Phillip and the Eora: Governing race relations in the colony of New South Wales

What was Governor Arthur Phillip's relationship with the Eora, and other Aboriginal people of the Sydney region? How do we interpret Philip in the light of his actions towards Aboriginal people? Looking at the colony's early years through the twin lenses of British and Eora perspective and experience banishes the notion that there can be only one 'right' story or way of interpreting Phillip's legacy

Seeking Sydney From the Ground Up: Foundations and Horizons in Sydney’s Historiography

It was an essay by geographers Robyn Dowling and Kathy Mee on Western Sydney public housing estates in the 1950s and 1960s which prompted me to write that we need histories ‘from the ground up’. Dowling and Mee compared longstanding stereotypes of Western Sydney and public housing estates with real demographic profiles and the lived experiences of suburban people, stories that ‘highlight the social promise and ordinariness embedded in the building of estates’. Here was recognizable, human Sydney, full of ‘people doing things’, recovered from the condescension of almost everybody. In this article I want to first explore what ‘from the ground up’ has meant in my own work, and look at its implications for urban history more generally. Then I will trace some key movements and breakthroughs in Sydney’s urban historiography over the past half century, noting particularly what happens when close-grained research is fused with larger conceptual and theoretical approaches and models. My own approach to urban history ‘from the ground up’ is urban ethnographic history. The aim is Annales-inspired histoire total, for I seek to ‘see things whole, to integrate the economic, the social, the political and the cultural into a “total” history’. The Annales emphasis on space, and the perception, co-existence and interaction of different historical timescales, have of course been germane to the emergence of urban history since the 1960s, while cross-disciplinary exchange and thinking (something in which we bowerbird historians excel!) also lies at the heart of urban studies

The Settler Evolution: space, place and memory in early colonial Australia

Ideas and expectations about colonial space and the making and remaking of real places lie at the heart of the early Australian colonies. Over the past forty years, and especially in the last decade, scholars have recovered much of that lost world, a world of polyglot diversity, constant movement, economic social and cultural expansion, cross-cultural encounters, relationships and appropriations, extraordinary adaptations, myriad connections and overlaid human geographies. Yet in the later nineteenth century, the colonies were also profoundly shaped by discontinuities in memory, place and experience, as wave upon wave of new arrivals started new lives literally unaware of what had happened earlier, or how these places had come to be. The success of later settlers was built upon those earlier foundations, and yet false assumptions about ‘gaol colonies’ and ‘savages’, twinned with assertions of legitimate occupancy and entitlement, easily captured the narrative as well as the literal ground, and are still widespread in Australian historiography, popular history and heritage today

THE ROCKS AND SYDNEY: SOCIETY, CULTURE AND MATERIAL LIFE 1788-C1830

This study explores the early history of Sydney's Rocks area at two levels. First, it provides a much-needed history of the city's earliest, oldest-surviving and best-known precinct, one which allows an investigation of popular beliefs about the Rocks' convict origins, and which challenges and qualifies its reputation for lowlife, vice and squalor. Second, by examining fundamental aspects of everyday life - townscape, community and commonality, family life and work, human interaction and rites of passage - this study throws new light on the origins of Sydney from the perspective of the convict and ex-convict majority. Despite longstanding historical interest in Sydney's beginnings, the cultural identity, values, habits, beliefs of the convicts and ex-convicts remained largely hidden. The examination of such aspects reveals another Sydney altogether from that presented by governors, artists and mapmakers. Instead of an orderly oupost of empire, a gaol-town, or a 'gulag', the Sydney the Rocks represents was built and occupied largely according to the tastes, priorities and inclination of the people, with relatively little official regulation or interference. While the Rocks appeared 'disorderly' in the eyes of the elite, it nevertheless functioned according to cultural rules, those of the lower orders - the artisans, shopkeepers, publicans, labouring people, the majority of whom were convicts and ex-convicts

THE GRANDEST IMPROVEMENT IN THE COUNTRY: AN HISTORICAL AND ARCHAEOLOGICAL STUDY OF THE GREAT NORTH ROAD, N.S.W., 1825-1836

The line of road originally intended to link Sydney with the booming settlements of the Hunter Valley underwent a ten year survey and construction period, beginning in 1825 with Heneage Finch's hastily selected, winding line, and ending in 1836 with two small road gangs caught in a continuous cycle of construction and decay. In the interim period, however, the road had aroused the enthusiasm of the best surveyors and engineers available in the colony. These men envisioned a fine, all-encompassing, permanent thoroughfare - a most appropriate goal in view of the contemporary optimism with regard to the colony's future. The structures and formations were impressive and etensive and built as far as possible according to the latest principles emerging from the road building revolution in Britain. The methods were, of necessity, simplified in response to the colonial conditions of rugged terrain, vast distances and the large but unskilled and, for the main part, unwilling convict labour force. The results were highly successful, as is stille vident today, and never failed to impress early travellers and reassure them that they were, after all, in a 'civilised' country. The road never actually fulfilled its builders' plans. A steamboat service established between Sydney and the Hunter Valley robbed it of its role as a vital link, and other more hospitable or more direct routes were discovered and used by what traffic did proceed on land. After the few remaining gangs were finally withdrawn, seciton after section quickly fell into disuse and abandonment. Both the grand and modest structures and formations were left neglected, and thus preserved, to the present day

Environmental city rapporteur report

The State of Australian Cities (SOAC) national conferences have been held biennially since 2003 to support interdisciplinary policy-related urban research. This paper was presented at SOAC 2 held in Brisbane from 30 November to 2 December 2005. SOAC 2 was hosted by the Urban Research Program at the South Bank campus, Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith University. The principal intention of the conference was to lead a dialogue between leading researchers on the state of Australian cities and where they might be headed. SOAC 2 was designed to lead to a better understanding of the research needs of Australian cities and to provide those in the public and private sectors with a better appreciation of the current state and capacities of researchers. SOAC 2 brought together participants from a wide range of fields, including: academics, researchers, policy makers, private and public sector practitioners, leaders in government, social commentators and the media. Conference papers published fromSOAC 2 were subject to a peer review process prior to presentation at the conference, with further editing prior to publication

Convergence: Can the Digital Age Bring the Interests of Records Managers and Records Users Together?

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Can environmental history save the world?

As a 'genre of history' in Australia environmental history is relatively new, emerging in the 1960s and 70s from encounters between history, geography and the natural sciences in the context of growing environmental concern and activism. Interdisciplinary in orientation, the field also exhibited an unusually high level of engagement with current environmental issues and organisations. In this era of national research priorities and debates about the role and purpose of university-based research, it therefore seemed fair to ask: 'can environmental history save the world?' In response, a panel of new and established researchers offer their perspectives on issues of relevance and utility within this diverse and dynamic genre. This article has been peer-reviewed