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Posts tagged ‘australia’

Jun 11

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Gallipoli and national memory

By Stephanie Brown (@StephEmmaBrown)

On 22 May 1915, ‘a gay-hearted youth’, William Fielding Sames, sat outside his dug-out in Gallipoli (modern-day Turkey) drinking a cup of tea.[1] Even though he was just 22-years-old, William had been in the Army for five years, been promoted to Lieutenant and served in Egypt.[2] Yet, the decision to sit and drink this cup of tea was to prove fatal. While he sat with his tea a bullet penetrated his lung.[3] William died nine days later while on the way to a military hospital in Greece. He was buried at sea on 31 May 1915.[4]

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May 28

Book Review – Samia Khatun, Australianama: The South Asian Odyssey in Australia

Mobeen Hussain (@amhuss27) reviews Samia Khatun’s Australianama (Hurst Publishers, December 2018, ISBN 9781849049696 £25.00)

In Australianama, author and academic Samia Khatun skilfully weaves an intricate patchwork of hitherto unexplored connections between South Asia and Australia. I first heard about Australianama at an Islam and Print in South Asia Workshop at the British Library where Khatun was presenting on her work on South Asian peoples in Australia. She shared her research journey, relating how she came across a photograph of a book labelled as the Quran located in the desert lands of Australia in Broken Hill, noting how the words looked like Bengali script. At the workshop, as well as in the book, she shared her experience of visiting the mosque to find that the book was not the Quran but a book of Bengali Sufi poetry called Kasasol Ambia (Stories of the Prophets), all the while wondering how a book published in Bengal found its way to an inland Australian mining town. (Khatun, 3) This question is where Khatun’s Australianama begins.

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Jul 24

Digging up coals, Down Under

By Matthew DJ Ryan

Growing up I would often take the eight-hour train ride from my home town in the ‘bush’ (country) down to Sydney, Australia. For at least half of that trip the train would zip past coal mine after coal mine, sharing the tracks with cargo trains carrying their fossilized loads, often hundreds of cars in length. Most people are aware that mining is a central feature of the Australian political economy – and a contentious one too, in the age of the ‘Anthropocene,’ and its accompanying environmental crisis.[1]

But even as people argue for the end of coal in Australia, very little is known about the origins of coal mining in the colonies. Passing the mines of the Hunter valley, New South Wales, I never once asked ‘how long have these mines been here?’ or ‘why did we start mining coal in the first place?’ While the disinterest of a teenager might be forgiven, the neglect of these questions by both historians and policymakers is far more concerning. So, what can we learn from the history of coal mining in the Hunter valley that might better inform our politics and policies?

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Jan 24

Australia Day and the Struggle to Control a Nation’s History

by Eleanor Russell

On the 26th of January 1788 eleven ships under the command of Captain Arthur Phillip sailed into Port Jackson, now known as Sydney Harbour, carrying the first of more than 150,000 convicts sent to the new penal colony in Australia. The experiences of these convicts, and of the naval and military personnel, administrators, and free settlers, would be transformed from history into an origin story of the Australian national character that remains the focus of Australia Day celebrations. Read more

Oct 29

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Bringing archives back to life

By Alex Wakelam | @A_Wakelam

Archives can be peculiar places. Each comes with its own personal variety of watchful archivists, identification requirements, seating regulations and occasionally (for those who’ve tried to enter the almost impenetrable fortress that is the Bodleian) oaths to swear. They sometimes seem like sacred historical spaces (Cathedral archives often literally are) where only the enlightened, the blessed, the chosen brothers and sisters of history speaking “shibboleth” may enter. They are, of course, anything but. Despite the grumbling academics trying to expel anyone but themselves from the British Library and presumably from anywhere they deem “their territory”, those documents labelled “Public Records” are, as the name suggests, publicly owned and publicly accessible. The 1958 Public Records Act even specifically requires the provision of ‘reasonable facilities … available to the public for inspecting and obtaining’ historical records.

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Mar 26

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On the ‘right to be bigots’: the dehistoricisation of racism

By Jess Hope

What happens when policy ignores history? This week, Australia’s conservative government announced proposed changes to the Racial Discrimination Act (1975) and its amendment the Racial Hatred Act (1995), which was established in response to an increase in verbal and physical racial violence in Australia. The changes would see the repeal of Section 18C, which presently makes it unlawful to ‘offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate another person or a group of people’ on the basis of their ‘race, colour or national or ethnic origin’.[1] Instead, in the opinion of Attorney-General George Brandis, the Australian people ‘have a right to be bigots.’[2] As currently stated, the implications appear to be as follows:

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