'Cool cat' of journalism captured decades of Australian history on 35mm film Journalist and broadcaster Wayne Coolwell documented years of Indigenous culture with his 35mm camera. The photographs are going on showcase at the State Library.

State Library of Queensland showcases photo archive of trailblazing Indigenous journalist Wayne Coolwell
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03... #ausmedia #ozhist

It's Monday morning and you're writing your to do list for the week. Why not add "write abstract for JAS 50.4 special issue" on that list?

#OzStudies #CFP #OzHist #OzLit #humanities

Offshore wind farm survey solves 150yo coal supply-ship mystery A renewable energy company's search for an offshore wind farm site leads divers to the wreckage of the City of Hobart, which sank nearly 150 years ago off Victoria's east coast.

Divers have uncovered the wreckage of the City of Hobart, which sank off the eastern Victorian coast in 1877. Surveyors scanning the seabed for a proposed offshore wind farm site helped locate the wreckage.
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-03... #ozhist

50In 2026, the Journal of Australian Studies publishes its 50th volume. To mark this occasion we propose a special issue for release in late 2026. For this volume, we would like to invite scholars to revisit its back issues - perhaps with nostalgia, perhaps with criticism, but always with the purpose of evaluating what Australian Studies has been, what it currently is, and what it can be. We seek articles of that can do one or more of the following: Select a particular article or special issue from the past to speak to from a contemporary perspective Revisit one of your own articles published in JAS to critically revise, update - or perhaps redact past scholarship Scholarly reflections of editorial experiences with the journal focused on characterising “Australian Studies” at the time Critical personal reflections Debates and disputes in Australian studies (on the pages and off of JAS ) A critical history of/commentary on JAS and its relationship to the field of Australian Studies more broadly Critical reviews of key themes the journal has covered (or not covered) over its history Critical reviews of the role of disciplines and disciplinarity within the interdisciplinary formation of Australian Studies We also welcome other proposals and suggestions. Please note that we are open to a wide range of lengths and formats in this context, as appropriate to the form of your contribution, and we invite contributors to specify a nominal word count in their proposal, noting that this cannot exceed 8000 words (inclusive of footnotes). We invite all contributors to provide a 300-500 word abstract proposal for their article by 30 March 2026 . This is to allow us to identify and remedy any potential overlaps, and to identify peer reviewers in advance. Outcomes and feedback on abstracts will be provided by 3 April at the latest. Please submit your abstracts to: journalofaustralianstudies@gmail.com with the subject line: Attn: JAS at 50 Special Issue.

Initial manuscripts are due in ScholarOne by 17 July 2026 ; however, we welcome early submissions. All manuscripts will be peer reviewed. In the spirit of collaboration, we ask that contributors to the special issue also assist with peer reviewing other contributions. After revisions based on the peer review are made, manuscripts will undergo an editorial review, after which they may be returned for further revisions. After this round of editorial revisions, the manuscripts will then be forwarded to our copyeditor by no later than 28 August. Final manuscripts (including peer review, revision, copyediting, and revisions after copyediting) are due by 9 October 2026. If you have any questions, please email the Editors: jess.carniel@unisq.edu.au and chris.hay@flinders.edu.au Production timeline at a glance Abstracts: 30 March 2026 Notification of acceptance: 3 April 2026 Initial manuscript submission: 17 July 2026 Peer review and revision process completed by: 28 August 2026 Final manuscripts (including peer review and copyediting) : 9 October 2026 Publication: December 2026

To celebrate our 50th volume, JAS invites you to contribute to a special issue on (the Journal of) Australian Studies at 50.

Please see the CFP below for details - and please circulate it far and wide!

@intlausstudies.bsky.social

#CFP #OzStudies #OzLit #OzHist #auspol #AustralianStudies

Australia marks 60 years since switching to decimal currency Six decades ago, Australia swapped its old currency for dollars and cents. A catchy jingle sung by a cartoon character named Dollar Bill helped the country adapt.

Remember Dollar Bill? It's been 60 years since Australia made the big change to decimal currency
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02... #ozhist

I’m in the process of tying up all the documentation relating to my time as Creative Technologist-in-Residence at the State Library of Victoria LAB. But as I was looking through the list of outputs, I realised I’d never written anything about the interface I created to explore georeferenced maps from the SLV collection. I also remembered that there were a few improvements I wanted to make to the interface. So instead of spending a few hours writing up a blog post, I’ve spent several days completely overhauling the Georeferenced Maps Explorer. I’m pretty happy with how it’s working now. **Have a play!** Wilson's Prom made up of a patchwork of georeferenced maps and aerial photographs using the Georefrenced Maps Explorer. Try it now! To get started, just click on the basemap. Details of all georeferenced maps within 50km of your selected point will be displayed in the right-hand column. As you move your mouse over the list of results, the boundaries of the georeferenced maps will be displayed on the basemap. This gives you a preview of their location and size. Click on one of the results to display the georeferenced map as a layer on top of the modern basemap. Hover over a result to see the map boundaries You can add as many maps as you like. If your selected maps overlap, you can change the order in which they’re shown. Click on the layers icon in the top left of the basemap. You’ll see a list of the maps that are currently displayed. Use the arrow buttons to move a map backwards or forwards. You can also use the sliders to adjust the opacity of each map. This can make it easier to examine the relationship between maps. For example, you might want to compare the features of a historic map with those of the underlying basemap. Stitch together multiple maps like this series of seven photomaps, and change the opacity to see the features underneath The Explorer’s url updates with every selection you make, so you can bookmark or share a url to return to the same position and collection of maps. For example, this link will take you to the collection of maps of Wilson’s Prom shown above. ## The background If you missed the start of this journey back in November last year, you might be wondering what the georeferenced maps are and where they come from. During my SLV LAB residency, I found a way of hooking the SLV’s digitised maps up to a tool called Allmaps that helps you identify points that connect historic maps to our modern coordinate system. When enough points have been identified, the historic maps can be positioned on a modern basemap. This is known as georeferencing, georectifying, or ‘map warping’, as the results can often appear skewed or warped. Once I had connected things up, I invited the world (or at least the tiny part of it that follows me on social media) to help turn the SLV’s maps into data. And they did! As of today, **1,447** of the SLV’s digitised maps have been georeferenced. This dashboard displays current georeferencing progress. The total number of SLV maps georeferenced over time. It's still going up! There’s still plenty more to do. If you’d like to help, the full instructions are available here. Georeferencing is pretty fun, so why not have a go? You can explore the current collection of georeferenced maps in a few different ways. There’s a dataset you can download or search that gets updated every two hours. This data is loaded into a spatial database that’s used by the Georeferenced Maps Explorer. As part of my recent improvements, I’ve automated this process as well, so the database should be updated with the latest additions every 24 hours. You can also search for georeferenced maps using the my place app. You just enter an address and my place pulls together data from a variety of sources – mixing the georeferenced maps up with parish maps, newspapers, photos, and entries from the Sands & MacDougall’s directories. Georeferenced maps in my place results ## The interface The Georeferenced Maps Explorer uses MapLibre and the Allmaps MapLibre plugin to display the georeferenced maps. You might notice that it looks pretty similar to the Newspapers Explorer and the CUA Browser, both of which use MapLibre, as well as Bulma for CSS. I’ve been trying to settle on a fairly standard set of tools that I can use to create and maintain these sorts of interfaces without too much fuss. Basically I just cut and paste a lot of stuff, then modify as needed. When you click on the basemap in the Explorer, the coordinates are sent off to the spatial database to retrieve details of georeferenced maps within 50km. The spatial database runs in Datasette, which has a built-in JSON API that I use with a set of predefined ‘canned’ queries to pull back the data I need. The results are displayed in the right-hand column, along with square thumbnails generated by the SLV’s IIIF service. The metadata includes distance and area measures. These are used to find and sort the results. There are two distance measures, one from your selected point to the closest boundary of a map, and the other to the centre of a map. If the point is contained within a map’s boundaries, then the ‘bounds’ distance is zero. The search query finds maps whose closest boundaries are within 50km. Originally I sorted the results by this distance and the area of the maps. But this meant that large scale maps that included the selected point (such as maps of the whole of Victoria) appeared above nearby local maps. To make it easier to find maps within an area, I added the ‘centre’ distance and now sort the results using that. This allows nearby maps that don’t include the current point to bubble up towards the top of the search results, above many of the large scale maps. It’s far from perfect, but I think it strikes an ok balance. The data also includes the boundaries of each map as GeoJSON. I use this to generate a MapLibre layer that contains all the boundaries as polygons. The boundaries are hidden until you hover over the corresponding search result, then the opacity of the boundary is flipped to `1` and it magically appears. When you click on a search result, a request is fired off to Allmaps for the full georeferencing data. The Allmaps plugin uses this to retrieve the map image from the SLV’s IIIF service and display the warped map in MapLibre. I looked around for quite a while to find a good way of changing the opacity and order of the warped maps in MapLibre. I eventually found the Map Libre GL Layer Manager which did a lot of what I wanted. I forked the repository and modified the code to get the opacity slider to work with warped map layers. Warped map layers already have a `setOpacity` method, it was just a matter of checking for ‘custom’ layers, then finding where the warped map was in the layer object. if (type == "custom") { layer.implementation.setOpacity(opacity); I also made a few cosmetic changes, such as renaming the tooltips on the reorder buttons from ‘move up’ and ‘move down’ to ‘send back’ and ‘bring forward’ – up and down just confused me. I tried for a long time to find some way of adding tooltips or popups to the warped maps that would show their details when you moved the mouse over them. I found that if you were displaying multiple maps that looked similar, such as the photomaps above, it was difficult to know which map was which. After a chat with the Allmaps developers in their IIIF Slack channel, I realised that this approach wouldn’t work as the warped map layers don’t currently listen to mouse events. Instead I decided to add hover events to the list of results, rather than the maps, and use them to display the map boundaries as described above. This way I get the connection between the map and metadata that I wanted, as well as a useful way of previewing results. I think I’ve probably stopped fiddling with the interface for now. I hope you find it useful! ## The future? There’s more that I’d like to do with the georeferenced maps. In particular, I’ve been thinking about an interface with a slider that showed the changing patchwork of maps over time… **Related resources:** * the code for the Georeferenced Newspapers Explorer and all the other apps and sites I created during my residency is in this GitHub repository * the code to harvest the georeferenced data from Allmaps and build the dashboard is in this GitHub repository * there’s also the full list of all the apps, code, posts, and talks created during my residency

For lovers of maps and/or Victorian history, I wrote up some notes about exploring georeferenced maps from the State Library of Victoria. updates.timsherratt.org/2026/02/12/exploring-geo... #localHistory #spatialHistory #ozHist

How trailblazing strikers jumped out of windows to oppose government control Fed up with restrictions over what they earned and where they could go, pearl boat workers embarked on nine months of industrial action that would change the face of their communities forever. Ninety ...

Torres Strait Islanders commemorate the legacy of 1936 pearl industry maritime strike
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01... #ozhist

The six weeks that would destroy John Howard’s prime ministership. The Howard government made two decisions that would reverberate through Australian politics for the next 20 years, newly released cabinet papers show.
archive.is/CVf2t #auspol #ozhist

Cabinet papers reveal Alexander Downer warned of dire climate change outcomes in 2005 Officials warned of major economic, environmental and social disruption to Australia due to its dependence on coal

The Howard government was warned in 2005 that climate change was occurring more quickly than previously predicted and “many human and natural systems and economic activities in Australia” were vulnerable, newly released documents show.
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne... #auspol #ozhist

Qld government releases Wayne Goss cabinet documents sealed for 30 years The cabinet documents were originally sealed in 1995. Today, they shed light on the decision-making processes of the government of the day.

Unsealed documents from 1995 Queensland Labor government cabinet detail decision-making processes 30 years later
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01... #qldpol #ozhist

Case file of last woman hanged in Australia released after 75 years Jean Lee and her two co-accused were executed for murder in 1950. Handwritten letters from the trio are among items publicly available for the first time since their trial captured the nation's attent...

Handwritten letters among items in the unsealed case file of murderer Jean Lee, who was hanged in 1951 along with her partners in crime, Robert Clayton & Norman Andrews for the 1949 murder of William 'Pop' Kent in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Carlton.
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01... #auslaw #ozhist

How 4ZZZ kept Brisbane loud and proud with the help of bands, battles and beer Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ has withstood political, social and financial pressure for 50 years and it's still thriving as a loud and proud beacon of counterculture.

Brisbane community radio station 4ZZZ celebrates 50 years against all odds
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12... #ausmedia #qldpol #ozhist

Australia's first Mormon warned others of Adelaide's wickedness It's been 185 years this month since Australia's first Mormon arrived in Adelaide. He immediately regretted the move.

Australia's first Mormon arrived in Adelaide 185 years ago and immediately regretted it
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-11... #ozhist

Allan Walters - Wikipedia

The Wikipedia article of the day is on Air Vice Marshal Allan Leslie Walters, a senior commander in the Royal Australian Air Force
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allan_W... #ozhist

Can anyone recommend a paper or book about the destruction of the Jeff Kennett years? #VICpol #OzHist

Stephen Mayne’s not yet here, but his recent chat on ABC Melbourne made me realise I gotta read up.

Australia has thousands of op shops. They started with one woman's idea One hundred years ago, showgirl-turned-philanthropist Millie Tallis spent weeks preparing for a major second-hand goods fundraiser in Melbourne, giving rise to the Australian op shop.

One hundred years ago, showgirl-turned-philanthropist Millie Tallis spent weeks preparing for a major second-hand goods fundraiser in Melbourne, giving rise to the Australian op shop.
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10... #ozhist

How a hand-scribbled note helped reveal Australian undercover agents It started a researcher down a rabbit hole "beyond anything anyone could ever dream up", involving deception, double agents, secret names and plans for a genocide.

Escapee Australians became undercover agents in Yugoslavia during World War II
www.abc.net.au/news/2025-10... #ozhist

Screenshot of journal article. Title: Entering the Arid Zone: Australian Development Diplomacy and UNESCO, 1945–1960. Author: Ruth A. Morgan (Australian National University). Abstract: This article examines the response of Australian governments to UNESCO’s agenda of conducting scientific research in “arid zones” to explore the role of the nation in the liberal internationalism of the postwar world order. UNESCO’s first director-general, Julian Huxley, and its first head of the Natural Sciences Section, Joseph Needham, both positioned science as critical to an internationalist agenda. Australian botanist Bertram Thomas Dickson and his contemporaries shared this belief in the necessary role of science in postwar reconstruction and the betterment of humanity. However, as Dickson’s hitherto unexamined correspondence with Canberra and UNESCO shows, national interests still mattered, as did empire, to the movement of scientific ideas during the first decades after the war. The interwar rise of applied science and its contributions to rural Australia, as historical geographer J. M. Powell argues, had “won” scientists like Dickson and the CSIR official support, which sustained their importance to postwar reconstruction and development efforts. Australia’s contribution to the UNESCO initiative therefore followed Canberra’s assessment of the strategic value of the organisation to its regional ambitions and development diplomacy.

In the second article in the Australian desert special, @ruthamorgan.bsky.social examines Australia's response to the UNESCO agenda on research in "arid zones".

#deserts #CSIRO #UNESCO #science #OpenAccess #OzStudies #OzHist

tinyurl.com/m4wcn734

Screenshot of journal article. Title: The Golden Chariot: Quacks, Quackery and New England Newspapers, 1889–1893. Author: Belinda Beattie, University of New England. Abstract: Quack advertising was widespread in pre-Federation newspapers including those in rural New England (northern New South Wales). Between 1891 and 1892, Madame and Dr Paul Duflot and their Golden Chariot visited the New England area and attracted large crowds. At the same time, the practice of medical science was striving to establish its credibility and set itself apart from alternative health providers. They did this by pejoratively labelling alternative medicine providers as “quacks”. This article contributes to the New England media-history and news-framing literature on quack reporting. It draws on the framing theories of Robert Entman and Paul D’Angelo, alongside Zygmunt Bauman’s concepts of the “stranger” and “strangerhood”. The analysis reveals a striking hypocrisy among local newspapers: while they prominently advertised the quacks and their cures—including the Duflots’ public appearances and private consultations—they simultaneously ran anti-quack news stories. Notably, the popularity of the Duflots suggests that New Englanders were not entirely won over by medical science. Instead, they prioritised personal autonomy, human agency and control over their healthcare decisions.

49.3 cont'd...

Beattie examines the popularity and scepticism surrounding quacks visiting New England in the late 19th century revealing a familiar tension between profit and information in the media.

#OpenAccess #quackery #OzHist #OzStudies

tinyurl.com/yda83dhp

Politics, Pride and Perversion <p>Frank Arkell (1929–1998) was the most successful politician of his generation; an Independent who served as Wollongong’s Lord Mayor (1974–1991) and state member (1984–1991). Arkell dominated Wollon...

Politics, Pride and Perversion
The Rise and Fall of Frank Arkell
This new book by Erik Eklund on Wollongong’s independent Lord Mayor (1974–1991) and state member (1984–1991) is free to download as a PDF.
press.anu.edu.au/publications... #nswpol #auslaw #ozhist

#ResearchNote – Understanding Attitudes to Australian Military History: Some Air Power Observations In mid-June this year, the War Studies Research Group at UNSW Canberra published an excellent and thought-provoking report on ‘Understanding Attitudes to Australian Military History.’ Authored by N…

#newarticle - #ResearchNote – Understanding Attitudes to Australian Military History: Some Air Power Observations drrossmahoney.wordpress.com/2025/06/26/r... #airpowerhistory #ozhist #milhist #plsRT

Australian military historiography Over the past century Australian historiography of war has ranged from strategy, command, battle and defence policy to the social, political, and cultural aspects of conflict. Historians themselves...

Does anyone have access? I want to read this article. www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1... #OzHist

a close up of a red light with the letter e in the center Alt: a close up of a flashing red light

#OzHist #Convict emergency!

There was a website (official Australian archives?) where you could find the description of your convict ancestor and some rudimentary programming could generate a godawful "portrait" based on this description. Is this still live? And/or what or where was it??

Image of an article called "Mystery of the missing G-G letters to the queen" as it appears on page 7 of The Australian in the Wednesday 4 May 2025 edition. Letters sent by former governor-general Michael Jeffery to Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 and 2004 have vanished after an internal review by Government House and an extensive search by the National Archives of Australia did not find any such records. These records, open for public access after 20 years, could not be located after a request made by The Australian to view them. No letters from the queen or her Buckingham Palace staff sent to the then governor-general and Government House staff could be located. This is highly unusual given the extensive vice-regal correspondence of his predecessors that has been opened to the public. Moreover, these letters are classified as official commonwealth records under the Archives Act 1983. Government House conducted an internal review that consulted with third parties outside government in an effort to locate the missing correspondence. “No documents have been located,” a spokesman for Government House told The Australian. “The (Office of the Official Secretary to the Governor-General) has, and continues to, work with the National Archives.” Jeffery, who was governor-general from August 2003 to September 2008, died in December 2020. The existence of letters written in 2003 and 2004 could deal with Australian troops serving in Iraq and Afghanistan and John Howard’s re-election in October 2004, and might offer his perspective on a range of matters. The National Archives undertook an extensive electronic and physical search for the vice-regal correspondence and came up empty-handed. This involved “a review of all consignment listings for transfers received from” Government House, which is the controlling agency.

Letters sent by former governor-general Michael Jeffery to Queen Elizabeth II in 2003 & 2004 have vanished after an internal review by Govt House and an extensive search by the National Archives of Australia did not find any such records.
www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/gover... ($) #auspol #ozhist

The last time the Coalition split it was News Corp's fault too (kind of) With friends like these, huh?

The last time the Coalition split it was News Corp’s fault too (kind of)
www.crikey.com.au/2025/05/23/c... #auspol #qldpol #ozhist

Joh for Canberra - Wikipedia

For those wondering, the last time the federal Coalition split was in 1987, under pressure from the Qld nationals during the failed Joh for Canberra push. The Hawke govt went on to win Labor's biggest HOR majority (until 2025).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joh_for... #auspol #qldpol #ozhist

Black and white photo of two Australian army servicemen in the Middle East c1942 (image credit Australians at War Film Archive)

Black and white photo of a group of WRAACS (Women's Royal Australian Army Corps) servicewomen and a male army officer outside an army barracks building c1953

Annual reminder, if you want to go beyond the flag waving and mythologising surrounding Anzac Day, the Australians at War Film Archive is an online oral history resource featuring compelling interviews with ordinary Australian service men and women #ozhist
👉 australiansatwarfilmarchive.unsw.edu.au

A scanned page from the Australian Women's Weekly, with text and photos of Chinese theatrical performances

A scanned page from the Australian Women's Weekly, with photos of Chinese theatrical performances

Before his career as editor of Studio International, Art Monthly & Art Monthly Australasia, Townsend (1919-2006) played a large role in spreading Chinese arts abroad - including this theatrical tour to Australia and the UK featured here in the Australian Women's Weekly (thanks #Trove!)

#ozhist

Dutton’s weaponisation of citizenship There is a powerful irony in Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s proposal to change the Constitution to enable the government, not the courts, to strip dual Australian citizens of their citizenship.

For those with access, the Saturday Paper has an excellent article today by Kim Rubenstein on Dutton's weaponisation of citizenship: www.thesaturdaypaper.com.au/comment/topic/2025/03/29... #auspol #ozhist

Original post on hcommons.social

The next ARDC Community Data Lab co-design session will be focused on building tools for HASS research using 'Public Interest Documents' – this includes things like Hansard and other government documents. It's run next week on 25 Feb. I think it's important to get more historians involved, so […]