History Matters

I discovered House of Welcome (HoW) following a discussion with a friend. I was talking to her about this class, telling her that I wanted to find an organisation that worked in the refugee space. One of the reasons for this is I strongly believe that refugees and people seeking asylum should be treated with respect when they come to Australia.  I know that our government doesn’t always do this and it makes me very angry, especially as someone whose family was once in this situation. How we treat migrants, refugees and people seeking asylum eventually makes it into our history books. I don’t want to just sit back and see these experiences and injustices pass by. 

In 2022, following the Novak Djokovic scandal, where he was held in an immigration detention facility, I became aware of the Park hotel in Melbourne where refugees were being held. After reading a newspaper article talking about the hotel; detailing the stories of people who were living there, how they worried about Covid, and that the health and living conditions were subpar, I was angry. I was angry and shocked that I did not know that this hotel existed. I was aware of the offshore detention process however I was not aware of the hotel in Melbourne. I was angry because neither the news nor newspapers were reporting on it. 

I kept asking myself why a country as rich as Australia was putting people through experiences like that? People who had been deemed as refugees by the Australian Security and Intelligence Organisation. In my mind, my Australia could not do that. After all, I believed that we were a fair dinkum country that celebrated egalitarianism. I was also angry because the migrant experience is integral to Australia, to its identity and historical narrative. We are a country of migrants, whether it be recent migrants or migrants from 1788. As of the 2021 census 27.6% of the population were born overseas. That is why when I was talking to my friend I was immediately drawn to House of Welcome because I realised that this was my opportunity to get involved and have a say. 

House of Welcome is an organisation that welcomes, shelters and empowers people seeking asylum and refugees. It helps people of all ages, genders, sexualities, nationalities and religion. Their purpose is to ‘[t]o uphold the intrinsic dignity of each person by providing support and advocacy to empower the most disadvantaged and marginalised within our community.’ They achieve this through their activities and programs which address homelessness, destitution and social isolation among people seeking asylum.

For my project I am organising a Table Talk. A Table Talk is part of the listening component of the organising cycle. A listening session is a collection of table talks – where a small group of people discuss their experiences/stories in relation to an issue, or topic together around a table. It is a gathering of people where they share stories and hear the pressures that their community faces, usually on a particular topic and issue. These stories will decide on the pressures the majority of people face and what an organisation will first work on to solve.

My project will be the report that I write after the event, because that report will become a historical document. It will record the event, what happened, what was discussed, who attended and it will be of use to the organisation as it will guide their future actions. 

The Australian National Maritime Museum

Before this project, I was quite unfamiliar to the unique and important work achieved by the Australian National Maritime Museum. What I previously did not realise was the highly complex and diverse nature of Australian waterways and its associated stories of resilience and loss.

Upon our recent visit to the museum, I was amazed at my initial sighting of their Welcome Wall which has almost 30,000 names of people who have travelled from various locations to make Australia their home. The inscriptions not only highlight the diversity of the Australian community but further stress the museum’s central message for national unity and multiculturalism. Herein, while the Maritime Museum is home to significant naval vessels and boats, it is more importantly a centre for the many unique stories of human triumph and tragedy.

A Focus on Migration

Since the arrival of the First Fleet in 1788, approximately 10 million settlers have moved from across the world to start a new life in Australia. This significant figure is reflected in the over 10,000 objects in the Maritime Museum’s collection which relate to Australia’s rich immigration history. Whether beginning from Indigenous fisherman who initially explored the Australian waterways, or to the over 15,000 asylum seekers accepted in Australia between 2019-20, migration through the Australian waterways has continued to be a highly prevalent experience within the national identity.

My initial interaction with Australian naval matters was through previous readings about the SIEV-X incident of 2001. This tragedy brings to light the highly politicised nature of Australian maritime control, in conjunction with revealing the complexity of the waterways for being both a symbol for hope and immense loss. In this realisation, my research extended to the Maritime Museum’s work in displaying Australia’s rich immigration history.

Here, I found their 2020 National Maritime Collection conducted by Peter Dew. Drew’s repurposing of photographs from the National Archives incites commentary on the treatment of asylum seekers specifically during the White Australia Policy, but further extends his critique on current issues of non-European immigration. The striking images of Monga Khan and Gladys Sym Choon dressed in cultural attire is superimposed with the word ‘AUSSIE’. Through highlighting the struggles of integration for asylum seekers, Drew captures the paradoxical experience of non-European immigration to Australia and provokes important conversation about what epitomises a ‘real Australian’. In doing so, the museum does essential work to humanise the marginalised and difficult experiences of migration by sea. Through its exhibits, it challenges traditional narratives of national identity, to rather empower the diverse communities who lack agency to tell their story.

Future Project

Despite not having begun volunteering work with the museum, the project will be based upon a donated object which can be potentially brought into the National Maritime Collection. I hope to positively assist the museum through continuing their work in growing awareness of the migrant experience to Australia. Through developing my understanding of the curatorial process, I hope to learn how to effectively empower and give agency to marginalised communities who reside outside traditional national frameworks. The Australian National Maritime Museum plays an important role in conveying the tumultuous experience of migration, where I look forward to future collaboration with their team to further investigate this rich history of Australia.

In so had proclaimed the New South Wales Government Gazette newspaper publication on Tuesday 30^th August 1881, in response to a widespread deadly outbreak of smallpox only months earlier. The Coast Hospital, as it then became known, had formally opened in Sydney’s eastern suburbs area two years later – right on the ocean’s doorstep. Its sole purpose: as the NSW colony’s first infectious disease hospital, to operate in dealing strictly with the smallpox strain and other infectious diseases in an urban quarantined-based area.

For more than century later, the hospital – later renamed as the Prince Henry Hospital – continued to service world-class and pioneering medical healthcare, such as: utilising a state-of-the-art Operating Table engineered by the Zoeller & Ross firm in 1890; the Bubonic Plague of 1900; the construction of army wards in 1917 for First World War military personnel; the 1918 Spanish Influenza; the establishment of the first virus diagnostic laboratory in NSW in 1951 – which led to the discovery of Coxsackie viruses on Australia’s northern-eastern coast; pioneering the first kidney transplant operation in NSW in 1965; and opening in 1987 of Cardiac Catheterization Centre, Lithotriptor Centre (eliminating kidney stones with ultra sound waves) and AIDS unit.

The Prince Henry Hospital formally closed down in 2003, and thus, is now an established museum dedicated to the history of the hospital, staff, and patients.

Just wanted to be there…

‘Just wanted to be there.’

The reason given by Sister Alva Kelway Storrie for wanting to join the Australian Army Nursing Service (AANS) in World War II

My first day of volunteer work for the museum was to be rather exciting – but nothing I thought it seemed that was to be overall significant; I was instructed first to read over deciphered transcripts of old hospital correspondence, written at the turn of the century, by the hospital Matron to the Medical Supervisor. “Nurse A is now officially employed with us; so far, her conduct is good.” “Nurse B has resigned her position due to the recent death of a friend.” “Nurse C is unable to attend to work due to contracting typhoid fever; she will be on sick leave for at least two weeks.” Later, I was tasked to itemise (very) old nursing registration records and other credentials into an elaborate filing system. When I finally came to the very last two individual records, my fascination skyrocketed in wondrous illumination! Amongst the registration booklet for Sister Noreen C. O’Halloran was accompanied with a black and white photograph of her (in old age) and a letter. Upon opening the letter, I noted that it was dated 3^rd June 1947 – and had been sent by the War Office in London acknowledging her national service. The last registration record was far more galvanising – the nurse (whom unfortunately I did not record her name) had far more documentation of her war service, including hand-written letters and numerous small photographs on location.

It then dawned on me, plainly, that the best thing I can offer to the Prince Henry Hospital Museum is to create a memorial – most likely an additional page to their own website, filled with profile texts, digitised photographs/documents (and perhaps a short film) – in tribute to the valiant nurses of the former hospital who gave their expertise, service and lives in times of war…

To be an Asian Between Cultures (ABC) is to be caught between two worlds: one of laidback sunshine and beaches, and one of family, culture and responsibilities. Created by and for young Asian Australians, the Asian Australian Project (AAP) creates a space where this unique cultural experience can be explored. AAP holds many social events throughout the year where community members can come together, engaging in everything from Clean Up Australia Day to AAP movie nights. It also offers professional development opportunities in the form of workshops and mentorship programs.  

However, AAP’s initiatives are nothing if not plentiful and varied. In addition to social and professional opportunities, it seeks to be a brave and forward-thinking voice within mainstream and Asian Australian communities, using its platform to challenge norms and preconceptions. To achieve this mission, it runs a journal that covers everything from Ramadan to interviews of the 2022 Federal Election candidates. AAP also runs fireside chats on topics such as being an Asian LGBTQIA+ person and food’s relationship with identity. 

While being progressive and interested in young people and contemporary issues, AAP also recognises the distinct connection Asian Australians have with family, culture, and language, and put out language resources to help Asian Australians initiate tough conversations with their families. For example, resources have been made to cover relevant vocabulary to be used in talking about colonisation and Indigeneity in languages ranging from Tagalog to Vietnamese.  

Growing up as an ABC, I have always been interested in questions of identity and culture. I started volunteering as a writer with AAP in December 2021 and through their journal, have been able to explore the history of monolids and the double eyelid surgery and the development of Asian fusion foods. I strongly believe in the work that they do and am constantly impressed at the range of initiatives and loyal following they have, especially as they are a young organisation, having been established in 2019.  

For AAP, I will be creating a cookbook, with recipes sourced from the volunteers and the community. Food for ABCs is an incredibly multifaceted issue. While many of us are teased and taunted when we are younger for the way our food smells or differs from other kids’, many of us also find food to be a way in which we connect with our families and cultures. I hope to capture stories like these in the cookbook, exploring everything from the history of popular dishes to the family recipe carried down through generations, to the way someone developed their favourite hangover food.  

For AAP, this will provide a base for a project they may expand on after the semester, as well as being an experiment of what could be effective or ineffective in a project such as this. Additionally, the outreach to the community will be good exposure for the organisation and it will provide a platform for its volunteers to share recipes and stories about food.  

The Sydney Jewish Museum is not just a museum; it is also a memorial, a place of remembrance, a figurative gravesite for a multitude without one.

This sentiment was presented to our class on our visit to the Sydney Jewish Museum (SJM) in early September. It has been a sentiment that has stuck with me. The power a place like this can have, the meaning it embodies, the facilitation of significant connection it enables – these ideas have rattled around my brain in the weeks following the visit. An idea like this challenges our understanding of what history means, what it does, what its purpose is to both individual lives as well as the life of society.

The visit to SJM was captivating to me, and immediately drew my attention as an organisation I wanted to approach to undertake this subject’s major project with. Alongside History Beyond the Classroom, I am also taking a subject this semester titled The Holocaust: History and Aftermath. The obvious link of subject matter seemed like a perfect opportunity to focus my semester’s study on this specific area. While being a History major in my degree, I also have a second major in Biblical Studies and Classical Hebrew, a part of the Hebrew, Biblical and Jewish Studies Department at the University. As such, this also felt like a perfect opportunity to link my broader subject areas together. In many ways, noticing these connections across the semester and my degree to SJM feels very poignant as a part of the concluding semester of my degree.

My first session volunteering with the museum occurred this past Friday. I had various opportunities to meet with several members of staff who were exceptionally warm and welcoming. I then received a brief orientation to the museum, particularly focusing on the curatorial department, from the museum’s head curator Roslyn. My project began with a day spent scanning the pages of an old scrapbook, an item donated to the museum in 2010. Contained within the scrapbook was a collection of newspaper clippings from 1960-1961. The story goes that this scrapbook was put together by the mother of the writer of these articles. Working my way through the scrapbook, I tried to conjure up a picture of the circumstances that lay behind its creation. A loving mother, immensely proud of her son who is off reporting as a correspondent in New York, or deployed to various other places over the globe including Jerusalem and Havana depending on current events. Each week, possibly eagerly awaiting a new edition of the paper to scan through for any reports written by her son, she would cut out any that were there in order to memorialise them within the scrapbook.

What struck me is the many ways this item has potential to hold significance. The stories that are told not just in the reports throughout the scrapbook, but also in its creation. The personal, familial significance behind its creation. For SJM, a section of reports covering the trial of Adolf Eichmann are their primary section of interest in the object. The remainder of my time volunteering with SJM will primarily focus on reading, analysing and reporting on the Eichmann related material in the book. What they offer the museum, how the reporter approaches reporting it, what he has to say about it will all be part of my analysis. For the museum, my work will hopefully help further colour in the broader narrative of justice, and the theme of upholding human rights through the prosecution of a major architect of the Holocaust. Through this, my hope is that this work might help SJM (even if only in a small way) to continue to be more than just a collection of objects, but that it might contribute to their goal for the Museum to be a place ‘where history has a voice,’ as their tagline states. That the museum may continue to be a monument to hope. That for those who enter the museum, that it may be a place that ultimately encourages and facilitates deep reflection on the past and the present, and the upholding and advocating of human rights today.