PHA NSW Members at Work

Embracing ghosts? Local history, shared heritage and ‘dark tourism’

  by Peter Hobbins… “Where are the bodies buried?” For historians, who are not prone to excavation – or to desecrating graves – this seems an inappropriate question. Yet it’s one of the most common queries raised during the many public tours and talks that I’ve given on Sydney’s former Quarantine Station at North Head, near … Read more

Crown Street: Four History Lessons

  by Judith Godden … At last! After some four years’ delay, my history of Sydney’s baby factory, Crown Street Women’s Hospital, is out! Published by Allen & Unwin, Crown Street sheds light on Sydney’s social history as well as international issues in women’s health. It also has some lessons for today, though I normally … Read more

Public History Prize 2015

  …Birgit Heilmann reports The 2015 Public History Prize was awarded to Imogen Dixon-Smith (pictured right) for her essay, Keeping up with the times: Complicating understandings of gender at the historic house Meroogal. The judges, current chair of the PHA NSW & ACT, Dr Mark Dunn, and Dr Catherine Bishop, Historical Studies Research Concentration Coordinator … Read more

Illuminating local history

  … by Ian Willis ‘Get to know your neighbourhood – you could be in for some surprises!’ says PHA member Katherine Knight, after picking up one of the volumes in the Kingsclear Books Pictorial History Series. A number of PHA members, including myself, have written for Kingsclear about particular localities, regions or local government … Read more

Dust, rust and shadows

  by Carol Roberts … A few years ago I began interviewing the earth-pastel artist Greg Hansell. My research led to me running several historical tours based on Hansell’s artistic representation of heritage sites in the Hawkesbury and close environs. Hansell says his attraction to painting farm implements, tools and industrial technology  is ‘hard-wired’ from … Read more

Japan as the Occupier and the Occupied

  … Christine de Matos discusses the work involved in editing a volume of essays. The year 2015 marked the centenary of Gallipoli, seen as the most important for Australia in a range of Great War centenaries that fall between 2014 and 2018. Less noticeably, 2015 also marked 70 years since the end of that … Read more

Callan Park: compassion and conflict in the asylum

  … Virginia Macleod PHA (NSW & ACT) introduces a new book by Roslyn Burge, Callan Park: compassion and conflict in the asylum, Friends of Callan Park, Rozelle, 2015 When Professor Paula Hamilton, President of Oral History NSW launched this book in August she reflected on what Callan Park means: it is more than an assemblage of … Read more

Speeding Through History (and myths and legends)

  By Bruce Baskerville The PHA (NSW & ACT) held a ‘Speeding Through History’ event in Canberra on Saturday 30 May 2015. This was one of our Pearl Anniversary 1985-2015 events. It was well attended by a diverse group of public historians working in the ACT and south-eastern NSW. Participants each had eight minutes to … Read more

Freshly Squeezed

  Emma Dortins mixes history and art… A hesitant hand clap, silence, another clap followed by another, a shuffle and guffaw, more confident clapping, a whoop and smattering of laughter as the claps develop a pattern. This is one of the recordings sound artist and clarinet player Laura Altman (LINK) and I have filed away … Read more

Urban planning and community engagement: the historian’s role

This post is a personal reflection by Ian Willis about his involvement in a community consultation on the Camden Town Centre Enhancement Strategy. The strategy involves a number of elements: a decked car park; traffic lights; additional street lighting; new street furniture; and landscaping, signage and footpath development. It has produced a problematic consultative process … Read more