History Matters

Throughout working with the Jessie Street National Women’s Library I have reflected on how we tell women’s history and the stories that get told and those which remains only as memories. Precious to a few, but not important enough to be recorded as more than family heirloom.

With the Jessie Street National Women’s Library I worked alongside the wonderful and friendly volunteers on the Tapestry project. This is project surrounds women’s stories. The Library holds a series of short memoirs , all written by women either about their life, or that of a family member or loved one. These stories vary drastically, covering many time periods are are written by women of all walks of life. Tapestry allows for women to write their own story. They are not focused on writing for an audience but write to honour the people in their lives.

I helped the volunteers make changes to the website to help make the Tapestry stories more discoverable and easier to navigate. I worked alongside them, suggesting ways to improve the website and making social media content to increase the profile of the Tapestry project.

In addition, I created promotional material for this project as it is incredible valuable and I wanted as many people to get the change to read some of the Tapestry stories. These stories provide so much detail into the social history of Australia, from so many diverse points of views. Tapestry allows for family histories to be recorded and for other the learn of the experiences of women.

History is not just what we record, but how we chose to record these stories. The Tapestry project allows for women to be the center of their own narratives. I think this is a method of storytelling that deserves more attention. It is empathetic and empowering. Allowing people to speak about whatever aspect of their life that they think is most critical to history.

There is a vast divide between these self recording histories and larger historical narratives. Tapestry helped me understand why that gap existed, and focus empathy in my historical work .

2023 marks ten years of RESPECT— a program run by Outloud dedicated to educating primary school boys in Canterbury-Bankstown about domestic violence and healthy relationships through rap. My project involved writing a section for Outloud’s website entitled “10 Years of RESPECT: History and Highlights” that speaks to the value and significance of the program.

I also conducted two group oral history interviews for Outloud’s archive, documenting the experiences and perspectives of RESPECT facilitators and participants. The section I have written for the website primarily draws from these oral histories to capture the distinct voices of those who have been involved in RESPECT’s short yet rich history.

In 2022, Outloud extended the RESPECT program to engage alumni, now Year 10 students in high school. As part of the alumni program, these students are trained to facilitate primary school workshops as mentors to younger students. A highlight of my project was documenting this exciting development.  

I had the privilege of interviewing two students from Sir Joseph Banks High School who are currently participating in the RESPECT alumni program. These young men are leaders in their community who made a commitment to values of respect, equality, and nonviolence in Years 5 and 6 through their first encounter with the RESPECT program and have sustained this commitment ever since. Now in Year 10, their stories are a testament to the long-term impact of the program in shaping young men’s visions for their future and producing empowering connections within and across Canterbury-Bankstown school communities. One student shared:

The student interviewees also shared their strongest memories of RESPECT during primary school. These stories were incredibly moving. One student spoke of his experience performing at the Women’s Domestic Violence Court Advocacy Service Conference in the Sydney CBD in 2018:

I am immensely grateful to these students for sharing their experience of RESPECT, as well as to Craig Taunton and Van Nguyen— without whom this project would not have been possible. I came away from these interviews having observed the power of RESPECT to create positive change in the culture of school communities and open conversations about domestic violence across Canterbury-Bankstown more broadly. The impact of RESPECT is felt strongly by all involved, and I hope to see the program continue to thrive in the future.

Here is the link to the RESPECT section of Outloud’s website, which will be updated soon: https://outloud.org.au/projects/respect/

The ANZAC Nurses of the Coast-Prince Henry

https://sites.google.com/view/anzacnursesprincehenry/home

In his authoritative work Why History Matters, John Tosh observes how communities “are confronted by the paradox of a society which is immersed in the past yet detached from its history.” Tosh’s contention profoundly underscores both the genesis of this project, as well as the fundamental importance of its very purpose.

I was fortunate to be accepted by the Prince Henry Hospital Museum based in Little Bay. On my first day as a volunteer, I was tasked to itemise old registration records of nurses from the former hospital when I eventually came across two particular nurse’s records included documents and photographs pertaining to their services during the Second World War. My immediate impression was that this could potentially form an entirely original project by presenting an apparently untold piece of Australian war accounts – from an enlisted nurse’s perspective. This concept was mainly due to an inherent belief that the general consensus of Australian army nursing, particularly during both world wars, at least, was relatively unknown or entirely remote altogether. Moreover, to focus primarily on a specific individual’s history in this regard would also be extremely unlikely as to have any previous form of official historical publication.

Hence, the implicit argument of Profiles in Valour is how the role played by Australian army nursing in twentieth-century’s cataclysmic events has been highly underplayed or historically unappreciated within this historical discourse. Names such as ‘Bessie’ Pocock, Margaret de Mestre, Vivian Bullwinkle, and Muriel Knox Doherty should be included alongside those annals of the Australian military iconography, next to Gallipoli, John Simpson Kirkpatrick and his donkey, the Rats of Tobruk, and the Kokoda Track. Jan Basset’s exordium in her monograph Guns and Brooches somewhat confirmed this suspicion accentuating how the historiography of Australian army nursing has been unilaterally neglected by most historians until the 1980s. Fortunately, her work, along with notable other studies by Catherine Kenny, Peter Rees, and Rupert Goodman have crucially filled gaps within its historiography which otherwise may have been lost forever. Therefore, this project relies exclusively on such secondary materials in order to create, as per Bassett’s dictum, an ‘impressionistic’ historically profile of an individual ANZAC nurse to arguably illustrate their own wartime experiences.

Crucial sources such as diaries or letter correspondence are usually extremely rare, and interviews conducted years, even decades, later can potentially lend itself to a degree of containing slight inaccuracies (usually of minor details within the broader picture). Therefore, with the absence of the former, I have relied mainly on primary sources, including war records and contemporary newspaper accounts, as the core basis for a biographical history. Whilst Catherine Kenny’s extensive interviewing accounts on the Australian POW nurses in Malaya and elsewhere is indeed a valuable asset, in this area, I have consulted instead the Sydney Morning Herald and Women’s Weekly contemporary accounts and interviews conducted immediately after their release in September 1945. The Prince Henry Hospital Museum importantly also showcases on display their former Coast-Prince Henry nursing staff and graduates that had served in wars and conflicts abroad. Originally, this project was to convey the histories of at least four nurses from the former hospital. However, both Nora Kathleen Fletcher and Muriel Knox Doherty were reluctantly eliminated mainly due to exceeding word count limits thereby inhibiting other important detailed aspects: also, the former had worked entirely with the (British) Royal Red Cross and St. John Order throughout the First World War; whereas the latter had already extensively written about her experience from her own exemplary seven hundred page letter correspondence (as a United Nations rehabilitation nurse at the Belsen concentration camp in the aftermath of the Holocaust) which has also thus been expanded by the authors Judith Cornell and Lynette Russell. By these inclusions, it would have therefore somewhat undermined this project by negating the all-encompassing ANZAC element, as well as forgoing the crucial aspects from those necessary unpublicised accounts.

Henceforth, the fundamental themes are a sterling appreciation for cherishing Australia’s national heritage through an inherent understanding of its national identity forged through the ANZAC spirit of ‘mateship,’ and commemoration of its war legacy. By illustrating these war nurses’ biographical profiles, it serves as the fundamental need as a memorial towards the Prince Henry museum itself and the overall general public The museum will, hopefully, proudly identify within its own history how it had become inexorably linked with the ANZAC legacy in which it can inviolably claim its own contribution to its story. For the public, it will hopefully serve as a continuing additional layer of storytelling about the ANZAC legend that is subconsciously ingrained within the Australian psyche and cultivated by its national pride. It also further helps us to bring this historical past into our own present understanding of our Australian identity. As Anna Clark stipulates in Private Lives, Public History, it allows a means of “map[ping] that historical space not only as disjuncture but also as a possible intersection.”

My project involved exploring the curatorial processes of the National Maritime Museum for the acquisition proposal of a diary into the Museum’s collection. Currently, there are copyright and ownership issues which restrict me from sharing close details and images of the diary. However, its contents explore the voyage of an individual who was onboard the Lusitania for a voyage from Sydney to London in 1879. He pursued this migration for postgraduate education and training in Medicine. His departure from Australia for the purpose of medical training was highly unique and allowed me to work on original themes which the Museum had not previously engaged with. Furthermore, the ability to work with a personal diary was significant to understand diverse modes of historical writing and testimony. His account improved my understanding of the possibility of historical writing to be highly diverse and take variable forms to express significant experiences and emotions connected with maritime travel.

The main goal of the project was to convey the significance of the authors experiences within his journal and ultimately, acquire his manuscript within the Museum’s collection for display. My project argued the large value of personal journals and diaries to illuminate important details of maritime travel and the conditions of Australian work and education during the 1800s. While working on the project, I was continually reminded of the long-term scarcity of historic personal accounts. Especially considering the journal documented travel departing from Australia to the UK, the ability to have access to the experiences of individuals who have left Australia is highly rare. Discussion with the Head of Knowledge at the Museum, Peter Hobbins, informed me of the large disposal of old manuscript due to individuals being unaware of its historical significance, in conjunction with challenges regarding the authenticity and sensitivity surrounding the publishing of journal details. In light of the difficulties of both accessing and working with diaries, the project largely argued the historical significance and importance of preserving the contents of the 1879 journal.

The project focused on the theme of emigration from Australia. Within the Museum’s collection, diaries and journals are largely centred on the experiences of individuals travelling to Australia for work or starting new lives. The dominant narrative focuses on immigration to Australia to strengthen the national identity and convey the positive experiences of life in Australia. Herein, the journal is important to challenge the dominant theme of immigration to Australia and rather convey the dynamic movement between the British colonies for professional advancement. The authors voyage exposes the limited nature of clinical and medical education in Australia in the 1800s, where his pursuit for improved training in Scotland and England conveys the frequency of travel away from Australia. Hence, the voyage is significant to reveal the agency of Australian citizens to utilise the opportunities available to them within the Empire and subsequently, pursue improved working and education conditions away from Australia. Furthermore, the journal makes large reference to theme of maritime travel. Throughout his account, the author details the multitude of vessels spotted during his travels. The diversity of vessels such as, a schooner, cargo and mail steamships and Arabian dhows convey the high frequency of sea travel in the 1800s.

The project engages with the role of public history in facilitating diverse modes of communicating history. The unique journal manuscript challenges traditional forms of academic history writing and rather privileges the voice of unique individuals to communicate maritime travel in the 1800s. This public history work encourages the use of creative modes of communication that is more inclusive of diverse perspectives. While certain biases may be present within the personal account, the project illuminates how journals can provide unique interpretive and research potential that may not be accessible through traditional primary sources. This is highly important as it can allow modern audiences to also engage with historical writing. Expanding different historical perspectives can encourage diverse individuals to contribute their valuable perspectives and participate in the construction of history, as exampled by the 1879 diary. 

I hope that the diary is acquired into the Museum’s collection for the long-term preservation and sustaining of its unique contents. Further, I hope to work with the Museum in the future to transfer the research I conducted in the acquisition proposal to a more accessible form of communication such as, a blogpost for their website or an article in the Museum’s magazine. My experience working with the Maritime Museum and the curatorial, conservation and library team was highly rewarding and informative of the various details involved in public history works. The unique skills learned, and connections made through the Museum allowed for a positive completion of the project.

My project contains the skeletons of a cookbook, 24 pages including a cover design, contents page, recipes, and stories. It plays on the ‘ABC’ motif, creating a fun and playful introduction to Asian Between Cultures and their relationships with food. I chose this form for my project as I felt it was the most doable in the short timeframe as well as the most adaptable for any future iterations of the project.

I’ve been flexible with the way I presented my recipes, allowing each contributor to guide how their recipe is written, whether very accurately or free-flowing with measurements and instructions. Some contributors submitted their recipes via voice recording or via calling me, while others wrote them out. I chose this method as I think it represents the reality of how we experience food and cooking. Not every dish is improvised with a dash of this and a dash of that, nor is every dish measured down to the last teaspoon. I think the traditional recipes that are very precise or the Western recipes that are very free-flowing are particularly interesting and unique, as these foods are being viewed through a different cultural lens.

My key argument is that these stories surrounding food are valuable, demonstrate the complex relationship that ABCs have with their foods, and help weave a broader tapestry of migration, culture, and history. I weaved more explicit and formal histories throughout to demonstrate how a small story can extrapolate into a bigger narrative and attempted to write each story in an engaging and personal way to show the value behind it. This engagement and personality, I found, mostly derived from the use of the themes of migration, culture, history, and family, as that’s where the heart of the story often was.

The highlight of creating this project was talking to people and making their stories feel heard and valued. Everyone I spoke to was eager to share and even more eager to see their recipes put in a cookbook format. Many told me that they showed their families and requested the completed copy to give to them. It really showed how much people want these important parts of their lives to be given permanency and longevity (part of my own desire to capture my waipo’s recipe is knowing that our family might forget it in a couple of decades). Thinking about permanency for my community reminded me of one of the readings, where Bongiorno was talking about how to fit ‘alternative’ histories into a national narrative that has for so long had its foundations in whiteness. For me, this project is not attempting to jam in an Asian Australian story into an already constructed narrative of Australian food, but rather, building it from scratch, with community stories, members, and interests at the centre.

I think this is the heart of the project’s need, so that we can share our foods and stories, spark conversations about Asian Australian food cultures, and make our community feel seen, heard, and worthy of permanency.

While I’m not 100% certain where the future of the cookbook lays, I’m super excited to start discussing with the Asian Australian Project about whether it’s a project we want to continue into the future. In the meantime, I’m getting together my raw materials as well as the recipes I wasn’t able to use, so that we may draw on them in the future.

See below an excerpt of my project!