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The Australian state and much of the settler polity maintain an unresolved contradiction between fully acknowledging Indigenous people and upholding a system predicated on the assumption of their socio-political inferiority. This tension inflects a public sphere in which Indigenous people frequently deploy truth-telling as an epistemic strategy, albeit one that involves a balance between challenging cultivated silences and/or colonial triumphalism and the costs of repetitive epistemic labour. The landscape of communicative exchange thus outlined suggests the need for a more nuanced assessment of the decolonial potential of truth-telling about colonial violence in Australia, given a contemporary context wherein settler individuals and institutions increasingly attempt to elicit such testimony from Indigenous people. Discourse analysis of media items published in 2020 about 26 January, Australia's national day, reveals Indigenous people's resistance against both colonial untruths and the racialised epistemic power differential enabling their circulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades, the role of the history discipline as part of the architecture of colonization has become more visible and better understood. Such acknowledgement reflects foundational shifts in historical practice and theory prompted by transdisciplinary and transnational scholarship in fields such as postcolonial and settler‐colonial studies, First Nations knowledges, and historical perspectives and practices contextualized by transatlantic slavery. Their intervention in turn prompted a vital question: How do we map settler‐colonial historiography if the discipline has been complicit in the settler‐colonial project? Using Australian historiography as a case study, this article explores how History has been part of the architecture of colonization, policing whose stories can be told and by whom. Drawing on the work of Indigenous history‐makers and knowledge‐holders, it also points to ways that researchers might reach outside the traditional scope of historiography to map and contemplate the range of history‐making that comprises history in the settler colony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary Fossilized plant–insect herbivore associations provide fundamental information about the assembly of terrestrial communities through geologic time. However, fossil evidence of associations originating in deep time and persisting to the modern day is scarce. We studied the insect herbivore damage found on 284 Eucalyptus frenguelliana leaves from the early Eocene Laguna del Hunco rainforest locality in Argentinean Patagonia and compared damage patterns with those observed on extant, rainforest‐associated Eucalyptus species from Australasia (> 10 000 herbarium sheets reviewed). In the fossil material, we identified 28 insect herbivory damage types, including 12 types of external feeding, one of piercing‐and‐sucking, five of galls, and 10 of mines. All 28 damage types were observed in the herbarium specimens. The finding of all the fossil damage types on extant Eucalyptus specimens suggests long‐standing associations between multiple insect herbivore lineages and their host genus spanning 52 million years across the Southern Hemisphere. This long‐term persistence, probably enabled through niche conservatism in wet eucalypt forests, demonstrates the imprint of fossil history on the composition of extant insect herbivore assemblages. Although the identities of most insect culprits remain unknown, we provide a list of Eucalyptus species and specific population locations to facilitate their discovery, highlighting the relevance of fossils in discovering extant biodiversity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1970s, a rare assemblage of trade beads was discovered inside a woven plant fibre bag in a rockshelter (the ‘Dillybag site’) near Laura, Cape York Peninsula, Queensland. Cached post-1895, the bag held more than 4000 glass beads strung on cotton, nylon and hand-spun (possibly human) hair twine. Seventy-eight percent of beads showed some degree of damage from bead-on-bead contact, suggesting that the assemblage accumulated gradually over time. All beads on hair twine were minute or small, and potentially reveal consumer choice in their selection, as does the large proportion of red, white and black beads, suggesting a preference for customary colours. This cache is not only the largest collection of glass beads recovered from an archaeological context in Australia, but also speaks to the dynamism, agency and persistence of the Indigenous people of southeast Cape York Peninsula following invasion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lionel Lindsay still troubles Australian art history. An illustrator and etcher of undeniable skill, he voiced conservative aesthetics, including his anti-modernist and antisemitic polemic Addled Art of 1942. However, Lindsay was also philo-Arab, as he demonstrated in his 1929 visit to the Maghreb to meet Etienne Nasr’Eddine Dinet, the Islamophile Orientalist whose 1889 Snake Charmer was Lindsay’s favourite painting at the Art Gallery of NSW. During two months in Bou Saada and Kairouan, Lindsay made dozens of watercolours, drawings and meticulous etchings of ‘local character’, studied here as a group for the first time. Drawing on Lindsay’s unpublished diaries, letters and memoirs this article shows that this anti-modernist Anglo-Australian’s ‘Orientalism’ ignored the settlers and chose favourites among the peoples of the Maghreb. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Where are Chinese Australians in Australian history? Australia's Chinese past is persistently framed as 'forgotten' in public debate, a perpetual newness which ignores forty years of scholarship in the field. Contemporary works on Sino-Australian relations proliferate, resurrecting Cold War mentalities but avoiding Australia's colonial history of Chinese migration and settlement. This article accounts for this forgetfulness while also drawing attention to a spate of recently unearthed Chinese-language sources written by Chinese Australians. These sources, newly translated, invite us to see Australia's past in a Chinese context, revealing a propensity in Australia to organise historical time along European lines, obscuring ties of causality between events in Asia and Australia. Multilingual archives challenge the primacy of English-language sources in the narration of Australia's past, humanising Chinese Australians and destabilising China as the proxy for Australian security fears. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are currently very few brass bands in schools in Australia, however they were the predominant music ensemble in Australian schools up to the 1970s. The aim of this article is to document the popularity of British-style brass bands in Australia, and the corresponding development of brass bands in schools during the 20th century. The history of the brass band in Australia and its decline is explored, drawing significantly on the historical research of Dr Duncan Bythell, Dr Thomas Fraschillo, Dr Dave Russell, and Dr John Whiteoak. In addition, various primary sources are examined, such as newspaper articles and photographs. British immigration to Australia played a significant role in shaping the brass band movement, which was distinctly male-dominated and had strong links to the military culture of the first half of the 20th century. These societal trends followed into the school brass band setting. The article concludes with an overview of the factors that influenced the shift away from the all-brass ensemble in schools. This research provides a better understanding of the brass band tradition within the context of the school environment in Australia and calls for further research and scholarly inclusion in the literature of music education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 1847 a pastoralist in southern New South Wales experimented with the use of indentured Chinese labourers. This article reveals the identity of this pastoralist to be Leopold Fane de Salis and examines his use of indentured Chinese labourers in his employ in the late 1840s and early 1850s. We argue that de Salis’ initial sourcing of Chinese labour illuminates the importance of local experimentation and transnational colonial trading networks in the iterative development of those larger indentured migration schemes which soon followed. Further, we interrogate the public representation of this experiment by analysing the experience of Chinese labourers as revealed through de Salis’ station ledgers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

"Khmer Nationalist: Sơn Ngọc Thành, the CIA, and the Transformation of Cambodia" by Matthew Jagel is a book that explores the life and political career of Sơn Ngọc Thành, an important Cambodian nationalist. The book focuses on Thành's influence on international relations, his ties to U.S. intelligence operations, and his role in navigating the Cold War geopolitical structures. It examines Thành's involvement with the Khmer Serei, an anti-Communist and anti-monarchist group, and his participation in the 1970 Lon Nol coup. The book sheds light on Thành's contributions to Cambodian political history and highlights his significance as a political figure. [Extracted from the article]

The article urges for history teaching to move beyond telling the truth about the colonisation, genocide and dispossession of First Nations Australians towards a context of justice in the Australian history classroom. It cautions the risks of capturing narratives that rely on mistrust and the balance between documenting and interpreting the truth. It suggests a questioning of the curriculum by creating a false balance and interrogating the language used to frame and shape historical events.

The Journal revisits an historic paper from 1970 detailing the introduction of a computer-based Subscriber Installation Management Control System. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses a book titled "Perfect" and its significance for both media scholars and young people. The book explores the impact of social media on young people, particularly young women, and their experiences of being constantly scrutinized and judged. It challenges the notion that social media is solely responsible for young people's distress and instead focuses on the complexities of mediated identity. The book provides a space for scholars to engage with young people's concerns and offers young people the opportunity to see themselves reflected in a new light. It also raises questions about the moral implications of failing to achieve perfection and the affective reinforcement of individual responsibility in feminist and anticolonial scholarly knowledge. [Extracted from the article]

Film has played a seminal role in Australian environmental history, as an instrument of advocacy to shape political disputes and government actions. Such cinematic activism originated in the 1960s with the dispute over the damming of Tasmania’s iconic Lake Pedder. Here, documentary filmmaking was used by the protagonists to influence public opinion and convey rival views of the remote wilderness lake. For conservationists, film helped build an emotional connection and sense of place, whilst for pro-dam proponents, film helped curate an ideology of economic progress. The protagonists’ mutually reinforcing tactics, especially the intermediary role of the Tasmanian Department of Film Production, combined with the outstanding beauty of Lake Pedder, drove the turn to cinematic activism. Understanding how these films were produced and screened is also important to appreciating their significance for cinematic activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dingoes are culturally and ecologically important free-living canids whose ancestors arrived in Australia over 3,000 B.P., likely transported by seafaring people. However, the early history of dingoes in Australia--including the number of founding populations and their routes of introduction--remains uncertain. This uncertainty arises partly from the complex and poorly understood relationship between modern dingoes and New Guinea singing dogs, and suspicions that post-Colonial hybridization has introduced recent domestic dog ancestry into the genomes of many wild dingo populations. In this study, we analyzed genome-wide data from nine ancient dingo specimens ranging in age from 400 to 2,746 y old, predating the introduction of domestic dogs to Australia by European colonists. We uncovered evidence that the continent-wide population structure observed in modern dingo populations had already emerged several thousand years ago. We also detected excess allele sharing between New Guinea singing dogs and ancient dingoes from coastal New South Wales (NSW) compared to ancient dingoes from southern Australia, irrespective of any post-Colonial hybrid ancestry in the genomes of modern individuals. Our results are consistent with several demographic scenarios, including a scenario where the ancestry of dingoes from the east coast of Australia results from at least two waves of migration from source populations with varying affinities to New Guinea singing dogs. We also contribute to the growing body of evidence that modern dingoes derive little genomic ancestry from post-Colonial hybridization with other domestic dog lineages, instead descending primarily from ancient canids introduced to Sahul thousands of years ago. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the findings of an experiment in the use of Artificial Intelligence text generation processes to convert historical 'big data' into narrative text. Using an extensive collection of records pertaining to the Australian colonial settlement of Norfolk Island in the South Pacific (1788–1814), we investigate Generative Large Language Model technology for converting tabulated data from the site into short pieces of novel text, describing the lives of transported convicts and free individuals recorded in our databases. These personalized stories are assessed for fluency and factual correctness. Using this process, we uncover some instructive problems and caveats. We detect AI's inherent tendency toward bias and uncritical perspectives, including potentially offensive stereotypes. We also discover an unwelcome tendency to summarize data. So, whilst the outputs are for the most part effective and functional, we find that the best results still require artful human intervention to fully capture the most human aspects of history and heritage research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the relationship between reparations as compensation and reparations as transformation in settler colonial Australia. Much of the global reparations debate on colonization and slavery has focused on important demands confronting the historic damages and ongoing accumulation of disadvantage from colonization in ex‐colonies or from plantation slavery. Much less has been said about reparations for settler colonialism which is a specific form of ongoing colonization in the here and now. Drawing on long‐standing work around reparations for colonization by Indigenous peoples in Australia, and the woeful compensatory responses the state and judiciary have offered, this article argues that reparations for ongoing colonization could consider options beyond monetary compensation. This includes the critical domain of reparations as transformation that aim less to offset damage and reconcile suffering, but rather to comprehensively transform colonial relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Grain production in the early years of the British colonisation of Australia was characterised by a lack of expertise of farmers, a paucity of farm animals and equipment and the poor work ethics of convicts. In 1803, just when wheat production was increasing and becoming less risky, stem rust of wheat caused by the fungus Puccinia graminis f.sp. tritici was discovered by an exiled Irish rebel Joseph Holt, on Captain William Cox's Brush Farm. Stem rust became an intermittent and often serious disease culminating in a series of epidemics in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Growing varieties less prone to rust was a key recommendation from a series of rust-in-wheat conferences held from 1891 to 1896. It was William Farrer who was the first in Australia to develop new wheat varieties that resisted the ravages of rust principally by maturing earlier. The rust outbreaks were also catalysts for the New South Wales and Victorian governments to employ Australia's first plant pathologists, Nathan Cobb and Daniel McAlpine, respectively. A year later, Henry Tryon was employed by the Queensland government as its first vegetable pathologist, although he had conducted plant disease investigations as early as 1889. Grain production in the early years of colonisation in Australia was hampered by poor farming practices, lack of livestock, and belligerent, unenthusiastic convict labour. In 1803, just when the situation began to improve, stem rust of wheat was discovered by the exiled Irish rebel 'General' Joseph Holt on Brush Farm, owned by Captain William Cox. The disease, which has remained a threat to wheat production ever since, found its way into ironic Australian literature, including Ned Kelly's Jerilderie letter. Photograph from an original picture in the possession of Sir William Bentham painted in 1798, Day & Haghe lithrs. to the Queen, Trove, . Accessed August 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Brian Howe was elected to the federal Parliament in 1977 as the Labor Member for Batman (now Cooper). Following the election of the Hawke Government in 1983 until his retirement from politics in 1996, Howe held several key social policy portfolios in both the Hawke and Keating Labor Governments, and was Deputy Prime Minister from 1991 to 1995. As a politician, Howe held a strong commitment to policy development and implementation. During his career as a Government Minister, he oversaw some of the most significant changes in social policy in Australian history. This article sets out his reflections on policymaking over this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the historical evolution of Australia's motor mechanic trade from 1900 to 1970, exploring its impact on Australian society, economy, and the emergence of a new workforce segment. Topics include the transformation of landscapes due to the introduction of motor cars, the socio-economic role of mechanics within Australia's working class, and a critical examination of their evolving professional identity amid societal changes and technological advancements.

Australia's colonial era is formally over. Yet the legacies of structural inequality, dispossession, exploitation and racism against Indigenous Australia remain alive and well. In 2021, Victoria established the Yoorrook Justice Commission, culminating in a formal truth-telling and treaty process. Seeking to address harm since colonization, the state process is unprecedented both nationally and abroad. This article considers the relevance of the commission to truth recovery, accountability and structural reform in Australia. To date, national efforts to deal with the colonial past have been piecemeal and relatively ineffective. The Yoorrook Justice Commission departs from previous single-issue inquiries as well as from reconciliation policies driven by white-Australian federal institutions. While the Commission is not a panacea for resolving colonial injustice, it provides an important means of relational and structural truth-telling towards more just relations and righting racial wrongs. Ultimately, the Yoorrook Justice Commission sets a valuable precedent for Australia and other postcolonial nations. Its level of Indigenous ownership, its authority as a Royal Commission and the breadth of its inquiry make it a significant transitional justice project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores early modern European records of fire behaviours on the Australian continent. In particular, it analyses the perspectives provided in hitherto relatively unexplored records of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) and situates these in relation to contemporary English and later French and British accounts of fire practices. It argues that knowledge, use and textual record of fire practices constituted a key form of power for Europeans, a site of invasion and a tool of violence. Fire produced knowledge of people, of their resources and of their technologies, particularly their weaponry. Fire could be harnessed for European possession. Fire communicated distinctiveness in these records, marking a boundary between Aboriginal peoples and Europeans, and, on some occasions, interactions around fire with Indigenous people aimed to transition local peoples to new technologies and to presumed civilisation. In their own practices, in their perceptions of Aboriginal fire behaviours and in the written accounts that they produced from their experiences, Europeans form part of the story of early modern histories of Antipodean fire. Understanding what such sources reveal and what they obscure can assist in situating them appropriately in modern discussions about historic fire behaviours on the Australian continent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the under-examined history of how Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities responded to HIV and AIDS in the 1980s and 1990s. When HIV emerged as a public health threat in Australia, Indigenous healthcare workers and community leaders developed and delivered health promotion programs that were highly successful in preventing the spread of the virus among their communities. These programs drew on the political principles of self-determination and community control, fought for by the Black activism of the preceding decades. This article follows the story of one healthcare worker, Aunty Gracelyn Smallwood, who was instrumental in advocating for and implementing the grassroots Indigenous response to the virus. A proud Birrigubba, Kalkadoon and South Sea Islander woman and registered nurse, Aunty Gracelyn's outspoken advocacy took her from her hometown of Townsville all the way to the highest offices of Australia's AIDS response, where she helped shape and implement a world-leading approach to HIV and AIDS prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sentencing an aged pensioner to nearly six years imprisonment for perjury in 1910, the Victorian Chief Justice denounced a man 'as dangerous ... as the law could contemplate'. The prisoner had procured a number of others to give false evidence in a civil suit for libel launched by an ex-politician against another still serving in the Commonwealth Parliament. The denunciation expressed judicial abhorrence of what judges regarded as a detestable crime, undermining the administration of justice. This first study of the historical prosecution and sentencing of perjury in Australia explores the characteristics of cases that were committed for trial in the Supreme Court in colonial Victoria. Those prosecuted, and sometimes convicted, included witnesses swearing to alibis in the course of trials for murder, women alleging sexual assault or suing for maintenance of a child, men and women seeking damages or redress in the civil courts over unpaid debts or angry words, and police frustrated by the failure to obtain convictions in sly grog cases. In addressing the prosecution of perjury in Australian colonial courts this article examines what was at stake when private citizens as well as public officials sought to punish those perceived as failing to tell the truth under oath. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Australia's harsh policy response to asylum seekers appears to be an extreme measure for a country that thinks of itself as a liberal democracy. Confining analyses of this regime to refugee law and policy overlooks the ways that Australia's colonial history, Indigenous dispossession, and contemporary race relations interact with one another. This article argues that these historical dynamics are essential to understanding the Australian government's response to asylum seekers in the present day, with asylum-seekers and Indigenous peoples in Australia both being utilized as tools of modern statecraft to shore up the legitimacy of the Australian state. Attention is drawn to parallels between the treatment of both Indigenous peoples and asylum seekers by the Australian government, with the increasingly harsh response to asylum seekers in Australian politics coinciding with the expansion of land rights for Indigenous Australians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the history and importance of sports in Australian culture. It emphasizes the significant role that sports play in shaping Australian popular culture and national identity, as well as their economic contribution. The article acknowledges the development of impressive sporting arenas and the presence of statues honoring sporting heroes. It also addresses the role of sports in fostering social cohesion and national identity, especially in the absence of a shared history or religion. The article recognizes the historical exclusion of Indigenous people from mainstream sports and the subsequent efforts to include them. It highlights the success of Australian cricket teams in the late 19th century as a symbol of national cooperation and achievement. The concept of "sportive nationalism" is introduced, which links sporting success with national pride. The article acknowledges criticisms of Australian sporting culture, particularly in relation to male sports, but notes the positive growth and acceptance of women's team sports. It concludes by discussing the limited academic attention given to Australian sport history and the importance of teaching and researching this topic. [Extracted from the article]

This article provides a concise history of Australian popular culture since World War II, focusing on the shift from traditional historical narratives to the social and cultural dimensions of everyday life. It explores the role of mass media in shaping a shared national popular culture and the challenges faced by Australia in maintaining a strong local popular culture in the face of dominant global media industries. The article concludes by discussing the efforts of Australian governments to support and promote local cultural industries through public sector investment and regulatory interventions. Despite challenges posed by globalization and digital media, Australia already has a robust and diverse popular culture that should be preserved and connected to the everyday lives of Australians. [Extracted from the article]

The Australian higher education system has its origins in the "Oxbridge" model, and while traces of its Eurocentric heritage persist, the system has evolved through a blend of continuity and change. To grasp the trajectory of Australian higher education, it is essential to delve into its historical development and the pivotal events that have shaped its current form. This article explores significant milestones in the establishment of Australian higher education, all within the backdrop of Australia's history as a colonized nation transitioning to Federation in the 20th century. Embedded within this commentary is a recognition of the intricate challenges faced by academics within the realm of higher education. Historically, academia has remained an exclusive and elitist sphere, marked by imperial and patriarchal norms that have favored white, heterosexual men. These norms have perpetuated the perception of their superiority, consequently influencing how minority groups have navigated academia, both as students and academics. The institutionalization of political, economic, and symbolic ideologies has further exacerbated the obstacles encountered within academia. Therefore, it becomes paramount to consider the impact of the higher education system's operations on academics and how it has perpetuated the influence of colonialism and imperialism on the shaping of scientific knowledge and practices throughout history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Manning Clark is regarded as a pioneer of Australian national history. His output has been unequalled but it has provoked a vigorous division of opinions concerning its accuracy and the all-pervading thesis that Australia, to achieve its true national self-perception, must throw off the British heritage that included the baleful influence of the Anglicanism in which Clark was raised by his priest father. Here the work of three key scholarly critics, namely Dr George Shaw, Professor Brian Fletcher and Professor Alan Atkinson is evaluated, all of whom are Anglican historians of Australia. They have made very different assessments of the evolution of Australian national identity and the permanence of the British heritage. Shaw, as a former student of Clark, has assessed his mentor's work not as rigorous history but essentially as 'sentimental humanism'. As well, the opportunity is taken to reflect on the two extensive biographies of Clark, namely by Brian Matthews and Mark McKenna. Both these men were educated as Roman Catholics at a time when Rome was decidedly allergic to the idea of ecumenical outreach. Consequently, it is argued here that an accurate assessment of Manning Clark's oeuvre is yet to be accomplished. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This issue of Australian Historical Studies focuses on the relationship between Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). The articles aim to recover PNG as a part of Australian history and explore the historiography that has created a division between the two nations. The issue highlights the shared history and unique status of PNG within the Australian state. It also discusses the revival of interest in studying the history of Australia's former territory, facilitated by Deakin University's research and symposia on the PNG-Australia relationship. The articles provide insights into Australian colonialism, memories of Australian rule, and expand Australian history beyond the continent. [Extracted from the article]

From the decolonisation of Papua New Guinea in 1975, Australian historiography has focused on the continent and Tasmania, excluding the former territories/y north of the Torres Strait and denying their constitutional place in the nation's past. The forgetting of Papua New Guinea in Australia is the result of the continental consciousness of Australians, enhanced by the new nationalism of the last fifty years. Other sources of forgetting include the small numbers of Papua New Guineans now resident in Australia, and the cleaving of Papua New Guinea from Australian history, which was then assigned to Pacific history. Papua New Guineans, by contrast, remember Australian rule and debate Australia's role in the history of their nation. Less a plea for remembering, this article is focused on the 'moat of oblivion' that creates the conditions for the national forgetting of Papua New Guinea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses nineteenth-century migration-themed texts and images as a starting point for investigating the production of various patterns of seaborne mobilities en route to colonial Australia from the 1830s to the 1880s. Within the mobility framework, the floating world of emigrant ships provides a major venue for truthful representations of passengers' daily practices on board ship in general and maritime historiography in particular. It is argued that the interplay between body and space at different scales enables us to foreground the mobile, therapeutic, and affective dimensions of migration along the lines of class and gender. To this end, the article considers the production of seaborne mobilities within a larger context of maritime culture by engaging with four central thoughts: ship-based mobilities and mobile bodies, bodily motion and spatial mobilities, bodily health and therapeutic mobilities, as well as bodily senses and affective mobilities. These central thoughts, the article further asserts, direct us towards considering how the ship comes to be the prime site for evoking the imagery of mobile Britons, especially with regard to the various ways in which every-day mobilities are intrinsically embodied, practiced and performed through a body in transit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reviews the web site The South Australian Frontier and Its Legacies, which documents the nature, extent and duration of violent interactions between the Aboriginal people of South Australia and colonists.

This article explores the affective dimensions of social media platform TikTok, and its potential as a novel form of political participation among young people. It draws on data from a sample of 24 TikToks focused on the 2019/20 Australian bushfires, as well as seven interviews with young people who create, view and share TikToks. Building on Ash's notion of 'affective design', the article demonstrates how the memetic qualities of juxtaposition, whimsy and humour are utilised to enable escape and/or connection. As young people grappled with the intensity of emotions from the Australian bushfires, TikTok gave them space for the expression of complex affects through humour, whimsy, and juxtaposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overlapping disasters of the Australian 2019–2020 bushfire season and the COVID-19 pandemic, figured alongside the imaginary of projected future disasters, have provided a space of legitimation to experiment with controversial facial recognition technologies (FRTs). Drawing upon interviews conducted with senior Australian government administrators and researchers, I argue that FRTs are being used to respond to the trauma of disaster through its novel mediation and refiguration, tied to discourses of resilience which have been used to justify the expansion of FRT as a means for relief and the provision of aid. This legitimation, however, is challenged by the difficulty FRT encounters in capturing the face in its vital and its mortal malleability. What I term 'the problem of the corpse' serves to bring to light the 'paranoid' gaze of the biometric apparatus, disrupting the aim of using biometric infrastructure to produce a 'new normal' in the ongoing aftermath of disaster. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The historical influence of environmental factors on families has received relatively little scholarly attention. In this article we explore the impact of the 'natural' or 'more-than-human' world on Australian families through one of the most powerful examples of environmental influence: disasters. We take three case studies as our focus: Cyclone Tracy (1974), the 2011 Queensland Floods and the 2019-20 Black Summer Fires. Our primary source materials are oral history interviews with Australian parents, some of which are archived interviews in cultural collections and some of which are contemporary interviews newly-created for this research. Through these case studies spanning half a century, we analyse change and continuity in the ways in which disasters have been experienced and remembered by Australian parents. While parents consistently shoulder an additional burden during disaster by caring for children, the ways they do so are distinctly gendered and have remained so across time. But as disasters increase in frequency, ferocity and severity in an era of climate change, the way parents understand, respond and prepare for environmental crises is shifting. Australian parents increasingly see their childrearing duties as encompassing consideration of extreme weather in locating or renovating a family home, practicing evacuation drills, and anticipating potential disasters in planning family holidays. Awareness of climate risks is even influencing reproductive decisions about family size or whether to become a parent. We hypothesise that shifts in individual parent's disaster experiences may be collectively changing Australian cultural ideals of 'good' parenthood in the twenty-first century. Research conducted at the intersection of the history of the family and environmental history is becoming urgently significant in the present-day, as we seek to make sense of rapid environmental change and its personal and cultural impacts on our human lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the parallels between Chinese and Australian colonial and post-colonial history, emphasizing the lasting impact on contemporary societies. The author, a descendant of convicts in Australia, shares their personal experiences and discusses the influence of European refugees and the Budapest School on Australian society. The article focuses on philosopher Agnes Heller and her analysis of totalitarianism, the public sphere, and the tension between the scientific and the transcendental. It concludes by discussing the relevance of Heller's ideas in today's society and the lessons that can be learned from her work. [Extracted from the article]

Time is a foundational concept in historical studies. The past is located 'in time', of course, such that time guides and bounds 'what happened' to a 'when'. There have also been increasing theorisations that understand 'time' itself as temporally and culturally bound. As well as historicising, then, time itself must be historicised. Using Australian historiography as a case study, this paper explores the changing concept of 'time' over time. It sets out a provisional timeline of Australian history's understanding and deployment of historical time, contributing a much-needed historicisation of time to a growing field of historical theory. In charting a history of time in Australian historiography, it demonstrates the historicity of 'time'. This paper shows how the concept of time not only reflects, but in turn shapes and defines, historical practice and research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Walker's 'Anxious Nation' had had its greatest influence on scholars working on Australian encounters with Asia. But the book's most significant achievement was to identify the central importance occupied by Asia – or, more precisely, the spectre of Asia – in Australian history. It diagnosed Australia's desperate search for security, its defensive posturing as a 'White Man's Country', and the longstanding search for 'engagement' as part of the same malady: a hyperawareness of Asia's proximity and power, and the sense that it would determine Australia's future. This was less a book about Asia than it was about Australia. Until it is recognised as such, and fully drawn into mainstream Australian histories and survey courses, the task of understanding Australia's national character in light of its neuroses remains incomplete. A quarter century after its publication, historians of Australia still have a lot to learn about their anxious nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The North China Famine of 1876–79 killed over 10 million people and generated a rise in non-governmental relief both nationally and overseas. This article examines the establishment of the China Famine Fund in Melbourne, Australia, which contributed to famine relief efforts in Shanghai. It demonstrates how the fund's establishment followed lobbying by Chinese merchants in Melbourne and was made possible by pre-existing Chinese-European collaborative social and commercial networks. In highlighting the fund's establishment, this article draws attention to the cultural influences of Chinese merchant philanthropy, the global mobilities of famine reportage, and philanthropy as a site for elite cultural encounter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Economics and the Dreamtime was a landmark in Australian Economic History where Noel Butlin elevated awareness of the central importance of Indigenous economic history. It was a sprawling inter‐disciplinary work that used economic tools to understand Indigenous society before first contact and in the early colonial period. This article revisits that book to provide a critical evaluation of the major contributions of Butlin's research on Indigenous Australians. His primary contribution was to make Indigenous people more visible in the Australian economy in the early colonial period. He created a unique backcasting methodology that allowed Indigenous population to be estimated in the first six decades of the colony based on depopulation from disease, resource loss and frontier violence. I argue that the two main shortcomings of Butlin's research is that his method used colonial estimates of the population and that the population estimates are not sufficiently geographically differentiated. The main criticism of Butlin's research in the literature is that it is too speculative. However, his methodological innovation allows considerable transparency in the assumptions used and can create a range of plausible estimates that give us a sense of the unreliability of the existing population estimates. Alternative methodologies based on estimating population densities in 1788 from anthropological evidence are historically point estimates, which do not provide a sense of how uncertain the estimates might be. The way forward for this debate is to combine Butlin's demographic backcast methodology with population density estimates that take into account the selective mortality from disease and frontier violence. Finally, in order to create a truly Australian Economic History, it is necessary to also augment the methodology to incorporate Indigenous perspectives into the analysis and to utilise a local geography that acknowledges the diversity of Indigenous Australia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Elite women seized the public health campaign during the 1900 plague outbreak to assert political influence and advocate for sanitation reform grounded in their domestic experiences. These women advocated for their inclusion in the political sphere by valuing their domestic experiences as knowledge relevant for public health initiatives. This reframing of experience positioned them as viable citizens in the imminent Federation. Applying Laura Zanotti's concept of relational ontology, this analysis frames their actions as not simply a battle against institutional authority but as careful and strategic interactions with their era's political context, exploiting aspects of it that were beneficial to them. Their ambivalent involvement in the public health campaign illustrates a complex chapter in Australian medical history. Women used the opportunity of plague to reevaluate their experience of the home as a form of knowledge relevant to public health. At the same time, they leveraged their growing status as political subjects to oppress others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the history and experience of women librarians in Australia as identified in the extant literature and historic record. It seeks to explore the broader context of women librarians in Australia since white colonization including issues of equity employment and suffrage in an attempt to provide greater insight into the forces that have shaped the experience of women in Australian libraries. The article identifies key issues significant individuals and gaps in the published record of Australian women librarians. It identifies some key political social and cultural factors that may have influenced women's contribution to Australian librarianship and explores the often-complex nature of understanding this history in a country that was established not as a unified nation but as a group of loosely related colonies. The article finally serves to raise questions about how Australian library history has been framed and who may have been forgotten or ignored and provides suggestions for future research opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the most part, histories of Australia's international relations locate the origins of its engagement with the international human rights regime in the 1940s. By then, however, debates about human rights had been appearing in the Australian newspapers for more than a century, focused, among other things, on the application of universal rights to the foreign peoples with which the colonies were engaged in their international affairs. Drawing on archival materials and newspaper articles from 1803 to 1901, this article examines the place of human rights in the international relations of nineteenth century colonial Australia. Focusing on debates over the use of Indian and South Sea Islander indentured labour, it demonstrates how ideas developed in the context of the anti-slavery movement of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries shaped debates about the universal applicability of human rights in the Australian colonies' engagements with others. In doing so, it provides an account of the early development of human rights ideas in the Australian colonies and demonstrates how they sought to resist human rights claims in their international affairs, choosing instead to prioritise the pursuit of national (racial) unity and prosperity over the rights of others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federated Australia was seen for a long time as a significant social 'laboratory'. The Commonwealth itself was seen as an 'experiment'. This widespread metaphor relied on a particular pattern of perception: the country was 'new' (it was not), and the country was allegedly isolated (it was not, at least not completely). Many believed that its social environment could be controlled, like that of a scientific laboratory. A laboratory is designed to shut all disturbances out – the value of the data and experiments depends on it. This article outlines this metaphor in the context of Australian history during the 20th century, its rhetorical power and what made it discursively possible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amid growing public and academic interest in the identification and return of Aboriginal objects acquired by Britain from Australia after 1788, enquiries into the disputed origins of the British Museum's 'Gweagal shield' have highlighted the need for new and better forms of provenance research. This article explores a novel methodology and source of information: British Treasury and customs records detailing the descriptions, values, and duties paid upon a vast number of colonial collections of Aboriginal objects, human remains, and natural history specimens known to have disembarked in Britain between 1788 and 1823. By positing a new provenance for the 'Gweagal shield' – namely, that it may have accompanied Bennelong, Yemmerrawanne and Arthur Phillip on their passage to England in 1793 – the article explores the potential of such records for highlighting what, when, how, and from whom Australian collections arrived in Britain in this early and hitherto little-understood period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]