WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.800 Hello, I'm Alison Russell from the History Trust of South Australia. 2 00:00:03.220 --> 00:00:06.840 Welcome to the Adelaide Festival Ideas and today's session, 3 00:00:07.060 --> 00:00:08.180 Democratising History. 4 00:00:09.180 --> 00:00:11.600 Congratulations to you all for pacing yourselves 5 00:00:11.600 --> 00:00:14.560 and making it through to this session today. 6 00:00:15.180 --> 00:00:16.860 I hope you're enjoying yourselves. 7 00:00:17.780 --> 00:00:20.340 As the director of South Australia's History Festival, 8 00:00:20.560 --> 00:00:23.700 one of our state's wonderful suite of community festivals, 9 00:00:23.940 --> 00:00:27.020 I'm very much looking forward to the conversations here this afternoon. 10 00:00:27.020 --> 00:00:31.080 So our session today is Democratising History 11 00:00:31.080 --> 00:00:33.820 and we've got a number of questions that we'll be looking at. 12 00:00:33.960 --> 00:00:36.920 What role does history play in Australian democracy? 13 00:00:37.780 --> 00:00:38.840 Who are its gatekeepers? 14 00:00:39.220 --> 00:00:44.260 Is the ivory tower besieged in ruins or projecting strength? 15 00:00:44.640 --> 00:00:48.340 Is the digital age heralding a new era of informed citizens? 16 00:00:49.320 --> 00:00:51.280 Are Twitterstorians a distraction? 17 00:00:52.240 --> 00:00:54.840 And can historians ever predict the future? 18 00:00:55.080 --> 00:00:56.380 That's a lot of questions. 19 00:00:57.020 --> 00:01:01.460 But thankfully we have somebody very well qualified to reflect upon them. 20 00:01:02.040 --> 00:01:05.480 Dr Nick Brodie is a graduate of three Australian universities. 21 00:01:06.160 --> 00:01:11.160 He's been at ANU, at Flinders and at the University of Tasmania. 22 00:01:11.400 --> 00:01:16.280 He works as an historian, an archaeologist, an archivist and a writer. 23 00:01:16.740 --> 00:01:19.120 He's lectured at the University of Tasmania 24 00:01:19.120 --> 00:01:22.480 but is now primarily an independent researcher and writer. 25 00:01:23.040 --> 00:01:26.840 His doctoral research was in late medieval and early modern 26 00:01:27.020 --> 00:01:30.440 English vagrancy law, which as he noted in his email to me 27 00:01:30.440 --> 00:01:32.140 is a highly marketable skill. 28 00:01:33.820 --> 00:01:36.980 He has moved to subjects beyond that. 29 00:01:37.140 --> 00:01:41.680 He's the author of a number of books, including most recently 1787, 30 00:01:42.140 --> 00:01:44.600 The Lost Chapters of Australia's Beginnings, 31 00:01:44.660 --> 00:01:47.760 and Kin, A Real People's History of Our Nation. 32 00:01:48.080 --> 00:01:49.040 Please make him welcome. 33 00:01:52.720 --> 00:01:53.660 Thanks, Alison. 34 00:01:53.940 --> 00:01:55.680 And thank you everyone for coming. 35 00:01:55.740 --> 00:01:57.000 And to the Adelaide... 36 00:01:57.020 --> 00:01:58.720 Thank you to the Adelaide Festival of Ideas for hosting me. 37 00:01:58.760 --> 00:02:01.400 It's wonderful to be here, especially because Hobart's snowy today. 38 00:02:02.020 --> 00:02:03.940 So I'll quickly run through these questions. 39 00:02:04.300 --> 00:02:06.880 What role does history play in Australian democracy? 40 00:02:07.520 --> 00:02:08.520 Probably very little. 41 00:02:08.600 --> 00:02:09.360 Who are its gatekeepers? 42 00:02:09.460 --> 00:02:09.660 Me. 43 00:02:10.140 --> 00:02:13.220 Is the ivory tower besieged in ruins or projecting strength? 44 00:02:13.380 --> 00:02:13.920 Who really cares? 45 00:02:14.600 --> 00:02:18.160 Is the digital age heralding a new era of informed citizens? 46 00:02:18.360 --> 00:02:18.960 Probably not. 47 00:02:19.440 --> 00:02:21.400 Are Twitter historians a distraction? 48 00:02:21.760 --> 00:02:24.120 Well, I don't really know because I don't use Twitter all that much. 49 00:02:24.640 --> 00:02:26.800 And can historians ever predict the future? 50 00:02:27.020 --> 00:02:28.880 They can try, but not necessarily be accurate. 51 00:02:30.940 --> 00:02:34.420 I thought after writing those and reflecting on them for this paper 52 00:02:34.420 --> 00:02:36.600 that they're kind of wrongly phrased in a way. 53 00:02:36.640 --> 00:02:37.980 And I wrote them, so I can say that. 54 00:02:38.880 --> 00:02:40.300 And I'll come back to that later. 55 00:02:40.380 --> 00:02:44.260 But really, I want to use my story in a way to approach this problem. 56 00:02:44.880 --> 00:02:48.140 I'll put the pen down because I feel like a lecturer standing here doing that. 57 00:02:50.880 --> 00:02:52.260 I'd just like to start... 58 00:02:52.260 --> 00:02:54.340 I normally don't read things anymore. 59 00:02:54.420 --> 00:02:56.120 I usually just ad-lib totally. 60 00:02:57.020 --> 00:02:59.140 But I'd just like to read a little bit from the conclusion of Kin, 61 00:02:59.620 --> 00:03:03.180 which was my first major book with Hardy Grant last year 62 00:03:04.500 --> 00:03:08.500 about telling the nation's story using my family's story as a narrative device 63 00:03:08.980 --> 00:03:10.980 and as a historical research tool. 64 00:03:11.820 --> 00:03:15.980 I think it's important to recognise that it is that as well as the narrative as well. 65 00:03:16.020 --> 00:03:19.540 It's a way of forcing us to look at history in a particular way, 66 00:03:19.600 --> 00:03:21.740 and I think that's quite a useful way of approaching the past. 67 00:03:22.040 --> 00:03:24.460 Just as an aside, I once worked with an archaeologist 68 00:03:24.460 --> 00:03:27.000 who had this whiz-bang digital camera, 69 00:03:27.020 --> 00:03:32.260 and he only ever took 12 shots a day of the site. 70 00:03:32.640 --> 00:03:34.140 And we used to ask him, 71 00:03:34.180 --> 00:03:35.500 why on earth are you doing this? 72 00:03:35.560 --> 00:03:37.640 You could take a million photos and just pick the best one, 73 00:03:37.700 --> 00:03:40.280 and instead he'd spend hours setting up just the right shot. 74 00:03:41.440 --> 00:03:44.480 And then over a pint one night, he said, 75 00:03:44.540 --> 00:03:46.300 because it enforces a discipline. 76 00:03:46.840 --> 00:03:50.100 He still thought in terms of the old film 77 00:03:50.100 --> 00:03:54.300 and thinking about what he was doing and carefully crafting it 78 00:03:54.300 --> 00:03:57.000 rather than using the digital technology to... 79 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:58.980 to make it easier and then do the work later. 80 00:03:59.040 --> 00:04:01.320 He was focusing on doing it properly, 81 00:04:01.560 --> 00:04:02.880 but it forced him to think, 82 00:04:02.900 --> 00:04:06.240 and in a way using my family tree in Kin was a way of doing that, 83 00:04:06.280 --> 00:04:08.620 much in the same way that 1787, 84 00:04:08.660 --> 00:04:10.500 the nature of the archive, 85 00:04:10.600 --> 00:04:13.780 forced me to think in a very particular way about Australian history. 86 00:04:15.080 --> 00:04:17.820 So just from Kin's conclusion, very briefly, 87 00:04:18.420 --> 00:04:20.980 although regularly used as terms by historians 88 00:04:20.980 --> 00:04:23.120 or to describe historical writing, 89 00:04:23.660 --> 00:04:26.740 right-wing and left-wing are almost pointlessly, 90 00:04:26.740 --> 00:04:26.980 but they're not. 91 00:04:26.980 --> 00:04:27.740 They're not really broad characterisations. 92 00:04:28.920 --> 00:04:32.340 The terms derived from a physical way of determining sides 93 00:04:32.340 --> 00:04:33.460 on particular questions, 94 00:04:33.660 --> 00:04:36.000 with one group gathering on the right of a room 95 00:04:36.000 --> 00:04:37.400 and the opposing group on the left 96 00:04:37.400 --> 00:04:39.660 before the moderator counted the results. 97 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:42.920 But it has come to stand for packages of ideas, 98 00:04:43.580 --> 00:04:46.080 and so individual thoughts on particular issues 99 00:04:46.080 --> 00:04:48.540 are forcibly subsumed in the collective, 100 00:04:49.300 --> 00:04:52.240 much like big histories can mute individuals 101 00:04:52.240 --> 00:04:54.220 by constantly addressing groups, 102 00:04:54.480 --> 00:04:56.840 Labour, Liberal, National, Green, 103 00:04:56.980 --> 00:04:59.380 Princes, Merchants, Peasants, Convicts, 104 00:04:59.380 --> 00:05:03.160 Aborigines, Women, Upper Classes, Middle Classes, Lower Classes, 105 00:05:03.160 --> 00:05:04.620 etc. ad nauseam. 106 00:05:05.000 --> 00:05:07.280 We seem to have forgotten that the winged metaphor 107 00:05:08.120 --> 00:05:11.260 serves solely to affirm the irreconcilability of ideas, 108 00:05:11.920 --> 00:05:12.900 ideologies and people, 109 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:15.160 and the parties to which they are ascribed. 110 00:05:16.780 --> 00:05:20.620 And to map human history as a mostly binary perpetual struggle, 111 00:05:21.440 --> 00:05:23.860 each side variously flapping up and down, 112 00:05:24.420 --> 00:05:25.380 vigorously going nowhere. 113 00:05:26.980 --> 00:05:29.880 So I wrote that in 2014 or early 2015, 114 00:05:30.080 --> 00:05:32.040 published mid-year last year. 115 00:05:32.780 --> 00:05:33.960 And then a couple of days ago, 116 00:05:34.040 --> 00:05:37.460 I read that every single speaker in the three-day line-up is a lefty. 117 00:05:39.400 --> 00:05:43.740 Despite having so diligently trying to frame myself as a centrist 118 00:05:43.740 --> 00:05:46.460 to be as marketable as possible to as many people as possible. 119 00:05:48.180 --> 00:05:50.240 And I think that in a way tells us 120 00:05:50.240 --> 00:05:52.460 what one of the big issues with Australian history is. 121 00:05:52.700 --> 00:05:54.800 There are people who make decisions, 122 00:05:54.980 --> 00:05:56.480 make up their mind without actually 123 00:05:56.480 --> 00:05:57.780 ever engaging with it. 124 00:05:58.400 --> 00:06:01.560 And it's this problem of disengagement, I suppose, 125 00:06:01.880 --> 00:06:05.040 that I've been trying to deal with over the last few years, 126 00:06:05.220 --> 00:06:07.680 on a personal note as well as a professional one. 127 00:06:08.520 --> 00:06:10.100 So I'd like to backtrack a little bit 128 00:06:10.100 --> 00:06:14.220 and just use three years to kind of tell in brief my story 129 00:06:14.220 --> 00:06:16.540 and how I came to be doing this history, 130 00:06:16.640 --> 00:06:19.100 and then to come back to where we are at the moment. 131 00:06:19.920 --> 00:06:22.880 I picked 1999 just quite arbitrarily 132 00:06:22.880 --> 00:06:26.320 because it's the first year of the Festival of Ideas in Adelaide. 133 00:06:27.000 --> 00:06:31.860 And got to thinking about what 1999 meant for me. 134 00:06:32.160 --> 00:06:36.880 In 1999, I was in year 12, I was finishing my HSC. 135 00:06:37.500 --> 00:06:39.860 I was told the other day I'm one of the youngest speakers, 136 00:06:40.000 --> 00:06:43.860 so I'm probably the only person who can say that. 137 00:06:44.580 --> 00:06:46.960 1999 for me meant Nintendo 64. 138 00:06:47.400 --> 00:06:49.660 That means Mario Kart, racing around, 139 00:06:50.480 --> 00:06:52.360 and Goldeneye, shooting people. 140 00:06:53.900 --> 00:06:55.780 Basically playing games with my mates 141 00:06:56.480 --> 00:07:00.160 and much to Mum's distress, reading The Hobbit during my examination period. 142 00:07:00.740 --> 00:07:03.540 What I was being examined on was Tacitus. 143 00:07:04.040 --> 00:07:05.740 I was obsessed with history, 144 00:07:07.160 --> 00:07:11.920 and I studied 2A, I think it was called 2A, advanced. 145 00:07:12.040 --> 00:07:14.840 It was like a double unit, plus a level 3 advanced, 146 00:07:14.960 --> 00:07:16.800 so I was also doing an extra one. 147 00:07:17.160 --> 00:07:18.380 So I really loved history. 148 00:07:18.440 --> 00:07:19.820 I was like the ultimate history nerd 149 00:07:19.820 --> 00:07:23.180 in my very little school in Junean country, New South Wales, 150 00:07:23.300 --> 00:07:26.220 which if you can think of a map, it's near Wagga. 151 00:07:26.880 --> 00:07:28.620 Roughly halfway between Sydney and Melbourne. 152 00:07:28.960 --> 00:07:32.720 You know, railway country town, very isolated, 153 00:07:33.420 --> 00:07:35.460 very, very Australian I've come to realise 154 00:07:35.460 --> 00:07:41.020 when I once was laughed at at an international customs checkpoint 155 00:07:41.020 --> 00:07:44.260 when the person saw that my birthplace was called Wagga Wagga. 156 00:07:44.600 --> 00:07:47.100 I saw them look and have a little chuckle at that. 157 00:07:47.420 --> 00:07:49.980 Very Australian, but I was not doing Australian history, 158 00:07:50.060 --> 00:07:50.960 I was doing Roman history. 159 00:07:51.320 --> 00:07:53.580 And there are a number of reasons for that, 160 00:07:53.700 --> 00:07:56.400 but fundamentally it comes down to the fact that Australian history, 161 00:07:56.400 --> 00:08:00.500 as taught, and when I say taught I really mean forced down my throat, 162 00:08:00.780 --> 00:08:05.560 during the course of all of my school history was very dull. 163 00:08:05.940 --> 00:08:07.940 It was very hard to engage with. 164 00:08:08.280 --> 00:08:14.000 It was transparently nationalist by the time that I was doing my HSC. 165 00:08:14.960 --> 00:08:21.940 The late 1990s I'm sure most of you will realise is of course the era of Howard and Hansonism, 166 00:08:22.080 --> 00:08:26.380 and so it was very easy to just not engage with history. 167 00:08:26.380 --> 00:08:28.780 I didn't engage with history at all at that period, Australian history. 168 00:08:29.880 --> 00:08:30.740 But I read almost everything. 169 00:08:31.000 --> 00:08:33.800 I spent most of Year 8 reading the ancient Greek classics, 170 00:08:34.100 --> 00:08:38.480 committed part of Pericles funeral oration to memory as one does, 171 00:08:39.760 --> 00:08:43.740 and read all the archaeological texts that are could for any part of the world, 172 00:08:44.620 --> 00:08:50.880 and then of course was doing Roman history at the HSC level. 173 00:08:52.320 --> 00:08:56.320 And Tacitus as a subject, Tacitus of course is a Roman history, 174 00:08:56.380 --> 00:09:02.220 writing histories of Rome from a period a couple of hundred years 175 00:09:02.220 --> 00:09:04.040 after the growth of the empire, 176 00:09:04.100 --> 00:09:06.240 the shift from republican to imperial Rome. 177 00:09:06.620 --> 00:09:10.380 And we were looking at his writings about Augustus, 178 00:09:10.380 --> 00:09:12.840 Caesar and Augustus and so on. 179 00:09:13.480 --> 00:09:16.440 So it was really a historical world for me 180 00:09:16.440 --> 00:09:19.920 that was framed with discourses between autocracy 181 00:09:19.920 --> 00:09:23.700 and more democratic forms of government. 182 00:09:23.700 --> 00:09:27.200 Not that you would really think the Senate of Rome is necessarily democratic, 183 00:09:27.460 --> 00:09:29.260 but it's much more democratic than, of course, 184 00:09:29.300 --> 00:09:31.720 Augustan Rome, where Augustus says what goes. 185 00:09:32.700 --> 00:09:34.920 So that discourse was kind of in my head, 186 00:09:35.020 --> 00:09:36.520 while the Australian historians, 187 00:09:36.780 --> 00:09:39.200 those who did Australian history at HSC level, 188 00:09:39.300 --> 00:09:40.500 were studying World War I. 189 00:09:41.020 --> 00:09:47.240 From there, 1999 is a year where I really think about things like Columbine. 190 00:09:47.920 --> 00:09:49.720 Columbine, for me and for my generation, 191 00:09:49.800 --> 00:09:53.280 was probably much more significant than many of the other world events. 192 00:09:53.280 --> 00:09:54.920 It really struck home to us. 193 00:09:56.220 --> 00:10:00.220 It was an insight into the way that the globalisation 194 00:10:00.220 --> 00:10:02.240 of the new millennium would take place. 195 00:10:02.380 --> 00:10:03.500 That, of course, is the other thing. 196 00:10:03.580 --> 00:10:06.640 In 1999, I was the only person in my school, 197 00:10:06.780 --> 00:10:08.500 in my history advanced class of one, 198 00:10:10.020 --> 00:10:13.840 who I was thrown in with the rest of another class, 199 00:10:15.120 --> 00:10:17.300 who thought that the millennium didn't start in the year 2000. 200 00:10:19.220 --> 00:10:20.940 So I was a bit of an oddball that way. 201 00:10:22.360 --> 00:10:23.020 And, of course, 202 00:10:23.280 --> 00:10:25.540 1999 was also the year of the Republican referendum. 203 00:10:25.880 --> 00:10:29.940 So, again, Tacitus and Australian history should have aligned for me. 204 00:10:30.380 --> 00:10:33.240 And I should have been interested and engaged. 205 00:10:34.220 --> 00:10:35.600 But I wasn't. 206 00:10:35.600 --> 00:10:37.220 And I wasn't effectively engaged. 207 00:10:37.300 --> 00:10:40.800 As a relatively history nerd kind of person, 208 00:10:41.440 --> 00:10:43.020 something about Australian history 209 00:10:43.020 --> 00:10:44.820 and the way it was being talked about and discussed 210 00:10:44.820 --> 00:10:46.600 was just really not grabbing me. 211 00:10:47.540 --> 00:10:49.580 And, of course, I'm speaking now from the perspective 212 00:10:49.580 --> 00:10:52.120 of someone who's just written two Australian history books. 213 00:10:52.120 --> 00:10:54.880 And so I'm hoping you will see how I gradually got there. 214 00:10:55.460 --> 00:10:58.220 So I went off to university, to the ANU, 215 00:10:58.240 --> 00:11:02.040 to study Bachelor of Arts and Law. 216 00:11:02.380 --> 00:11:05.540 I eventually gave the law away about halfway through 217 00:11:05.540 --> 00:11:08.980 once I realised that the property law that I was studying 218 00:11:08.980 --> 00:11:11.400 was pretty much the same property law I was studying 219 00:11:11.400 --> 00:11:13.420 in the medieval units at the time. 220 00:11:14.340 --> 00:11:17.280 I just couldn't understand how that made sense. 221 00:11:18.560 --> 00:11:19.480 And I did OK. 222 00:11:19.560 --> 00:11:20.560 It wasn't that I was failing. 223 00:11:20.680 --> 00:11:21.120 It was just... 224 00:11:21.120 --> 00:11:21.340 Just... 225 00:11:21.760 --> 00:11:23.340 Didn't agree with me something about it. 226 00:11:23.500 --> 00:11:26.860 But when I went to enrol in the arts subjects, 227 00:11:26.960 --> 00:11:28.580 it was archaeology that drew me to ANU. 228 00:11:28.860 --> 00:11:30.420 So I did archaeology all the way 229 00:11:30.420 --> 00:11:33.080 and basically picked every bit of the world 230 00:11:33.080 --> 00:11:35.140 to try and study at some point along the way. 231 00:11:36.140 --> 00:11:38.040 And the other subject I enrolled in was German. 232 00:11:38.460 --> 00:11:39.960 And that lasted about two weeks 233 00:11:40.380 --> 00:11:42.420 because I realised you had to turn up every day 234 00:11:42.420 --> 00:11:45.360 at nine o'clock in the morning to do German. 235 00:11:46.100 --> 00:11:49.320 And I had people at the college coming and asking me 236 00:11:49.320 --> 00:11:50.400 for help with their history essays. 237 00:11:51.340 --> 00:11:53.300 And I realised that actually history is what I should be doing. 238 00:11:53.400 --> 00:11:55.360 And of course I went off and enrolled in 239 00:11:56.460 --> 00:11:58.600 Rome Republic to Empire, it was called. 240 00:11:58.800 --> 00:12:01.480 And did no reading because of course I just untested this 241 00:12:01.480 --> 00:12:03.460 and got through with flying colours. 242 00:12:04.000 --> 00:12:05.860 But it set me back on the path to history. 243 00:12:05.920 --> 00:12:06.900 It was always my great love. 244 00:12:07.280 --> 00:12:09.560 And so from then on I was doing history and archaeology 245 00:12:09.560 --> 00:12:11.440 all the way, as much as possible. 246 00:12:11.800 --> 00:12:12.980 But with one exception. 247 00:12:13.740 --> 00:12:15.220 I avoided Australian history. 248 00:12:16.680 --> 00:12:18.420 Just absolutely avoided it. 249 00:12:18.540 --> 00:12:20.680 And if there was a subject choice between... 250 00:12:21.380 --> 00:12:24.220 Jane Austen's England and Australian history, 251 00:12:24.320 --> 00:12:25.360 I would choose Jane Austen. 252 00:12:25.380 --> 00:12:28.960 If there was a subject choice between ancient China 253 00:12:28.960 --> 00:12:31.920 and something to do with Australia, I would choose China. 254 00:12:32.000 --> 00:12:33.760 I would choose anything other than Australian history 255 00:12:33.760 --> 00:12:37.880 until finally in honours I was forced to take one unit. 256 00:12:38.140 --> 00:12:39.300 And that unit was called 257 00:12:39.300 --> 00:12:42.380 Race and Ethnic Relations in Australian History. 258 00:12:42.660 --> 00:12:44.860 And it was a bit of a mind-blower, I will admit that. 259 00:12:45.280 --> 00:12:48.200 It opened to me that world of frontier conflict 260 00:12:48.200 --> 00:12:50.340 and discussion, 261 00:12:51.340 --> 00:12:52.960 Australia really had trouble with, 262 00:12:53.700 --> 00:12:54.660 making exciting. 263 00:12:55.420 --> 00:13:01.880 It is a topic that was so extremely politicised and sensitive 264 00:13:02.460 --> 00:13:04.500 that it was hard to engage with 265 00:13:04.500 --> 00:13:06.480 until I actually looked at it 266 00:13:06.480 --> 00:13:08.620 and then realised it's a really interesting story, 267 00:13:08.860 --> 00:13:11.080 regardless of what take you have on it. 268 00:13:11.220 --> 00:13:12.960 It's a very interesting thing to look at 269 00:13:12.960 --> 00:13:14.320 and it's a very interesting thing to study. 270 00:13:15.120 --> 00:13:18.060 I'll move forward a little bit now to 2007. 271 00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:21.080 2007 I was on the Nintendo, 272 00:13:21.340 --> 00:13:22.900 I was still playing Mario Kart, 273 00:13:23.000 --> 00:13:25.260 but I was actually able to turn the controller now. 274 00:13:25.320 --> 00:13:26.220 Technology had advanced 275 00:13:26.220 --> 00:13:28.520 and we were no longer on dial-up. 276 00:13:29.920 --> 00:13:31.700 Fortunately things had progressed a little bit. 277 00:13:33.000 --> 00:13:34.860 A couple of major innovations of the period, 278 00:13:34.980 --> 00:13:36.100 2004, Facebook. 279 00:13:37.160 --> 00:13:38.260 2006, Twitter. 280 00:13:38.580 --> 00:13:39.920 2006, Wikileaks. 281 00:13:40.520 --> 00:13:42.640 So it was really quite a new world 282 00:13:42.640 --> 00:13:46.900 of digital technology and digital entertainment. 283 00:13:47.360 --> 00:13:49.180 I'd always been a bit of a computer nerd, 284 00:13:49.340 --> 00:13:50.820 learned how to program BASIC. 285 00:13:51.340 --> 00:13:54.260 Back in the 80s on a big chunky computer of Dad's. 286 00:13:56.040 --> 00:13:59.760 But the mid to late 2000s I think was a period 287 00:13:59.760 --> 00:14:01.680 where technology was really engaging 288 00:14:01.680 --> 00:14:02.740 and changing the landscape. 289 00:14:03.440 --> 00:14:05.300 And by then I was enrolled in a PhD. 290 00:14:05.820 --> 00:14:07.780 And as Alison pointed out earlier, 291 00:14:07.840 --> 00:14:11.400 the subject of the PhD was medieval vagrancy law, 292 00:14:11.560 --> 00:14:14.180 specifically the regulation of beggary, 293 00:14:14.260 --> 00:14:16.200 vagabondage and poor relief in England 294 00:14:16.200 --> 00:14:19.080 between 1495 and 1572. 295 00:14:21.440 --> 00:14:23.240 I don't get to talk about it very often, 296 00:14:23.260 --> 00:14:25.260 so I have to take the chance. 297 00:14:27.280 --> 00:14:29.100 2007, the reason I've picked that year 298 00:14:29.100 --> 00:14:31.340 is not only because I was a year into a PhD, 299 00:14:31.520 --> 00:14:34.580 but it was my first national conference opportunity. 300 00:14:34.960 --> 00:14:36.880 And that of course was Adelaide that I came to 301 00:14:36.880 --> 00:14:38.060 for ANZAMEM, 302 00:14:38.060 --> 00:14:40.100 the Australian Medieval Early Modern Conference. 303 00:14:41.680 --> 00:14:43.580 And there I was starting to talk about 304 00:14:43.580 --> 00:14:45.320 what I was starting to find in my PhD. 305 00:14:45.980 --> 00:14:48.000 All the way through my studies I'd got interested 306 00:14:48.000 --> 00:14:49.940 not so much in the content of history. 307 00:14:50.100 --> 00:14:51.160 I mean that's always something that, 308 00:14:51.160 --> 00:14:51.900 that has interested me. 309 00:14:51.920 --> 00:14:53.240 But in the ways of doing history, 310 00:14:53.380 --> 00:14:55.280 how history is worked out. 311 00:14:55.440 --> 00:14:57.580 That's what most interested me about Tacitus. 312 00:14:57.680 --> 00:14:58.920 It's not what Tacitus had to say. 313 00:14:59.000 --> 00:15:00.900 It's not so much what Augustus did. 314 00:15:01.120 --> 00:15:02.520 But how did Tacitus know? 315 00:15:02.820 --> 00:15:05.180 You know, you get those little hints of documents 316 00:15:05.180 --> 00:15:06.080 that he might have read. 317 00:15:06.800 --> 00:15:09.140 Or little bits of oral tradition he's got. 318 00:15:09.680 --> 00:15:12.120 And those are the bits that really grabbed me. 319 00:15:12.220 --> 00:15:13.500 And they grabbed me all the way through 320 00:15:13.500 --> 00:15:16.060 such that by the time I was doing PhD research, 321 00:15:16.460 --> 00:15:17.920 that's what I was obsessed with. 322 00:15:18.160 --> 00:15:19.920 I've only recently realised the term, 323 00:15:20.000 --> 00:15:20.860 when people ask me, 324 00:15:20.860 --> 00:15:23.180 to describe what sort of a historian I am. 325 00:15:23.240 --> 00:15:25.320 You know, I've got a medieval PhD 326 00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:27.760 and I write Australian history books 327 00:15:27.760 --> 00:15:31.060 and write things about other parts of the world as well. 328 00:15:31.560 --> 00:15:32.740 I'm a methodologist. 329 00:15:33.240 --> 00:15:34.620 I like methodology. 330 00:15:34.880 --> 00:15:37.060 I like thinking about how history comes together 331 00:15:37.060 --> 00:15:41.260 and how it can be discussed. 332 00:15:41.320 --> 00:15:43.260 And of course I realised that that is also in part 333 00:15:43.260 --> 00:15:45.640 because I was studying my undergraduate 334 00:15:45.640 --> 00:15:48.480 through the height of the post-modernist fad. 335 00:15:49.180 --> 00:15:50.480 And Australian history, 336 00:15:50.860 --> 00:15:52.080 was infected with it. 337 00:15:52.380 --> 00:15:54.120 Absolutely infected with it. 338 00:15:54.700 --> 00:15:57.700 And I understand and appreciate the post-modernist urge. 339 00:15:57.920 --> 00:15:59.080 I'm not saying it's all garbage. 340 00:15:59.320 --> 00:16:00.900 But as an undergraduate student, 341 00:16:01.140 --> 00:16:02.960 it's very easy to think that it is. 342 00:16:03.980 --> 00:16:05.480 And in part that's because 343 00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:08.120 the Australian history wars were taking place. 344 00:16:08.940 --> 00:16:11.640 I've just got the date here somewhere. 345 00:16:12.460 --> 00:16:13.400 Yes, 2002, 346 00:16:13.700 --> 00:16:16.080 The Fabrication of Aboriginal History by Keith Winshuttle, 347 00:16:16.120 --> 00:16:17.200 Volume 1 was published. 348 00:16:17.480 --> 00:16:19.060 And that in a way changed the landscape. 349 00:16:19.140 --> 00:16:20.180 And that's something that I was quite, 350 00:16:20.860 --> 00:16:22.860 aware of but not really focused on. 351 00:16:23.140 --> 00:16:25.960 It was the kind of thing that made it into the major dailies. 352 00:16:26.120 --> 00:16:28.420 So because of that I was vaguely aware of it. 353 00:16:28.480 --> 00:16:30.380 But because I wasn't interested in Australian history, 354 00:16:30.480 --> 00:16:31.780 I wasn't really engaged with it. 355 00:16:32.300 --> 00:16:34.600 And I could kind of see the point, I suppose, 356 00:16:35.620 --> 00:16:38.860 that history had become a little bit detached from the archive. 357 00:16:39.880 --> 00:16:44.040 And anybody who started to do any look into frontier conflict 358 00:16:44.040 --> 00:16:45.460 will know that Winshuttle is wrong. 359 00:16:45.640 --> 00:16:46.820 There's no doubt about that. 360 00:16:47.300 --> 00:16:48.180 Absolutely wrong. 361 00:16:49.300 --> 00:16:50.840 But he did have a bit of a... 362 00:16:50.860 --> 00:16:55.940 There was a point about the nature of historical research at that time. 363 00:16:56.160 --> 00:16:57.680 How's that for upsetting the... 364 00:16:59.380 --> 00:17:00.300 I'm a lefty. 365 00:17:01.020 --> 00:17:02.080 We're all lefties thing. 366 00:17:02.680 --> 00:17:08.440 And so that really got me thinking in terms of PhD 367 00:17:08.440 --> 00:17:11.040 about how can you know what history is? 368 00:17:11.120 --> 00:17:14.300 That was always the thing that the kind of vacuous student said in the tutorials. 369 00:17:14.520 --> 00:17:16.220 How can we ever know this is what it is? 370 00:17:17.380 --> 00:17:19.260 And I suppose I got a bit hostile. 371 00:17:19.380 --> 00:17:20.460 There was one girl in particular, 372 00:17:20.460 --> 00:17:22.000 I remember, in a tutorial. 373 00:17:22.200 --> 00:17:24.660 And the subject was the medieval church. 374 00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:28.780 And this is one of my go-to examples of how difficult it is. 375 00:17:28.880 --> 00:17:30.620 And it's the moment that I started talking, actually. 376 00:17:30.780 --> 00:17:32.800 For anybody who's ever taught a tutorial, 377 00:17:32.940 --> 00:17:34.100 we know that they fall into groups. 378 00:17:34.320 --> 00:17:36.380 And I was the quiet student who did all the reading 379 00:17:36.380 --> 00:17:39.160 but didn't say anything until this point. 380 00:17:39.260 --> 00:17:42.900 And this point was when a girl brought out her Gideon's Red Bible 381 00:17:42.900 --> 00:17:47.560 in a tutorial and opened it up and showed it around to say, 382 00:17:48.240 --> 00:17:49.360 there was no Pope. 383 00:17:50.460 --> 00:17:51.700 And I was like... 384 00:17:52.720 --> 00:17:55.180 But we're studying medieval church history. 385 00:17:55.320 --> 00:17:59.280 It doesn't matter if you don't believe there should be a Pope. 386 00:17:59.780 --> 00:18:00.620 That's understandable. 387 00:18:01.240 --> 00:18:04.660 But in medieval Europe, there was a guy who was called the Pope. 388 00:18:04.780 --> 00:18:07.700 And lots of other people recognised this guy called the Pope. 389 00:18:08.040 --> 00:18:09.320 And that's what got me talking. 390 00:18:09.480 --> 00:18:10.860 And it was that combative style, 391 00:18:11.060 --> 00:18:15.020 that reactionary approach to talking and discussing. 392 00:18:15.260 --> 00:18:18.080 And so I understand that impulse as well in Australian history. 393 00:18:18.140 --> 00:18:18.740 And that is strong. 394 00:18:20.460 --> 00:18:25.620 One of the funny things about 1787 being released recently 395 00:18:25.620 --> 00:18:27.780 is as part of the lead-up, 396 00:18:27.820 --> 00:18:29.700 there was a competition to... 397 00:18:30.300 --> 00:18:32.460 an online Facebook competition 398 00:18:32.920 --> 00:18:34.480 giving away a couple of books 399 00:18:35.080 --> 00:18:39.740 for people to write a comment as to why they thought they should get it. 400 00:18:40.180 --> 00:18:43.260 And I was spying on it, as you do, 401 00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:47.880 and getting fascinated with the results, with the comments, 402 00:18:47.980 --> 00:18:49.900 because it gives you a bit of an idea as to what people are expecting. 403 00:18:50.460 --> 00:18:52.500 And I know what's in the book, but they don't yet. 404 00:18:52.520 --> 00:18:53.820 They've only really got the blurb to go on. 405 00:18:54.340 --> 00:18:57.100 And one guy, and I wish he won, because he really deserves the book, 406 00:18:57.160 --> 00:18:58.740 he said, it's more lefty garbage. 407 00:18:59.800 --> 00:19:00.600 Full stop. 408 00:19:01.940 --> 00:19:03.960 Clearly hadn't read it, clearly hadn't engaged with it. 409 00:19:04.060 --> 00:19:06.080 And it's that reactionary style. 410 00:19:06.280 --> 00:19:09.660 But anyway, it was that reactionary style that got me talking about history 411 00:19:09.660 --> 00:19:12.260 and thinking and engaging, 412 00:19:12.440 --> 00:19:15.360 while also thinking about the problem of how do you demonstrate something 413 00:19:15.360 --> 00:19:18.420 to somebody who is so adamantly opposed to it. 414 00:19:19.160 --> 00:19:20.440 That is really one of the... 415 00:19:20.440 --> 00:19:22.820 the great problems for history generally, 416 00:19:22.920 --> 00:19:24.180 but Australian history in particular, 417 00:19:24.860 --> 00:19:27.640 where we do have very strong national narratives, 418 00:19:27.700 --> 00:19:30.060 much stronger than most other countries, really. 419 00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:33.340 When you look at the nations around the world, 420 00:19:34.440 --> 00:19:36.620 these colonial settler countries like ours 421 00:19:36.620 --> 00:19:38.100 have strong national narratives 422 00:19:38.100 --> 00:19:40.580 because they were part of the colonial process. 423 00:19:41.060 --> 00:19:43.980 And they were developed a century ago 424 00:19:43.980 --> 00:19:46.280 and have stuck ever since. 425 00:19:46.760 --> 00:19:49.260 So that's kind of on the periphery of my consciousness 426 00:19:49.260 --> 00:19:50.080 as I'm doing a... 427 00:19:50.440 --> 00:19:52.020 PhD into medieval vagrancy. 428 00:19:53.040 --> 00:19:56.060 Looking at medieval vagrancy also taught me to think 429 00:19:56.060 --> 00:20:00.220 about how ideas get entrenched over a very long time. 430 00:20:00.660 --> 00:20:01.740 Because I went off... 431 00:20:01.740 --> 00:20:04.180 I just started drifting into it 432 00:20:04.180 --> 00:20:06.420 because I got interested in these things called medieval hospitals. 433 00:20:06.800 --> 00:20:09.180 Medieval hospitals are basically monastic institutions 434 00:20:09.860 --> 00:20:12.940 which operated what we now call almshouses. 435 00:20:14.340 --> 00:20:17.340 They're like little monasteries for poor people or sick people. 436 00:20:17.980 --> 00:20:20.420 And it's part of the social welfare system. 437 00:20:20.420 --> 00:20:22.720 It's part of the social welfare apparatus of medieval Europe 438 00:20:22.720 --> 00:20:25.920 which was done away with at the Reformation, by and large, 439 00:20:27.700 --> 00:20:31.120 in Protestant countries and much of Catholic Europe later anyway. 440 00:20:31.660 --> 00:20:33.860 And so I got interested in those things 441 00:20:33.860 --> 00:20:36.320 and that's what I really set off to study first. 442 00:20:36.900 --> 00:20:39.320 And I do what you do and you read the literature 443 00:20:39.320 --> 00:20:41.180 and you think to yourself, you know, 444 00:20:41.200 --> 00:20:42.160 I've got to be on top of this. 445 00:20:42.220 --> 00:20:44.720 And as I did so, I realised some other people had made some mistakes. 446 00:20:45.100 --> 00:20:47.580 And what they had made mistakes about was the law. 447 00:20:47.980 --> 00:20:49.440 Funnily enough, having ditched law, 448 00:20:50.520 --> 00:20:54.760 the legal apparatus that they were talking about 449 00:20:54.760 --> 00:20:59.540 and these shift moments and these moments of important change were wrong. 450 00:20:59.700 --> 00:21:05.440 The historians were focusing upon these instances of legislative action 451 00:21:05.440 --> 00:21:10.540 as significant indicators of social and cultural change. 452 00:21:10.840 --> 00:21:16.000 When I recognised that really there were some editorial mistakes 453 00:21:16.000 --> 00:21:19.400 in the Statutes of the Realm volumes, 454 00:21:19.520 --> 00:21:20.280 which is the kind of... 455 00:21:20.420 --> 00:21:21.660 definitive editorial text. 456 00:21:21.760 --> 00:21:22.440 How nerdy is this? 457 00:21:23.900 --> 00:21:26.700 And because of that, laws were in force 458 00:21:27.360 --> 00:21:29.240 when the historians thought they weren't, 459 00:21:30.000 --> 00:21:31.380 which means that there's continuity. 460 00:21:31.760 --> 00:21:33.860 There's much greater continuity, essentially. 461 00:21:34.100 --> 00:21:34.980 I mean, it's four years' work. 462 00:21:35.100 --> 00:21:36.840 There's more continuity than people thought. 463 00:21:39.220 --> 00:21:42.220 But it meant that that idea that there was change 464 00:21:42.220 --> 00:21:43.960 had been around for a long time. 465 00:21:44.100 --> 00:21:46.220 It had been around since those statutes had been edited. 466 00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:49.100 So it's like 400 years people had been thinking 467 00:21:49.100 --> 00:21:50.280 this is what had happened. 468 00:21:50.420 --> 00:21:52.600 And they'd been telling themselves that for 400 years. 469 00:21:52.780 --> 00:21:53.460 And it's quite... 470 00:21:53.460 --> 00:21:55.260 It seems really obscure, 471 00:21:55.340 --> 00:21:57.740 but it's quite an important part of English national history 472 00:21:57.740 --> 00:21:59.760 because it's the development of the welfare state. 473 00:22:00.340 --> 00:22:03.560 England prides itself on having the first national welfare state. 474 00:22:04.860 --> 00:22:06.100 And in a part... 475 00:22:06.100 --> 00:22:07.760 In a way, really, it has it 476 00:22:07.760 --> 00:22:09.400 because it didn't get rid of it at the Reformation, 477 00:22:10.560 --> 00:22:12.800 even though it had a narrative that it developed it afterwards. 478 00:22:15.260 --> 00:22:18.180 And so I went on a full-scale attack, as you do in a PhD, 479 00:22:18.400 --> 00:22:19.540 and eviscerated it. 480 00:22:20.420 --> 00:22:22.940 And had trouble getting through the markers, as you do, 481 00:22:23.600 --> 00:22:24.900 who don't like hearing that. 482 00:22:26.180 --> 00:22:28.160 Which, in a way, has set up my problem for now. 483 00:22:29.320 --> 00:22:31.380 Medieval vagrancy is not a very marketable skill. 484 00:22:31.520 --> 00:22:33.200 I still write and publish medieval history 485 00:22:33.200 --> 00:22:34.600 because it interests me. 486 00:22:34.980 --> 00:22:38.740 And I think one role that history does play in a democracy is escapism. 487 00:22:38.840 --> 00:22:42.080 And I'm one of those people who certainly indulges in the escapism of it. 488 00:22:43.360 --> 00:22:46.340 But it also got me thinking about how to tell a story 489 00:22:46.340 --> 00:22:47.980 when there is such a problem with it. 490 00:22:48.980 --> 00:22:49.860 Make or break. 491 00:22:49.860 --> 00:22:52.260 You can't just break. 492 00:22:53.000 --> 00:22:54.460 You have to make as well. 493 00:22:54.740 --> 00:22:56.160 And in the context of a PhD, 494 00:22:56.460 --> 00:22:58.320 it's quite easy to just focus on the break part. 495 00:22:58.700 --> 00:23:01.360 But in terms of writing national narratives 496 00:23:01.360 --> 00:23:04.740 for popular consumption, as Kyn and 1787 are, 497 00:23:05.840 --> 00:23:09.100 and I'm quite lucky to have this opportunity to do this. 498 00:23:09.120 --> 00:23:12.620 Most historians, unfortunately, don't have this opportunity. 499 00:23:13.080 --> 00:23:14.920 And so I recognise how lucky I am. 500 00:23:15.320 --> 00:23:17.640 But there's a difficulty. 501 00:23:17.900 --> 00:23:18.260 There's a difficulty. 502 00:23:18.560 --> 00:23:19.780 Windshuttle's mistake, in a way, 503 00:23:19.860 --> 00:23:21.200 with the fabrication of Aboriginal history, 504 00:23:21.300 --> 00:23:22.320 is he didn't pose an alternative. 505 00:23:22.640 --> 00:23:25.880 He said that what the historians were saying was wrong. 506 00:23:26.300 --> 00:23:29.200 And the alternative was really just the old version, 507 00:23:29.300 --> 00:23:30.460 which is already out of date. 508 00:23:31.140 --> 00:23:33.960 And so what do I do now when I'm looking at national history 509 00:23:33.960 --> 00:23:36.760 and the big sweep of Australia's story? 510 00:23:37.040 --> 00:23:40.160 And I think it is important to continue to have a sort of a story. 511 00:23:40.340 --> 00:23:42.360 A national story is a useful touchstone 512 00:23:44.200 --> 00:23:46.220 for our sense of self, 513 00:23:46.400 --> 00:23:49.840 for our engagement with where we are, 514 00:23:49.860 --> 00:23:51.340 and what we're doing and where we're going. 515 00:23:53.900 --> 00:23:57.820 But changing that, it's like slowing a battleship. 516 00:23:58.120 --> 00:24:00.260 It's going to take a while for that ship to slow down. 517 00:24:00.300 --> 00:24:01.900 You can't throw the gears into reverse 518 00:24:01.900 --> 00:24:03.380 and expect it to stop on a dime. 519 00:24:03.920 --> 00:24:05.700 So you have to slightly veer it. 520 00:24:05.860 --> 00:24:07.460 And I think that's what a lot of Australian history 521 00:24:07.460 --> 00:24:09.180 is doing at the moment, and doing quite well, 522 00:24:09.920 --> 00:24:12.980 is like little tugboats pushing at the major narrative. 523 00:24:13.580 --> 00:24:15.280 And it's finally reached a tipping point 524 00:24:15.280 --> 00:24:17.980 where somebody like me can come along and step in 525 00:24:17.980 --> 00:24:19.780 and actually steer the ship. 526 00:24:19.780 --> 00:24:21.580 And steer the ship a bit one way or the other. 527 00:24:23.140 --> 00:24:24.100 Left, yeah. 528 00:24:29.040 --> 00:24:30.220 Down the middle. 529 00:24:30.300 --> 00:24:31.160 Safely down the middle. 530 00:24:32.520 --> 00:24:33.740 We're just slowing it down. 531 00:24:35.800 --> 00:24:40.080 And so the problem for me was how to do this. 532 00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:40.980 And I got interested... 533 00:24:40.980 --> 00:24:42.420 That's why Kin basically came about. 534 00:24:42.460 --> 00:24:44.380 I got interested in using my family's story 535 00:24:44.380 --> 00:24:46.740 as a narrative device and a research tool 536 00:24:46.740 --> 00:24:48.140 to enforce a discipline. 537 00:24:49.780 --> 00:24:51.100 And the reason, if I look back to 1999, 538 00:24:51.800 --> 00:24:54.600 is because I grew up reading James A. Michener. 539 00:24:54.880 --> 00:24:56.980 Everybody, people know Michener's novels. 540 00:24:57.060 --> 00:25:00.080 You know, those intergenerational novel format, 541 00:25:00.160 --> 00:25:02.620 which gives you the softer version of history. 542 00:25:02.700 --> 00:25:04.200 Not the hard edges of the politics, 543 00:25:04.400 --> 00:25:05.560 not the kings and the queens. 544 00:25:05.940 --> 00:25:07.580 No, they're there, but they're in the backstory. 545 00:25:07.740 --> 00:25:10.020 It's general, just everyday people 546 00:25:10.020 --> 00:25:11.760 living their everyday lives, 547 00:25:11.880 --> 00:25:14.060 doing extraordinary things kind of narrative, 548 00:25:14.120 --> 00:25:15.060 which works so well. 549 00:25:16.040 --> 00:25:17.940 And so I thought that's what I would try to do. 550 00:25:18.160 --> 00:25:19.520 And of course, at the... 551 00:25:19.520 --> 00:25:20.580 The point that I proposed it, 552 00:25:20.620 --> 00:25:22.320 I had very little idea what I was going to find. 553 00:25:22.380 --> 00:25:23.380 I knew about half of it. 554 00:25:24.740 --> 00:25:28.480 So roughly half of the story was there in vague outline. 555 00:25:29.340 --> 00:25:31.820 And I was really amazed at what I found. 556 00:25:31.900 --> 00:25:33.180 Australian history is really rich. 557 00:25:34.120 --> 00:25:35.780 And of course, that is one of the other changes 558 00:25:35.780 --> 00:25:37.660 that have taken place since 2007, 559 00:25:37.840 --> 00:25:39.900 is that Trove had been released. 560 00:25:41.040 --> 00:25:43.400 Trove is the online database 561 00:25:43.400 --> 00:25:45.180 coming out of the National Library of Australia. 562 00:25:45.360 --> 00:25:47.300 And it really reflects a wider trend. 563 00:25:47.520 --> 00:25:49.440 There is mass digitisation taking place. 564 00:25:49.440 --> 00:25:49.500 There is mass digitisation taking place. 565 00:25:49.500 --> 00:25:49.860 There is massive resources. 566 00:25:50.420 --> 00:25:52.020 So if we're looking at the democratisation 567 00:25:52.020 --> 00:25:52.800 of Australian history, 568 00:25:53.680 --> 00:25:55.540 people are getting much more access 569 00:25:55.540 --> 00:25:58.540 to the raw source material than ever before. 570 00:25:58.900 --> 00:26:01.100 And that is completely changing the landscape. 571 00:26:01.280 --> 00:26:02.160 I looked it up this morning, 572 00:26:02.180 --> 00:26:04.640 just so I could throw a lovely little statistic out. 573 00:26:04.820 --> 00:26:07.380 At 9.04am on a Sunday, 574 00:26:07.560 --> 00:26:12.920 there were 14,591 searches of Trove in the last hour. 575 00:26:13.640 --> 00:26:17.040 That's from 8.04 till 9.04 on Sunday. 576 00:26:18.180 --> 00:26:19.240 And there were... 577 00:26:21.380 --> 00:26:23.420 514,781 and 100... 578 00:26:24.460 --> 00:26:31.580 Sorry, 514,781,184 items being digitised. 579 00:26:32.640 --> 00:26:36.220 It's a phenomenal change in the landscape of history. 580 00:26:36.600 --> 00:26:38.640 And so one of our great challenges, I think, 581 00:26:38.740 --> 00:26:40.600 is how best to use that. 582 00:26:40.880 --> 00:26:43.560 How best to encourage people to engage with that 583 00:26:43.560 --> 00:26:44.500 in meaningful ways. 584 00:26:45.420 --> 00:26:47.820 And that was the other part of what Kin was really about. 585 00:26:47.960 --> 00:26:49.040 Kin was not about telling you 586 00:26:49.040 --> 00:26:50.080 what the national story is. 587 00:26:50.420 --> 00:26:53.920 It's about showing you how you too can go find the national story. 588 00:26:54.000 --> 00:26:55.200 You too can go engage with it. 589 00:26:55.260 --> 00:26:55.880 And everybody can. 590 00:26:56.100 --> 00:26:57.240 It's relatively straightforward. 591 00:26:57.740 --> 00:26:59.520 I mean, it was hard work, don't get me wrong. 592 00:26:59.660 --> 00:27:01.680 But it's relatively straightforward. 593 00:27:02.760 --> 00:27:05.160 And I think that's something that we really need to encourage. 594 00:27:05.460 --> 00:27:08.660 We need to encourage more grassroots engagement with history. 595 00:27:09.020 --> 00:27:10.800 If we think, who are the gatekeepers? 596 00:27:11.020 --> 00:27:12.340 Well, we've got lots of gatekeepers. 597 00:27:12.860 --> 00:27:14.980 We have political commentators. 598 00:27:15.180 --> 00:27:16.120 We're all lefties. 599 00:27:16.940 --> 00:27:18.220 We've got academics. 600 00:27:19.420 --> 00:27:23.040 I mean, there's basically a two-generation gap, I like to say, 601 00:27:23.140 --> 00:27:24.980 in well-known Australian historians. 602 00:27:25.460 --> 00:27:27.600 For the in crowd, there are people that people know. 603 00:27:28.040 --> 00:27:31.060 But for the public at large, you know, 604 00:27:31.160 --> 00:27:34.040 the touch-to people are people like Henry Reynolds and Geoffrey Blaney. 605 00:27:34.380 --> 00:27:37.080 And in terms of a career generation, 606 00:27:37.580 --> 00:27:40.000 that's two or three generations ago, there's a real gap. 607 00:27:40.200 --> 00:27:43.240 There is an aged aristocracy there, 608 00:27:43.780 --> 00:27:47.680 which has not been challenged very effectively 609 00:27:47.680 --> 00:27:48.840 for quite some time. 610 00:27:49.040 --> 00:27:51.540 And I think the challenge to that can come from the grassroots level. 611 00:27:51.700 --> 00:27:54.500 Local historical organisations, family history organisations, 612 00:27:55.060 --> 00:27:56.880 they're all doing fantastic and amazing stuff. 613 00:27:56.940 --> 00:27:59.620 I love seeing engaging local history. 614 00:28:00.120 --> 00:28:02.800 Not all of it's necessarily the best written stuff in the world, 615 00:28:02.840 --> 00:28:06.380 but the research there is sometimes absolutely phenomenal. 616 00:28:06.600 --> 00:28:09.440 Very tenacious people doing that sort of stuff. 617 00:28:11.640 --> 00:28:16.080 And so from that point, I think we can turn to the kind of 1787 approach, 618 00:28:16.200 --> 00:28:18.760 which is like a headbutt to the national narrative. 619 00:28:19.040 --> 00:28:22.420 The way that you tell stories in a way that our story has to start in 1788. 620 00:28:22.760 --> 00:28:25.560 The title itself is a bit iconoclastic, obviously, 621 00:28:25.800 --> 00:28:27.160 and the book is that way as well. 622 00:28:27.380 --> 00:28:30.860 But it's more a nuancing of Australian history. 623 00:28:31.220 --> 00:28:37.800 And so I think if we're going to move forward in terms of history 624 00:28:37.800 --> 00:28:40.380 and its relationship to the Australian democracy, 625 00:28:40.640 --> 00:28:44.060 we need to more effectively engage with the processes. 626 00:28:44.400 --> 00:28:46.040 We need to all become methodologists. 627 00:28:47.000 --> 00:28:47.600 Thanks. 628 00:28:47.700 --> 00:28:48.060 Yes? 629 00:28:48.420 --> 00:28:49.020 Yes? 630 00:28:52.720 --> 00:28:54.080 Thanks very much, Nick. 631 00:28:54.340 --> 00:28:58.840 Now, we do have a microphone in the centre of the room here, 632 00:28:58.960 --> 00:29:03.040 and we would definitely welcome people to come and ask questions 633 00:29:03.040 --> 00:29:04.220 if people have them. 634 00:29:04.320 --> 00:29:06.160 Oh, look, there's people coming already. 635 00:29:06.240 --> 00:29:07.780 I don't even get to ask my question. 636 00:29:07.860 --> 00:29:08.640 Come forward. 637 00:29:10.820 --> 00:29:13.220 I'm approaching this really interesting talk 638 00:29:13.220 --> 00:29:15.180 from a bit of a personal position, 639 00:29:15.280 --> 00:29:18.760 so if I'm digressing, just shut me up politely, OK? 640 00:29:19.040 --> 00:29:24.080 I'm really fascinated just the short talk in terms of history 641 00:29:25.200 --> 00:29:29.320 being capable of reflecting the development of human consciousness. 642 00:29:30.300 --> 00:29:35.240 In other words, how we as an identity, as an individual, 643 00:29:35.380 --> 00:29:37.460 or as a collective relate to the group, 644 00:29:38.340 --> 00:29:41.540 which seems like it's miles off your topic, 645 00:29:42.340 --> 00:29:47.720 but I've somehow managed to engage with the jury 646 00:29:47.720 --> 00:29:48.600 on your... 647 00:29:49.040 --> 00:29:49.760 nuclear waste, 648 00:29:49.820 --> 00:29:54.160 and we're talking about a 10,000-year decision being made now, 649 00:29:54.320 --> 00:29:56.440 and just listening to you talking about history, 650 00:29:57.040 --> 00:30:01.020 there's no expert like yourself on time, 651 00:30:02.620 --> 00:30:05.560 and I'm not quite sure where I'm going with this, 652 00:30:05.620 --> 00:30:07.480 but I do find what you're saying interesting 653 00:30:07.480 --> 00:30:09.400 in terms of you're going back 654 00:30:09.400 --> 00:30:11.220 and you see how people are relating 655 00:30:12.020 --> 00:30:15.400 as individual, family, to the group, 656 00:30:15.560 --> 00:30:17.140 and I think there's a somewhere, 657 00:30:18.080 --> 00:30:18.740 there's a... 658 00:30:19.040 --> 00:30:25.960 linear track of humans changing their attitude to life and the fact you're even looking at it 659 00:30:25.960 --> 00:30:30.960 from a democratic point of view of looking at history in other words you're looking through 660 00:30:30.960 --> 00:30:37.060 democracy going back in a way is going to dismantle history to a hell of a degree anyway 661 00:30:37.060 --> 00:30:40.940 you're going to rewrite it to a certain degree because the person who's or the group that's had 662 00:30:40.940 --> 00:30:48.660 power generally when there's written history has controlled that written history did you ever get 663 00:30:48.660 --> 00:30:53.860 back to oral history get back to oral history yeah i used a little bit of oral history in in 664 00:30:53.860 --> 00:31:00.160 late kin um i think in terms of group identity it's really interesting to think in terms of 665 00:31:02.960 --> 00:31:07.700 kin's i'm fascinated by the way people engage with it and often write to me or come up to me 666 00:31:07.700 --> 00:31:13.660 and say they recognize their own father or their own mother in this and to to recognize your own 667 00:31:13.660 --> 00:31:17.760 family in the national story i think is something relatively new 668 00:31:17.760 --> 00:31:18.560 and 669 00:31:18.560 --> 00:31:23.260 and that sense of engagement and belonging and as we look at australian history one of the things 670 00:31:23.260 --> 00:31:29.820 which is changing and needs to be continually pushed is the long-term diversity i found recent 671 00:31:29.820 --> 00:31:36.860 a couple of weeks ago in just incidental archival work i found a chinese person in the frontier in 672 00:31:36.860 --> 00:31:41.920 van diemen's land in the 1820s or 30s according to the books he's not supposed to be there 673 00:31:43.000 --> 00:31:48.380 there he was and you look at the early ports they're highly dynamic places people coming from 674 00:31:48.560 --> 00:31:54.620 all over the places one of the greatest myths of australian history is that the white australia 675 00:31:54.620 --> 00:32:01.060 policy was a phenomenon rather than a policy it was a policy objective you know there was we were 676 00:32:01.060 --> 00:32:05.380 a disproportionately white country on demographics but that's not quite the same thing there was 677 00:32:05.380 --> 00:32:09.740 always diversity there and that's one of the things that i'm interested in pushing more and more 678 00:32:10.860 --> 00:32:11.940 any other questions 679 00:32:14.840 --> 00:32:18.320 nick could you say a little about history and 680 00:32:18.560 --> 00:32:22.520 predicting the future which i don't think you really perhaps covered that 681 00:32:22.520 --> 00:32:31.140 and also in regard to that if you think that history can in some way predict the future 682 00:32:31.140 --> 00:32:35.520 has it helped you to predict the future of your family 683 00:32:37.020 --> 00:32:42.740 ah not really no no i think in terms of predicting the future again 684 00:32:42.740 --> 00:32:47.960 the questions i didn't come back to it because i was flagged for time i saw it 685 00:32:48.560 --> 00:32:50.460 the question should be reframed a little bit 686 00:32:50.460 --> 00:32:53.660 can historians predict the future well of course they can try 687 00:32:54.940 --> 00:33:00.680 should they who knows i think it should be more about how do historians influence the future 688 00:33:00.680 --> 00:33:06.700 how do we mold the future how do we help actually not just focus on the past but use the past to 689 00:33:06.700 --> 00:33:10.580 look forward and that in a way is the most interesting story to engage with 690 00:33:11.140 --> 00:33:15.000 failed abysmally with my family but they haven't already yet 691 00:33:16.640 --> 00:33:18.160 uh thanks very much that and i'd 692 00:33:18.560 --> 00:33:22.360 will need to talk to you afterwards because your story echoes mine in so many ways 693 00:33:22.360 --> 00:33:24.680 um but i did want to ask particularly 694 00:33:25.680 --> 00:33:28.260 so you've written monographs and 695 00:33:28.980 --> 00:33:30.440 giving speeches like this 696 00:33:30.440 --> 00:33:36.800 what how else do you see the ways for historical knowledge to influence national conversation 697 00:33:37.720 --> 00:33:38.760 ah yes 698 00:33:39.580 --> 00:33:42.420 getting it out there as much as possible is the key thing i think 699 00:33:42.420 --> 00:33:43.440 historians should 700 00:33:43.440 --> 00:33:45.900 there's a structural problem in the academy 701 00:33:45.900 --> 00:33:48.460 i'll talk specifically from that context 702 00:33:48.560 --> 00:33:49.100 to begin with 703 00:33:49.100 --> 00:33:51.580 that in universities 704 00:33:52.620 --> 00:33:54.080 it's all about counting beans 705 00:33:54.080 --> 00:33:56.160 universities have their have a fake currency 706 00:33:56.160 --> 00:33:58.000 and that currency is eftel 707 00:33:58.520 --> 00:34:00.440 and they have another fake currency 708 00:34:00.440 --> 00:34:01.900 and i can't remember what it's called 709 00:34:01.900 --> 00:34:03.100 but it's basically the publications 710 00:34:03.100 --> 00:34:04.040 counting publications 711 00:34:04.040 --> 00:34:06.340 and you trade in these fake currencies to the government 712 00:34:06.340 --> 00:34:07.540 which gives you real currency 713 00:34:07.540 --> 00:34:09.800 which you then use to buy more professors 714 00:34:09.800 --> 00:34:10.900 and more executives 715 00:34:12.000 --> 00:34:12.480 so 716 00:34:14.240 --> 00:34:14.720 essentially 717 00:34:15.680 --> 00:34:18.360 if you want to get ahead in the university sector as a historian 718 00:34:18.360 --> 00:34:19.360 and as a historian 719 00:34:19.360 --> 00:34:22.420 you've got a choice between the university or teaching in high schools 720 00:34:22.420 --> 00:34:23.360 if you're lucky 721 00:34:23.360 --> 00:34:25.380 you can get to work in an institution 722 00:34:25.380 --> 00:34:27.660 institution like a museum and stuff 723 00:34:28.360 --> 00:34:30.140 but from the university sector 724 00:34:30.140 --> 00:34:30.880 um 725 00:34:31.420 --> 00:34:32.580 there's a real disdain 726 00:34:32.580 --> 00:34:34.120 for popular writing 727 00:34:34.120 --> 00:34:34.840 popular engagement 728 00:34:34.840 --> 00:34:35.840 if you look around the mag 729 00:34:35.840 --> 00:34:37.300 popular magazines for instance 730 00:34:37.300 --> 00:34:39.400 the historical articles there are often 731 00:34:39.400 --> 00:34:40.800 not written by historians 732 00:34:41.620 --> 00:34:42.100 and 733 00:34:42.760 --> 00:34:43.580 the best 734 00:34:43.580 --> 00:34:47.360 i often say the best selling books marketed as history in australia 735 00:34:47.360 --> 00:34:48.280 are not written by historians 736 00:34:48.280 --> 00:34:48.340 so 737 00:34:48.340 --> 00:34:48.520 ! 738 00:34:48.700 --> 00:34:51.860 hopefully that'll change as you'll go off and buy kin in seventeen eighty seven 739 00:34:52.880 --> 00:34:54.860 at the moment 740 00:34:55.560 --> 00:34:58.660 it's journalists really who have the best selling history books 741 00:34:59.260 --> 00:35:00.520 and they dominate it 742 00:35:00.520 --> 00:35:03.140 and historians have been scared of that 743 00:35:03.140 --> 00:35:06.800 and in part it's structural and so i don't really know how to deal with that other than 744 00:35:06.800 --> 00:35:08.360 to just step outside that game 745 00:35:08.360 --> 00:35:09.980 which is what i'm doing at the moment 746 00:35:09.980 --> 00:35:11.660 and to play a different game 747 00:35:12.180 --> 00:35:14.020 and to try and balance the quality 748 00:35:14.020 --> 00:35:17.840 and rigor of academic research with the accessibility 749 00:35:17.840 --> 00:35:18.060 and the accessibility 750 00:35:19.000 --> 00:35:19.780 of popular writing 751 00:35:20.600 --> 00:35:23.440 uh... but that is a hard thing to juggle you get a lot of snide comments from 752 00:35:24.000 --> 00:35:24.800 from academics who 753 00:35:25.500 --> 00:35:27.160 who prefer their book that 754 00:35:27.160 --> 00:35:29.760 three people read on the shelf of cambridge university 755 00:35:30.600 --> 00:35:31.120 uh... 756 00:35:32.000 --> 00:35:33.640 but also i think encouraging 757 00:35:34.240 --> 00:35:35.480 from a public perspective 758 00:35:36.400 --> 00:35:39.180 the thing that people can do is take their children to museums 759 00:35:40.000 --> 00:35:41.660 take their grandchildren to museums 760 00:35:42.960 --> 00:35:43.900 engage with 761 00:35:44.780 --> 00:35:47.780 with the history that's all around you you see those statues out there 762 00:35:47.840 --> 00:35:48.200 front here 763 00:35:48.200 --> 00:35:52.220 beautiful public art from the nineteenth century that can be used to tell a story 764 00:35:53.020 --> 00:35:56.240 it can be a different story to the story that the people who built the art intended you to 765 00:35:56.240 --> 00:36:00.300 to tell but you can use that as a discussion point and i think the more that that happens in 766 00:36:00.300 --> 00:36:01.560 australia the better off we'll all be 767 00:36:01.560 --> 00:36:06.020 i want to take you back to predicting history for the future 768 00:36:06.020 --> 00:36:09.760 you mentioned tacitus and i'm sure 769 00:36:10.360 --> 00:36:12.940 you also looked at Thucydides at some stage 770 00:36:13.600 --> 00:36:15.220 so you have a long term 771 00:36:15.680 --> 00:36:16.120 view 772 00:36:16.880 --> 00:36:17.340 of history 773 00:36:17.840 --> 00:36:20.220 let's say five hundred bc till today 774 00:36:20.940 --> 00:36:22.980 doesn't that interest you in seeing 775 00:36:24.180 --> 00:36:26.000 things repeating themselves for 776 00:36:26.000 --> 00:36:26.840 various 777 00:36:27.620 --> 00:36:29.800 ideas so would you 778 00:36:30.560 --> 00:36:31.860 talk a little bit about that 779 00:36:32.620 --> 00:36:33.500 yep quite happily 780 00:36:34.020 --> 00:36:38.180 one of my great bugbears i have many bugbears about australian history but one of them is 781 00:36:38.180 --> 00:36:39.440 australian exceptionalism 782 00:36:40.240 --> 00:36:42.120 the idea that australian history is 783 00:36:42.760 --> 00:36:47.780 special unique snowflake it has unique snowflake attributes but it is not utterly unique 784 00:36:47.780 --> 00:36:48.900 there are other settler 785 00:36:48.900 --> 00:36:51.420 colonial societies that follow similar trends 786 00:36:51.420 --> 00:36:52.820 and do similar things 787 00:36:52.820 --> 00:36:59.040 well i don't buy into the idea that history is entirely cyclical you can see trends appearing 788 00:36:59.040 --> 00:37:03.180 and for instance in at the simplest one at the moment is it does feel very much like 789 00:37:03.180 --> 00:37:04.140 the nineteen thirties 790 00:37:04.140 --> 00:37:07.160 it's coming after at global financial crisis 791 00:37:07.160 --> 00:37:08.580 and there is 792 00:37:08.580 --> 00:37:10.140 nationalism on the rise 793 00:37:10.800 --> 00:37:13.260 and who knows where we going i think 794 00:37:13.260 --> 00:37:16.560 things like islands that look like aircraft carriers 795 00:37:16.560 --> 00:37:18.600 are very troubling. 796 00:37:19.280 --> 00:37:21.120 That's about as far as I'll go. 797 00:37:22.500 --> 00:37:27.000 Why do you think the present generation of Australian historians 798 00:37:27.000 --> 00:37:29.260 are very little known? 799 00:37:30.160 --> 00:37:31.560 The older ones are, 800 00:37:31.620 --> 00:37:34.900 but the present generation of historians are very little known. 801 00:37:35.220 --> 00:37:36.920 In part, lack of opportunity, I think. 802 00:37:37.300 --> 00:37:40.620 I think that is definitely part of the story. 803 00:37:40.740 --> 00:37:42.960 The older generation have stayed there 804 00:37:42.960 --> 00:37:44.700 and they have stayed in the limelight 805 00:37:44.700 --> 00:37:46.620 and it has been hard for people to get in. 806 00:37:46.680 --> 00:37:47.780 It's just basic market forces. 807 00:37:48.200 --> 00:37:51.080 I think there is also an element of the faddiness of history 808 00:37:51.080 --> 00:37:54.840 and the post-modernist fad did affect Australian history. 809 00:37:54.940 --> 00:37:55.660 It's very hard... 810 00:37:55.660 --> 00:37:59.000 I mean, a good theoretical research 811 00:38:00.080 --> 00:38:03.440 can be interesting to people who are into theoretical research, 812 00:38:03.580 --> 00:38:06.420 but it's not something that Joe Bloggs down the street 813 00:38:06.420 --> 00:38:08.380 is necessarily going to want to buy off the shelf. 814 00:38:08.540 --> 00:38:10.860 And that, in a way, is another structural element 815 00:38:10.860 --> 00:38:13.880 because universities are self-replicating entities 816 00:38:13.880 --> 00:38:14.600 and they tend to... 817 00:38:14.700 --> 00:38:16.200 promote people who are similar to themselves 818 00:38:16.200 --> 00:38:19.860 and then that goes out into the next generation of teachers and so on. 819 00:38:19.960 --> 00:38:22.320 And so you have these fads in history 820 00:38:22.320 --> 00:38:26.340 and we have the relic of the nationalist fad 821 00:38:26.340 --> 00:38:27.920 from the 20th century 822 00:38:27.920 --> 00:38:29.720 and then we have a middle gap 823 00:38:29.720 --> 00:38:31.960 and now we've got nationalists again, in a way, 824 00:38:32.020 --> 00:38:33.640 people looking for national stories. 825 00:38:34.340 --> 00:38:34.660 Thank you. 826 00:38:35.160 --> 00:38:37.100 Yeah, thanks for your very interesting talk. 827 00:38:37.540 --> 00:38:39.040 I'm wondering if... 828 00:38:39.700 --> 00:38:43.120 To what extent do you believe in breaks in history? 829 00:38:44.840 --> 00:38:46.440 To what extent do you believe that 830 00:38:46.440 --> 00:38:48.940 there are certain watershed events 831 00:38:50.080 --> 00:38:52.380 which really change the structure of society? 832 00:38:52.640 --> 00:38:53.100 To what extent? 833 00:38:53.340 --> 00:38:55.900 And in Australian history, 834 00:38:56.140 --> 00:38:59.700 can you point to any that you think are quite regal 835 00:38:59.700 --> 00:39:01.460 and not kind of an artefact of perspective 836 00:39:01.460 --> 00:39:02.440 or something like that? 837 00:39:03.160 --> 00:39:04.060 Yep. Okay. 838 00:39:04.320 --> 00:39:06.440 Yes, there are certainly watersheds, 839 00:39:06.440 --> 00:39:08.320 but they're watershed periods, is what I would say. 840 00:39:08.440 --> 00:39:11.060 They tend to be stretched out at the edges 841 00:39:11.060 --> 00:39:12.600 once you start to look very closely. 842 00:39:12.760 --> 00:39:13.580 The idea that... 843 00:39:13.580 --> 00:39:14.140 I said, 844 00:39:14.700 --> 00:39:15.280 I hate that analogy, 845 00:39:15.420 --> 00:39:18.540 that events forge identities and things. 846 00:39:18.660 --> 00:39:20.300 It's so tired a trope. 847 00:39:20.940 --> 00:39:24.340 But certainly there are these times of rapid change. 848 00:39:25.480 --> 00:39:27.520 My go-to one, being a medievalist 849 00:39:27.520 --> 00:39:28.660 who studied Reformation Europe, 850 00:39:28.700 --> 00:39:30.560 would be to point to the 16th century. 851 00:39:30.700 --> 00:39:31.480 The early modern... 852 00:39:31.480 --> 00:39:33.920 Late medieval, early modern shift is one of these. 853 00:39:34.000 --> 00:39:34.960 There is dramatic change. 854 00:39:38.320 --> 00:39:42.020 The European connection with the New World, 855 00:39:42.080 --> 00:39:42.700 the Americas, 856 00:39:43.420 --> 00:39:44.200 and with... 857 00:39:45.320 --> 00:39:46.340 Southern Africa, 858 00:39:47.000 --> 00:39:48.160 the Indian Ocean, 859 00:39:48.220 --> 00:39:49.160 and Southeast Asia, 860 00:39:49.840 --> 00:39:50.560 and Australia, 861 00:39:51.180 --> 00:39:52.240 happened in a blip, 862 00:39:52.880 --> 00:39:54.140 historically speaking, really. 863 00:39:54.220 --> 00:39:55.880 That is a major fundamental shift. 864 00:39:56.140 --> 00:39:57.560 In terms of Australian history, 865 00:39:57.760 --> 00:40:00.960 I think it's a lot harder to point to them. 866 00:40:01.660 --> 00:40:03.740 I would say that we can point to 867 00:40:06.420 --> 00:40:09.240 the rapid expansion of colonisation. 868 00:40:09.640 --> 00:40:11.660 So I like to say that 869 00:40:11.660 --> 00:40:14.540 the first fleet settlement, for instance, 870 00:40:14.540 --> 00:40:15.740 is an important moment. 871 00:40:15.840 --> 00:40:17.200 I don't want to suggest to people 872 00:40:17.200 --> 00:40:18.640 that it's of no significance. 873 00:40:18.920 --> 00:40:20.520 But more important in a way 874 00:40:20.520 --> 00:40:23.640 is the changes that were 10, 20 years down the track 875 00:40:23.640 --> 00:40:26.320 with the more explosive colonisation 876 00:40:26.320 --> 00:40:28.020 from those early beachheads. 877 00:40:28.480 --> 00:40:31.360 That's an interesting rapid shift. 878 00:40:31.680 --> 00:40:32.980 The other one, I think, 879 00:40:33.020 --> 00:40:35.260 is the post-war phenomenon. 880 00:40:35.860 --> 00:40:39.260 I think World War I is very important 881 00:40:39.260 --> 00:40:41.660 for Australia's sense of identity, in a way. 882 00:40:42.600 --> 00:40:44.520 But in terms of national... 883 00:40:45.060 --> 00:40:45.460 change, 884 00:40:46.500 --> 00:40:50.060 the post-war world is much more important. 885 00:40:50.320 --> 00:40:51.540 And the coming of the Depression 886 00:40:51.540 --> 00:40:54.820 and then World War II coming in such short time frames. 887 00:40:54.980 --> 00:40:57.800 So I would point to that as another kind of one. 888 00:40:58.240 --> 00:40:59.940 And, of course, there are regional variations. 889 00:41:00.140 --> 00:41:01.860 And I think there's a danger of looking at 890 00:41:02.680 --> 00:41:04.140 national stories all the time. 891 00:41:04.180 --> 00:41:05.180 Because, of course, it's quite different 892 00:41:05.180 --> 00:41:06.000 depending on where you are. 893 00:41:06.700 --> 00:41:07.720 Last question, folks. 894 00:41:09.680 --> 00:41:11.420 You referred to Trove 895 00:41:12.720 --> 00:41:13.520 and the... 896 00:41:14.540 --> 00:41:17.840 wealth of additional information that's now available. 897 00:41:18.060 --> 00:41:20.400 If you were doing your HSC now 898 00:41:20.400 --> 00:41:24.640 and projected 17 years doing... 899 00:41:24.640 --> 00:41:27.700 doing your work and history, 900 00:41:27.980 --> 00:41:31.480 what would you discover about Australia 901 00:41:32.400 --> 00:41:36.840 with respect to the Twittersphere and Facebook? 902 00:41:37.600 --> 00:41:41.780 What will historians of the future have to work on 903 00:41:41.780 --> 00:41:43.480 when there are no real... 904 00:41:45.500 --> 00:41:46.640 That's an interesting question. 905 00:41:46.840 --> 00:41:47.980 ...things of that nature 906 00:41:47.980 --> 00:41:52.580 that you can study medieval property law 907 00:41:53.340 --> 00:41:54.620 600 years ago. 908 00:41:55.200 --> 00:41:56.980 What the hell are they going to do with Twitter? 909 00:41:57.320 --> 00:41:57.660 Yep. 910 00:41:58.020 --> 00:41:59.900 I think that is a very interesting question. 911 00:42:00.080 --> 00:42:02.760 And people often ask me what they should do for... 912 00:42:03.540 --> 00:42:04.000 in terms of... 913 00:42:04.000 --> 00:42:05.980 when I speak to family history societies, for instance, 914 00:42:06.260 --> 00:42:08.380 as to what they should preserve for their children. 915 00:42:08.480 --> 00:42:10.000 And I say, your history. 916 00:42:10.520 --> 00:42:12.120 You know, write your own history 917 00:42:12.120 --> 00:42:13.660 and your parents' history. 918 00:42:13.720 --> 00:42:14.520 It's far more important. 919 00:42:14.540 --> 00:42:14.980 It's far more important than researching 920 00:42:14.980 --> 00:42:16.040 those of your ancestors 921 00:42:16.040 --> 00:42:17.760 because their documentation's there. 922 00:42:17.860 --> 00:42:18.460 It's safe and sound. 923 00:42:19.060 --> 00:42:22.140 The nature of local newspapers has changed dramatically. 924 00:42:22.380 --> 00:42:22.780 That's one thing. 925 00:42:22.840 --> 00:42:24.020 If you look at Trove, you will see that. 926 00:42:24.100 --> 00:42:25.800 They were filled with news once upon a time. 927 00:42:27.580 --> 00:42:28.780 Hard to believe, I know. 928 00:42:31.620 --> 00:42:33.740 But it is an interesting question. 929 00:42:33.960 --> 00:42:36.500 And it's one that I keep coming back to. 930 00:42:37.220 --> 00:42:38.480 I like to say that... 931 00:42:39.020 --> 00:42:40.760 I do a lot of colonial research now 932 00:42:40.760 --> 00:42:43.280 and I can tell you more about any given afternoon 933 00:42:44.540 --> 00:42:47.120 in any given town in colonial Australia 934 00:42:47.120 --> 00:42:49.720 than I can tell you about 5th century Britain. 935 00:42:50.720 --> 00:42:53.820 The wealth of documentation is overwhelming, really. 936 00:42:54.020 --> 00:42:55.900 And I'm working on another book at the moment 937 00:42:55.900 --> 00:42:57.420 which is a colonial topic. 938 00:42:57.580 --> 00:42:59.480 And I am drowning in material. 939 00:42:59.740 --> 00:43:00.460 There is so much. 940 00:43:00.560 --> 00:43:01.700 It's hard to juggle. 941 00:43:02.800 --> 00:43:04.620 In terms of looking to the future 942 00:43:04.620 --> 00:43:06.420 and then looking back to this age, 943 00:43:06.700 --> 00:43:09.520 what I think we will get is a lot of argumentation. 944 00:43:09.660 --> 00:43:10.200 We will get... 945 00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:13.640 But that also has its precedence. 946 00:43:13.720 --> 00:43:14.440 One of the things... 947 00:43:14.440 --> 00:43:14.920 One of the things you can see 948 00:43:14.920 --> 00:43:17.280 in early 20th century Australian newspapers, 949 00:43:17.540 --> 00:43:18.300 which is very interesting, 950 00:43:18.820 --> 00:43:21.560 you get these multi-week arguments 951 00:43:22.860 --> 00:43:24.880 about obscure bits of Australian history 952 00:43:24.880 --> 00:43:26.520 that people are fixating on. 953 00:43:28.400 --> 00:43:31.400 Someone writes a little broad history of the region 954 00:43:31.400 --> 00:43:33.100 and then the next week someone comes in and says, 955 00:43:33.200 --> 00:43:34.600 no, no, no, that was the wrong date 956 00:43:34.600 --> 00:43:36.380 and it was a different named dog. 957 00:43:36.640 --> 00:43:39.040 And then the next week another person will write in 958 00:43:39.040 --> 00:43:40.900 and say, no, no, no, the first dog was the right one 959 00:43:40.900 --> 00:43:42.040 but you're talking about another bloke. 960 00:43:42.540 --> 00:43:44.420 And you get this all over Australia. 961 00:43:45.540 --> 00:43:46.420 This argumentation. 962 00:43:46.500 --> 00:43:49.280 So I think what the Twittersphere and Facebook represents, 963 00:43:49.760 --> 00:43:52.400 other than a secret network for all of us academics 964 00:43:52.400 --> 00:43:53.820 who are underemployed historians 965 00:43:53.820 --> 00:43:56.660 who are waiting for the rest of them to open up 966 00:43:56.660 --> 00:43:57.480 so we can get jobs, 967 00:43:58.620 --> 00:44:02.440 is it provides that kind of argumentation, 968 00:44:02.480 --> 00:44:05.340 that kind of fixating on nitty-gritty arguments 969 00:44:05.340 --> 00:44:09.100 and in a way, what role does Australian... 970 00:44:09.100 --> 00:44:10.200 I'll end on this note. 971 00:44:10.280 --> 00:44:13.800 What role does Australian history play in Australia's democracy? 972 00:44:13.940 --> 00:44:14.420 To go back to the beginning of the 20th century, 973 00:44:14.420 --> 00:44:15.980 to go back to what Philip Adams said the other day, 974 00:44:16.080 --> 00:44:17.900 it's a misdirection. 975 00:44:18.080 --> 00:44:21.460 We often fall into that trap 976 00:44:21.460 --> 00:44:23.500 of having those tiny little arguments about nothing 977 00:44:24.040 --> 00:44:25.340 rather than really big stuff. 978 00:44:27.060 --> 00:44:27.520 APPLAUSE 979 00:44:31.680 --> 00:44:34.920 Nick, thank you for a most enlightening 980 00:44:34.920 --> 00:44:36.480 and thought-provoking presentation. 981 00:44:37.500 --> 00:44:41.160 Thank you to our audience for ending promptly on time. 982 00:44:41.260 --> 00:44:41.840 You are wonderful.