History Matters

HSTY3902 comrades!

Home stretch is here and I can almost see the finish line! As I scramble to put together my final research project, I thought I would give a rather honest opinion of my experiences so far…

I keep having these really frustrating dreams about my project. I wake up with heart palpitations and sweat beads down my face (okay, so maybe that’s a slight exaggeration, but still).

I have been working with the Whitlam Library in Cabramatta. They have a fabulous team of heritage officers who do all sorts of great local historical research, such writing books for local clubs, conducting oral interviews, much of which is in collaboration with the Fairfield Museum.

My project is to find the OFFICIAL date of establishment of each of the 27 suburbs under Fairfield Council (south-west Sydney). There are banners in each of the suburbs which state the “date of establishment”, but unfortunately, some of these dates are wrong. I have to go find primary sources showing the “real” dates and give the the info to the Fairfield Council (which is also my final project).

Historians love dates. They are our little comfort pillows; they slip complex situations into simple time frames. Ah, how lovely! How sweet! How romantic!

But I never imagined it would be so hard to find a single date.

I have spent hours wading through newspaper clippings, council records, advertisements, maps. You name it, I’ve looked. And yet, it has taken me hours to find one little piece of information.

I feel like the gods of history have been toying with me. I feel like a mouse being cruelly chucked around by a cat: lulled into a false sense of security, only to be once again snapped up in its deceiving paws.

Take the suburb of Edensor Park. There is heaps of information available through newspaper archives and private letters. Edensor Park was mostly isolated farmland up until the 1950s. But, it did have post office and telephone line (predicament #1: does that mean it’s “officially” established?”). However, it didn’t reach its suburban peak until the 1970s when a huge land release occurred, and much of the area became residential (predicament #2: is this the time of “official” establishment?). And on top of this, I can’t find a single document which explicitly states the date of proclamation. So many documents, but so little information. And Edensor Park is one of the least of my worries.

It’s times like these when my inner historian is really put to the test. I have learnt that you need creativity and you REALLY need to think for yourself. There are no history books to tell you what to think (so that’s what lecturers meant when they kept saying “critically and independently” analyse! Who would’ve thought?). At the end of the day, if I can’t find a date IN a source, I have to come to some conclusion, given the sources I do have. Maybe Edensor Park was established in the 1920s and maybe it was “reborn” in the 1950s? Perhaps I will give the Council both dates instead of just one.

Nevertheless, I have also had some breakthroughs (cue triumphant orchestral music). When I found a newspaper clipping which explicitly stated that Wakeley was established in 1979, I almost cried with joy. I felt like I was looking at my first child. So many emotions after such a long labour.

So, my comrades, BE BRAVE!

I used to think love was a battlefield, but you know what? History research is a battlefield, especially if you’re dating it (pun absolutely intended).

If there is one thing I have learnt, it’s that history isn’t a beautifully bound book written by some famous historian. History is the many tedious hours of research, scouring through barely legible newspapers, maps and photographs, only to find yourself exactly where you started. And when you do find that one magical piece of information, it’s about knowing what to do with it.

The end of semester is nigh at Sydney University. Our jacaranda is in full bloom, finding a free desk in Fisher is near impossible, and no doubt the students’ (and perhaps the staff’s) collective caffeine intake has skyrocketed. In the frantic rush to finish off assessments it can be difficult to recall our naïve enthusiasm of the beginning of semester, let alone the ghosts of semesters past. Yet as I was doing some final research for my project yesterday I was vividly reminded of one of readings from the 3000-level unit I took last semester: ‘Crying in the archives’ by Curthoys and McGrath. It provided helpful guidance on doing archival research as well as reflecting on its pleasures and challenges (hence the title). Even more than being reminded of this article, I found myself living it.
My project chronicles the history of writers at Callan Park – from poets who were patients there when it was a mental asylum, to the present activities of the New South Wales Writers’ Centre. One of my subjects is Frank Webb, a renowned Australian poet who spent several years at the asylum as well as at other psychiatric institutions. While I’d thought my research was complete, I stumbled across a catalogue listing for a package of papers donated to the State Library by a friend of Webb’s after his death. Based on the dates listed, I didn’t think it would be very relevant for my project and it got pushed to the bottom of my research list. Yesterday, motivated by my need to see another source, I finally made the trip. And what a goldmine it was! After a lengthy process that made me feel like a true scholar – obtaining the fancy gold Special Collections library card, requesting the item from a wizened librarian who recommended various others sources for me to look into, and finding a free desk in the impressive Mitchell Library, I finally opened up the file.

Among letters written from other institutions, there were two from Webb’s time at Callan Park – one photocopied but the other an original letter addressed to a friend. I knew I’d hit the jackpot with that one letter alone, but it wasn’t until I read through them all that I realised the significance of what I’d found. Biographers have described Webb’s stay at Callan Park as particularly bleak, with him composing no poetry at all in that four years. I don’t know if they’ve read these letters, but the truth of their assessment bleeds out of those pages. He writes of the Communists that supposedly surrounded him, and seems worried to the point of paranoia about rumours that were apparently spreading about him outside the asylum walls. Webb claims that his friend’s previous letter was withheld from him by a nurse, and seems to trust only one person to faithfully deliver notes to him.
In other letters he is frank (ha!) about his unhappiness, but weaves this in among relatively cheerful responses to his friend’s recent trip overseas and tales of mutual acquaintances. It is only in the Callan Park letters that you get a sense of his overwhelming despair: “I have been unable to think of writing a poem, nor ever be able again to write whilst in this Hospital.” His utter despondency brought me to tears in the middle of the library. To be fair I cried last week because I saw a happy dog, so I’m not sure I can be trusted to accurately gauge emotional impact. But holding the very pages he wrote on, seeing the shape and slant of his handwriting, and reading his words to “Dear David” was a visceral and moving experience. Curthoys and McGrath were certainly right when they described the “joy and exhilaration” of encountering personal documents in the archive.
And don’t worry – I made sure those priceless documents were safely out of the path of my tears!

Hello friends of HSTY3902,
The organisation I am conducting research for is the Q-Station Sydney Harbour National Park. It is located at the historic site of the former North Head Quarantine Station, near Manly. As early as 1832, the site was used to quarantine new arrivals to the colony via ships that had or might have been exposed to infectious diseases, such as small pox, whooping cough, the Spanish influenza, etc. By 1975, the station was turned into a temporary migrant centre. The site housed victims from Cyclone Tracy of 1974, to Vietnamese orphans from the Vietnam War in 1975 (which I’ll explain a little further down). The site continued to operate until its closure in 1984. Nowadays, the site is used for conference and accommodation purposes. It is also home to one of the most famous paranormal tours in Australia and forms part of Sydney Harbour National Parks.
My major project will be based on Australia’s version of ‘Operation Babylift’, both seen in Canada and the US. This year marks its 40th anniversary in Australia. Operation Babylift was primarily an American initiative which saw around 2,000-2,500 Vietnamese children airlifted towards the end of the war right after the fall of Saigon in 1975. According to Dr Peter Hobbins (whom we had the pleasure of meeting during our excursion to the Q-station), this ‘operation’ has a unique historical link with the site. However, this has not been thoroughly explored and documented.
Between April-May of 1975, as mentioned, the station was temporarily turned into a migrant centre. According to one nurse on the site at the time:
“On arrival in Sydney, 100 children were admitted to the Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children and the rest were taken to the Quarantine Station at North Head, Manly.”
If you are interested in reading this very interesting and unique account, see: http://www.adoptedvietnamese.org/reflections/personal-reflections/chris-sturt-memories-of-north-head-quarantine-station/)
Interestingly, Operation Babylift fell on the cusp of Australia’s first major refugee mission/response, per se. Hence, this saw the Whitlam government initially hesitant to take in refugees. Despite this fact, the government and the embassy in Vietnam were “pressured on these three issues: refugees, the evacuation of Australian embassy staff and the evacuations of orphans.” Inter-country adoption became one of the major facets of this operation right here in Australia, as seen in the US and Canada (source: Fronek, Patricia. “Operation Babylift: advancing intercountry adoption into Australia.” Journal of Australian Studies 36, no. 4 (2012): 445-458).
As stated on the Quarantine Station website, the Q-Station is an ‘ideal place to examine the changes & evolution of a site over time. The history of the Quarantine Station parallels and reflects Australian & world history”. This is very true for a site which is home to a variety of stories situated within Australia’s colonial and post-colonial past. However, as mentioned, one of these stories has been relatively untold. Nonetheless, considering the importance of this unique piece of Australia’s immigration history, I really do hope I can do it justice.
More to come soon.
P.S
I would just like to mention an unrelated thing: This unit has by far been one of the most challenging classes I have ever encountered. Regardless, it has allowed a student of history like me to witness and analyse this discipline from a different and exciting angle; an angle to which I thought I’d never have the opportunity to look through. Essentially we have been told to get up from our seats, walk through the classroom door to discover what lies beyond us (hence history ‘beyond the classroom’). For history is all around us, waiting to be discovered and one day be a part of the larger picture of our ‘fabric of society’, of the world.
So thank you to Michael, Peter and peers! I hope we can all finish strong in what has been just as rewarding as well!

Continue reading “Parramatta Female Factory Riot Day Commemoration”

The view from Fort Michilimackinac, now Mackinaw City, Michigan. Or a view of Anishinaabewaki? Whose lands? Whose Perspective? Whose History? (Photo by author)
Our last formal meeting in HSTY 3902 History Beyond the Classroom took place on Monday, October 26. Students presented on their community work and major projects, reflected on their experiences, and we had a fun end-of-year party to cap it all off. In their presentations and reflections, the students once again impressed each other, me, as well as visiting colleagues from the History Department at Sydney University. Many thanks to all who came along to hear about their work.
Hannah Forsyth also joined us from ACU, where she has been coordinating a similar course. Hannah and I dreamed up this unit of study together several years ago while working on our Social Inclusion program. Teachers at the disadvantaged schools we worked with asked us to help get their students out of the local ‘bubble’ that they were in. Hannah and I also came to realise that our own Uni students (along with us) often seldom left the ‘bubble’ they were in. We were keen to think of a way to push students out of the comforts of the classroom and engage with communities and groups with whom they might not normally interact and to think of the challenges and opportunities of history from a different perspective than the traditional essay allows.
The origins of the class in our social inclusion efforts has meant, I think, that engagement has been central to what the students have been doing which, in turn, has meant the students are all doing local or community-engaged history as much as they are doing public history. The two do not necessarily always go together, but the students have convinced me that in combination, community-engaged public history makes for a more grounded, meaningful, and accountable approach to the past, one that challenges the hierarchies of academic history in many different ways – and often in ways that I did not foresee happening.
The blog posts written by students throughout this semester testify to the meaningfulness and transformative effect of doing community-engaged public history. This was only reinforced when Hannah asked students how their work this semester has enriched their sense of history, or made them think differently about the place of history in the world.
Students immediately noted that working with “real people” demonstrated how personal history could be, and how important it is to so many different kinds of people. They could also see how many different ways people use history, and just how different those ways could be from “academic history.” Indeed, many students said they understood now in a more tangible way the different roles of history and how it works in practice (and one or two noted that they could now see history as a career – they could finally answer that question “what will you do with a history degree!).
Some of the students working with organisations that didn’t have a specific historical focus also said they felt they were doing important work documenting these organisations and their activities, and that history could be about this history in the making, not just preserving sources or telling stories about the past. One noted how important it was to do this, because she felt that no one else would do so, and it could be lost. And even while it was frustrating at times, and not always historical in nature, students could see how our historical skills could be useful in non-historical settings, and with non-historical organisations.
The students’ work with different kinds of organisations also seemed to democratise their view of history. “History is everywhere,” they declared, and not just where historians (or archivists) say it is. One student noted that his work made him realise that this was a great opportunity to reclassify what constitutes history – to query what we normally value. Working with community groups helps us “decentralise historical importance and what we should consider important.” Additionally, “local history shows us what is important to generations of residents and how important their history is as well.”
Significantly, some students noted that they realised for different individuals and groups, history could be “therapeutic,” and they could see how people used history to “reshape themselves and their world.” One student said her community-engaged work made her feel like the course was helping her to help other people.
In the end, because they saw how seriously others took history, the students said they learned to take it seriously too. Indeed, many noted they had spent far more time on their work for this class than any others they had ever taken, that they “got involved more,” because they saw just how important their work was to other people – that it “mattered.” This was only reinforced as students realised that other students and non-students were interested in what they were doing, both inside and outside the University, and that unusually, they were also keen to talk about what they were doing in their history class! Suddenly, their work was not just about getting a good mark, “going through the motions” of writing an essay, or even developing skills. There was much more at stake, and several students noted that they came to realise that the history they were doing was about much more than themselves.
You can see why I’m more than a little sad about the course coming to an end. The students in HSTY 3902 have impressed, inspired and energised me from the start. I’m sure that many thought I was a little mad when I explained what we would be doing way back in Week One. Likely some still think so! But this group has persevered, thrown themselves into their work, and pioneered a way forward for future classes.
Along the way, they have not been the only ones learning. This course and the students’ work has made me think very differently about my own work, made me question my relevance as an academic historian, and forced me to acknowledge that we have much more work to do to make our work accessible, to think about our responsibilities as historians, and to be more accountable for the histories that we write.
The class might have ended, but I’m very much looking forward now to reading students’ reflective diaries, and seeing their major projects come to fruition. Stay-tuned…

Home of the Wildcats: The picture above shows the Wildcats’ logo side by side with the Auburn City Council’s slogan: “Many cultures, one community.”
As a kid growing up, I had three great loves – history, photography and basketball.
Storytelling comes in as close second.
Not many people know this but it was through my exposure to the works of Andrew Bernstein and Nathaniel S. Butler – both renowned sports photographers who had covered games for the National Basketball Association (NBA) -that I developed my love for photography.
In terms of basketball history, I am a walking encyclopaedia.
I can talk about basketball all day long given the opportunity. In fact, I once spoke about it so much that someone suggested, sarcastically, that maybe I should write a book about it.
So I did. Or at least I am trying to.
I’m not a good basketball player but I love this game and I’ve learnt over the years that when you love something, you will always find away to utilise any resource at your disposal to improve it.
Dr. McDonnell’s “History Beyond The Classroom” program gave me the platform to achieve just that.
With the academic freedom he had given us, I decided to use my passions to craft a historical book, filled with stories, images and statistics, about basketball in Sydney, a city I have grown to love in my nine years living here. It is also a city in need of more literature to be written about its rich local basketball history.

Early years: Photographs of the PBA operating out of the Auburn Basketball Centre during the 1970-80’s with players playing on concrete floors.
Enter the Parramatta Basketball Association (PBA), the brains behind the Ultimate Basketball League (UBL).
I first came across the UBL in 2013, I remember quite a few of my friends played in their league. It was their inaugural season and it attracted a lot of former and aspiring National Basketball League (NBL) players such as Luke Martin, Ben Knight, Graeme Dann and Luke Kendall. The UBL’s full games were live streamed. They were even sponsored by Spalding – the official sponsor of the NBA. In other words, the UBL was a huge hit in the local basketball scene in Sydney.

Continue reading ““Improving the sport”: Why I’m working with the Parramatta Basketball Association”

Photo by Tracey Trompf from http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/lifematters/catherine-freyne/3976124
One week behind, I’m afraid….Last week we were very fortunate to have as our guest speaker Catherine Freyne. Catherine Freyne is a historian and media producer now working at the City of Sydney. She previously produced the groundbreaking Hindsight documentaries at ABC Radio National (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/). Other projects she has worked on include the Dictionary of Sydney (http://home.dictionaryofsydney.org/), 80 Days that Changed Our Lives (http://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/) and Against The Tide: A Highway West (http://www.againstthetide.net.au/). Catherine studied Australian history at UNSW. For her work in radio she has received two NSW Premier’s History Awards – a remarkable achievement.
Catherine talked about the many projects she has been involved with, and why she is so passionate about public history. She also talked about her new role at the City of Sydney which has allowed her to explore so many more new ways of thinking about history and its collection and presentation.
She particularly engaged students with her explanation of how her team at the ABC recreated history on Pitt Street and in Hyde Park when making the Hindsight program, Good Sex: The Confessions and Campaigns of W.J. Chidley (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/hindsight/good-sex—the-confessions-and-campaigns-of-w.j.-chidley/4605590), and also raised the bar on thinking of good public history apps when talking about the Against the Tide which is still in development and which Catherine contributed to in 2014. The app allows users travelling along the Parramatta River on the Rivercat to make choices about what kinds of histories they are interested in, and hear of the experiences of different groups of people in different voices.
Catherine quoted her former colleague Dr Shirley Fitzgerald who said when accepting the 2014 Annual History Citation that in her work as City Historian (1987-2009), she had been primarily motivated by this question: who gets access to precious urban public spaces, and why? History allows us to think about how that allocation has changed and evolved over time. Catherine responded engagingly to students’ questions about how to get the balance right between “important” history and “interesting” history, and told us of her sense of history as political both in giving voice to the marginal and marginalized, but also as giving us a richer sense of the present. Though she lamented the end of Hindsight, she also noted that students should tune in to Earshot, Radio National’s new general documentary slot which still broadcasts history features each week (http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/earshot/).
Following on from Catherine’s talk, we had a workshop on the problems and challenges that students were facing in getting their project designs off the ground. These ranged from the need for some technical advice, to dealing with creative differences and emphases between themselves and the organisations with whom they were working. While we couldn’t always come up with clear and easy answers, students learned to appreciate that there might be ways to work around some of these problems.
We also returned project proposals. Students were asked to outline their work with their chosen organisations and sketch out their ideas for their major project that has grown from that work. These proposals were a treat to read and mark. I’ve never enjoyed marking as much as I did this time around, a sentiment echoed by Michaela Cameron who also helped me assess them – and we have never given out such high marks! The work students have been doing with their community-partners has in most cases been extremely important, fascinating, and often heart-warming (you can glean some of this through the blogposts by students on this site). Their reflections on this work and how they plan to approach the major project were also thoughtful, creative, and provoking, and reflected a real engagement with the work they were doing, and the groups with whom they were working. One unexpected side effect of situating ourselves “outside the classroom,” I reckon, was the clarity of the prose of students. Not having to shoehorn or situate their work amid other scholars’ frameworks seemed to liberate students to write clearly, directly, and thoughtfully. The proposals were simply a joy to read. Really looking forward to their reflective diaries and their major projects now, due in November.

I remember from one of the early readings that a concept I had never truly thought about properly was proposed to me. It offered the idea that there is much more to history than simply what historians deem to be “important”. The example used was Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 BC. It highlighted that Caesar’s crossing was marked as an incredibly important event in the history of not only the Roman Republic but also the world. However, it also posed a difficult question for historians; what about the million other people who cross it the same year as Caesar?
What of these people? Who were they? Who did they love? What were their interests? Who were these people who took the same journey that Caesar took? But more importantly, what impact did these crossings, let alone these people, have on history? I would argue just as much as Caesar himself in many ways.
I guess I always knew of this concept, I just never really thought of it in an academic sense, nor on a personal level. Having done three years of academic, “dead people” history already, I found this very hard to comprehend on a formal level.
My current project working with Holy Cross College, Ryde, pertains to old boy ANZACs. Now, I’m not one to perpetuate the mythos of the formulaic nation building that current “pop-politickers” love perpetuate on both sides the argument. I find that both sides of the argument, pro-ANZAC and seemingly more anti-ANZAC, tend to homogenise all ANZAC men as one giant group or “idea” rather than the actual men themselves. My interest however, is similar to the idea of the many Romans who crossed the Rubicon. How these men lived beforehand, how their schooling shaped them, how they travelled halfway round the world never to see their Gladesville, Redfern or Ryde again.
This class has opened my eyes to all these concepts and ideas. Now it is up to us as historians to use these ideas of public, personal history to help the community to grieve, celebrate, acknowledge, love and hate people and events that may not fit the “Great History” like Caesar, but mean things to individual people. I feel as if these ideas of atomising individuals, rather than homogenising, is important when looking at the histories of the public.

Ashfield Polish Club update: My documentary is slowly taking shape! It has been an incredibly rewarding experience but I still have a lot to do. This unit as a whole has completely reshaped my approaches to history and personalized the experience of history immensely. Hearing everybody speak yesterday was so incredible and thanks to everyone who shared where they are at with their projects!! Inspiring me to work harder! The Polish community in Sydney and the wider area has been incredibly accommodating and this project has been a LOT of fun. As I said in an earlier post, check out the Polish Club’s website and Facebook! website: http://www.polishclub.net.au/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Polish-Club-Ashfield-Klub-Polski-Ashfield-153845331300439/ Looking forward to seeing what everybody finishes up with at the end of the semester and to hear about ongoing work!

Throughout my entire schooling I have only written useless histories. In my junior high school years I would write essays on topics I can’t even recall, using Wikipedia as my key source. In later high school I would aim for objectivity, using primary sources as infallible evidence for claims.

When university came around I continued writing essays. I continued to use Wikipedia – admittedly far less. I still valued my primary sources as ultimate forms of evidence, though used them more critically, more hesitantly. And throughout these nine years the only things I ever produced were useless histories. They were read by my teacher, my lecturer, and occasionally my parents or girlfriend. My volunteer editors feigned interest in the obscure topics that they had no attachment to or care for. My teachers would reward me for my use of sources, but in the end there were curriculum points to mark by, and that’s all they ever looked for.

University is different, right? I’ve heard my lecturers are only paid for fifteen minutes of marking per essay. I have only ever produced useless histories.

Now here one might argue that these essays weren’t entirely useless. Without these essays – and the skills I put to practice in them – how else could I have developed my proficiency as a historian? I owe my critical knowledge of history to these essays. This argument is sound. I agree with it even. However, the point remains: the histories I produced – the histories I laboured over for hours and hours of my schooling years – were useless as histories.

Another argument arises here. One could say I was not ready to produce histories that would make an impact. My history writing was not developed enough to be ‘accurate’, let-alone useful.

I have my hesitations with this argument.

History is currently structured around a hierarchy of worth. Students across this country sit on the lowest rung, writing worthless histories full of spelling errors and Wikipedia quotes still in the original Arial 10.5 font. Slightly above them are the ‘unqualified’ or ‘underqualified’ local historians, who write histories without referencing (sometimes) and without a rigorous process of academic review. Above these local historians is the undergraduate History student who shows promise, but still writes histories for one person: the marker. Then comes the Honours students, and consequently, the PhD students. It is only at the postgraduate level that a historian begins to be recognised – and even then, only by a select few. It is only after years and years of producing useless history that historians begin to make an impact, however small that impact may be.

Wait a second. Doesn’t every profession require you to go through these same motions? This process of producing useless works with the aim of honing your skills is seen in mathematics, where you answer endless questions until one day you start to ask you own. It is seen in science, where you perform experiment after experiment, despite the fact they have been done before, all for the purposes of developing your knowledge and your skills. It is seen in law, where you tackle theoretical and historical case studies, preparing you for what you will face beyond the university’s sandstone walls. Why should history be any different? Why should history value work by historians ‘in training’?

Because history is a social process as much as it is a profession. All people are agents in the construction and interpretation of history. Yes, some are more qualified than others to construct critical and reliable histories. That I do not contest. There is a place for academic history. But there is also a place for history by the people.

The hierarchy of history that determines the worthy from the unworthy is counter-productive. What is needed is an acknowledgement of different forms of history, not different worth. A local history display in a country town theatre has a far greater impact on that community of 7000 people than, say, a thesis on the Decentralisation of Colonial Power in Algeria could ever have on its audience of highly specialised and bickering academics.

Sure, academic history can shape the world. Yet it does so very rarely. If we are to measure worth by academic proficiency, then academic history is the only history worth writing. If, however, we are to measure worth by social impact, then we need to re-evaluate the hierarchy that currently shapes our approach to history.

Now for a good-old ahistorical quote to wrap up this rant. Abraham Lincoln famously called for a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” It’s interesting to consider the link between history and politics. A good government will hear the voice of the people and be shaped by this voice. A bad government will ignore the voice of the people, view it as useless, and blaze its own destructive path. History needs to listen to the people, not just classify them as useless and unworthy. More than this, it needs to be shaped by the voices of the people. Lincoln shaped a nation when he called for a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” I wonder what he would think about a history of the people, by the people, for the people.