eNewsletter
Newsletter 3 May 2024
News
History Council of South Australia annual Fellows Lecture
On 23 April, the History Council and State Library of South Australia hosted the annual Fellows Lecture. This year, 2023 Fellow Maggi Boult, 2024 Fellow Dr Alice Neikirk, and recipient of the 2024 Highly Recommended Prize Dr Angela Gurr presented their research projects. Information about these projects is available on the HCSA Fellowship page here.
The History Council has issued a media release outlining its position on proposed reforms at the South Australian Museum.
Read more on our advocacy page here.
Save the Queen: The Priscilla Project
A project is underway to restore the Priscilla bus from the film 'The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert'. She was discovered on a property in rural New South Wales, having survived fire, floods, and exposure to the elements. The History Trust of South Australia is seeking donations to restore the bus and display her at the National Motor Museum in Birdwood.
Further information through the HTSA
Planning, Development and Infrastructure Act review final report and Government response released
Following an extensive review by an expert panel, the Government is adopting over 100 recommendations to make the planning system more efficient and user-friendly.
More information on the Review's March newsletter here.
Indian Diaspora in Australia collecting project
The National Library of Australia is actively looking for stories from Australians with Indian heritage to add to the national collection.
Further information on the NLA website
Make your local community collections part of Trove
Australia’s digital library Trove is inviting community-led, volunteer-run and rural and regional collecting organisations across Australia to showcase their digital content for free. These digital collections and data will become available and findable in Trove.
Find out more about how to become a part of Trove on their website
Get your book published into the National Library of Australia collection
For anyone considering self-publishing, whether your book is printed or electronic, free or for sale, you need to deposit a copy with the National Library of Australia, and with your state or territory library.
If you deposit electronically, information about your book will be available in Trove and the National Library’s catalogue within a day of deposit. For print deposits, a record will be available within 3 months of your publication being received.
For information about legal deposit, visit the NLA’s website here.
You can also read the fact sheet (pdf)
The NLA has also recently published a blog on their website which provides more general information about independent and self-publishing. You can read it here.
Adelaide Museum of South Australian History
The History Trust are inviting responses to a survey about a proposed new museum: the Adelaide Museum of South Australia's History.
Find out more and have your say on the proposed museum here.
Around the Country
Exhibition: Rameses and the Gold of the Pharaohs
This exhibition, exclusive to the Australian Museum in Sydney, features 181 priceless artefacts and relics, many of which have never left Egypt before. This wonderfully preserved collection includes sarcophagi, animal mummies, jewellery, royal masks, and ornate tomb treasures which showcase the workmanship of Egyptian artisans. Open in Sydney until May 19 2024.
Further information and ticket purchase through the museum website
Lectures, exhibitions, and events
The South Australian Frontier and its Legacies
A new website which maps the nature and extent of frontier conflict in South Australia, contributing to the truth-telling called for in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. Explore this highly interactive site which is informed by extensive archival research and oral histories of Aboriginal people and settler descendants.
Further information and registration through the SA History Festival website
Madge & Bibs and the Advancing Girls
The premiere of a new film telling the story of Adelaide's Advanced School for Girls, it's headmistress Madeline Rees George, and her sister Marian who was a French teacher there. The film uses dramatisations of family letters and interviews with Madeline together with contemporary interviews with many notable historians.
Further information and registration through the SA History Festival website
The Many Loves of Geoffrey Dutton
Dutton was a founder of the Adelaide Festival and Writers Week, an author and art collector, and a founder of the Australian Republican Movement. The film features extraordinary home movie material and interviews.
Further information and registration through the SA History Festival website.
Department of complaints
Join the National Archives of Australia and explore historic complaints sent to the Commonwealth and the Government of South Australia - including the harrowing, amusing, and bizarre.
14 May 2024, 11am-12pm, Hetzel Lecture Theatre, State Library of South Australia.
Further information and registration through Eventbrite
Power to the people
Delve into citizen and resident activism demonstrated through petitions submitted to the Australian Government from records held in the national archival collection.
28 May 2024, 12-1pm, Hetzel Lecture Theatre, State Library of South Australia.
Further information and registration through Eventbrite
Talk: The Battle of Dernancourt
Learn the history of the WWI Dernancourt Battle and how Adelaide came to have a suburb named after the French village.
16 May 2024, 5-6pm, Unley Museum, Edmund Avenue, Unley
Further information and registration through the City of Unley website
Public lecture: After the shipyards - Whyalla in the 1980s
When the BHP Whyalla Shipyards closed permanently in 1978, it led to an exodus of some of the skilled workers and their families. As Whyalla was built around the heavy industries, the whole story of the city has been described as being continually in decline since. Was that notion correct? This is the 1980s.
Presented by Paul Mazourek, Whyalla Public Library, Thu 16 May 2024, 11am – 12pm. Free.
Public talk: Cuttlefest 2024 - People in the landscape
A talk on Barngarla country with Maritime Museum Curator Paul Mazourek about the amazing story of the landscape development and people's histories in the Northern Spencer Gulf. Point Lowly Lighthouse, Point Lowly SA.
Further information through the Australian Tourism Data Warehouse website
South Australia's History Festival 2024: Power
The program for South Australia's History Festival 2024 is now available. The festival will be running throughout May with events for everyone.
View the online program on the official website
Exhibition: Children's voices from the Bob Hawke Collection
This exhibition explores Hawke's commitment to future generations and Australia's youth, unveiling the 'voices of children' in the Hawke Collection.
On now until 28 June 2024, Kerry Packer Civic Gallery, Hawke Building level 3, UniSA City West Campus.
Further information through the UniSA website.
Exhibition: Now showing... Cinema architecture in South Australia
From suburban cinemas to palaces in the middle o the city, these often highly decorated buildings became centres of entertainment for South Australians in the twentieth century.
On now until 30 May 2024
Further information through the UniSA website
The results are now in for the first-ever survey dedicated to history activities across the state, known as the South Australian Stories Survey Initiative or SASSi!
If you want to connect with other history enthusiasts and find out more about who is doing where, how and why, come to the ‘Let’s Get SASSi’ event on 14 May 11-12:30pm, at the Drill Hall, Torrens Parade ground, when the History Advocate, Dr Kiera Lindsey, will share these first findings and stimulate a discussion about how we can work together to ‘give the past a future, now!’
14 May 2024, 11am-12.30pm, Torrens Parade Ground.
Further information and registration through the History Festival website
Encounter Celebrations film fundraiser
The Encounter celebrations Committee will be hosting a screening of the documentary film The Navigators along with guest speakers Gillian Dooley, Professor Jean Fornaserio, and Professor John West-Sooby.
11 May, 1-2pm, Victa Cinema, Victor Harbour.
Further information and registration link here
New exhibition: Disrupt, persist, invent: Australians in an ever-changing world
This exhibition, explores the many ways people have achieved social change in Australia, from noisy protest to quiet persistence. On at the State Library of South Australia, 20 April - 11 August.
Further information through the SLSA website
Lighthouse Lore & Portside Tour: a journey through Port Adelaide's past
Join the History Trust of SA for a tour, talk, and a drink at two of Port Adelaide's iconic landmarks: the Port Admiral Hotel, and the Port Adelaide Lighthouse. 11 May 2024, 6pm - 8pm, $45 per person (includes meal and drink).
Further information and registration through Trybooking
University of Adelaide Historical and Classical Studies Research Seminar Series 2024
The schedule for semester one is now available. Check it out on the University of Adelaide website here.
The next seminar will feature Dr Susan Marsden on 'Unpacking a colonial history painting: Charles Hill’s The Proclamation of South Australia 1836'. Held in-person on Mondays at Napier 420, 12pm. Zoom links TBA.
One Day Conference: South Australian 2024 History Festival
Saturday 4th May
The recently formed South Australian Church History Network (SACHN) invites you to register for the one-day conference as part of this year’s History Festival. The theme of the day is "Paradise of Dissent Revisited." Papers of 20 minutes will be presented which open up and examine areas in which churches and Christians influenced social and public life.
Early responses indicate that the event will be full of variety and interest and draw on most SA church traditions. Papers will explore the notion of SA as a ‘Paradise of Dissent’ and encourage further research and publication.
The SACHN involves historians from several Christian denominations (currently Anglican, Baptist, Salvation Army, Uniting Church) who are concerned with the recognition of SA religious history within the broader history of SA and within the religious history of Australia as a whole. Its aims are to increase awareness of the Christian presence in and contribution to SA life and history from 1836.
Those registering for the day will receive a detailed program including timetable and topics of papers. To find out more and register contact the convenor of SACHN, Rev. Dr Dean Eland at [email protected]
Conference fee is $30 and last date for registration is Monday 29 April. The conference will be held at The Church of the Trinity, (UCA) 318 Goodwood Rd, Clarence Park 5034. Generous onsite parking is available on the northern side of the church site.
Further information and registration form (pdf).
Historical Society of South Australia 2024 program
The HSSA has announced its program for 2024 as follows:
7 June: Skye Krichauff: The South Australian Frontier and Its Legacies: A Truth-Telling project.
5 July: Benjamin Nicholls: "There are pianos everywhere": Oscar Comettant and other travel writers on South Australian music.
2 August: Robert Foster: The role of environmental factors in shaping Aboriginal/settler relations in colonial South Australia.
6 September: Elizabeth Bor: Responses to Bushfires in South Australia from the 1820s to Federation.
4 October: Martin Hamilton-Smith: Western Democracy Under Challenge: The interesting case study of South Australia.
1 November: Erin Reardon: RA&HS Archives – Walking into 185 Years of History (and Wondering What to do With It).
Australian Heritage Festival 2024: Connections
Australia's largest annual community-driven celebration of heritage will take place in South Australia from 18 April to 19 May 2024.
Event registrations are now open on their website.
Flinders University History Research Seminars semester 1 2024
The schedule for the semester one seminars is now available.
The next seminar will feature Professor Adrian Shubert (York University) on ‘The Edwin Fox: How an Ordinary Sailing Ship Connected the World in the Age of Globalization, 1850–1914’.
Held in-person at Humanities North Theatre 2 (Bedford Park, SA) or through Microsoft Teams, Fridays, 11.15am - 12.30pm.
See the flyer for the full schedule and Teams details here (pdf).
Book releases
Book launch: Celebrating 25 Years of the Eudunda Family Heritage Gallery
‘The First 25 Years’ is a volunteer-oriented account of the Gallery’s journey from the original idea to the wonderful repository it is now.
Further information and registration through the History Festival website
Book launch: The recollections collection: a people's history, by Karen Joyce and Colin Ball
Unabashedly The Recollections Collection is a peoples’ history of Hindmarsh in South Australia, particularly of locals who lived in the neighbourhoods of Bowden and Brompton. It conflates two modern eras by combining the long-first-half of the twentieth century, the 1890s to 1960s, with the much shorter and radically transformational times of the 1970s and 80s. 29 May, 7-9pm, Brickmakers Arms, Brompton SA.
Further information and registration through the History Festival website
Book launch: A view from the horizon: my life in politics and beyond, by Peter Duncan
Join former SA Premier Hon Lynn Arnold AO for the launch of Dunstan era Attorney-General Peter Duncan’s memoir. These two political contemporaries will turn back the clock and consider the nature of political power in SA in the 1970s and 1980s. 14 May 2024, 5.30-7.30pm, Torrens Parade Ground, Victoria Drive.
Further information through the HTSA
An insider's history of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra, by Paul Blackman
This history of the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra tells the story from its creation through to the world class ensemble that performs today.
Further information and ordering through Wakefield Press
Calls for papers
Call for Submissions: New Thinking About Old Histories
Later this year HTAV’s journal Agora will explore the theme ‘New Thinking about Old Histories’. The Editor is seeking contributors who can discuss recent evidence or academic debates that History teachers should know about to update their knowledge and inform their teaching. Referenced articles of up to 2000 words in plain language, aligned with the History curriculum, are due in July.
Prospective contributors should contact the Editor ([email protected]) with a brief outline of their topic and how it would describe ‘new thinking’.
Opportunities
Bernadette Bean South Australian Records Management Service Excellence Award
Awarded to celebrate those who have dedicated their careers to managing, preserving, and innovating within the fields of records and information management, knowledge management, history and cultural heritage, museum and library collections management. Nominations are now open until 8 July 2023.
Further information on the award website.
ASO4 History Trust of SA - Maritime Museum Manager
Applications close 13 May
Further information and application through I Work for SA
NLA Fellowships and Grants program
Applications are now open for the National Library of Australia's Community Heritage Grants program (applications closing 9 May) and 2025 Fellowships (applications closing 6 May).
Read more about the Community Heritage Grants Program here
Read more about the Fellowships here
The Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia
The next issue is scheduled to be published in November 2024 and they are inviting scholars from all disciplines who are researching South Australian history to submit papers, or proposals for papers, for inclusion in this, and subsequent editions. They would particularly like to encourage post-graduate student and early career researcher contributions.
For more information, visit their website here or contact the editor [email protected]
