Heatwaves are forgotten killers as deaths occur silently, in homes and institutions. In urban and temperate areas heatwaves evaporate from our memory, erased by the drama of fire, flood and storm. Environmental historians recognise the importance of climate as not simply a “backdrop against which history is played out” but an active force in Australian […]
What comes to mind when we think about the ‘Swinging Sixties’? Is it miniskirts and pop music, street protest, or the Pill? Do we remember rebellious youth and ‘the generation gap’, or think nostalgically of a time of full employment, buoyant wages, and high rates of home ownership? In truth the sixties was about all […]
The next installment in the seminar series from Deakin University, Australian Catholic University and Old Treasury! ‘Material Histories’ presents new scholarship from a wide range of speakers, all united by their passion for objects! The 1960s is a period defined by change. An era of unprecedented growth in youth culture and synthetic fibres saw the […]
Home ownership is once again a hot political issue. As house prices rose inexorably in the early twenty first century, many young people found themselves locked out of home ownership. And yet the desire to own ‘a home of our own’ is still as strong as ever. Join Margaret Anderson as she reflects on the […]
Over the best part of a decade, we've been researching the history of Australian fathering and family life, from 1919 to the present day, working alongside a team that's also included John Murphy, Johnny Bell and Mike Roper. Drawing upon hundreds of oral history interviews from several national collections, as well as memoirs, wartime letters […]
The next installment in the seminar series from Deakin University, Australian Catholic University and Old Treasury! ‘Material Histories’ presents new scholarship from a wide range of speakers, all united by their passion for objects! First Speaker: Spoils from ‘The Tour of the East’ In 1930, the white colonials, Jack Mortlock, of Martindale Hall, near Clare […]
Join ‘Behind the Lines 2024’ curator Matthew Jones and Political Cartoonist of the Year Megan Herbert as they explore the exhibition and Megan's work. Megan Herbert is a cartoonist, illustrator, and writer whose work appears in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. Her cartoons in ‘Behind the Lines’ reference climate change, the cost of living, the housing […]
While the idea of Cold War-era spies often evokes cliched images of James Bond or John La Carré, the reality of spies and surveillance in Cold War Australia was far stranger and far more interesting than any spy novel. Historians working with restricted or highly redacted material have increasingly shed light on these real life […]
The next installment in the seminar series from Deakin University, Australian Catholic University and Old Treasury! ‘Material Histories’ presents new scholarship from a wide range of speakers, all united by their passion for objects! In 2022, a virtual exhibition was launched to mark 150 years of the Overland Telegraph Line. A collaboration between Australian Catholic […]
Few of us can truly say that we enjoy housework, despite the plethora of ‘labour-saving devices’ now found in most homes. Imagine then, a time when almost all domestic tasks relied on muscle power and elbow grease alone. The lucky few employed domestic servants to do this work. (Of course, the servants weren’t so lucky!) […]
