History Matters

My father was a stonemason. He spent years of his life chipping away at stone. To this day, he still bears the marks of his work on his rough and calloused hands. As a child, I often marvelled at the things he could create from the stone with just a few simple tools like his hammer and chisel. Our family home, built more than twenty years ago by my father and grandfather, lays on a foundation of sandstone; the steps leading up to our front door were carefully smoothed by his hands. Even our letter box, although old and weathered now, was built from sandstone.
I have always had a connection to old buildings. I think it is because they remind me of my father, our family home and my own history. Perhaps, this is also why I am so intrigued by the many historical buildings along Alison Road, in the old town of Wyong. These buildings, which include the Old Court House, Chapman’s Store and the Railway Station, are all enduring remnants of years gone by. Built with aging brick and stone, they are the only remaining markers of the time in which Wyong was first founded over a century ago.
More than just the buildings themselves, it is the stories of the people behind them that captivate me the most. In the past few weeks, I have spent hours trawling through archives, newspapers and books, searching for people with connections to the buildings along Alison Road. Slowly, I am piecing together a narrative about the past lives and ways of the pioneers of Wyong.
So far, I have read stories about William Ponton, a bricklayer by trade who built the Post Office adjoining the Old Police Station, who was famed throughout the town for laying more than 1000 bricks a day. I have also uncovered numerous newspaper reports about the first postmaster of Wyong, Mr. Stafford, who disappeared from his lodgings at the Court House one morning along with a considerable sum of money from the till. It is stories like these, about the buildings of Wyong and the people who built them, lived in them and visited them, that I will endeavour to share in my walking tour of Alison Road.
Erin Blanchfield
I am working alongside Wyong Family History Group to develop a walking tour of the historical buildings along Alison Road in Wyong. For further information about the group, please visit; http://www.wyongfamilyhistory.com.au/

For my community project, I decided to go back to my old school (because twelve years at school apparently wasn’t long enough). I enjoyed my time at school and hold my teachers and administrative staff in much higher regard, having now witnessed my friends struggling with the demands of a degree in Education.
 
Kambala introduced the study of history to me. Perhaps it was the moment when we made our own archaeological dig in a shoe box in year 7, or studied the Titanic in year 10 (aka arguing if there was enough space on the door for Jack Dawson *spoiler alert* there was), or even our field trips to the Rocks, and Vaucluse House in primary school. I can’t pin point the exact moment in which I became fascinated about the past, but it was undeniably born, cultivated, and matured inside school walls. I studied both ancient history and history extension for the HSC. While I wanted to take modern history too someone-who-shall-not-be-named thought that mathematics was a better idea (it wasn’t). However, despite learning about the great history of great men, the school’s history of my school was largely ignored. I graduated with more knowledge about the gymnasiums in Pompeii than Kambala’s buildings.
 
I therefore decided to work with the Kambala Old Girls Union (KOGU) in order that I might engage deeper with my school’s history and the community which had taught me so much. This year marks the 120th Anniversary of the Kambala Old Girls Union. As part of the celebrations, KOGU is releasing a series of images and biographies on old girls who have led inspirational lives. I myself wrote the biographies for nine deceased old girls.
This was a challenge as it was difficult to obtain information about some of the old girls, given they lived in the 1800s. However, having researched their lives deeply by trawling through 1903 editions of the Sydney Morning Herald I managed to find sufficient information to construct a biography about their lives.
 
I was fascinated by the challenging and intriguing nature of these old girls’ lives. While some served in the Red Cross during World Wars I and II, another founding the Country Women’s Association, to another becoming one of the best artists in Australia, these girls, who walked the same halls as myself for twelve years left a significant mark on the country’s history. In HSC Ancient History we spent months studying powerful women like Hatshepsut, one of the most powerful Pharaohs in New Kingdom Egypt. We studied Livia, Julia, Octavia, the wife, daughter and sister of Augustus. We studied the great female protagonists from the Classical Tragedians (I think at this point I need to confess my true passion for history lies in Ancient Rome, specifically 42BC-14D).
We studied these captivating famous ancient women, women who challenged authority and forged a unique and independent path for themselves in their challenging societies. But, not once did we study the old girl who was the first female junior medical resident officer at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.
Not the old girl who raised 95 000 pounds for the Australian Cerebral Palsy Association through her position as Miss Australia.
Not once the old girl who was Australia’s first female diplomat to the United Nations.
Not the girls who walked the same corridors, perhaps sat in the same chairs, wore the same uniform or sang the same school song.
Sometimes it’s not necessary to visit Ancient Rome to find inspirational historical figures as HSC Ancient History would have you believe. Sometimes you can find their fingerprints on the door of M22.*
~ Lizzie Richardson (class of 2012)
*M22 was the history room at Kambala

There really is nothing like seeing strangers and mates alike join to drop their pants to the Eagle Rock, or belt out every lyric to Khe Sanh whilst they drown themselves in beer.
I think most young Australians are drawn to a culture shaped by music entertainment and drinking. Perhaps problematically, drinking and the social activities that accompany it are entrenched historically in the Australian identity. The nationalist character of the Australian imagined community is a topic oft-discussed by academics and public figures alike. At the grass roots however, I think most appreciate and love the role that music and social drinking has had upon their identity, particularly because of the relationships and sense of community they have fostered. After all, don’t you and your mates enjoy the same music?
As I have grown up in between countries and cultures, I felt a great need to deepen my roots to a place and community. Music, particularly music in the Inner West, and the pub culture which supports it has played a crucial role in connecting me to a sense of culture and place here in Sydney. This public history project has provided me the opportunity to marry my historical interests with my social world and community. I have Dan and Matt Rule, community leaders and business owners of Music and Booze Co. to thank for building the space that myself and so many others can enjoy within Sydney’s Inner West. This project will pay homage to that fact.
Music and Booze Co. was only conceived in 2014 to ‘facilitate and curate creative events, involving the countires [sic] most exciting bands, labels, agents & communities’, at festivals, live music and hospitality venues, as well as public spaces such as parks, initially in and around Newtown, NSW, and now all of Australia. Before the conception of the company, the Rule Brothers have worked behind the scene for many years and have arguably helped build some of the most popular bands in Australia, while simultaneously restoring and building the reputation of famous pubs such as the Annandale Hotel and The Lord Gladstone. However, bankruptcy and state restrictions have forced the brothers to start fresh, where they rely on the publicity of their friends (musicians, publicans and other music and non-industry workers) to grow as a public, cultural and business organisation. This is where I have slotted myself in – helping publicise and support their business by attending their events and spreading the word. It isn’t much, and I wish I could pick up a guitar and bring a big audience to them but I lack the talent. But my passion and love for this community and consequently my appreciation for what the Rule brothers have done has motivated me to use my historical skills to highlight the significance of their work. We will see how it goes..

For the past few weeks, I have been assisting the Local History department of the Woollahra Library in collating some research for an upcoming walking tour on crime in Vaucluse. Now I’m not sure Vaucluse is usually thought of as a hotspot for crime, with its sea views and the letterbox-numbers spelled out with words. But just like any area that has been around for a while, and that has had human beings living side by side, there have been some scuffles along the way.
In my research so far, I have started at the start. This, for the Vaucluse area, begins with Sir Henry Browne Hayes, a wealthy Irish convict who was sent over to NSW in 1802 for trying to forcibly marry a wealthy young woman to then claim control of her large inheritance. For some reason she wasn’t too keen on the idea and managed to escape and get the police on his case. After being on the run for two years, he eventually turned himself in and was shipped off to NSW. Hayes was a downright trouble maker. For one, he was an Irish Freemason and was intent on establishing Freemasonry upon his arrival in Sydney, contrary to the wishes of Governor King (who was already dealing with a few potential convict uprisings at the time). A bunch of convicts, banding together in a sort of secret cult? Not what you want. The story continues, and I have to find more information, but Hayes continued to aggravate the powers that were. This included being shipped off to Van Diemens land as a result of rebellious tendencies.
Interestingly though, he was one of a few convicts to be ‘well off’ and as such he suffered all the usual convict hardships: sailing around the bay in his boat, cultivating his garden, and building the beautiful sandstone cottage that he would name Vaucluse. Later the house was sold to W.C. Wentworth, a much more palatable character from what I’ve gathered, and has survived in good condition thanks to being State-Heritage listed.
I loved reading about this story but I can’t help thinking: would I enjoy this story if instead of a convict, this ‘Hayes’ was just another wealthy foreigner who wanted a sea view in Sydney’s East? What if he was a convict who got on just fine with local authority and just lived a quiet, law-abiding life? I think that history, or rather the passing of time, can cull large proportions of the human experience away from the story that I (or anyone) could construct around someone like Hayes. He is in danger of being summed up by a culmination of birth dates and death dates, of signed land agreements, of Gazette reports, and inevitably the ‘humanness’ leaches out of his story. I am not sure that this is unavoidable, but I find it interesting how easy it is to forget the emotional landscape that a person, much less someone deemed a ‘criminal’, can have in his/her life. It is hard to imagine, because obviously I was not there to experience it. And so my point about crime (if there is any), is that maybe part of the allure of crime history is its ability to make those darker parts of ourselves – those angry, rebellious, unfair, criminal parts of ourselves- more palatable as we look at them in the form of another, safely removed from us by time.
This is another reason why I respect the ideas of walking tours, because just like the one we undertook at the Parramatta Female Factory, the spoken word and the physicality of a tour can help to convey some of these stories with a more emotional touch, with more imagination coming into the history-making process.
For now, I continue gathering evidence of those sneaky members of Sydney’s dodgiest neighbourhood: Vaucluse.

The community group I am working with is the University of the Third Age (U3A) in Liverpool NSW. U3A is a non-profit movement that operates nationally and internationally designed for people over the age of 50. Any senior can become a member, whether you live in the local area or not and you do not need to be a pensioner to join. Members of the organisation simply pay a small annual fee to gain access to a whole bunch of educational and leisure activities (most at no extra cost and no assignments or exams).
To provide insight into the extensive range of classes available, listed below is the program of the many classes members of Liverpool U3A had the opportunity to attend during Term 3 of 2016 (the U3A program is divided into 4 terms per year where adjustments may be made for different classes depending on various factors).
~ Art Appreciation ~ China/Porcelain Painting (Beginner/Advanced) ~ Computer (Beginner/Intermediate)
~ Computer: Q and A ~ Computer: Internet ~ Computer: Scanning ~ Creative Writing ~ Enjoy Reading
~ Euchre ~ French (Beginner/Intermediate) ~ Gadgets for Seniors ~ History ~ Meditation
~ Oil and Acrylic Painting ~ Patchwork ~ Walking Group ~ Water Colour: Painting/Drawing/Mixed Media
~ Yogalates
The motivation for choosing Liverpool U3A for my public history project was inspired by my Grandmother. She has been attending the organisation for nearly 15 years, after the loss of my Grandfather in 2001. Her neighbours who already attended encouraged her to go and try out some of the classes. Today she currently attends multiple classes, is the French tutor for the beginner and intermediate classes and is one of the committee members on the Board.
I feel so passionate about this organisation because I have personally seen how much interest and joy it has added to my grandmother’s life (she barely has time to ring her grandchildren!). I want to show others in the community what a fantastic job this organisation does at empowering seniors and providing them with a place to continue to live life to the fullest both educationally and socially.
For more information, you can visit their website: http://www.liverpoolu3a.com.au

When I was younger, my parents took my family on a “surprise holiday.” My brothers and I climbed into the car without a clue as to where it would take us. Were we off to the snow? The airport? Embarking on a long road trip to Queensland?
40 minutes later, we’d already arrived at our destination: Liverpool Street. In Sydney.
At first, we thought it was- must have been, a joke. We rolled our luggage into the hotel lobby and scanned our parents’ faces for hints of where we would really be heading.
Twenty minutes later, checked into our room and gazing at a slightly obstructed view of the Sydney Tower, we finally came to terms with the fact that our surprise adventure meant simply travelling from our home in the west to a hotel in the CBD.
My mum gave us a mischievous look. We were certainly surprised, I’ll give her that.
“It’s important to explore your own big backyard,” she insisted.
The holiday turned out to be wonderful; scenic, exciting and full of fascinating traces of history I’d never previously realised existed. I had a great time wandering about the city that was at once familiar and full of secrets.
Since this initial introduction to the idea of “exploring your own backyard,” I’ve seen it splashed everywhere: in travel magazines, on lifestyle websites, blogs, think pieces, you name it. Discovering one’s own city, country, neighbourhood, street… going local continues to be promoted, and rightly so, as an eye-opening and enriching experience.
Taking this history unit this semester has further emphasised the concept for me. As someone who has mostly studied history from an academic perspective, taking most of my previous courses on all that “exciting” stuff- namely European wars and revolutions, learning about local and public history has been a welcome change. I’ve discovered there are over 500 clocks hiding away at Central station, a burial ground underneath Town Hall, a collection of colourful first fleet characters buried in Parramatta and a bunch of exciting and creative ways to bring the past into the present.
As I begin to work with my community organisation- the Blacktown and District Historical Society, I’m excited to be discovering the history that’s right on my doorstep, or more specifically, at my back fence. The house behind mine is heritage listed- once home to the first president of Blacktown Shire. I spent my childhood staring at my neighbours’ gorgeous old chimneys, peering at their Victorian veranda as I swam in the pool in summer and taking in the picturesque line of its roof, long driveway, and jacaranda tree as the sun set in the afternoon. I always felt lucky that my house backed onto theirs and found that it encouraged my imagination to run free and ponder scenarios from “the olden days.”
I now have the opportunity to research this house, among others, through my community engagement, and am very much looking forward to where this exercise of (literally) exploring my backyard will take me.
History sure has its superstars- its famous figures, its celebrity cities. But I’ve been delighted to realise the importance of pulling myself away from the dramas of Bolshevism in order to plant my feet firmly on Australian turf, walk them outside and see what’s waiting for me.

There is no denying that history has an illuminating power; an ability to shine light on aspects of the past that have largely remained in darkness. However, it has become increasing clear this week – especially when reflecting on the works of Louise Prowse – that there exist some histories that have been written with fragmented lights, resulting in a marginalised documentation of the past. Regrettably, this is especially applicable to Aboriginal and indigenous histories.
One would imagine ‘Local History’ would be at the forefront of celebrating and exhibiting evidence of local peoples of the past. Yet what struck me most profoundly about Dr. Prowse’s article was that Local Historical Societies have, in fact, for the most part of the twentieth century darkened any evidence of local Aboriginal existence. While this, of course, changed from the 1960’s when Aboriginal rights were, to a large extent, ‘popularised’, it leads me to ponder whether there are other histories that remain in darkness waiting to be illuminated by future ‘popularity’…

Continue reading “Illuminating Histories”

My project for the Addison Road Community Centre seeks to memorialize and honour the women who protested the ‘death ballot’ conscription for the Vietnam war in the late 60’s to early 70’s. These mothers were present at every single intake of soldiers, predecessors to the radicals and students from Sydney Uni who joined the resistance later on in the war when public sentiment was flailing. They held vigils, they wore gloves and reverently upheld signs marked “remember Nuremberg”. Despite being branded as communists – these women, mostly 40 and over, took on the job with unfettered determination.
When speaking with the centre’s historian, the scope of the project began to dawn me. Tracking down the descendants or associates of a group of older women who campaigned in Marrickville 50 odd years ago, to create an oral history, would not prove an easy task. Her words sunk in, ‘this is primary research’, ostensibly no one has ever tried to collate these diminishing second-generation accounts and recreate the dynamic political scene. I was left with a barrage of unanswerable questions. Where would i find them? How would i get them to agree to speak with me? (having expressed her own trouble in doing so) What were my hunches? What specifically did i want to find out? Who may know-someone-who-would-know-someone who could refer me? How many of this ‘x-john doe’ lived in the broader area according to the white pages? I was left perplexed and filled with dread. This was an ambitious undertaking.
After all, these protests were within living memory. Why then, was this contemporary history left uninterrogated? Whilst the annals of white, colonial Australian history, as evidenced by our lecture from Judith, remain seared in public memory and actively pursued. These women and their fight to save the nation’s sons competes with the carnival-like celebration of Anzacs and all who have served in the military for Australia. Upon further research, peacemaking, at home and internationally, is one of the few public arenas in which women have always had a decisive and initiatory role. These themes simmer above my research, recasting the information i find. This history is important. Not only as a landmark in social justice for Australia, but for the human rights issues we encounter today. No movement ever succeeded with only the anarchists, the radicals, the scholars. Ordinary Australians and older generations imagined outside the parameters of social rebellion need to be included. The women of S.O.S remind me of a group I see rallying today, dismantling the idea of what a protester is. The ‘grandmothers against the detention of refugee children’. They never miss a rally, they come in impressive numbers, they wear matching shirts and they bear witness.
Noreen Hewett, the groups lead organiser in one of her final recorded interviews, when asked as to why she founded Save our sons, said, “I have always had a general interest in the question of peace.” Indeed this is all one should need.
Teresa Singh

I decided to approach Club VeeDub at the recommendation of my Dad. It’s really my dad’s fault that I’m here. You see my dad has the gift of the gab and a dysfunctional appreciation of cars that don’t (or won’t) go. So all my life I have been inundated with story after story after story of car after car after car (I never complained though, not once). It’s not terribly difficult to imagine that Dad has a network of likeminded people who are also obsessed with cars that don’t go. But Dad will tell you that it’s actually Grandfather’s fault, and Uncle Al and Uncle John would definitely tell you that it’s Grandfather’s fault (This car thing is genetic).
My Dad has had Citroens for years (Grandfather did too). The collection is mostly the same each year. But about two years ago now, Dad crossed the border. He spent $100 on a Kombi that doesn’t go. Dad recently joined Club VeeDub in an attempt to meet some people who knew a few things and had a few parts that might help get the Kombi off the lawn.
It is from this context that I contacted Club VeeDub to see what I could do for them. It turns out they have a lot of history going on. Phil, the editor of the Club’s monthly magazine, the Zeitschrift, tries to put an historical piece in each edition. He offered to let me edit the next copy of the magazine. Then Dad started talking, and now I am also writing a piece for the magazine.
I’m not going to be writing anything I thought I might write. I am going to be writing about my history. Grandfather owned a panel shop in Lidcombe that wrecked and fixed up Volkswagens. So thanks to Dad I am going to be trawling through family photos and interviewing my uncles to help inform the article. I think it should be really interesting because I really don’t know a lot about the wrecking days of the shop – although I’m sure I’ve been told on numerous occasions. What I have been told already, is that they used to use a Kombi Ute to bring in parts and that Dad got run over by a Beetle without wheels – but that’s a story for another blog.
And thanks to Dad, he is after all, the reason I am here, I have my first source.

This is a picture of Uncle John, Dad and Uncle Al on Schenk & Co’s last day of business, on the 18th December, 2014. Dad’s caption reads
“Schenk & Co Smash Repairs closed its doors today after 54 years of trade.
In its heyday we used VW Kombi utes as our workhorse. We collected parts In them. We took beetle bodies to Sims metal In them and they did countless trips to the tip.
Today we did our last ever tip run from Schenk & Co.
It was only proper that it be done in a Kombi.”
I really have no idea what happened during Schenk & Co’s Kombi era other than that. But I think that Dad, Uncle Al and Uncle John will have plenty of stories to tell. The only trouble will be fitting the stories into the article and getting them to stop talking. I think that some of the stories may not make it into the article, but I think they still are important in telling the story. I hope that I’ll be able to figure out how to do a blog for it myself, and hopefully I can do them justice there.

I have always been fascinated by history, leading me to choose as much elective history as possible throughout high school, and only naturally resulting in a major at university. This fascination probably stems from the fact that I have always been surrounded by history. My grandparents would tell me enthralling stories, I’ve long watched my Dad passionately piece together our family tree, and my Mum constructs our immediate family history in scrapbooks. Yet, my interests have always extended far beyond Australian or local history.
While I tell myself I am so interested in WWII and post-war European history because it’s my ‘family’ history (a great-grandfather and grandfather who served in WWI and II respectively, and ancestry from the United Kingdom, Ireland and Germany), is it really ‘my’ history?
With every session I have with my community organisation, Manly, Pittwater and Warringah History Society (MWPHS), I become more and more aware of just how unknowledgeable I am about the rich local history of the area I have lived my entire life – the Northern Beaches.
The popularity of local history, exactly what MWPHS strive to collect, preserve, and circulate, has exploded in recent years. Graeme Davison puts it clearly and simply – “Local history, which links our aspirations for community to a sense of place, our fragile present to a seemingly more stable past, has a strong claim on the contemporary imagination”.
So, I guess rationalising my attraction to European history is justified, as my family history has very much impacted my life today, linking my “fragile present to a seemingly more stable past”. But how then do I explain my lack of connection to the history right on my doorstep? (This isn’t an exaggeration. A quick walk into the bush near my house, and you’ll stumble across Aboriginal rock carvings). The history with which I should resonate, given my physical relationship, “a sense of place”.
I’ve always assumed my local area lacked an ‘interesting’ history worthy of my attention, but I’m continuously being surprised as I come across documents in MWPHS’ archives (like newspaper advertisements for Manly Ferries from the early 1900s, or photographs of one of the many farms that once existed in my suburb). Why has it taken this long for me to be exposed to this information? If I had been exposed earlier, could I have a stronger sense of belonging to my local community?
History, whether it is public, local, national, Indigenous, female (the list goes on), is very much about identity making. The power of history lies in its ability to educate about the past, in order to make sense of the present, and inform or progress the future. This happens at all levels (community/local, nations, transnational), but most basically for individuals. HSTY3902 students – who knows what little known information you’ll uncover and publicise? Whose identity may your work help shape in the future? You have the power, use it wisely.