In the bestselling Black Kettle and Full Moon, master storyteller Geoffrey Blainey takes us on another absorbing journey – a guided tour of a vanished Australia. Covering the years from the first gold rush to World War I. Blainey paints a fascinating picture of how our forebears lived – in the outback, in towns and cities, at sea and on land. He looks at all aspects of daily life, from billycans to brass bands, from ice-making to etiquette, from pipes to pubs. The engaging text is further brought alive by an evocative selection of contemporary illustrations by artists such as Julian Ashton.This is Geoffrey Blainey doing what he does best bringing to life for the modern reader the sighs and sounds and smells of another time.
In The Legacy of Douglas Grant, John Ramsland vividly re-creates the famous Aborigine's life - now lost in the mists of history. Douglas was born to Indigenous parents and, as an infant, was the sole survivor of a cruel massacre in northern Queensland. As an adult, he was a charismatic speaker on Aboriginal rights, but spoke with a distinct Scottish burr. Why was this so?He was rescued by a kindly Scottish immigrant and brought up and well educated in the Scottish way in Sydney’s leafy suburb of Annandale.Highly successful at school, he became a leading engineering draftsman at Mort's Dock Company in Balmain and, later, a woolclasser at "Belltrees" station near Scone in the Hunter Valley of NSW.With friends from "Belltrees", he joined the 1st AIF. His dangerous encounters on the Western Front and as a prisoner-of-war in Germany are pieced together by the author from many fragments.Douglas bravely faced unpleasant racism in post-war Australia, but never lost his keen sense of humour and scholarly interests.
This book explores the circus as a site in and through which science and technology are represented in popular culture. Across eight chapters written by leading scholars – from fields as varied as performance and circus studies, art, media and cultural history, and engineering – the book discusses to what extent the engineering of circus and performing bodies can be understood as a strategy to promote awe, how technological inventions have shaped circus and the cultures it helps constitute, and how much of a mutual shaping this is. What kind of cultural and aesthetic effects does engineering in circus contexts achieve? How do technological inventions and innovations impact on the circus? How does the link between circus and technology manifest in representations and interpretations – imaginaries – of the circus in other media and popular culture? Circus, Science and Technology examines the ways circus can provide a versatile frame for interpreting our relationship with technology.
Records and archival arrangements in Australia are globally relevant because Australia's indigenous people represent the oldest living culture in the world, and because modern Australia is an ex-colonial society now heavily multicultural in outlook. Archives and Societal Provenance explores this distinctiveness using the theoretical concept of societal provenance as propounded by Canadian archival scholars led by Dr Tom Nesmith. The book's seventeen essays blend new writing and re-workings of earlier work, comprising the fi rst text to apply a societal provenance perspective to a national setting.After a prologue by Professor Michael Moss entitled A prologue to the afterlife, this title consists of four sections. The first considers historical themes in Australian recordkeeping. The second covers some of the institutions which make the Australian archival story distinctive, such as the Australian War Memorial and prime ministerial libraries. The third discusses the formation of archives. The fourth and final part explores debates surrounding archives in Australia. The book concludes by considering the notion of an archival afterlife. - Presents material from a life's career working and thinking about archives and records and their multiple relationships with history, biography, culture and society - The first book to focus specifically on the Australian archival scene - Covers a wide variety of themes, including: the theoretical concept of the records continuum; census records destruction; Prime Ministerial Libraries; and the documentation of war
Hector Crawford – the name remains synonymous with Australian television. The tag line ‘This has been a Crawford Production’ still resonates with generations of Australians who grew up with his cops, the Sullivan family or any of the long line of productions that flowed from his legendary company. His public façade is part of our collective memory but the man behind it, and how his passion and determination changed Australian culture forever is revealed in ‘Hector’. In this compelling account of his life Rozzi Bazzani recounts vividly how, as Crawford’s influence grew, the off screen politics employed by the TV networks and rivals to diminish his company’s power became as exciting as any of his onscreen dramas. ROZZI BAZZANI was a successful singer and studio artist for many years before she turned to writing full time. In addition to spending years of her life researching Hector and Dorothy Crawford’s lives, she co-wrote the musicals Gershwin, The Musical and The King of Corn, and hosted countless radio and TV programs. Ms Bazzani is a graduate of Melbourne University and lives in the Macedon Ranges in Victoria. Winner of the History Publication Award at the 2016 Victorian Community History Awards Shortlisted Ashurst Business Literature prize 2016 ‘Formidable research. Tells the rich story of Crawfords before as well as after television arrived.’ – Jock Given, Media International Australia ‘Sub plots-indicate difficulties of Hector’s sister and his wives forging careers and wanting to marry and have families in the 1940’s–50’s.’ –Susan Lever, literary critic, and general editor of the Cambria Australian Literature Series ‘Detailed, and thoroughly researched – a keyhole into the times.’ – Steven Carroll, Sydney Morning Herald and The Age ‘Entertaining…’ – Tom Gilling, The Australian ‘Narrative style for a general readership’. – Don Gibbs, RHSV ‘A quite incredible book about the life of radio the TV producer Hector Crawford.’ – Melbourne Observer
This book explores the food history of twentieth-century Sydney, Shanghai and Singapore within an Asian Pacific network of flux and flows. It engages with a range of historical perspectives on each city’s food and culinary histories, including colonial culinary legacies, restaurants, cafes, street food, market gardens, supermarkets and cookbooks, examining the exchange of goods and services and how the migration of people to the urban centres informed the social histories of the cities’ foodways in the contexts of culinary nationalism, ethnic identities and globalization. Considering the recent food history of the three cities and its complex narrative of empire, trade networks and migration patterns, this book discusses key aspects of each city’s cuisine in the twentieth century, examining the interwoven threads of colonialism and globalization.
The first Europeans to settle on the Aboriginal land that would become know as Australia arrived in 1788. From the first these colonists were accused of ineptitude when it came to feeding themselves: as legend has it they nearly starved to death because they were hopeless agriculturists and ignored indigenous foods. As the colony developed Australians developed a reputation as dreadful cooks and uncouth eaters who gorged themselves on meat and disdained vegetables. By the end of the nineteenth century the Australian diet was routinely described as one of poorly cooked mutton, damper, cabbage, potatoes and leaden puddings all washed down with an ocean of saccharine sweet tea: These stereotypes have been allowed to stand as representing Australia’s colonial food history. Contemporary Australians have embraced ‘exotic’ European and Asian cuisines and blended elements of these to begin to shape a distinctive “Australian” style of cookery but they have tended to ignore, or ridicule, what they believe to be the terrible English cuisine of their colonial ancestors largely because of these prevailing negative stereotypes. The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788- 1901 challenges the notion that colonial Australians were all diabolical cooks and ill-mannered eaters through a rich and nuanced exploration of their kitchens, gardens and dining rooms; who was writing about food and what their purpose might have been; and the social and cultural factors at play on shaping what, how and when they at ate and how this was represented.
A Journey Travelled is a pivotal Australian story long overdue for the telling: how Aboriginal and European people interacted with each other following Britain's territorial invasion in 1826, as well as its ongoing presence for the next 100 years. There has been a wealth of documentary and oral history available to researchers prepared to write from a local history perspective, yet very few Australian historians have accepted this challenge. What has been lacking until quite recently is the sense among historians and the general Australian public that the history of Aboriginal-European relations - not only for the first few years of contact, but for a period of many decades - is central to the nation's story. This extraordinary situation persisted, with very few exceptions, until the intense cultural and political foment that occurred throughout the Western world during the 1960s inevitably impacted the history departments of Australian universities. For the first time, Australians were confronted by the reality of their past as the old reluctance to write about the history of Aboriginal-European relations came to an abrupt end. As a very readable history on a topic that is of relevance to all Australians, A Journey Travelled examines the topic from the vantage point of the town of Albany and the wider Great Southern region of Western Australia, bringing a unique story to life. The book contains maps and images, including early photos of Menang men and women, as well as appendices regarding seasonal cycles, land cleared for agriculture, Western Australian tribal boundaries, and more. [Subject: History, Aboriginal Studies, Australian Studies, European Studies]
International Perspectives of Festivals and Events addresses contemporary issues concerning the potential of festivals and events to produce economic, social, cultural and community benefits. Incorporating a range of international perspectives, the book provides the reader with a global look at current trends and topics, which have until now, been underrepresented by current literature. International Perspectives of Festivals and Events includes a broad range of research, case studies and examples from well-known scholars in the field to form a unified volume that informs the reader of the current status of festivals and events around the world. In a fast-moving industry where new theory and practice is implemented rapidly, this is essential reading for any advanced student or researcher in festivals and events.
