The capital city of Australia is a twentieth century creation. It emerged from a paddock in rural New South Wales one hundred years ago. On 12th March 1913 Lady Denman, the wife of Australia’s Governor-General, stood on the newly laid foundation stones and announced the name of the city to be – Canberra. The city had already been born by the time the crowd gathered in the … [Read more...] about The Dream of a Century: The Griffins in Australia’s capital
Place and Environment
Book Review: Flood Country by Emily O’Gorman
I would never have read this book if it wasn’t for twitter. Last year I came across the twitter stream of the University of Wollongong’s, Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (@AUSCCER) and those of researchers who work at the Centre. I have enjoyed these tweets about geography and the environment . One day I noticed their tweets about the Sydney launch of a … [Read more...] about Book Review: Flood Country by Emily O’Gorman
Thistle Thoughts
Today I was inspired while weeding. This was not the dainty weeding that one does in a household garden bed. No, one afternoon on my Christmas holidays I spent the afternoon with the rest of our family pulling thistles out of an infested paddock on my brother’s farm. When I wasn’t pulling thistles I was chief thistle spotter and bag puller. As you can see from the photo we … [Read more...] about Thistle Thoughts
Disasters at the 2012 Australian Historical Association Conference
Day three of sessions at the Australian Historical Association conference started with disasters. No, nothing awful befell the historians ensconced at the University of Adelaide. Rather, the subject of the plenary panel in the morning was ‘Disasters in Social and Cultural Perspective: Impact, Response, Memory’. Archives, museums and libraries around Australia have done … [Read more...] about Disasters at the 2012 Australian Historical Association Conference
Know Your Database
If you are interested in reading more about digital humanities, check out my other blog at http://stumblingfuture.wordpress.com Over the last week I finally got a chance to try out the tools that Wragge (aka Tim Sherratt) has devised to mine digitised historic Australian newspapers accessed through Trove. This post is about the results of applying his tools. If you want to do … [Read more...] about Know Your Database
