Local Communities, Global Networks, AHA 2019 Conference, University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba

by Patricia Curthoys… Your experience of large, multi-stream conferences can only ever be partial and peculiar to you. What follows was my experience of the 2019 AHA Conference, which  began with the Green Stream (Australian and New Zealand Environment History Network) Keynote, #CoalMustFall: Revisiting Newcastle’s Coal Monument in the Anthropocene, given by Nancy Cushing, of … Read more

‘Christmas Food and Feasting, A History’

…by Minna Muhlen-Schulte In the Antipodes Christmas in July has become a mid-year winter tradition to indulge the food and booze we normally enjoy at the end of the year. What is the historical lineage behind turkeys, puddings, mince pies and mulled wine? In her new book Christmas Food and Feasting PHA NSW member Dr … Read more

Who do you think you are?

… by Michael Bennett I really should have had a haircut! After being asked half way through last year to appear on the Casey Donovan episode of SBS’s Who Do You Think You Are, I naturally began thinking about how TV shows are made. I imagined rocking up to the set to be greeted by … Read more

Intermarriage in colonial Singapore

  …by Dr Marc Rerceretnam, principal researcher, Yesteryear Heritage Researchers The year 2019 is historically significant in Singapore. It marks the bicentenary of the founding of a modern trading outpost on the island. Although evidence of strong commercial activity goes back as far as the 14th century, by 1819 the island had reverted to a … Read more

A special book launch: Rosemary Kerr’s history of the road trip

  …by Pauline Curby Rosemary Kerr’s long-awaited road trip book was launched at Gleebooks on Glebe Point Road on the evening of 17 May. Chaired with competent professionalism by friend and colleague Dr Emma Dortins, this launch marked the culmination of years of research and writing, leading to a PhD thesis and finally to this … Read more

Current Research Notes: Going to London

  …Ian Willis is preparing papers for two conferences: the 2019 Australian Historical Association conference and the 2019 Redefining Australia and New Zealand at the University of Warsaw Thousands of young single Australian-born women travelled to London and beyond from the mid-to-late 19th century.  This pilgrimage, as historian Angela Woollacott has called it, was a … Read more

After the war: what next?

  … by Francesca Beddie What could be more apt after the four years of WWI commemoration than the question posed at Professional Historians New Zealand’s fifth conference in its twenty-five-year history — After the war: what’s next? And the answer: well, yes, more war history but also more diversity in whose stories are told … Read more

Great Strike of 1917 captured on film

  by Laila Ellmoos… The Great Strike of 1917 began on the NSW railways and tramways on 2 August 1917 in the midst of World War 1. The strike started when employees from Eveleigh Railway Workshops and Randwick Tramsheds walked off the job to protest against the introduction of a new way of monitoring worker … Read more

Sailing headlong into 2020: public historians and the 250th anniversary of James Cook

  … by Stephen Gapps Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the waters of considered debate about the commemoration of Australia’s colonial origins, along comes Captain Cook. Again. The famous navigator, once considered to embody the correct set of qualities inherited in modern Australia instead of Governor Phillip and those … Read more