On 11 June 2014, a memorial commemorating wartime service of the people of Napranum community (formerly Weipa Presbyterian Mission) was opened by the Honourable Warren Entsch MP and the Elders of Napranum, in the presence of Keith Payne VC, OAM, Councillors and community members. A catafalque party was provided by local members of Bravo Company, 51st Battalion, the Far North…
The Brisbane City Council has published a limited run of member Ray Kerkhove's new book, Aboriginal Camp Sites of Greater Brisbane: A Historical Guide. It is a ground-breaking work in historical mapping for the Brisbane region, and promises to be a foundation for further digital mapping production done in the Mapping Brisbane History Project.
Congratulations to Dr Murray Johnson who has a new book out, Australia's Ancient Aboriginal Past: A Global Perspective (Australian Scholarly Publishing). Murray is on a roll and the next great work, Van Diemen's Land: An Aboriginal History (UNSWP), is due out next March.
Dr Lyndon Megarrity was recently awarded the Council of Australian University Librarians/ Australian Society of Authors fellowship for 2014, the first time it has been offered. Lyndon will use the fellowship to investigate the papers of J.G. Drake at the Fryer Library, University of Queensland. Lyndon points out that this interesting award involving a large number of special collections across…
At the Queensland Day Dinner hosted by the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, Dr Kay Cohen was presented with the 2014 John Douglas Kerr Medal of Distinction. In a career spanning over thirty years, Dr Kay Cohen has and continues to demonstrate a quiet, generous and prodigious professionalism and dedication to the field of Queensland history. Kay’s principal area of…
Welcome back to the work and fellowship of your professional association, as expressed or symbolised in this very humble e-bulletin. We start a new year. The next twelve months will be interesting times for us. Most of you will not be able miss the fact that the centenary of World War I is just about to be launch upon the…
By Thom Blake Crossing the Divide is a history of the area in central Queensland formerly encompassed by the Jericho Shire Council. Janice Cooper, a PHA member, was commissioned by the Barcaldine Regional Council to research and write this history. The Council should be well pleased with the result as Cooper has done an admirable job. She was well qualified…
Dear Editor,
Your recent editorial on generational change expressed some important issues very clearly. It is certainly true, as you say, that it is the 60+ generation that seem the most interested in history, and that trend has probably been with us since Adam was a boy. I am not sure if anyone has done a study of all those ‘Back to Croydon/Hughenden/Cloncurry’-style commemorative publications printed in the 1950s etc. to celebrate the historical anniversaries of Queensland districts, but I am sure that ‘old timers’ were probably at the forefront of such heritage-minded endeavours. As we get older, we do tend to have a greater awareness and appreciation of the passage of time. (more…)
I am told that “May you live in interesting times”, is often referred to as the Chinese curse. I don’t believe in curses in any providential sense, but it is true that, as professional historians, we are living in interesting times. There is much about our present context that makes it difficult for a historian as an independent and credible scholar. Digitalisation of historical resources has come at a price. Certainly it speeds up the research process and makes it even possible to access sources which were too distant to make it unfeasible to organise a research trip. It cannot be all put up online. The trip to the archives (hopefully not too far away) is still a necessity, and given the volume of archival material, it will still be a necessity for a long time to come. However, what the trained scholar has access to, so has the amateur historian. There is no problem in the fact that increasingly many folk now wish to take up the role of the amateur historian, nor is there a problem in the archivist making it easier for the disciplinary-untrained to do history work. Most archives have a public obligation to make material freely-available. The difficulty doesn’t lie here.
Few people have made a greater contribution to excellence in Queensland history as Dr Ruth Kerr has, and continues to, over a career spanning forty-five years. In her teaching, research, publications and involvement with Queensland State Archives, Queensland Parliamentary Library, a range of Queensland Government Departments, the University of Queensland, the Royal Historical Society of Queensland, the Australian Mining History Association, the Professional Historians Association of Queensland and most of Queensland’s local historical associations Dr Kerr has contributed diligently and generously to advancing our knowledge of Queensland’s history.
Queensland Day Dinner
From L to R – Her Excellency Ms Penelope Wensley, Mary Elliott, Ruth Kerr’s sister-in-law, and Ruth Kerr (more…)