History Matters

This unit has been by far the most challenging, most stressful and most rewarding experience I’ve had at university.

As it stands now, my project is both incomplete and almost unrecognisable from my initial goals. That said, it’s grown into something more than an assignment and with it I’ve found my niche within the Picnic Point Bowling and Social Club – I feel like I belong there more than ever.

No longer a series of video interviews or an update to the Club’s webpage, my project has developed into an exercise in writing the history of Club Picnic Point almost from scratch. This shift mostly occurred when preparing for my interviews (which are still scheduled to take place) as I quickly realised I had no place to begin. What history did exist ended around 1971 and was focused on the Club’s foundation years.

It became clear then that any interviews I did conduct would not be moored in context. With the Club’s history largely unrecorded, I decided to focus on contextualising everything before moving onto the interviews and website updates.

In order to write the history, I relied on a number of secondary sources about the local area (Picnic Point/Panania, Bankstown-Canterbury and the Georges River), the history of bowls in Australia and various histories written by other Clubs as a guideline (and occasional reference through their connections to Club Picnic Point).

Most of my work, however, was guided by primary resources. I began by reading through the entirety of available minutes books from 1956 to 1981 and any other documents (for example letters, voting ballots, invitations, debenture records) I could find. At the same time I undertook digital and physical research into newspaper and newsletter archives that related to the Club’s history while collating a photo archive that allowed me to make connections across time. Quite late into the project (about a month before submission) a whole new series of primary sources were discovered and I worked to integrate these into my knowledge. These sources included newspaper clippings from the 1960s and 1970s, photo albums and some notes written by members on the history of the Club as they remember it. Overall, the investigation (and digitisation) of primary sources took up the majority of the semester.

This research and recording aspect of the project was valuable in that it allowed me to take historical initiative (contacting officials, making public announcements etc.), but it also made me realise how frightening it is to literally ‘construct’ an uncontested history. Arguing that the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand caused WWI is one thing, telling a group of people the ‘facts’ about their own organisation is another.

I won’t deny that I’ve developed a small amount of historical anxiety over the course of this project. I’ve checked and rechecked dates and events countless times and have still found something wrong with them; I’m also very aware that I’m selecting the ‘facts’ of the Club based on what I deem important and not what somebody else may deem important. I’ve tried to assuage this fear by discussing with the Club at length the things they value.

That said, there are still some areas of my research I recognise as limited and hope to fix in future. Firstly, I have a relatively simple knowledge of bowls as a sport and have no ability to decide what is an historic victory and what isn’t. Secondly, there is a massive gap in my project from the mid-1960s to the early 2000s, based off the lack of primary evidence that I’ve uncovered about this time. Going forward, I hope to minimalize these limitations by, again, consulting with the Club’s experts (which could possibly take the form of the oral history interviews themselves).

Because of this, I consider the project I am submitting now a draft to be reviewed by my supervisor. As it stands, it involves three main aspects: a chronological timeline, a history based around themes chosen by my supervisor and myself, and a photo archive that has begun to be realised as an historical album.

Naturally, since submitting the project for marking I’ve noticed an embarrassing number of typos that have since been fixed.

My next steps are based around expanding on the history recorded in these three forms through:

• a social media call-out to members of the Club, asking them to submit photographs, documents or even sign up for oral history interviews (in addition to the members I have already confirmed with)
• further archival research of my own now that time permits – I have recently been in contact with a representative from Bowls NSW about opening up the digitised archives
• turning my own (somewhat mismatched) bibliography into an aid for future Club historians
• conducting the oral history interviews (my original goal) as I still believe that recording the memories of the Club’s oldest members is crucial, especially considering my lack of knowledge about bowls and the archival gaps from 1980 to 2000

Ideally, I will have the core aspects of this project completed by January but in all honesty I don’t see it being finished to the degree I want until well into 2020. Following extensive reviews and approval from the Club, I intend to use all of my work to finally update the Club website. I believe this will ensure that their history is accessible, sustainable and marketable.

When browsing through everyone’s projects, I began to grow worried that I hadn’t included certain aspects or maybe hadn’t done enough work. As I post this now I feel less concerned, knowing that everyone’s approach to writing history is as unique as the history they’re writing about.

I want to thank Mike, Marama and Picnic Point Bowling and Social Club for making all this (and what’s to come) possible.

For my major project I volunteered with the Romsey Lancefield & Districts Historical Society. While volunteering, I sorted through their map collection in the Old Lancefield Courthouse and organised the maps while creating an Excel document to reflect their order. I was asked to create this database to make it easier for the Society’s members to see which maps they have and to locate them. My project is useful mainly internally in the Society as they are often asked to research individual properties. Maps are useful for this research as they can provide information on historic landowners as well as property boundaries and subdivisions. I had the aim with this project to make it easier and quicker to find individual maps as they are ordered to match the spreadsheet. It also makes it easy to see which maps are included in the collection, without the need of searching through all the physical maps. I was not given a template so looked online at websites such as Trove and the US Library of Congress as a guide to see what information they listed for their maps. I then chose to set out the information in the way I believe was the most clear and detailed.

The workbook I created contains four sheets which reflect the order in which the physical maps are organised. These sheets from left to right in the workbook are: Topographic, Parish and Related, Other and Small Maps. The sheets Topographic, Parish and Related, and Other all relate to the large maps. All small maps are contained in the Small Maps sheet.

The physical maps are organised in the same order as they are listed in the Excel spreadsheet. Large maps are ordered with the first map at the top of the first sheet (Topographic) being at the back of the cupboard, then the order of the maps moving forwards follows the order on the Excel spreadsheet, down the sheet and onto the next sheet in order from left to right. Small maps are also ordered on the rack in the order they are listed down the sheet. Maps are arranged into subcategories within the sheets then organised into alphabetical order based on location within each subcategory, going down the sheet.

All categories of the maps include the following headings: Location (eg. Lancefield), Year (eg. 1947), Scale (eg. 1:63360), number of copies, Description (brief notes on what is shown in the map if additionally information is useful) and Other Notes (other text given on the map). Additionally, each category includes details specific to that map type. Topographic maps also include the headings: Map No. (eg. 7823-II SW), Zone (eg. 55H) and Series (eg. R754). However, small maps do not include series numbers. Parish and related maps also include the headings: Township (eg. Kilmore), Parish (eg. Bylands), County (eg. Dalhousie), Shire (eg. Kilmore), Publishing/Production (eg. Drawn and Reproduced at the Department of Lands and Survey. Melbourne. 1961), Authority (By Authority: H. J. Green. Government Printer, Melbourne.) and Gaz. Number (eg. Gaz 61-402).

Small maps are divided into Topographic, Parish and related maps within their sheet and follow the same headings as the associated large maps. Topographic maps are at the top of the page, followed by the Parish and related maps which use separate headings to the Topographic maps. Where information is not present on any individual map, the box for that heading is left blank.

For the “Other Notes” section I directly typed additional text that was given on the maps which in some cases included partial sentences and words or unlabelled numbers. These were included as they may still be of interest to certain readers. This section comprises of multiple columns and continues out to the right of each sheet.

The workbook may be searched using the computer’s search function to locate specific map details, such as any maps for the location of Lancefield or for a specific year. Also, if new maps are added to the collection they can easily be inserted into the document by first identifying the map type, then locating their place alphabetically within that map type, before adding the details of the new map in its correct location. Excel was chosen as the format for this database as documents can be easily rearranged or added in this way, such as if maps are sold or new maps are bought, or if new information is discovered about a particular map which would be useful to note in its listing. This allows the project long term viability.

Alongside the Excel spreadsheet I have written an executive summary to explain how the Excel document and physical maps are organised as well as to explain how to use the document. As the spreadsheet is primarily for internal use by the Society, there is no need to publicly market my work outside the of Society. However, the executive summary functions to give an overview of what is included and how to use it so the document can be used long term without the need to explain it to each individual.

As my first blog post explains, I’ve been a member of Caloola Ski Club since birth. Inheriting this membership from my mother, who inherited it from her parents; Caloola is close to my heart as a place that feels like home and carries memories from multiple generations of my family.

That said, until now, those memories – the history of Caloola – remained a mystery to me. I’d heard theories on the meaning of the name (“it’s an Indigenous word meaning ‘high place’”), who designed the logo (“it was Noni’s daughter Louise – no, it was the architect Keith!”), and even when the club was established (“1963, that’s what the plaque on the front door says”). But none of these theories seemed to align, because in the more than fifty years since Caloola’s establishment, little to no efforts have been made to formally preserve its history.

As a member of the club, I have a responsibility to maintain it, and I’ve done so at many summer work parties – helping to repaint, refresh and otherwise repair the lodge. But in embarking upon this project, I reconsidered my idea of club maintenance; and realised that by putting together a history of the club, I can preserve its memory and legacy.

Diving into Caloola’s history has been invigorating and rewarding, but it hasn’t been free of challenges. I certainly underestimated the difficulty of piecing together a history that has never before been written. Being such a small club, with only 80-odd members, it’s not the sort of thing you can find at a local library, or a state library, or the digitised National Archives, or even via a well-placed Google search.

To find the information I did, I talked to foundational members, current Board members, scoured old documents like shares records and rulebooks. In addition to the primary sources I utilised, I also relied heavily on the work of the Perisher Historical Society, who are the main keepers of the history of the Mountains and its inhabitants. Eventually, I pieced together enough of the puzzle to create a basic history. It isn’t super-in-depth, because that would take many more months than I had; but it is a history that has never been recorded before, and for that I’m pretty proud.

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The project took shape in the form of a new website, designed with the Caloola membership in mind as the primary audience. I tried to be informative yet concise and incorporated a lot of imagery to intrigue the audience. I considered the things that I, as a member, have long been fascinated by: who created what, and when, and why.

The website is broken up into sections. The “About” section takes the reader to pages exploring the history of Caloola, the history of Smiggin Holes (where the lodge is located), and a series of photo galleries. Additionally, there is a page exploring the Indigenous heritage of Caloola. It describes the significance of the Snowy Mountains to various Indigenous nations and explores the actual definition of Caloola’s name, which I discovered is a Dharug word (the language of the Wiradjuri nation) that can be interpreted both as “to climb” or “an old battlefield”.

The “Resources” section of the website is currently used for making important documents easily accessible to members. This allows for the necessary information – like booking forms and the current rulebook – to be easily accessed, whilst maintaining privacy for the club, which is only available for members and their friends and family to visit.

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The new Caloola website is a pastiche of new and old information about a very niche history. This project has highlighted both the significance and difficulties of niche histories: the way that the smaller stories of history can be the hardest to uncover and the easiest to forget.

At times, the project was frustrating, due to the gaps in information; but I was encouraged by the support of club members. Their enthusiasm for a history of the lodge they, like me, have known and loved for the majority of their life proved to me the importance of niche histories. Grand, sweeping stories of how nations and entire cities came to be are important; but so too are the small, intimate stories of how shared interests brought together small communities such as Caloola.

Through this project I’ve learned that everyone can create history, and that is what the members of Caloola have been doing since they came together in 1961: through stories told over drinks at Christmas parties; the preservation of old documents in home filing cabinets; and the sharing of family photographs.

Now, they finally have the beginnings of a collated history; one that tells the story of a group of people who wanted to spend time with family and friends in one of Australia’s most beautiful locations. It is one that matters to the members of Caloola whose early responses to the site included statements like “I never knew that story!” or “wow, I’ve never seen those photos from that era!”. It is one that I aim to keep working at over my future years as a Caloola member.

You can discover that story below at the new Caloola website.

Website: Hammondville Public School Major Project

When I began my project, I didn’t expect to know so much–not just about the school, but Hammondville itself and the rich history that it has. I wasn’t aware I was going to have so many resources to work with and I was truly surprised when I saw the amount of information and primary sources kept.

The reason I picked Hammondville Public School is because it’s a great school where all of my siblings have attended, and I really wanted to know more about the school. Once I started to go through the archives, I knew that I made a great choice by choosing Hammondville. Picking a local organisation for this project was rewarding. I was able to connect with people in the community who attended the school years ago who had great stories.  As a past student who did not know anything about the history, I was interested in knowing about it, and doing something significant. I have lived in Hammondville since 1997 when I was 3 years old. There is a big sense of community in Hammondville where everyone knows everyone and you are friends with your neighbours.

I believe that doing this project with Hammondville Public School is an achievement in itself. The opportunity to have gone through years of history which were stored in multiple boxes and discover new things about the school that I didn’t know, nor did other people. Going through the archives there were student records, images of the school before it was made, images of students, and student work and year books. One of the greatest achievement was my first blog post on History Matters which had a huge reach. Many people read it and left comments stating that they were themselves past students. 

It’s important to have done this project for Hammondville Public School as it will allow current students and past students to have access to the school’s history. Times have changed, and technology is the main source for research. I hope that when searching “History of Hammondville,” my site will appear. This website will benefit the school, as they can use it as an education tool to teach students about the history of Hammondville.

The aim for the project was to create a website about the History of Hammondville Public School including an excerpt of the history, images, student works, year books, letters from past students, and more. The website is an easy way for students both past and present to read about the school. There were different formats, and I explored with creating something online for the students to interact with. I’ve chosen to use WIX to create my website, as I tried to use Prezi and other platforms but they didn’t work for me.

When you first go on the site you are welcomed with images of Hammondville Public School with their first students and Canon Hammondville. Scrolling through the home page you will see images that will direct you to pages with the history of Hammondville and the school, images, newspaper articles, etc. It’s easy to use the site and it will be easy for students to explore the site and read about the history of Hammondville itself and the school.

There were a few challenges that were brought up, especially when picking what platform to create the website with, as there are so many. I tried to play around with a couple of sites to see which was easier for me to use, and also wasn’t complicated for students to use. 

The last couple of weeks have been an experience which has opened my eyes to what Hammondville was, and the great accomplishment the school has achieved in the last 86 years. The rich history of the school has not been acknowledged by past or present students. 

My goal for this project is to complete it before school starts in 2020. I am presenting merely a draft of the website which will contain all of the information about the area and school. I will continue researching and finding more information and images. 

In October of this year I had the fortune to choose Breakfast Point Men’s Shed (BPMS) as my non-profit organisation of choice. Tasked with volunteering for a group, the eventual aim was to collaborate with them to form a historical project of some sort, to complete a product that would be of use to them. My initial conversations with the men at the Shed highlighted the need for a distinct “record” of sorts. Although the guys had thousands of photos recording the actions their organisation had taken – most notably woodwork projects for their surrounding community – they lacked a formalised story of how the Shed came into existence. As a group focussed on men’s mental health, physical wellbeing and charity, this was hardly on the list of their priorities. Fortunately, these stories remained in the minds of the members themselves, given the relatively recent formation of the organisation. 

By becoming increasingly exposed to the community work at BPMS, and through conversations with members within the group, I was inspired and encouraged to record the short history of the Shed. This formed my primary aim of the project: to detail the history and significance of the organisation. I was struck by the group’s generosity in time and resources to both myself and their wider community. Hence, the project I have conducted seeks to show, both implicitly and explicitly, that BPMS is an integral part of the Breakfast Point Community. 

But who was this project meant for? Shed Members? The Public? My decision to create a website to display this history enabled it to target both. Although not yet on the BPMS website, my hope is that an attachment can be made there, linking to my project. In so doing, this project has the capacity to reach all Shed members, many of whom frequent their own website to keep up to date with weekly scheduled events. It also has the added benefit of being accessible to the general public, or indeed anyone looking to join the Shed itself. The website itself targets the varying aspects of organisation. Initially, it details how the Shed originated and grew. In the retelling of this history, I attempt here to convey the group as constantly updating and improving upon itself and its space. I also expanded upon two further themes. Firstly, the huge support the Shed brings its wider community. This was a must in highlighting the history of the organisation, it has remained one of their core goals. Secondly, the value the Shed has towards the members themselves. From firsthand experience, I have seen how committed the men are towards fostering a community that can talk openly towards one another, tackling Men’s mental health a conversation at a time. 

How was I sourcing my content? What was my evidence? In this regard, a secondary reading that I had read within this university unit – M. Scott Momaday’s  The Way to Rainy Mountain – drastically altered my perception of what counted as valid historical practice. Within his work, Momaday utilizes personal experience, myth and oral testimony to record the history of his native american community. Ultimately this concept informed the creation of my own project, and the value oral testimony has in mapping intimate, local histories. It is for this reason that I have relied heavily on the words of the people that constitute the Shed. For the purposes of this short history, these men have lived through and consciously facilitated the growth and attitude of the organisation. They were my greatest source. Thankfully, key members at Breakfast Point generously gave me access to many photos, along with a few documents, which complemented the image of what the Shed was and how it had changed.

My hope is that by creating this website, I have made a place where current members can come to reflect upon the story of their organisation so far. As new generations are inducted as Men’s Shed members, I also hope this project will have a longer lasting effect. My wish is that it can inform successive generations about the humbles beginnings from which the Shed started and importance the group has had upon Breakfast Point, the Community Association and the members themselves.

I want to extend a sincere thank you to Tony, Gerrard, Vince, Ugo, Kevin, Ron V, Ron S, Chris, Bruce, Ross and many other members that were so accommodating and generous with their time. Without your insight, warmth and knowledge this project would not have been possible.  Thanks for making my time there enjoyable.

You can visit the website directly here: https://williamblanks21.wixsite.com/mysite or through the main page on the BPMS website: http://www.breakfastpointmensshed.com/index.php

I have been working with the Sutherland Shire Historical Society (SSHS) for a couple of months now and have really enjoyed the experience that I have had there. The society was very welcoming and embraced my project and me with open arms. The society has a museum located in Sutherland which I visited every Saturday morning during opening hours. Initially, I helped file and archive various pieces that the society had come to possess. The office required an overhaul so each week a few ladies from the society and I would work through various newspaper clipping, books and other items to make their system more manageable. I enjoyed this experience both because the ladies were so friendly and because I learnt so much about my local area whilst flicking through different articles. 

Unfortunately, I could not stay digging through these archives forever and my attention was drawn, rather reluctantly, to formulating a major project. I struggled for a couple of weeks, tossing up between different ideas. These included remaking the SSHS’s website, working in the museum to improve displays, digitising documents, working on an interactive display and creating a walking tour. Although some of these projects I was very eager to engage in, it was suggested to me that a walking tour would be very beneficial to the SSHS. Initially, I was worried because I struggled to think of many historical landmarks in Sutherland and thought it would be difficult to create an engaging tour. After further investigation and talking to various members of the society, I began to realise that there were actually many different sites around the area that had historical value.

I slowly began compiling a list of sites, both from my own research and the suggestions made by the SSHS members. Eventually, I settled on fourteen different stops that would take about an hour to travel to. The SSHS has no other published walking tours and so I aimed to cover a wide range of topics to inspire interest in a wide range of people. The walk contains transport, educational, council, medical and recreational buildings, as well as, parks and a cemetery. I also took into consideration the audience for the walking tour. The visitors to the museum are mostly older adults or young families. The walking tour could not be very long as neither of these parties can travel for long periods. The tour takes around one hour to complete and is on mostly flat and paved surfaces. Initially, I began the project by researching each stop and writing a small blurb about its history and any other interesting facts. The format for this project is a brochure and so the amount I could write had to be limited because of the space constraints. I had trouble limiting my text as there was a lot of information on many of the sites. The majority are heritage listed and can be found on government websites and lists. 

The society offered to place my walking tour on their website to make it more accessible to the public and allow people to complete the tour even when the museum is not open. To complement this idea I translated the tour onto a flyer instead of a brochure. In the digital form, the brochure can be difficult and confusing to read, this will make it easier for online users. 

The Sutherland Shire hosts many beautiful nature reserves and national parks, the walking tours on offer are focused on these areas and often neglect the built environment. This walking tour is original because it focuses on one town centre and the built environment that boasts an interesting and unique history. 

The walking tour has a two-part aim. The first is to engage the community with the history of Sutherland. Historical awareness and understanding allow the individual to see their surroundings from a different perspective and understand that place has meaning. Hopefully, this walking tour will inspire a greater appreciation of the Sutherland area. Secondly, the tour aims to attract more people to the Sutherland Shire Museum. This museum is run by the SSHS and is where the tour begins and ends. The museum is open every Saturday morning and often struggles to have a high number of visitors. I really wanted to try and address this problem within the project. By centring the walk around the museum the visitor is opened up to both a history of Sutherland town and that of the wider Sutherland Shire. It creates a more enriching experience and allows the museum to move further into the public sphere.

To gain the most exposure for the walking tour I am also investigating other mediums of advertisement for this project. The Sutherland Shire Council website would provide good exposure for the tour and the museum, hopefully boosting the numbers of visitors. The museum is very interesting and the SSHS has provided a unique space where the history of the Sutherland Shire can be explored. I hope that the museum will thrive and that more people will be able to experience the history that it offers. 

This subject and project have allowed me to be involved in a community that I did not even know existed up until a few months ago. I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I have spent with the SSHS. The walking tour project has come to its completion and I am extremely excited about the possibilities it presents. Although this is the case I am still keen to be involved with the SSHS and the museum. The other projects that were discussed in the earlier stages of the process still need to addressed and I am excited to see where they could take me. I am very grateful for this experience and the SSHS for taking me under their wing and supporting me throughout this project.  

The project that I undertook this semester was to compile a comprehensive historical walking tour of Watsons Bay. I have lived in the area all my life, so of course I have a fair degree of sentimental attachment to the subject matter and felt a strong engagement with the project. I worked with the Watsons Bay Association to complete this project. The association drew me in with a professional looking website with a comprehensive history section, which indicated a real passion for the history of the area. Upon meeting Roger Bayliss and his wife Julie, the president and treasurer of the organisation respectively, I learnt that the organisation was relatively small and dormant, and only springs to action during times when community lobbying is needed, like during the successful Save South Head movement.

Roger and Julie suggested I do a walking tour of the area in a PDF or brochure format that could be uploaded to the Association website and that they could circulate via their popular Save South Head Facebook page. They wanted me to do a walking tour because Watsons Bay is such a historical area, especially in a colonial context, as it was the sight of the landing of the First Fleet and one of Australia’s first colonies. It has a long history of indigenous inhabitation going back some 60,000 years. It is now one of the most popular tourist spots in Sydney. Roger and Julie thought a tour that gave a more complete perspective of the area’s history was necessary, as many tours revolve around the typical sites such as The Gap and Macquarie Lighthouse which offer obvious photo opportunities. Roger and Julie gave me a large folder of old newspapers, heritage documents, photos, and historical texts to sort through and gather information from. They also put me in contact with various local community members and local history experts to correspond with and talk to. They sent me a map of the tour circuit and the sights they wanted me to include, and the initial list involved 26 sights with others later added or removed. They included an example walking tour from Canada Bay which they wanted me to base the format on.

I began the project by reading through the documents they gave me and compiling information for each sight, and issues that required clarification. I consulted the online resource Trove and other historical sources such as Robin Derricourt’s South Head Sydney and The Origins of Watsons Bay, and Megan Martin’s A Thematic History of Watsons Bay, when there were gaps in my information. These two publications proved very useful and, along with the old Bay Lief local newspapers, formed the basis of the information for my walking tour. An area where my information was lacking was the Indigenous history, much of which had been destroyed by colonial settlers, or the natural erosion and weathering of the area. I understood this was a sensitive topic and wanted to consult a local Indigenous group about the information. Through research, I found Kadoo Tours, run by Tim Ella, Grant Hyde, and Tim Ella’s daughter Latoya Brown. They were very accommodating and invited me on their Watsons Bay and La Perouse tours which provided me with interesting insights regarding the cultural practices of the Aboriginal people that lived on the South East Coast of Australia. Grant also sent through a long list of all the native flora that can be found around South Head and information on how Indigenous Australians maintained the land. I consulted with Kadoo Tours throughout the project to ensure my information wasn’t encroaching on their tour, and my Indigenous information was historically accurate and sensitive. Ultimately, they were happy with the work I had done and approved of me using it.

One of my most significant challenges was to limit the sites in the tour to a reasonable number, and to keep the information included reasonably concise. Despite cutting the initial word count down by around 2000 words, the tour still was not applicable for a traditional 3 panel brochure. I decided that the best way forward was to format it like the Canada Bay walking tour example and design it as a downloadable pdf booklet. This will hopefully get enough traction through the website and Facebook page which has well over 1000 likes.

My revised scaffold was sent around to a number of knowledgeable local residents and historians of the local area, to see if they could offer more insight. I met with a couple of local residents, Kim Messenger and Terry Wolfe. Both offered valuable insight on the Cove Street residences, a site on the tour. Terry was particularly interesting as he lives in one of the oldest houses in the area which is made from ballast from the first fleet vessels with mortar containing remnants of Aboriginal shell middens. He had a lot of documents and books on the area too, which I read and used for additional information.

Once my scaffold was approved by the Watsons Bay Association I commenced designing the booklet. While trialling the idea of a brochure. I experimented with several programs, like Canva, however I would have had to do a very substantial edit to fit all the sites in and I felt a lot of important and interesting information would have been left out that way. I designed 3 maps for the tour using Google Maps which separate the tour into three distinct parts. When factoring in time spent eating, swimming or using the rest rooms, I think the tour is best suited for a full day trip. This is suitable for tourists as public transport options to and from Watsons Bay run all day long. I also included original photos most of which I took when walking the route. I also included information about the location of refreshments, restrooms and public transport.

The Watsons Bay Association seems very happy with the work I have done for them, and they have been a great organisation to work with. They have been very helpful and accommodating and are enthusiastic and interested about the history of the area, and the importance of history for conservation. The organisation plans to put the tour on their website in the near future. The Association and I have big plans to develop the tour over the summer to reach a wider audience.

When the tour goes live I will add the link to it from their website.

At the beginning of this year I read an amazing book by Anna Anthropy titled Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form.[1] Part manifesto, part history, part memoir and part manual – Anthropy argues for marginalised groups to hit the keyboard and design videogames to represent their experiences. Reading Anthropy’s work completely changed the way I thought about media forms and storytelling,

 ‘I can imagine – you are invited to imagine with me – a world in which digital games are not manufactured by publishers for the same small audience, but one in which games are authored by you and me for the benefit of our peers. This is something the videogame industry, by its nature, cannot give us. I like to think about zines – self-published, self-distributed magazines and books… I like the idea of games as zines: as transmissions of ideas and culture from person to person, as personal artifacts instead of impersonal creations by teams of forty-five artists and fifteen programmers.’[2]

I can hear you asking – what do videogames have to do with history? Am I in the right place, I thought you were supposed to be talking about a university history project? 

When I first read this book, I never thought it would make me think differently about history. But, what Anthropy argues for in Videogame Zinesters has a lot to do with history and its creation. 

Though we have an understanding of public history as part of our historical consciousness, it’s always been seen as lesser – as capital H history’s younger, dumber brother. But with the rise of social media, podcasting, blogging and the democratisation of website-making (with programs like Wix and Squarespace) there is now even more opportunity for public history to be made – not only by those who work in government funded institutions, or who are able to fund their own works but by those who want to write their own history.[3] This is where videogames and history collide – where history – like videogames – isn’t just the ‘impersonal creation… [of] forty-five artists and fifteen programmers’[4] but can become the work of what Anthropy calls, the ‘freaks, normals, amateurs, artists, dreamers, drop-outs, queers, housewives, and people like you.’[5]

For the past few months I have worked on a public history project to redesign the digital archive of Newcastle queer history group – Hunter Rainbow History (HRH). I have also created a zine featuring some of the main pieces of their archive to act as a portable exhibition of queer history in Newcastle. Both these projects were made with the aim to allow more people to access the archive, as well as to increase awareness of the archive’s existence (through the zine), make the archive more user-friendly, and to create an easy-to-read queer history of Newcastle that would provide entry-points into the more complex material in the archive.

When I first saw the HRH archive I was blown away by the amount of material that was available, but I was also overwhelmed by what each piece meant and how it all connected to a broader history. It was only after spending many hours familiarising myself with the material, doing secondary research and talking to John Witte (a founding member of HRH) that I was able to see how each piece connected and why it was so important to understanding Newcastle’s queer history. When working on my project this became my main aim – to allow people to access the archive and to instantly see the connections between the objects.

However, creating the zine presented a steep learning curve, particularly regarding how personal the creation of public history can be. I found Lorina Barker’s Hangin’ out” and “Yarnin’”: reflecting on the experience of collecting oral histories[6] a very helpful way to understand why this process was difficult – as both an insider to the community (growing up in Newcastle and being queer) and an outsider (as someone who hadn’t lived through the trauma of the AIDs epidemic, police arrests of the 1950s or ongoing violence), I felt incredibly attached to the people whose history I was writing. It often felt like removing a single sentence was wiping out the work which had been done to record LGBTIQ+ history. This was particularly difficult due to the short nature of a zine and at times it felt counterintuitive to have such a large amount of history condensed into under 400 words. However, the process also taught me a lot about what it means to create a historical narrative, and the importance of recognising the place of your work in broader historical writing.

Acknowledgements

Much of my research for this project came from the book Out in the Valley: Hunter gay and lesbian histories[7] (2010),which is one of the most substantial, and well researched written accounts of Newcastle’s queer history. I used Out in the Valley to generate a broader understanding of the common themes and events which I then used to understand the connections in the HRH archive. I also used the Australian Lesbian and Gay archives[8] as a model for writing queer history. The readings from this unit also helped guide my understanding of how to write public history – most notably The Problem of Belonging: Contested Country in Australian Local History by Frank Bongiorno and Erik Eklund (2014)[9]; and Anna Clark’s Private Lives, Public History (2016)[10]. An essay by Sam Leah and Jessie Lymn titled What Makes An Object Queer[11] made me think critically about the importance of objects to queer history, and how to involve more than one perspective in the writing of a historical narrative. These articles shaped how I approached the project, particularly the importance of considering audience, aim and how my project fit into history as a discipline.

Overall, I am so grateful for this unit for allowing me to make connections with the queer past of Newcastle. I am planning to continue working with HRH over the Summer and hopefully in the following year. Most of all, I hope my project is able to connect others to their own community and increase the visibility of Newcastle’s queer past.

Finally, the introduction to Out in the Valley contained a few key quotes which motivated me to continue this project. Below is one of my favourites, that acted as a constant reminder that queer people deserve more than a history confined to homophobic newspaper articles:

‘Up until the 1990s, when the hunter gay and lesbian community began to publish its own news magazines, the occasional newspaper article was the only evidence homosexuals of the region could find to tell them that their existence and history had not been completely erased from the consciousness of the community in which they lived. The negative articles at least enabled local homosexuals to see in print the kinds of views about them that were held by the people who were part of their world.’ [12]

You can visit the Hunter Rainbow History new website here.

The zine will be available in the archive pending copyright approval.

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[1] Anna Anthropy, Rise of the Videogame Zinesters: How Freaks, Normals, Amateurs, Artists, Dreamers, Drop-outs, Queers, Housewives, and People Like You Are Taking Back an Art Form, (Newcastle: Seven Stories Press, 2012).

[2] Rise of the Videogame Zinesters, 2012, p. 7.

[3] However, there is still a lot to be pessimistic about regarding the democratisation of history. I was only able to undertake this project because I was given time in my university degree, I was able to fund printing and access to a  laptop by myself, I was given access to resources and education through my ability to pay for university and I was able to fund my travel back and forth to Newcastle. There are a lot of privileges that still limit access of the creation of history. But my hope is that forms like zines, like videogames, like podcasting allow more people to access history and that there will continue to be more work done to increase that access. 

[4] Ibid.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Lorina Barker, “Hangin’ out” and “Yarnin’”: reflecting on the experience of collecting oral histories”, History Australia, 5, no. 1, (2008), pp. 1-9.

[7] Jim Wafer, Erica Southgate and Lyndall Coan, Out in the Valley : Hunter gay and lesbian histories . Newcastle, (Newcastle: Newcastle Region Library, 2000).

[8] Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives | Since 1978, collecting and preserving Australia’s very queer history. https://alga.org.au/

[9] Frank Bongiorno and Erik Eklund, “The Problem of Belonging: Contested Country in Australian Local History,” New Journal: An International Journal of the Humanities, Creative Arts and Social Sciences 3, no. 1 (2014), pp. 39-53.

[10] Anna Clark, Public Lives, Private History, (Victoria: Melbourne University Press, 2016).

[11] Sam Leah and Jessie Lymn, “What Makes An Object Queer: Collecting and exhibiting LGBT stories in regional museums and archives,” Information Research, 22, no.4, (December 2017).

[12] Jim Wafer, Erica Southgate and Lyndall Coan, Out in the Valley : Hunter gay and lesbian histories . Newcastle, (Newcastle: Newcastle Region Library, 2000), p. 2.

When I undertook this project, I immediately knew I wanted to work with the Nowra Town Band. With 140 years of history and some incredible resources that the Band has rarely had the means to collate and preserve, it seemed the perfect organisation to work with. My personal connection to the Band helped; I grew up playing cornet with them, and over the years my entire family has been dragged into playing a part, whether in the Band itself or providing vital assistance at band events.

I decided on the project itself while during preliminary research online, for the precise reason that I was able to find very little. In an age where the internet is one of the primary resources for finding information, this felt like something that I could address. I attended the Annual General Meeting to raise the idea of building a website with both a fleshed-out history section and, just as vitally, information about joining the band. The band committee agreed, and from this, the official Nowra Town Band website was formed.

Part of the reason this project is the right step for the Band is because of membership. While the Band is still thriving 140 years on from its inception, its numbers are dwindling and many of the players are older members of the community. A simple and accessible website broadens the avenues through which people are able to learn about and get involved. Ease of use was one of the main priorities due to the predominance of older people both currently in the Band and that show interest in getting involved- seasoned players who have recently moved or retired to Nowra make up a decent amount of the new additions. A website opens up an extra and very important avenue through which people are able to find out about the Band, its history, and its upcoming events.

Through the website, I aimed to highlight the community nature of the Band in order to create a welcoming atmosphere for potential new members that mirrors the welcoming nature of the Band itself. Throughout its 140-year history, the Band has never been an elitist organisation; many of its members have been beginners or self-taught, with little professional tutelage. This ties in with the accessibility of the site, as it makes it available to the widest range of people possible. An alternative form of presentation would have been increasing its social media reach through sites such as Instagram or YouTube, however without the basis of a simple website, these would have the potential to alienate the people most interested in joining or accessing the history of the Band. These may be a future endeavour for the Band, however they also require more frequent updates than a website which needs only to be updated with upcoming events.

The History section of the website is also a vital part of the project. The internet has become incredibly pertinent in the preservation and presentation of stories. In the process of writing it up, I showed my partner’s mother who grew up in Nowra one of the sources I was using. She read through it, pointing out the families she recognised and the members she went to school with or was taught by, and in an incredible coincidence, we figured out that she was distantly related to the man who had written the book she was reading. It is little moments like these that signify the importance of this project; not only for the future of the Band, but in increasing the visibility of its past and allowing these connections to be made. In small towns like Nowra, the personal connections to community run deep, and the preservation of local stories in easily accessible ways can be incredibly meaningful even to those who are not personally involved.

As part of the digitisation work, I scanned a variety of documents and photographs that have been stored in the Band Hall for decades. Many of them are falling apart, fading, or otherwise showing the test of time, and it is for this reason that taking advantage of digitisation technologies is important for organisations like the Nowra Town Band, whose resources for document preservation are limited by money and space. Digitisation requires resources of its own, which is why the Band’s archives had only been partially scanned prior to my involvement. The efforts which had already been undertaken were impressive, however the time-consuming nature of the work has meant that they have not yet been completed. This is something I hope to continue with in the future; working with the Band on this project has been an incredible experience, and it would be a privilege to continue this work with them.