We live surrounded by material things. Some are mundane and utilitarian, others exotic objects of desire, but all our belongings have something to say about who we are and how we live. Objects reflect both culture and history. Individually and collectively, they shape our lives, link us to others and connect us to the past. Yet objects are often strangely absent from accounts of past lives. This seminar series aims to unpack some of the stories that objects can tell about the present and about the past. We also hope to provide a forum for discussion for those of us interested in material histories. We aim to cast the net widely, with no limitations on either time or space.
In presenting this series the Old Treasury Building is working in partnership with colleagues from Deakin University and the Australian Catholic University. We have chosen a lunchtime slot (1-1.50PM AEST), to keep presentations concise and focused, but still allow audience participation. This is a free digital seminar series, with recordings available after each seminar for anyone who cannot join us on the day. Access information will be provided on registration. To register for the next seminar in the series please click on the link below.
Each seminar will present two researchers who will speak for 12-15 minutes each on objects that are linked by a common theme. If you are engaged in research on any aspect of material history and interested in presenting in the series, please contact the convenors via the MHSS contact form.
View recordings of previous presentations here.
Cuttings, Combings, Fettlings and Flock: Fashionable Consumption and Australian Wool ‘Waste’
Friday 20 February at 1pm
Australia’s wool industry produced vast amounts of fine fleece from the nineteenth century, spurring clothing industries globally and driving fashionable consumption. Yet wool processing and clothes manufacturing also generated waste – products like cuttings, combings, fettlings and flock. Salvaged then sold to waste merchants, these materials had a second life. This paper explores fashion and its resulting waste by drawing together the mail order catalogues produced by the Melbourne department store Foy & Gibson and the invoices it issued for the wool waste leaving its mills and clothing factories. It considers the value of these waste products in their second life.
Speaker: Dr Lorinda Cramer is a lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University. Her work explores the worn and material histories of Australian wool, the gendered dimensions of dress and textiles, and historical examples of sustainable fashion and waste in museum collections.
'Cuttings, Combings, Fettlings and Flock: Fashionable Consumption and Australian Wool ‘Waste’’ is presented as part of the PayPal Melbourne Fashion Festival’s Independent Programme.
Belief, Magic and the Supernatural: the Power of Objects
Friday 8 May at 1pm
First speaker:
A Boot in the Wall: Folk Magic in Gold-Rush Victoria?
This talk starts with a single, mud-caked leather boot found sealed inside a small compartment in a Ballarat building and asks why anyone would hide footwear in a wall. Drawing on the Australian Magic Research Project’s fieldwork in Victoria, I explore concealed shoes as protective charms, links to British and European folk belief, and what these quiet acts of “everyday magic” reveal about anxiety, migration and community life in nineteenth-century Australia.
Dr David Waldron is Associate Professor of History at Federation University Australia. His research focuses on folklore, local history and community heritage. His works include Sign of the Witch, Snarls from the Tea-Tree and Aradale: The Making of a Haunted Asylum, and the award-winning podcast Tales from Rat City.
Second speaker:
Ruma Besar (The Big House): Encountering the Supernatural in the Cocos (Keeling) Islands
This paper focuses on Oceania House, a colonial-era mansion located in the Australian Indian Ocean Territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Now privately owned, it was formerly home to the Clunies Ross family, who operated a coconut plantation using the labour of “Malay” indentured workers until the islands’ integration with Australia in 1984. Known locally as Ruma Besar or “the Big House,” it is believed by the local Cocos Malays to be a site of supernatural activity following the departure of its original owners. This research situates these beliefs within the broader Malay-Muslim context and considers what they reveal about tensions between official heritage narratives and local understandings of the past. In doing so, it examines how supernatural beliefs provide a means of engaging with difficult histories and heritage and its impact on the present day lives of the community.
Melathi Saldin is a Lecturer in Cultural Heritage and Museum Studies at Deakin University. An archaeologist and critical heritage scholar, Melathi's research looks at the relationship between difficult heritage, local communities and cultural resilience. She is an International Member of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and Co-Chair of the Sri Lanka ICOMOS National Scientific Committee on Intangible Cultural Heritage. She is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Heritage Destruction (2023).
Material Histories is presented by Old Treasury Building in partnership with Deakin University and Australian Catholic University.
