Read about about the colourful life of a bloke called George featuring a riot at a cricket match in Sydney between NSW and England in 1879 with random appearances by Banjo Patterson and Edmund Barton.
This tale is very well written by Geoff Lemon and Adam Collins.
#cricket #OzHist
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2025/nov/12/ashes-test-cricket-rivalry-1897-sydney-riot
Remembering the day school children around Australia broke the news of the sacking of the Whitlam government by the Governor-General...
The announcement of the sacking by the Governor-General's secretary on the steps of old Parliament House was broadcast to all the children watching kids programmes after school. With no social media and most parents working, the children heard about the dismissal of the government first and told their parents when they got home. I remember running out to my parents with my younger brother shouting the news to them. Coincidentally, our car had broken down so my mother arrived in a tow truck pulling the car.
I was in primary school and old enough to understand how big this news was. At school for years afterwards my friends and I recalled this momentous occasion and how we told our parents.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11-11/the-dismissal-50th-anniversary-photo/105958494
I started reading newspapers from a young age and remember reading Michelle Grattan's articles in The Age. Here are her recollections of The dismissal:
https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-remembering-the-day-gough-whitlam-lost-his-job-269387
Biographers muse on the future of biography when our everyday personal records are stored in electronic formats instead of paper, often ephemeral and other times locked away in obsolete formats or password-locked files: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10-26/biography-ai-algorithm-letters-diaries-digital-world/105923770
Do historians need to learn how to code? Yes. This is why I regarded the ability to code an important part of my toolkit when I was working as a professional historian. Knowing how to use an API to efficiently and effectively search and download digitised records was important in my work. I developed a particular methodology to ensure that I maintained sound standards of evidence gathering.
Government archives have been born digital for quite a few years now. Digital cameras, OCR and databases, blogs and websites have revolutionised the way historians research for quite a few years.
We stopped writing physical letters quite a few years ago. Historians of the future will develop new research techniques to get a glimpse into the past, just as many historians like me have done today. Missing records have always been something historians have to contend with - letters that were destroyed or never written. We have never had a complete record of the past, and that won't change in the future.
When meeting up with an elderly relation last week he told us that his father had 45 head of dairy cows. This was enough to look after a family with 5 children in the 1930s and 1940s in the Western District of Victoria.
Makes you think. I guess the family would not have had many things, but they had enough.
Over the last few days I have been sharing about the landscape of western Victoria which is covered with volcanos, some of which erupted comparatively recently, as little as 10,000 years ago. The Atherton Tablelands in Far North Queensland also has quite a few volcanos of a similar age.
The eruptions of both the western Victorian and Far North Queensland volcanos have been remembered by the Aboriginal peoples of the respective regions. They have carefully passed on this history in their oral storytelling traditions for thousands of years.
Today the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Commission) has published some of these indigenous histories. Read these stories about the creation of landscape that includes the stories about the volcanos: https://www.abc.net.au/news/deeptime/topic/landscape-change/
#volcanos #WesternDistrict #AthertonTablelands #TowerHill #Warrnambool #OzHist
There were a lot of indigenous peoples living in this area when the European settlers arrived. Sadly, many were driven out by the invaders very early on. This map shows some of the language groups in the state of Victoria.
A 120 year-old message in a bottle has been found in the walls of a Tasmanian lighthouse
#OzHist #Tasmania #lighthouse
The National Museum of Australia has the puppets from the old Australian children's TV program, Mr Squiggle, on display until mid-October.
Blackboard was my favourite character - "Oh hurry up!" in a deep, growly voice.
We are in the midst of an archival 'digital desert' where movie, videos and TV shows produced by streaming companies are withdrawn by them leaving the world without the ability to access them for posterity.
This article is a good introduction to the problems of maintaining historical archives of 'moving pictures'. Most material produced since the invention of the form has been lost to the world.
#archives #OzHist #movies #TVshows
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-05-17/vhs-dvds-streaming-and-the-rise-of-lost-media/104674526
Interesting piece about Beatrice Faust and the Women's Electoral Lobby (WEL). WEL actively lobbied politicians of all backgrounds about Women's issues and arguably influenced the 1972 Australian election.
This week Text is publishing a book about Beatrice Faust written by Judith Brett.
#OzHist #BooksAU
Episode 76 recounts the night Japanese Midget Subs came right into Sydney Harbour!
🎧 https://www.australianhistoriespodcast.com.au/76-japanese-subs-in-sydney-harbour/ 🎧
#AustralianHistory #History #AustralianPodcast #AustralianStories #AusPods #OzHist #WW2 #japanesemidgetsubs #SydneyHarbour
For those with access, the Saturday Paper has an excellent article today by Kim Rubenstein on Dutton's weaponisation of citizenship: https://www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2025/03/29/duttons-weaponisation-citizenship #auspol #ozhist
The next ARDC Community Data Lab co-design session will be focused on building tools for HASS research using 'Public Interest Documents' – this includes things like Hansard and other government documents. It's run next week on 25 Feb. I think it's important to get more historians involved, so sign up now to help shape the project. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ardc-community-data-lab-co-design-workshop-public-interest-documents-tickets-1245620206569?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=1 #researchInfrastructure #histodons #ozHist @histodons
One of my favourite historians, Brenda Niall, has just published a biography of Joan Lindsay, author of Picnic at Hanging Rock.
#OzHist #biography
The @zotero translator for Libraries Tasmania has been updated and is once again attaching digitised images and PDFs to items. The translator works across the library and archives catalogues, as well as the names index. There's some more details here: https://ozglam.chat/t/a-zotero-translator-for-libraries-tasmania/705 #GLAM #histodons #ozhist
Matthew Flinders recovered from the last horrific leg of his circumnavigation of Australia, and sets off back to England…. But the journey will take a lot longer than anticipated. 🫣
The final episode available today. 🎧 https://www.australianhistoriespodcast.com.au/75-bass-flinders-pt6/ 🎧
#Bass #Flinders #Explorers #AustralianHistory #HistoryPodcast #OzHist #Australia
The final episode on Bass & Flinders is in production but claiming Flinders coined the term Australia first might be controversial? 🤔
🔗 https://theconversation.com/putting-australia-on-the-map-29816
#history #AustralianHistory #OzHist #Flinders #Australia #Maps
Gravesites are important for genealogy and social history. This article also mentions the Australian Cemetries Index which is a very helpful collection of cemetery indexes. In Canberra we used it to help a distraught elderly man find the gravesite of his mother.
#OzHist #genealogy
There's been some early #newspapers from western Victoria added to #Trove over recent weeks:
- The Portland Mercury and Normanby Advertiser (Vic. : 1842 - 1843)
- The Portland Mercury and Port Fairy Register (Vic. : 1843 - 1844)
- Portland Gazette and Belfast Advertiser (Vic. : 1844 - 1849)
- The Belfast Gazette and Portland and Warnambool Advertiser (Vic. 1849 - 1876)
See the Trove Data Dashboard for updates: https://wragge.github.io/trove-newspaper-totals/ #GLAM #histodons #ozHist
Just added the 1933-34 volume to my searchable version of the Tasmanian Post Office Directories. There's now 50 volumes in total from 1890 to 1948. Almost 6 million lines of OCRd text. https://glam-workbench.net/libraries-tasmania/tasmanian-post-office-directories/ Still a few volumes from the 40s to come... #histodons #familyHistory #ozHist #Tasmania
