Roberts, Inquiring into Empire: Colonial Commissions and British Imperial Reform, 18-19-1833, published by Cambridge University Press.
To be launched by Zoë Laidlaw, University of Melbourne, at the Vere Gordon Childe Centre, University of Sydney.
7:30: Dinner: Newtown (tbd).
Participants
Leila K. Blackbird née Garcés (Louisiana Creole, unenrolled adoptee of Apache and Cherokee descent) is the Pozen Family Human Rights Doctoral Fellow of U.S. & Atlantic History at the University of Chicago.
Victoria Bonilla-Báez is an Uruguayan and Indigenous Pampeana woman of Black-Indigenous and Iberian decent and a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. She is also the recipient of the Indigenous Knowledges, Health and Sustainability Scholarship tied to the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project ‘Planetary Health Histories: Developing Concepts’ led by Prof Warwick Anderson, Prof Jakelin Troy, Prof Anthony Capon, and Prof Sverker Sörlin. Currently her research looks at silenced Indigenous and Afro-Indigenous knowledges on caring for land, waterways, and non-human species that are embedded and ‘hidden in plain sight’ within Uruguay’s rural areas. Her research is tied to the lands of her own ancestors, which are under threat due to monoculture farming and deforestation. As an emerging anthropologist and Indigenous woman she has both a cultural and academic duty to ensure that her peoples and her lands stories are told. This unearthing of knowledges and stories are part of broader cultural duty as an Indigenous women to add to the Gran Quillapí del Oyendau, a metaphysical memory keeper, where women weave (re)emerged knowledges and (re)assemble the memories that have been scattered throughout time.
Bruce Buchan is an intellectual historian whose work traces the entanglement of European political thought with the experience of empire and colonisation, focussing on the Early Modern and Enlightenment periods. Bruce’s research seeks an understanding of concepts by bringing different fields of historical enquiry into productive conversation, most notably colonial history, histories of sound and noise, the history of science and medicine, and the history of ideas and political thought. His previous research on European perceptions of Indigenous government, the conceptual history of asymmetric warfare, and the meanings of civility, savagery and civilisation have appeared in a wide range of journals.
Elizabeth Ellis is an associate professor of history at Princeton University where she teaches early American and Native American history as well as Indigenous studies. Her first book is “The Great Power of Small Nations: Indigenous Diplomacy in the Gulf South.” She is currently researching early Native American iconography and working on a collaborative project on eighteenth-century painted deer hides (minohsaya). Liz also writes about contemporary Indigenous issues and political movements. She is a citizen of the Peoria Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma, and she serves as the tribal history liaison for her nation.
Samuel K. Fisher is Associate Professor of History at the Catholic University of America and a Visiting Faculty Fellow at the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies. He is the author of The Gaelic and Indian Origins of the American Revolution: Diversity and Empire in the British Atlantic, 1688-1783 and co-editor of Cnámh agus Smior/Bone and Marrow: An Anthology of Irish Poetry from Medieval to Modern.
Lyndon Fraser is an anthropologist and historian who works at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand, and as a Research Fellow in Human History at Canterbury Museum. Lyndon co-edits The New Zealand Journal of History, serves on the Editorial Advisory Board for Irish Historical Studies, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Association of Social Anthropologists of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
Kate Fullagar FAHA FRHistS is Professor of History at Australian Catholic University andVice President of the Australian Historical Association. She is the author of The Savage Visit: New World Peoples and Popular Imperial Culture (Univ. of California Press, 2012) and The Warrior, the Voyager, and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire (Yale Univ. Press, 2020). Her most recent book is Bennelong & Phillip: A History Unravelled (Simon &Schuster, 2023). She is General Editor, with Katerina Teaiwa, of a forthcoming six-volume Cultural History of Oceania (Bloomsbury, 2027).
Claudia Haake is Principal Research Fellow in History at La Trobe University. Her primary research interest is Native American History from the 19th century onward. She is especially interested in North American Natives from Mexico and the US. Her major areas of interest in Native American Studies are ethnicity, identity and culture. Her work for her first book has focused on identity issues in a transnational comparative framework, investigating the cases of the Mexican Yaquis and the United States Delawares.
Miranda Johnson is Associate Professor of History at the University of Otago. She is a historian of colonialism and decolonisation, focusing on issues of settler identity, race, indigeneity, citizenship, and the politics of writing history. Her research focuses on Anglophone settler societies of the South Pacific and North America. Her first book, The Land is Our History: Indigeneity, Law and the Settler State (Oxford University Press, 2016) examined the wide-ranging effects of legal claims of Indigenous peoples in the settler states of New Zealand, Australia, and Canada in the late twentieth century. It won the W. K. Hancock Prize in 2018 from the Australian Historical Association. Miranda is currently president of the New Zealand Historical Association.
Michael McDonnell is Professor in Early American History at the University of Sydney. He is the author of Masters of Empire: Great Lakes Indians and the Making of America (2015) and numerous other publications on the Age of Revolution.
Ann McGrath has led the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Program on Deep History for the past seven years. Based at the Australian National University, she is the WK Hancock Distinguished Chair of History and currently serves on the Council of the National Museum of Australia. Her publications include Illicit Love: Interracial sex and marriage in the United States and Australia (2015) which won the NSW Premiers History Prize, and Born in the Cattle (1987), awarded the inaugural Hancock Prize. Along with Laura Rademaker and Jakelin Troy, she co-edited Everywhen: Australia and the language of Deep History (NewSouth Publishing 2023) and with Jackie Huggins, edited Deep History: Country andSovereignty (NewSouth Publishing 2025). Ann has co-directed and produced various films, including A Frontier Conversation (2006), Message from Mungo (2014) and Japarta (2025). Her work has been recognised by the Human Rights Award for non-fiction, the John Barrett Prize, and the Archibald Hannah Junior Fellowship at the Beinecke Library, Yale. She has been awarded Membership of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, of is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and the Australian Academy of Humanities. She has gained memberships of the Institute of Advanced Study, Durham and Fellowships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton as well as two Rockefeller Foundation Scholarly Residencies at Bellagio.
Annemarie McLaren is an historian of the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century world and the British empire, with a particular interest in the Indigenous societies encountered and how intercultural exchange took place. In 2020, her doctoral thesis was awarded the biennial Serle award for best postgraduate thesis in Australian history by the Australian Historical Association. She has also been the recipient of national and international research and essay prizes. She has held research fellowships at the Museum of Anthropology & Archaeology (Cambridge), the Omohundro Institute & Jamestown Rediscovery Center (Virginia) and Griffith University (Brisbane). She is review editor and board member of the journal Aboriginal History and a board member of the History Council of Western Australia.
I would like to acknowledge the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land from which I am writing and pay my respects to the Elders both past and present. I would also like to acknowledge the Dunghutti and other First Nations peoples of this country who were victims of the Australian Government policies that created the Stolen Generations.
This semester I was given the amazing opportunity to work with Kinchela Boys Home Aboriginal Corporation (KBHAC). The aim of the project was to rework an empty office room in the KBHAC headquarters in Waterloo into an archive room and small exhibition space that would document the history of the organisation. The completion of this project would not have been possible without the support of the Uncles, Aunties and descendants who dedicate themselves to KBHAC. A further thanks goes to Jadzia Stronell who was my partner on this project.
Who are KBHAC?
KBHAC is an organisation that was created by and for the survivors of Kinchela Aboriginal Boys Training Home (KBH), a ‘home’ built on the stolen land of the Dunghutti people 20km north-east of Kempsey that housed 400-600 Aboriginal boys forcibly removed from their families by the NSW Government under an assimilation project that lasted from 1924–1970. KBHAC aims to help these men to restore their identities and lives, and to address the impacts of intergenerational trauma felt by the families and descendants of KBH survivors.
The extensive offerings of this organisation to its community, in its many services, community engagement and professional research, means that completing tasks such as developing a room to archive their founding documents ends up on the back burner. However, this organisation has emerged from such a powerful history that should never be forgotten. This mission becomes especially important when considering that KBH is severely under researched, and the information that is available to the public, and even to survivors and descendants is extremely limited. Moreover, the aging demographic of the Uncles of KBH acts as a further imperative for preserving the history of KBH and KBHAC.
From the early days of working on this project, Jadzia and I felt it was crucial to keep the KBHAC community at the centre of our project. In order to do this, we wanted to demonstrate our interest in the organisation by volunteering at the KBH 100th Anniversary weekend in Kempsey. The weekend featured the buttering of countless slices of bread. But also many meaningful moments such as getting to see the Uncles walk through the KBH gate and talk about how far they have come, to getting to see the younger generations playing in the yard of KBH, a place of many painful memories for their elders. This experience really highlighted the healing process that organisations such as KBHAC are so crucial in nurturing. This experience also shaped our understanding that the final project should focus on the countless achievements of KBHAC and the strength of survivors, rather than on the traumas that have been experienced by this community.
Bread Buttering and organising the Dawn and New Dawn Magazines at the KBH 100th Anniversary
To see more photographs from the KBH 100th Anniversary, such as the uncles walking through the KBH gate, please see the KBHAC social media.
The project began with piles and piles of photographs and documents that KBHAC staff wished for us to organise into an ‘archive room’. This source material had been stored by various members of the organisation since its founding in 2002, with the documents ranging from inaugural meeting minutes to old newspaper clippings. However, the disarray of the documents meant that they were limited in their usefulness. The sorting process took place across our nine weeks working with the organisation, with the documents eventually being sorted into themes (e.g.: general events and founding). With the support of KBHAC, we were able to purchase materials for the room which included a shelf, archive boxes, folders, photo albums and display folders. The finalised archive room consisted of 15 categorised archive boxes, with 110 total subcategories. We also organised the Dawn and New Dawn Magazines into display folders with a cover page that notes the issues included in the folder and a QR code leading to the AIATSIS online repository. Finally, the photographs were sorted with the help of KBHAC staff into events and placed into photo albums.
Before and After sorting the archive
During the sorting process we identified key events in KBHAC’s history, deciding that some of these events should be displayed in the archive room at KBHAC. These events included the first meeting at Picton, Journey of Healing, Parliamentary Dinner and Koori Knockout. The images and documents that featured on this display were chosen in consultation with Aunty Leslie, Aunty Paulette, Uncle Widdy and Tiffany McComsey. It was a beautiful experience to see people who have been involved with the organisation for such a long-time reminiscing and getting excited about our project. Moreover, it became apparent that many of these documents and photographs had never been seen by the Aunties and Uncles, confirming the importance of our project. The main takeaway from this conversation was that the Aunties and Uncles were grateful we were there and showing genuine interest in their work at KBHAC, reaching the conclusion that so long as we were thoughtful in our final project, the organisation would be grateful.
Display in the Archive Room
Furthermore, we acknowledged that KBH survivors and descendants are spread across Australia hence many would not frequent the KBHAC office to see the archive room. Yet, we felt it was important for those most linked to KBHAC to have access and ownership over their history. For this reason, we digitised some sources, which were selected in consultation with KBHAC staff. The time constraints of the project meant that we were only able to digitise 27 sources, which exist on a spreadsheet that displays a digitised version of the source and an approximate 100-word description. The hope is that in time these sources can be moved onto the KBHAC website and social media pages.
The work done by survivors and descendants at KBHAC is incredibly valuable and must be remembered. Believing that I had a slight role in supporting such an important organisation is an experience I will carry with me forever. Moreover, there is still much work to be done in the KBHAC office which is why Jadzia and I intend to return in the New Year. In our continued work we plan to put up a timeline of KBHAC’s establishment, continue to sort through any remaining documents, develop the exhibition space further, and aid in the publishing of digitised source material.
When I set out to create a promotional history video for the Riding for the Disabled Association (RDA) Ryde, I was faced with the unique challenge of condensing the centre’s 40-year history into a digital format that would engage and inspire a diverse audience. The project, now completed, has been a highly rewarding journey, of course it had its challenges, but these only highlighted the importance of adaptability and perseverance in public history projects.
The Vision The inspiration for this project arose from a gap identified during my initial meetings with Ryde. While the centre’s general history had been documented in the book ‘Celebrating 50 Years of RDA NSW’, there was not an accessible digital medium that captured the essence of its four decades of service. My project aimed to address this gap by creating a video that resonated with modern audiences whilst also acting as a promotional tool to encourage greater participation and support for the centre, as it is not-for-profit and run wholly by volunteers. Therefore, I adopted a digital approach to ensure accessibility and outreach, making the history of Ryde accessible to anyone, anywhere. By creating a video intended to be broadcasted across YouTube, social media platforms and the RDA’s website, my project leveraged technology to bring RDA Ryde’s history to life for current and future generations.
The Process Bringing the project together required an intertwining of research, adaptability, and community engagement. This included:
Extensive Research: – Photographic Archives: Sorting through decades of photographs presented both an opportunity and a challenge. Some of the images were undated and not organised chronologically, but they became invaluable in illustrating milestones such as events, riders, and the contributions of long-term volunteers. – Oral Histories: Interviews with long-standing volunteers added depth and authenticity to the narrative. Selecting key moments from hours of footage was a meticulous process but ultimately introduced elements of emotional resonance to the final project. – Firsthand Observations: volunteering weekly provided me with invaluable insights into the RDA’s present-day operations and mission, enriching the historical narrative with contemporary context. – Secondary Resources: Books like ‘The Spirit of RDA’ and ‘Celebrating 50 Years of RDA NSW’ ensured the accuracy of key dates and events.
2. Community Collaboration: – Engaging with the RDA community was central to the project’s success. The enthusiasm of long-standing volunteers demonstrated the importance of preserving the centre’s legacy.
Themes and Messages The video is structured around key themes that highlight the RDA’s enduring values and impact:
Community Resilience: Showcasing how volunteers and the local community have sustained the RDA through challenges, including the relocation of the centre.
Inclusivity and Empowerment: Emphasising the transformative power of equine therapy for individuals with disabilities.
Legacy and Progress: Bridging the past and present to underscore the continuity of the RDA’s mission.
Volunteerism: Celebrating the volunteers who form the backbone of the organisation.
Key Riders: Highlighting inspirational figures like Paralympian Jan Pike to demonstrate the profound impact of the RDA’s work.
Impact The completed video serves multiple purposes: – Preservation: It documents and celebrates the RDA Ryde’s history, ensuring that its legacy is not forgotten. – Promotion: As a digital resource, the video is a tool for attracting new volunteers, donors, and participants. – Inspiration: By sharing the stories of resilience, empowerment, and community spirit, the video inspires deeper appreciation of the RDA’s work and greater involvement from a wide audience.
The project has also laid the groundwork for future initiatives, providing a comprehensive history of the Ryde centre for future volunteers, and a model for other RDA branches to document their histories in engaging and accessible ways.
Personal Reflection Working with the RDA Ryde has been a profoundly enriching and rewarding experience. Witnessing the beaming smiles of riders as they arrive every week is a testament to the organisation’s impact. I am deeply grateful to the RDA for allowing me to contribute to their mission and I look forward to continuing my volunteer work with them in the future.
Looking Ahead This project is not just a celebration of the past but a step toward ensuring the RDA’s future. The involvement of long-term volunteers proved fundamental in adding depth to the project and formed the heartbeat of the video. By making the centre’s history accessible and engaging, it paves the way for greater community involvement and sustained support. I hope this video inspires others to explore and share the stories of other community organisations for the generations to come.
* (video will be attached when officially approved by RDA NSW.) *
This semester, I was privileged enough to work with fbi radio on an incredible oral history of their music library. Established in 1995, and having broadcast full time since 2003, fbi is a community radio station in Eora, Sydney. Driven by a policy to play 50% Australian music, with half of that from Sydney, fbi is a radically inclusive organisation that celebrates the diversity of our local music scene. My project ‘Turn Up Your Radio’, presented on fbi’s website as a multi-media piece, intersperses oral histories with text, photo, and video to reflect upon various chapters in fbi’s history. Oriented towards fbi’s existing listenership, my project is an affirmation of the importance of community radio as the fabric of local culture, arguing for the need of institutions such as fbi to pioneer subaltern voices and experiences.
Conceiving the project in the first place was a creative challenge in meeting fbi’s need for a compelling piece that showcased the diversity of the organisation whilst also producing something within their existing content model. In working with fbi’s team, we decided to hone in on fbi’s library of over 20,000 CDs. In this library, next to the top dance release of 2014, is a demo by an office worker in a pub-rock band that only ever recorded one single. Next to that is a collection of ambient beats made by a student in their bedroom, besides the blues singer that has been gracing Sydney stages for decades.
However, due to the sheer size of the library, I needed a throughline. Even if I carefully went through each CD in the library, being able to grasp its historical significance was impossible within the remits of this project. I needed a creative solution that would make it possible for me to comprehend the library while also connecting with fbi’s vision. Oral histories were the perfect solution. Just as oral histories have historically been used to amplify the voices often neglected in written history, oral history in this project sought to shine a spotlight upon the incredible people who have supported Sydney’s music scene. Recorded in fbi’s studio using the audio-processing software ‘Reaper’, oral histories were perfect for the project as it coordinated with fbi’s identity as a radio station and gave me a way to work collaboratively with fbi volunteers and staff past and present.
My final project features oral histories from from Stuart Coupe, presenter of Wild Card from 2003-present, Stephen Goodhew, music director from 2013-1017, Dan Zilber, music director from 2003-2017, Simon Caldwell, DJ and longtime presenter of Monday Sunset, Cassandra Wilkinson, president of fbi from 1997-2021, Lee Tran Lam, writer and presenter of Local Fidelity from 2007-2023, Caroline Gates, programming director from 2010-2017 and John Ernest Dinamarca, volunteer and project manager of fbi’s social outreach program from 2015-17. Meeting with these incredible, was not only incredibly enlightening from an intellectual perspective, by personally rewarding in hearing the stories of this incredible organisation and the impact they have had on it.
As the first extended historical work done for fbi, this is a significant step in celebrating this incredible organisation, its originality lying in both its novelty, but also synthesis of modalities relevant to the station. As I spoke to many interviewees, they commented on the need for fbi to have a history written about them and how personally beneficial it was for them to reflect upon their time at the station, which has irrevocably transformed their life’s trajectory. I hope that this project, publicly available on the fbi website, will impact fbi by elevating the awareness of the organisation’s historical significance and the need for its story to be officially recorded. My project has told stories about fbi that have otherwise never been publicly recorded and I hope it inspires future historical work about the station. As Stuart Coupe beautifully put it in our interview, “[the] library is a remarkable piece of Music history. We talk about tombs in Egypt and artefacts being buried, and hopefully that library stays together.”
While my article has not yet been published, I have included two oral histories below to check out!
Day One: fbi 94.5 Present: Kill Your Idols (2003)
August 29, 2003. Since 1995, FBi (Free Broadcast Inc) Radio 94.5FM had been broadcast on special occasions from an empty shop next to the Clock Hotel in Surry Hills, on milk crates in a caravan in Bondi Beach or above a suckling pig restaurant on George Street. However, after over six years of lobbying and fundraising, the fbi Idols, constituting Sarah Blasko, Dave McCormack, Spod, Tony Buchen, Upshot, and Front-End Loader performed to a packed foyer at the fbi headquarters. Their live cover of ‘Turn Up Your Radio; by the Master’s Apprentices was the first song to be broadcast on air and was immortalised on the ‘FBI 94.5FM Presents: Kill Your Idols” a compilation of 21 songs (many of which were only demos), that encapsulated the Sydney scene at the time. Check out some footage from the day, alongside Music Director (2003-2017), Dan Zilber’s account of the day and the compilation CD that came out of it, Kill Your Idols.
Discovering New Talent: Harley, Harley (2011)
At the core of fbi’s mission to play 50% Australian music, is their commitment to amplifying grassroots talent that may be otherwise neglected by commercial; radio or major labels. For example, Music Open Day saw flocks of artists coming into the station hand-delivering demos on burnt CDs, keen for their first radio play. Some of these CDs had cover art, some in an entirely plain packaging straight from Officeworks. Others simply wrapped up their demo in the ripped-out pages of a medical textbook and in the case of Rainbow Chan, brought in her demo in a hand sewn and embroidered fabric sleeve. From a father with a newborn handing in a demo to the station – who later turned out to be a member of rock band and fbi success-story Wolf Mother – or music director Stephen Goodhew being live serenaded in his office, Music Open Day encouraged everyone and anyone to come in and take a shot. With the commitment of presenters, volunteers, and staff to scour the city for new releases, fbi has been responsible for the first radio plays of some of the biggest Australian exports from The Kid Laroi and Julia Jacklin, to 1300 and Nina Las Vegas, and countless invaluable independent artists. One notable story is of a 15-year-old Flume who handed in his first demo under the name ‘Harley’ to the station in 2007.
This semester I was privileged enough to work with the Sydney Convicts RUFC for my HYST3902 project, composing an archive and a short written history for the institution. Initially a daunting task, I somehow managed to pull through and deliver an archive with over 170 entries, ranging from simple scans of two-decade old posters to digitisations of 60+ page booklets.
The Point
The originality and argument of this project lies in its subject matter, the Sydney Convicts, acting both as a documentation of their now 20-year history and furthering the argument that they made with their founding in 2004. The originality of the project is by contributing to the history of rugby by applying serious historical attention to the Sydney Convicts as a gay rugby club adds another dimension to their agenda to combat both stereotypes of gay men, and the deep-rooted homophobia in rugby as a sport. As the Star Observer reported in 2004, “They see themselves as a rugby team first and foremost, which just happens to be gay.” By documenting the history of the Convicts like one would the history of any other amateur rugby club, the novelty of the Sydney Convicts in contemporary rugby is extended into the history of rugby. The argument of the project is then that it ‘historicizes’ the convicts, both within the history of rugby and establishes a singular historical narrative of the club itself. According to Joan Scott, “The point of new historical investigation is to disrupt the notion of fixity, to discover the nature of the debate or repression that leads to the appearance of timeless permanence.” This framework of ‘historicization’ disrupts the ‘permanence’ of the rugby landscape, wherein clubs have existed for well over a century even on the amateur level, by paying serious historical attention to a relatively young club in the Convicts. This is evident in account of the Convict’s early years, where many of the players had been excluded from their previous teams for their sexualities and the formation of a club that accepted these players was met with hostility from several other clubs in the Sydney suburban championship. By showing that the Sydney amateur rugby landscape, despite having some clubs that date back over 100 years such as the Manly Savers, has changed with the inclusion and eventual acceptance of the Convicts, amateur rugby is integrated into the greater social and historical processes of the society it exists in. Therefore, by paying serious historical attention to the Sydney Convicts, the project has both an original premise in documenting the relatively new club, and that documentation makes an argument by ‘historicizing’ the club and rugby as subject to both social and historical conditions.
What is a Rugger Bugger?
One particularly well documented part of the club’s history was the annual-ish ‘Rugger Bugger’ with cards, posters and news reports about the event preserved.
The Rugger Bugger, starting in 2004, is a show periodically held by the Convicts as a fundraiser to finance the club and travel to international events the convicts attend, most notably the bi-annual Bingham Cup.
The first several shows were held at the Midnight Shift, a historical LGBT club in Sydney, which has since closed down and been reopened as ‘Universal’ by a new set of owners. As such these cards are not only a piece of Convict history, but also of Sydney’s pre-lockout laws nightlife.
The ‘Wakulda: Weaving Our Stories as One’, video installation on the Old Courthouse Building in Port Macquarie
This semester I worked with Studio ESEM https://www.studioesem.com/ to organise the digital sources from one of their past projects in an archive and present it in a new non-linear digital format.
The project is based on Studio ESEM’s 2021 video projection installation Wakulda (Weaving our Stories As One), https://www.studioesem.com/projects/wakulda which marked the 200th anniversary of the British settlement of Port Macquarie, by reflecting on Indigenous/Birpai perspectives on this history.
The digital interpretation element of my project presents the sources that Studio ESEM collected during the production of Wakulda in a new non-linear digital format. My creative approach and presentation of the sources will enable the audience to engage with these stories in a new way. In the new format I was able to further explore and develop narrative threads from the original project such as Indigenous/Birpai perspectives on and connection to their Country, the history and impact of conservation movements in the Port Macquarie-Hastings area
My project, like the original Wakulda project focuses on the perspectives of the First Nations community of Port Macquarie, particularly the local Birpai people. The original project was significant in focusing on First Nations perspectives on a colonial anniversary, and making their voices heard in the (literal) center of the town in Port Macquarie, projected for the whole community on the Old Courthouse Building. The centering of these perspectives and personal experiences which have historically been excluded from public histories implicitly makes the argument that these are perspectives that must be listened to to gain a proper understanding of Australia’s past and to address the present day inequalities that are the effects of colonization in Australia. The project also highlights the significance of historic conservation movements in Port Macquarie and the women who lead them, a history which the original Wakulda project shone a light on, but which had historically not been well known to the Port Macquarie community, and my project also argues that this is an important history to recognize.
A page from the websiteA page from the website
I worked with the sources that Studio ESEM collected during the production of Wakulda, which were all in digital form on a drive. This included images of historical documents and artworks; audio recordings of personal oral histories; interviews with local historians; location video and photography of Port Macquarie and the natural environment around it; photos of individuals who were interviewed; photos and videos of local community activities such as a weaving workshop and choir performance; and historical photographs. I focused particularly on the oral histories and interviews, as these were not fully captured in the original video projection, and they reveal important perspectives and insights about Port Macquarie’s history. In the digital presentation, I supplemented these with images and video to contextualise them.
In the process of cataloguing the sources, I gained a thorough understanding of this archive and found particular themes in common throughout the sources. The three key themes of my project are embodied by the sections of my digital presentation. The first was Birpai Country: Weaving Community, which focused on the local Indigenous community, members of the Birpai nations and other nations and their connection to Country. It explored the meaning of the place to them, on one hand the physical space and natural environment, and on the other, the community and people. The second theme was Conservation in Port Macquarie: A Vital Legacy, where I focused on the contributions of local woman Grace Easterbrook to protecting the natural environment and the legacy of the Port Macquarie Conservation Society. Finally, Injustices, the past, and making a better future, focused on the injustices of colonization, the historical and current day impacts on Indigenous Australians, and the efforts members of the Port Macquarie Indigenous community to create a better world for future generations.
This project will give a platform for the voices of the local Indigenous community of Port Macquarie, highlighting their perspectives. These perspectives need to be amplified and listened to for both historians and the general public to gain a proper understanding of Australia’s past: as many of the interview participants mention, truth-telling is key aspect of achieving progress. Hopefully this project will make this history more accessible to the general public through an engaging digital format, not only for the residents of Port Macquarie, but anyone who wants to gain a better understanding of Indigenous Australian history and experiences.
In the production of the original Wakulda project, Studio ESEM were focused on producing the final product and had not organized the sources they had collected. The sources still had much value to explore, as much of the sources collected had not been included in the video projection, given the 10 minute runtime. The video is still being projected in Port Macquarie, but will end projection next year, so Studio ESEM is looking to long term and continuing projects in Port Macquarie: they have continued to collaborate with Aunty Rhonda Radley, who was significantly involved in Wakulda, on various other projects.
Firstly, my spreadsheet organizes the sources into a usable archive that can be used to make the use of them in any future projects easier and ultimately help make these sources accessible to the public
Secondly my “scrollytelling” presentation of the sources, explores a new way of presenting the sources, further develops narratives from the original Wakulda project and provides a basis for Studio ESEM to explore this new format, which they are keen on building on.
The documentation of sources in the spreadsheet did not require much creativity as it followed a model that Studio ESEM had used previously. For the “scrollytelling” page Studio ESEM wanted me to explore ways of presenting the sources digitally, but there was plenty of scope for what kind of digital presentation, techniques and the themes that I drew out of the sources. I used the format of a “scrollytelling” website, which allowed me to explore the full depth of the audio and visual digital sources I was working with. The connection of the audience with the individuals who were featured was made much more concrete by including audio clips of their responses, along with transcriptions The scrollytelling pages will eventually be published on a website, and made accessible to the general public. All the audio sources are also provided in text form, which helps accessibility. Through this project, Studio ESEM wanted me to explore digital presentation of stories and histories of the Indigenous Australian community of Port Macquarie, and what this format could offer. This is part of a larger project they are working on to platform these narratives and perspectives in a digital format. They want to further develop the work I did with me (which I am keen to do) and incorporate it as part of this larger project
