Academic literature on the topic 'Libraries Victoria Melbourne Cultural programs'

Background Digital technology and social media use are common among young people in Australia and worldwide. Research suggests that young people have both positive and negative experiences online, but we know little about the experiences of Muslim communities. Objective This study aims to explore the positive and negative experiences of digital technology and social media use among young people and parents from Muslim backgrounds in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. Methods This study involved a partnership between researchers and a not-for-profit organization that work with culturally and linguistically diverse communities. We adopted a participatory and qualitative approach and designed the research in consultation with young people from Muslim backgrounds. Data were collected through in-person and online focus groups with 33 young people aged 16-22 years and 15 parents aged 40-57 years. Data were thematically analyzed. Results We generated 3 themes: (1) maintaining local and global connections, (2) a paradoxical space: identity, belonging and discrimination, and (3) the digital divide between young Muslims and parents. Results highlighted that social media was an important extension of social and cultural connections, particularly during COVID-19, when people were unable to connect through school or places of worship. Young participants perceived social media as a space where they could establish their identity and feel a sense of belonging. However, participants were also at risk of being exposed to discrimination and unrealistic standards of beauty and success. Although parents and young people shared some similar concerns, there was a large digital divide in online experiences. Both groups implemented strategies to reduce social media use, with young people believing that having short technology-free breaks during prayer and quality family time was beneficial for their mental well-being. Conclusions Programs that address technology-related harms must acknowledge the benefits of social media for young Muslims across identity, belonging, representation, and social connection. Further research is required to understand how parents and young people can create environments that foster technology-free breaks to support mental well-being.

IntroductionThis article suggests extensions to the place of ‘national collections’ of Australia’s migration histories, and considers the role of regional libraries and museums in collecting, preserving, and making accessible the history of migration. The article describes a recent collaboration between the Bonegilla Migrant Experience site, the Albury LibraryMuseum and the regionally-based Charles Sturt University (CSU) to develop a virtual, three-dimensional tour of Bonegilla, a former migrant arrival centre. Through this, the role of regional collections as keeping places of migration memories and narratives outside of those institutions charged with preserving the nation’s memory is highlighted and explored.What Makes a Nation’s Memory?In 2018 the Australian Research Council (ARC) awarded a Linkage grant to a collaboration between two universities (RMIT and Deakin), and the National Library of Australia, State Library of South Australia, State Library of Victoria, and State Library of New South Wales titled “Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries” (LP170100222). This Linkage project aimed to “develop a new methodology for evaluating multicultural collections, and new policies and strategies to develop and provide access to these collections” (RMIT Centre for Urban Research).One planned output of the Linkage project was a conference, to be held in early 2019, titled “Collecting for a Society’s Memory: National and State Libraries in Culturally Diverse Societies.” The conference call for papers suggested themes that included an interrogation of the relationship between libraries and ‘the collecting sector’, but with a focus still on National and State Libraries (Boyd). As an aside, the correlation between libraries and memories seemed slightly incongruous here, as archives and museums in particular would also be key in this collecting (and preserving) society’s memory, and also the libraries that exist outside of the national and state capitals.It felt like the project and conference had a definite ‘national’ focus, with the ‘regional’ mentioned only briefly in a suggested theme.At the same time that I was reading this call for papers and about the Linkage, I was part of a CSU Learning and Teaching project to develop online learning materials for students in our Teacher Education programs (history in particular) based around the Bonegilla Migrant Arrival Centre in Wodonga, Victoria. This project uses three-dimensional film technology to bring students to the Centre site, where they can take an interactive, curriculum-based tour of the site. Alongside the interactive online tour, a series of curricula were developed to work with the Australian History Curriculum. I wondered why community-led collections like these in the regions fall to the side in discussions of a ‘national’ (aka institutional) memory, or as part of a representation of a multicultural Australia, such as in this Linkage.Before I start exploring this question I want to acknowledge the limitations of the ARC Linkage framework in terms of the project mentioned above, and that the work that is being done in the “Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries” project is of value to professional practice and community; in this article I am using the juxtaposition of the two projects as an impetus to interrogate the role of regional collaboration, and to argue for a notion of national memory as a regional collecting concern.Bonegilla: A Contested SiteFrom 1947 through to 1971 over 300,000 migrants to Australia passed through the Bonegilla Migrant Reception and Training Centre (“Bonegilla”) at a defining time in Australia’s immigration history, as post-World War II migration policies encompassed non-English speaking Europeans displaced by the war (Pennay "Remembering Bonegilla" 43). Bonegilla itself is a small settlement near the Hume Dam, 10 km from the New South Wales town of Albury and the Victorian town of Wodonga. Bonegilla was a former Army Camp repurposed to meet the settlement agendas of multiple Australian governments.New migrants spent weeks and months at Bonegilla, learning English, and securing work. The site was the largest (covering 130 hectares of land) and longest-lasting reception centre in post-war Australia, and has been confirmed bureaucratically as nationally significant, having been added to the National Heritage Register in 2007 (see Pennay “Remembering Bonegilla” for an in-depth discussion of this listing process). Bonegilla has played a part in defining and redefining Australia’s migrant and multicultural history through the years, with Bruce Pennay suggesting thatperhaps Bonegilla has warranted national notice as part of an officially initiated endeavour to develop a more inclusive narrative of nation, for the National Heritage List was almost contemporaneously expanded to include Myall Creek. Perhaps it is exemplary in raising questions about the roles of the nation and the community in reception and training that morph into modern day equivalents. (“Memories and Representations” 46)Given its national significance, both formally and colloquially, Bonegilla has provided rich material for critical thinking around, for example, Australian multicultural identity, migration commemorations and the construction of cultural memory. Alexandra Dellios argues that Bonegilla and its role in Australia’s memory is a contested site, and thatdespite criticisms from historians such as Persian and Ashton regarding Bonegilla’s adherence to a revisionist narrative of multicultural progress, visitor book comments, as well as exchanges and performances at reunions and festivals, demonstrate that visitors take what they will from available frameworks, and fill in the ‘gaps’ according to their own collective memories, needs and expectations. (1075)This recognition of Bonegilla as a significant, albeit “heritage noir” (Pennay, “Memories and Representations” 48), agent of Australia’s heritage and memory makes it a productive site to investigate the question of regional collections and collaborations in constructing a national memory.Recordkeeping: By Government and CommunityThe past decade has seen a growth in the prominence of community archives as places of memory for communities (for example Flinn; Flinn, Stevens, and Shepherd; Zavala et al.). This prominence has come through the recognition of community archives as both valid sites of study as well as repositories of memory. In turn, this body of knowledge has offered new ways to think about collection practices outside of the mainstream, where “communities can make collective decisions about what is of enduring value to them, shape collective memory of their own pasts, and control the means through which stories about their past are constructed” (Caswell, Cifor, and Ramirez 58). Jimmy Zavala, and colleagues, argue that these collections “challenge hierarchical structures of governance found in mainstream archival institutions” (212), and offer different perspectives to those kept on the official record. By recognising both the official record and the collections developed and developing outside of official repositories, there are opportunities to deepen understandings and interpretations of historical moments in time.There are at least three possible formal keeping places of memories for those who passed through, worked at, or lived alongside Bonegilla: the National Archives of Australia, the Albury LibraryMuseum in Albury, New South Wales, and the Bonegilla Migrant Experience site itself outside of Wodonga. There will of course be records in other national, state, local, and community repositories, along with newspaper articles, people’s homes, and oral lore that contribute to the narrative of Bonegilla memories, but the focus for this article are these three key sites as the main sources of primary source material about the Bonegilla experience.Official administrative and organisational records of activity during Bonegilla’s reception period are held at the National Archives of Australia in the national capital, Canberra; these records contribute to the memory of Bonegilla from a nation-state perspective, building an administrative record of the Centre’s history and of a significant period of migration in Australia’s past. Of note, Bonegilla was the only migrant centre that created its own records on site, and these records form part of the series known as NAA: A2567, NAA A2571 1949–56 and A2572 1957–71 (Hutchison 70). Records of local staff employed at the site will also be included in these administrative files. Very few of these records are publicly accessible online, although work is underway to provide enhanced online and analogue access to the popular arrival cards (NAA A2571 1949-56 and A2572 1957–71) onsite at Bonegilla (Pennay, personal communication) as they are in high demand by visitors to the site, who are often looking for traces of themselves or their families in the official record. The National Archives site Destination Australia is an example of an attempt by the holder of these administrative records to collect personal stories of this period in Australia’s history through an online photograph gallery and story register, but by 2019 less than 150 stories have been published to the site, which was launched in 2014 (National Archives of Australia).This national collection is complemented and enhanced by the Bonegilla Migration Collection at the Albury LibraryMuseum in southern New South Wales, which holds non-government records and memories of life at Bonegilla. This collection “contains over 20 sustained interviews; 357 personal history database entries; over 500 short memory pieces and 700 photographs” (Pennay “Memories and Representations” 45). It is a ‘live’ collection, growing through contributions to the Bonegilla Personal History Register by the migrants and others who experienced the Centre, and through an ongoing relationship with the current Bonegilla Migrant Experience site to act as a collection home for their materials.Alongside the collection in the LibraryMuseum, there is the collection of infrastructure at the Bonegilla Migrant Experience (BME) site itself. These buildings and other assets, and indeed the absence of buildings, plus the interpretative material developed by BME staff, give further depth and meaning to the lived experience of post-war migration to Australia. Whilst both of these collections are housed and managed by local government agencies, I suggest in this article that these collections can still be considered community archives, given the regional setting of the collections, and the community created records included in the collections.The choice to locate Bonegilla in a fairly isolated regional setting was a strategy of the governments of the time (Persian), and in turn has had an impact on how the site is accessed; by who, and how often (see Dellios for a discussion of the visitor numbers over the history of the Bonegilla Migrant Experience over its time as a commemorative and tourist site). The closest cities to Bonegilla, Albury and Wodonga, sit on the border of New South Wales and Victoria, separated by the Murray River and located 300 km from Melbourne and 550 km from Sydney. The ‘twin towns’ work collaboratively on many civic activities, and are an example of a 1970s-era regional development project that in the twenty-first century is still growing, despite the regional setting (Stein 345).This regional setting justifies a consideration of virtual, and online access to what some argue is a site of national memory loaded with place-based connections, with Jayne Persian arguing that “the most successful forays into commemoration of Bonegilla appear to be website-based and institution-led” (81). This sentiment is reflected in the motivation to create further online access points to Bonegilla, such as the one discussed in this article.Enhancing Teaching, Learning, and Public Access to CollectionsIn 2018 these concepts of significant heritage sites, community archives, national records, and an understanding of migration history came together in a regionally-based Teaching and Learning project funded through a CSU internal grant scheme. The scheme, designed to support scholarship and enhance learning and teaching at CSU, funded a small pilot project to pilot a virtual visit to a real-life destination: the Bonegilla Migrant Experience site. The project was designed to provide key teaching and learning material for students in CSU Education courses, and those training to teach history in particular, but also enhance virtual access to the site for the wider public.The project was developed as a partnership between CSU, Albury LibraryMuseum, and Bonegilla Migrant Experience, and formalised through a Memorandum of Understanding with shared intellectual property. The virtual visit includes a three-dimensional walkthrough created using Matterport software, intuitive navigation of the walkthrough, and four embedded videos linked with online investigation guides. The site is intended to help online visitors ‘do history’ by locating and evaluating sources related to a heritage site with many layers and voices, and whose narrative and history is contested and told through many lenses (Grover and Pennay).As you walk through the virtual site, you get a sense of the size and scope of the Migrant Arrival Centre. The current Bonegilla Migrant Experience site sits at Block 19, one of 24 blocks that formed part of the Centre in its peak time. The guiding path takes you through the Reception area and then to the ‘Beginning Place’, a purpose built interpretative structure that “introduces why people came to Australia searching for a new beginning” (Bonegilla site guide). Moving through, you pass markers on the walls and other surfaces that link through to further interpretative materials and investigation guides. These guides are designed to introduce K-10 students and their teachers to practices such as exploring online archives and thematic inquiry learning aligned to the Australian History Curriculum. Each guide is accompanied by teacher support material and further classroom activities.The guides prompt and guide visitors through an investigation of online archives, and other repositories, including sourcing files held by the National Archives of Australia, searching for newspaper accounts of controversial events through the National Library of Australia’s digital repository Trove, and access to personal testimonies of migrants and refugees through the Albury LibraryMuseum Bonegilla Migration Collection. Whilst designed to support teachers and students engaging with the Australian History Curriculum, these resources are available to the public. They provide visitors to the virtual site an opportunity to develop their own critical digital literacy skills and further their understanding of the official records along with the community created records such as those held by the Albury LibraryMuseum.The project partnership developed from existing relationships between cultural heritage professionals in the Albury Wodonga region along with new relationships developed for technology support from local companies. The project also reinforced the role of CSU, with its regional footprint, in being able to connect and activate regionally-based projects for community benefit along with teaching and learning outcomes.Regional CollaborationsLiz Bishoff argues for a “collaboration imperative” when it comes to the galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAM) sector’s efficacy, and it is the collaborative nature of this project that I draw on in this article. Previous work has also suggested models of convergence, where multiple institutions in the GLAM sector become a single institution (Warren and Matthews 3). In fact the Albury LibraryMuseum is an example of this model. These converged models have been critiqued from resourcing, professionalisation and economic perspectives (see for example Jones; Hider et al.; Wellington), but in some cases for local government agencies especially, they are an effective way of delivering services to communities (Warren and Matthews 9). In the case of this virtual tour, the collaboration between local government and university agencies was temporal for the length of the project, where the pooling of skills, resources, and networks has enabled the development of the resource.In this project, the regional setting has allowed and taken advantage of an intimacy that I argue may not have been possible in a metropolitan or urban setting. The social intimacies of regional town living mean that jobs are often ‘for a long time (if not for life)’, lives intersect in more than a professional context, and that because there are few pathways or options for alternative work opportunities in the GLAM professions, there is a vested interest in progress and success in project-based work. The relationships that underpinned the Bonegilla virtual tour project reflect many of these social intimacies, which included former students, former colleagues, and family relationships.The project has modelled future strategies for collaboration, including open discussions about intellectual property created, the auspicing of financial arrangements and the shared professional skills and knowledge. There has been a significant enhancement of collaborative partnerships between stakeholders, along with further development of professional and personal networks.National Memories: Regional ConcernsThe focus of this article has been on records created about a significant period in Australia’s migration history, and the meaning that these records hold based on who created them, where they are held, and how they are accessed and interpreted. Using the case study of the development of a virtual tour of a significant site—Bonegilla—I have highlighted the value of regional, non-national collections in providing access to and understanding of national memories, and the importance of collaborative practice to working with these collections. These collections sit physically in the regional communities of Albury and Wodonga, along with at the National Archives of Australia in Canberra, where they are cared for by professional staff across the GLAM sector and accessed both physically and virtually by students, researchers, and those whose lives intersected with Bonegilla.From this, I argue that by understanding national and institutional recordkeeping spaces such as the National Archives of Australia as just one example of a place of ‘national memory’, we can make space for regional and community-based repositories as important and valuable sources of records about the lived experience of migration. Extending this further, I suggest a recognition of the role of the regional setting in enabling strong collaborations to make these records visible and accessible.Further research in this area could include exploring the possibility of giving meaning to the place of record creation, especially community records, and oral histories, and how collaborations are enabling this. In contrast to this question, I also suggest an exploration of the role of the Commonwealth staff who created the records during the period of Bonegilla’s existence, and their social and cultural history, to give more meaning and context to the setting of the currently held records.ReferencesBishoff, Liz. “The Collaboration Imperative.” Library Journal 129.1 (2004): 34–35.Boyd, Jodie. “Call for Papers: Collecting for a Society’s Memory: National and State Libraries in Culturally Diverse Societies.” 2018. 1 Apr. 2019 <https://networks.h-net.org/node/73374/announcements/2079324/collecting-society%E2%80%99s-memory-national-and-state-libraries>.Caswell, Michelle, Marika Cifor, and Mario H. Ramirez. “‘To Suddenly Discover Yourself Existing': Uncovering the Impact of Community Archives.” The American Archivist 79.1 (2016): 56–81.Dellios, Alexandra. “Marginal or Mainstream? Migrant Centres as Grassroots and Official Heritage.” International Journal of Heritage Studies 21.10 (2015): 1068–83.Flinn, Andrew. “Community Histories, Community Archives: Some Opportunities and Challenges.” Journal of the Society of Archivists 28.2 (2007): 151–76.Flinn, Andrew, Mary Stevens, and Elizabeth Shepherd. “Whose Memories, Whose Archives? Independent Community Archives, Autonomy and the Mainstream.” Archival Science 9.1–2 (2009): 71.Grover, Paul, and Bruce Pennay. “Learning & Teaching Grant Progress Report.” Albury Wodonga: Charles Sturt U, 2019.Hider, Philip, Mary Anne Kennan, Mary Carroll, and Jessie Lymn. “Exploring Potential Barriers to Lam Synergies in the Academy: Institutional Locations and Publishing Outlets.” The Expanding LIS Education Universe (2018): 104.Hutchison, Mary. “Accommodating Strangers: Commonwealth Government Records of Bonegilla and Other Migrant Accommodation Centres.” Public History Review 11 (2004): 63–79.Jones, Michael. “Innovation Study: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia’s Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums.” Archives & Manuscripts 43.2 (2015): 149–51.National Archives of Australia. “Snakes in the Laundry... and Other Horrors”. Canberra, 29 May 2014. <http://www.naa.gov.au/about-us/media/media-releases/2014/25.aspx>.Pennay, Bruce. “‘But No One Can Say He Was Hungry’: Memories and Representations of Bonegilla Reception and Training Centre.” History Australia 9.1 (2012): 43–63.———. “Remembering Bonegilla: The Construction of a Public Memory Place at Block 19.” Public History Review 16 (2009): 43–63.Persian, Jayne. “Bonegilla: A Failed Narrative.” History Australia 9.1 (2012): 64–83.RMIT Centre for Urban Research. “Representing Multicultural Australia in National and State Libraries”. 2018. 11 Feb. 2019 <http://cur.org.au/project/representing-multicultural-australia-national-state-libraries/>.Stein, Clara. “The Growth and Development of Albury-Wodonga 1972–2006: United and Divided.” Macquarie U, 2012.Warren, Emily, and Graham Matthews. “Public Libraries, Museums and Physical Convergence: Context, Issues, Opportunities: A Literature Review Part 1.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science (2018): 1–14.Wellington, Shannon. “Building Glamour: Converging Practice between Gallery, Library, Archive and Museum Entities in New Zealand Memory Institutions.” Wellington: Victoria U, 2013.Zavala, Jimmy, Alda Allina Migoni, Michelle Caswell, Noah Geraci, and Marika Cifor. “‘A Process Where We’re All at the Table’: Community Archives Challenging Dominant Modes of Archival Practice.” Archives and Manuscripts 45.3 (2017): 202–15.

In 2001, the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne built on its holdings of Australian literary manuscripts by acquiring all the papers, drafts and other items associated with Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, True History of the Kelly Gang. The centrepiece of this acquisition, and the focus of this article, is Carey’s Apple Mac Classic laptop computer. The argument that is developed in this article is that Carey’s laptop is a technological artefact that operates, especially at the time of its acquisition, as an important talisman in three interrelated senses. First, it was viewed by library staff as a key means of gaining access to the ‘true history’ of Carey’s own creative drive or creative unconscious. Second, its public display alongside other textual objects (mostly books) served to reinforce a reconstructed corporate image that endeavoured to reposition the library as a vital contemporary cultural site and key player in Melbourne’s institutional gallery scene. Third, it was a crucial symbolic acquisition insofar as it spoke to certain desires within library management at that time, and which responded to similar moves at major libraries elsewhere around the world, to embrace collection digitisation as the path forward.

IntroductionThis article investigates how local studies collections in public libraries can help people explore the experiences of regional Australia. Some of this discovery can be done online, but as not all local studies material has been catalogued, is online or available in a digital format, some of this exploration will need to be onsite at public libraries throughout Australia. This exploration could be combined with other investigations into regional areas. What are local studies collections in public libraries? These collections are defined as beinginclusive of local history and so the local collection should support studies that look at the historical past, both distant and recent, or at current concerns in the community, such as local environmental issues, or plans for the future development of a locality. (Dewe 1–2)This broader look at the context of a place should provide information in a range of formats to help explore an area, and to find out about the history, geography and the environment as well as other local concerns and issues. Local studies collections should contain recent as well as older material. Each local studies collection will be different (McCausland; Bateman; Johnston; Gregg; Heap and Pymm) with some of these differences simply being because each area has a unique collection of stories which can be told about it. Other differences will be in how each public library interprets their remit to collect information and stories about a community, and which stories are included or excluded from the collection. There are budget constraints as well because each public library has to choose how to fund local studies as part of their overall library provision which means there are tensions and competing priorities in what is collected and how it is made available for research as well as information and entertainment. Some areas have more research activity so there is more being written, photographed, drawn, or otherwise recorded about an area, but no matter how small an area is, there is usually new local studies material being continually created.Local Studies CollectionsLocal studies collections are important as they provide key information about an area. For professional scholars, even in social history, the local becomes interesting only within a larger context, however. Local case studies may throw light on wider questions (Reid and Macafee 127).This highlights the value which local studies can contribute as part of research as these collections may provide case studies to explore, or different avenues to investigate. It also shows the importance of information in many local studies collections being brought together so the separate, local information can be connected to other local information. This bringing together can be as a result of research or through an aggregation system such as Trove (“Trove”).Peter Reid and Caroline Macafee have stated that becausethe potential is always there for local history to be pulled into issues of wider concern, it could be said to occupy a liminal space, a borderland between knowledge that is personal, and therefore academically trivial, and knowledge that is generalizable and therefore worthy of scientific attention. (127)This seems a harsh description, but it shows how these collections can be undervalued and that this undervaluing can risk them being overlooked by biographers, historians, and other researchers. Despite this thinking, local studies collections can offer unique and valuable insights into people and places; including for regional areas. The skilled library staff who manage these collections are also key resources in the history of regional areas, as they can help connect the local studies information to other local collections. As well as connecting people to the resources, the unwritten knowledge of staff is a separate and very important resource.How to Discover Local Studies CollectionsA good way to start exploring local studies collections is by searching Trove. Trove had, around the time of writing, “over 457,524,491 Australian and online resources” (online) and is an Australia-wide database, managed by the National Library of Australia. It enables you to search many library catalogues with one search tool which means that you can search once, in one place, rather than by individual library or museum catalogues. Trove brings together metadata including catalogue records, mostly from library catalogues, from organisations who choose to contribute access to their information. Some of the resources you can search for on Trove are in local studies collections in public libraries or held by other organisations which collect local information such as state and national libraries. Start your search by the name of the location which you are exploring. Be as specific as possible, as you can always broaden your search later. If the item has been digitised, or is already digital, you are often able to view or listen to this material online.As well as providing access to library catalogues, many local newspapers have been digitised and are searchable and viewable on Trove. Some newspapers have been digitised up to 1955, while some titles have fewer years available online, and microfilm will need to be used to find more recently produced information. Public libraries often hold the microfilm for their local newspapers. State libraries may hold them as well. This timeline of digital access is important to keep in mind as searching newspapers on Trove is very easy and searching on microfilm is not so appealing because of having to work through each newspaper page by page, microfilm roll by microfilm roll. You need to check the information about what issues of a newspaper have been digitised so you know when you need to start looking at microfilm copies rather than digitised ones. Older newspapers often include syndicated stories, so an event may have occurred in an area you are interested in but be reported in the newspaper from another area. You could also use the Trove API (application programming interface) to explore high volume digitised newspaper or catalogue data (Sherratt).This method of starting with Trove can also be a helpful way to find out which public library is in the area you are looking for, as the name of the organisation which holds the resources is listed online. You can click on a link to take you to their catalogue. While public libraries are often named for the town they are in, you may be looking for a place with a different name, so this method can be helpful. It can also show resources held in other libraries which may relate to the area of your research. Trove Mosaic by Mitchell Whitelaw (online), although an older interface, is a visual way to explore Trove and clearly highlights the different organisations contributing photographs.Libraries include local studies photographs in their social media and a very small number of them are collecting social media about their community (Forsyth et al.). Searching social media for terms such as #flashbackFriday or #throwbackThursday may also provide a way to discover local studies material online, although depending on your research topic, this method could be too haphazard an approach. There are still some local studies blogs to follow (MacRitchie) and searching for these can also provide information about local studies material in public libraries.Public Libraries and Local StudiesYou can also start at the public library. Depending on where in Australia you are searching there are different tools to help find your local public library. Rather than list them all, a useful starting point is to go to your favourite search engine and search for the name of town/suburb followed by public library. This should connect you with information about the local library through the library website, the regional library website (where two or more councils work together to provide a public library service), or via the council website. This is likely to provide sufficient information to be able to contact the library. However, before you contact the library, search the library catalogue. They may even have a separate local studies database for some or all of the local studies collection. This is why is it a good idea to start with Trove, before going to a local library search, as Trove should be aggregating collection information from a variety of sources bringing together the local public library as well as other organisations (sometimes some unexpected ones) which have material of relevance.Work from the State Library of New South Wales had demonstrated that not everything in local studies collection is catalogued (State Library of New South Wales) which makes it impossible to search for everything online. Quite a few (but not all) public libraries have a webpage where they describe their local studies collections and services. This can provide helpful information so that if you do not find something online you can telephone or email the library seeking further information. If the library is nearby you could simply visit it, but it is best to ring or email first if your time is limited, as it can be helpful to make an appointment to ensure that staff will be able to assist you with using the library collection. For searching the catalogues for local studies information, again, be as specific as possible, knowing you can always broaden your search terms. Helpfully, most (but not all) library catalogues have a sort by date option once material has been found, and some even have local studies specific search help. Often you can view or listen to digitised material online, but some libraries only make low resolution images available, which is rarely of good enough quality for research. When you have searched the catalogue or other online local studies database and not found anything, contact the library as they will be able to provide further information.Library staff will help you use their collections. Some public libraries charge a fee for more detailed research, others, quite reasonably, require you to do this more detailed research yourself.There are many variables, and it really depends on what and where you are researching. Perhaps you are looking for a written history of each area you plan to visit when exploring regional areas of Australia, or you might be planning to visit local studies collections to see how they lead you to areas and stories of local interest, or there is a particular research question you want to explore in several regional areas. How local studies books and other materials are written will depend on the time they were written, and the purpose for them. They can depict ideas and priorities which are outdated and/or offensive.Not Everything Is on TroveWhile Trove is a suggested starting place, given that every item in local studies collections is not catalogued, visiting the local public library can be an important step to take. Always check if the local studies area has different opening hours to the rest of the library. If part or all of the local studies collection is in a locked room, visiting the library at a very busy time is unwise as it may make it harder for the staff to assist you as they will have many other priorities and you may not be able to access the collection.Visiting the Library Visiting a public library and looking at how their local studies collection is arranged can help you see the collecting priorities. It also makes it very clear as to which public libraries have prioritised their local studies information. Occasionally the local studies area will be a partnership with both the library and the local family or local history society providing resources or the collection. This can result in different access conditions being applied to different collections.Visiting the collection means you can talk with the library staff about the history of the area as part of your experience of regional Australia. It is interesting to see how different local studies collections are arranged and how the local area is promoted through the collection and any displays or merchandise for sale. Often local publications will be for sale in the library so that you can purchase titles about the history of the area. Some councils commission histories of their areas, other times niche histories will be written by people in the community and the local studies collection can be a helpful way to discover these.Keep in mind that local government boundaries change (Leigh) and this may mean that resources you are looking for could be in a neighbouring area, rather than the location you are exploring. This is another reason to start with Trove.You May Not Be Able to See Everything Even If You Visit...For reasons of preservation you may not be able to see everything in the local studies collection even if you visit. Sometimes you need to watch out for special tours, which may not coincide with your visit to the area. There may be parts of the collection stored but not fully explored by staff, waiting their time in the queue to be catalogued and made available for research. Generally public library staff will be very helpful for you in your research, particularly if you have specific questions about the area.Know about CopyrightKnow the information about duration of copyright as some libraries say on their catalogues that everything which has been digitised is in copyright. This may be accidental as a result of some bulk cataloguing processes linked with digitisation. Stating something is in copyright is not the same as it being in copyright. The Australian Copyright Council has a helpful information sheet on the duration of copyright to help you understand what is in copyright and how long it is likely to continue to be in copyright.ChallengesThere will be collection gaps. The risk of bias is highlighted by the statement that libraries “are not, and have never been, socially or politically neutral institutions” (Gibson et al. 753). There has not been detailed research exploring these collection gaps, so the exact extent of exclusion or omission of information is not yet able to be quantified. There is arenewed professional imperative to position information centers as central locations for social justice work [which] has also turned our attention to the need to preserve materials that support a diverse and pluralistic society … [and] as a duty to steward unexplored histories. (Sheffield 573)Material may not be in the collection because it was not collected, or because it was not created. For example, in the past not everyone could afford a camera which means they may not have photographed or videoed their family, or public events. Not every grave had a headstone so someone may not have their grave recorded. Public libraries recognise these gaps, and in some areas library staff create or commission content to help with these omissions. For example, oral histories can be recorded to include stories which were not available in other ways, and photographs can be taken of current events to make sure a wider exploration of local stories are recorded in the local studies collection.Conclusion (and Opportunities)Grant White states, in relation to local studies that thesurvival of the artefact is only ever significant when it can be accessed by someone who can see meaning in it. The collection is in fact much more than the material sitting upon the shelves, it is access to it. Access which keeps it current in the community memory rather than as a separated, isolated adjunct. It is also the participation of the community in the creation of the collection, feeding it with its experience, reflections and memories. (98)This access is crucial, and with digitisation and digital collecting the access can increasingly be at a distance, without actually visiting a library. This increasing online access, especially through aggregated sites such as Trove, will hopefully enable research exploring the similarities and differences of regional areas, as connections can be made, and not only by people who can afford to travel to different places to do research. Digitisation, digital collecting, effective cataloguing and use of metadata can open up access to collections, just as digital preservation, preservation of other formats and conservation can help make sure that these materials are available into the future. Connecting to skilled staff who manage these collections is another way of exploring access as there will be information not recorded anywhere you can find, but which the staff may know because of their experience and knowledge of the collection as well as their knowledge of the community they work in.If you have been using public library local studies collections for research, it is helpful if you can share this research back with the public library, helping to build their collection for other people who are researching the region, even if they are exploring different topics. It may be a printed book you are providing, but more public libraries are able to accept donations of ebooks, or other online content. This can be a helpful way for you to contribute to the collections which have assisted in your research.ReferencesBateman, Shirley. “Innovation in Local Studies Collections and Programs: How Melbourne Library Service Is Fostering Community Pride.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 25.1 (2012): 12–18.Dewe, Michael. Ed. Local Studies Collection Management. London: Ashgate, 2002.Forsyth, Ellen, Ngarie Macqueen, and Daniel Nitsikopoulos. Contemporary Collecting: Collecting Instagram for Local Studies. ALIA Information Online, 2019.Gibson, Amelia N., Renate L. Chancellor, Nicole A. Cooke, Sarah Park Dahlen, Shari A. Lee, and Yasmeen L. Shorish. “Libraries on the Frontlines: Neutrality and Social Justice.” Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal 36.8 (2017): 751–66.Gregg, Alison. “Our Heritage: The Role of Archives and Local Studies Collections.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 15.3 (2002): 126–32.Heap, Amy, and Bob Pymm. “Wagga Wagga Women’s Wireless and the Web: Local Studies and New Technologies.” The Australian Library Journal 58.1 (2009): 5–16.Johnston, Clinton. “Capture and Release: Cataloguing Cultural Heritage at Marrickville Library and History Services.” The Australian Library Journal 62.3 (2013): 218–23.Leigh, Carol. “From Filing Cabinet to Cultural Centre: Creating a Community History Centre in Wanneroo Western Australia.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 25.2 (2012): 83–88.MacRitchie, John. “The Manly Art of Local Studies Blogging: A New Approach to Old Stories.” Australasian Public Libraries and Information Services 25.2 (2012): 89–93.McCausland, Sigrid. “Archives for the People: Public Libraries and Archives in New South Wales.” The Australian Library Journal 64.4 (2015): 270.Reid, Peter H., and Caroline Macafee. “The Philosophy of Local Studies in the Interactive Age.” Journal of Librarianship and Information Science 39.3 (2007): 126–41.Sheffield, Rebecka T. “More than Acid-Free Folders: Extending the Concept of Preservation to Include the Stewardship of Unexplored Histories.” Library Trends 64.3 (2016): 572.Sherratt, Tim. “Asking Better Questions: History, Trove and the Risks That Count.” Copyfight. Ed. Phillipa McGuinness. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2015. 112–24.State Library of New South Wales. NSW Public Libraries Local Studies Audit. 2014.“Trove.” Trove 7 Apr. 2019 <https://trove.nla.gov.au/>.White, Grant. “Message in a Bottle: Community Memory in the Local Studies Collection.” APLIS 13.3 (2000): 6.Whitelaw, Mitchell. “TroveMosaic: Exploring Trove Images.” TroveMosaic: Exploring Trove Images 7 Apr. 2019 <http://mtchl.net/TroveMosaic/>.

IntroductionIn regional Australia and New Zealand, museums and art galleries are increasingly becoming primary sites of cultural engagement. They are one of the key tourist attractions for regional towns and expected to generate much needed tourism revenue. In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were three million visitors to regional galleries and museums (MGNSW 13). However, apart from those (partially) funded by local councils, they are often run on donations, good will, and the enthusiasm of volunteers. Regional museums and galleries provide some paid, and more unpaid, employment for ageing populations. While two-thirds of Australia’s population lives in capital cities, the remainder who live in regional towns are likely to be in the 60+ age cohort because people are choosing to retire away from the bustling, growing cities (ABS). At last count, there were about 3000 museums and galleries in Australia with about 80% of them located in regional areas (Scott). Over the last 40 years, this figure has tripled from the 1000 regional and provincial museums estimated by Peter Piggott in his 1975 report (24). According to a 2014 survey (Shaw and Davidson), New Zealand has about 470 museums and galleries and about 70% are located outside capital cities. The vast majority, 85%, have less than five, full-time paid staff, and more than half of these were run entirely by ageing volunteers. They are entrusted with managing the vast majority of the history and heritage collections of Australia and New Zealand. These ageing volunteers need a diverse range of skills and experience to care for and interpret collections. How do you find the time and budget for professional development for both paid staff and volunteers? Many professional development events are held in capital cities, which are often a significant distance from the regional museum—this adds substantially to the costs of attending and the time commitment required to get there. In addition, it is not uncommon for people working in regional museums to be responsible for everything—from security, collection management, conservation, research, interpretation and public programs to changing the light bulbs. While there are a large number of resources available online, following a manual is often more difficult than learning from other colleagues or learning in a more formal educational or vocational environment where you can receive timely feedback on your work. Further, a foundational level of prior knowledge and experience is often required to follow written instructions. This article will suggest some strategies for low cost professional development and networking. It involves planning, thinking strategically and forming partnerships with others in the region. It is time to harness the power of modern communications technology and use it as a tool for professional development. Some models of professional development in regional areas that have been implemented in the past will also be reviewed. The focus for this article is on training and professional development for workers in regional museums, heritage sites and keeping places. Regional art galleries have not been included because they tend to have separate regional networks and training opportunities. For example, there are professional development opportunities provided through the Art Galleries Association of Australia and their state branches. Regional galleries are also far more likely to have one or more paid staff members (Winkworth, “Fixing the Slums” 2). Regional Museums, Volunteers, and Social CapitalIt is widely accepted that regional museums and galleries enhance social capital and reduce social isolation (Kelly 32; Burton and Griffin 328). However, while working in a regional museum or gallery can help to build friendship networks, it can also be professionally isolating. How do you benchmark what you do against other places if you are two or more hours drive from those places? How do you learn from other colleagues if all your colleagues are also isolated by the ‘tyranny of distance’ and struggling with the same lack of access to training? In 2017 in New South Wales alone, there were 8,629 active volunteers working in regional museums and galleries giving almost five million hours, which Museums and Galleries NSW calculated was worth over $150 million per annum in unpaid labour (MGNSW 1). Providing training and professional development to this group is an investment in Australia’s social and cultural capital.Unlike other community-run groups, the museums and heritage places which have emerged in regional Australia and New Zealand are not part of a national or state branch network. Volunteers who work for the Red Cross, Scouts or Landcare benefit from being part of a national organisation which provides funding, support workers, a website, governance structure, marketing, political advocacy and training (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 11). In Australia and New Zealand, this role is undertaken by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association AMaGA (formerly Museums Australia) and Museums Aotearoa respectively. However, both of these groups operate at the macro policy level, for example organising annual conferences, publishing a journal and developing Indigenous policy frameworks, rather than the local, practical level. In 1995, due to their advocacy work, Landcare Australia received $500 million over five years from the federal government to fund 5000 Landcare groups, which are run by 120,000 volunteers (Oppenheimer 177). They argued successfully that the sustainable development of land resources started at the local level. What do we need to do to convince government of the need for sustainable development of our local and regional museum and heritage resources?Training for Volunteers Working in Regional Museums: The Current SituationAnother barrier to training for regional museum workers is the assumption that the 70:20:10 model of professional development should apply. That is, 70% of one’s professional development is done ‘on the job’ by completing tasks and problem-solving; 20% is achieved by learning from mentors, coaches and role models and 10% is learnt from attending conferences and symposia and enrolling in formal courses of study. However, this model pre-supposes that there are people in your workplace whom you can learn from and who can show you how to complete a task, and that you are not destroying or damaging a precious, unique object if you happen to make a mistake.Some museum volunteers come with skills in research, marketing, administration, customer service or photography, but very few come with specific museum skills like writing exhibition text, registering an acquisition or conserving artefacts. These skills need to be taught. As Kylie Winkworth has written, museum management now requires a [...] skills set, which is not so readily found in small communities, and which in many ways is less rewarding for the available volunteers, who may have left school at 15. We do not expect volunteer librarians to catalogue books, which are in any case of low intrinsic value, but we still expect volunteers in their 70s and 80s to catalogue irreplaceable heritage collections and meet ever more onerous museum standards. That so many volunteers manage to do this is extraordinary. (“Let a Thousand Flowers” 13)Workers in regional museums are constantly required to step outside their comfort zones and learn new skills with minimal professional support. While these challenging experiences can be very rewarding, they are also potentially damaging for our irreplaceable material cultural heritage.Training for museum professionals has been on the agenda of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) since 1947 (Boylan 62). However, until 1996, their work focused on recommending curricula for new museum professionals and did not include life-long learning and on-going professional development. ICOM’s International Committee for the Training of Personnel (ICTOP) and the ICOM Executive has responded to this in their new curricula—ICOM Curricula Guidelines for Professional Museum Development, but this does not address the difficulties staff or volunteers working in regional areas face in accessing training.In some parts of Australia, there are regional support and professional development programs in place. For example, in Queensland, there is the Museum Development Officer (MDO) network. However, because of the geographic size of the state and the spread of the museums, these five regionally based staff often have 60-80 museums or keeping places in their region needing support and so their time and expertise is spread very thinly. It is also predominantly a fee-for-service arrangement. That is, the museums have to pay for the MDO to come and deliver training. Usually this is done by the MDO working with a local museum to apply for a Regional Arts Development Fund (RADF) grant. In Victoria there is a roving curator program where eligible regional museums can apply to have a professional curator come and work with them for a few days to help the volunteers curate exhibitions. The roving curator can also provide advice on “develop[ing] high quality exhibitions for diverse audiences” via email, telephone and networking events. Tasmania operates a similar scheme but their two roving curators are available for up to 25 days of work each year with eligible museums, provided the local council makes a financial contribution. The New South Wales government supports the museum advisor program through which a museum professional will come to your museum for up to 20 days/year to give advice and hands-on training—provided your local council pays $7000, an amount that is matched by the state government—for this service. In 2010, in response to recommendations in the Dunn Report (2007), the Collections Council of Australia (CCA) established a pilot project with the City of Kalgoorlie-Boulder in Western Australia and $120,000 in funding from the Myer Foundation to trial the provision of a paid Collections Care Coordinator who would provide free training, expertise and support to local museums in the region. Tragically, CCA was de-funded by the Cultural Ministers Council the same year and the roll-out of a hub and spoke regional model was not supported by government due to the lack of an evidence base (Winkworth, “Let a Thousand Flowers” 18). An evaluation of the trial project would have tested a different model of regional training and added to the evidence base.All these state-based models (except the aborted Collections Care hub in Western Australia) require small regional museums to compete with each other for access to a museum professional and to successfully apply for funding, usually from their local council or state government. If they are successful, the training that is delivered is a one-off, as they are unlikely to get a second slice of the regional pie.An alternative to this competitive, fly-in fly-out, one-off model of professional development is to harness the technology and resources of local libraries and other cultural facilities in regional areas. This is what the Sydney Opera House Trust did in March 2019 to deliver their All about Women program of speakers via live streaming to 37 satellite sites throughout Australia and New Zealand.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: ScenarioImagine the following scenario. It is a Monday morning in a regional library in Dubbo, New South Wales. Dubbo is 391 km or five hours drive by car from the nearest capital city (Sydney) and there are 50 regional museums within a 100 km radius. Ten people are gathered in a meeting room at the library watching a live stream of the keynote speakers who are presenting at their national museums conference. They are from five regional museums where they work as volunteers or part-time paid staff. They cannot afford to pay $2000, or more, to attend the conference, but they are happy to self-fund to drive for an hour or two to link up with other colleagues to listen to the presentations. They make notes and tweet in their questions using the conference twitter handle and hashtag. They have not been exposed to international speakers in the industry before and the ideas presented are fresh and stimulating. When the conference breaks for morning tea, they take a break too and get to know each other over a cuppa (provided free of charge by the library). Just as the networking sessions at conferences are vitally important for the delegates, they are even more important to address social isolation amongst this group. When they reconvene, they discuss their questions and agree to email the presenters with the questions that are unresolved. After the conference keynote sessions finish, the main conference (in the capital city) disperses into parallel sessions, which are no longer available via live stream.To make the two-hour drive more worthwhile and continue their professional development, they have arranged to hold a significance assessment workshop as well. Each museum worker has brought along photographs of one item in their collection that they want to do more research on. Some of them have also brought the object, if it is small and robust enough to travel. They have downloaded copies of Significance 2.0 and read it before they arrived. They started to write significance reports but could not fully understand how to apply some of the criteria. They cannot afford to pay for professional workshop facilitators, but they have arranged for the local studies librarian to give them an hour of free training on using the library’s resources (online and onsite) to do research on the local area and local families. They learn more about Trove, Papers Past and other research tools which are available online. This is hands-on and computer-based skills training using their own laptops/tablets or the ones provided by the library. After the training with the librarian, they break into two groups and read each other’s significance reports and make suggestions. The day finishes with a cuppa at 2.30pm giving them time to drive home before the sun sets. They agree to exchange email addresses so they can keep in touch. All the volunteers and staff who attended these sessions in regional areas feel energised after these meetings. They no longer feel so isolated and like they are working in the dark. They feel supported just knowing that there are other people who are struggling with the same issues and constraints as they are. They are sick of talking about the lack of budget, expertise, training and resources and want to do something with what they have.Bert (fictional name) decides that it is worth capitalising on this success. He emails the people who came to the session in Dubbo to ask them if they would like to do it again but focus on some different training needs. He asks them to choose two of the following three professional development options. First, they can choose to watch and discuss a recording of the keynote presentations from day two of the recent national conference. The conference organisers have uploaded digital recordings of the speakers’ presentations and the question time to the AMaGA website. This is an option for local libraries that do not have sufficient bandwidth to live stream video. The local library technician will help them cast the videos to a large screen. Second, they can each bring an object from their museum collection that they think needs conservation work. If the item is too fragile or big to move, they will bring digital photographs of it instead. Bert consulted their state-based museum and found some specialist conservators who have agreed to Skype or Facetime them in Dubbo free of charge, to give them expert advice about how to care for their objects, and most importantly, what not to do. The IT technician at Dubbo Library can set up their meeting room so that they can cast the Skype session onto a large smart screen TV. One week before the event, they will send a list of their objects and photographs of them to the conservator so that she can prepare, and they can make best use of her time. After this session, they will feel more confident about undertaking small cleaning and flattening treatments and know when they should not attempt a treatment themselves and need to call on the experts. Third, they could choose to have a training session with the council’s grants officer on writing grant applications. As he assesses grant applications, he can tell them what local councils look for in a successful grant application. He can also inform them about some of the grants that might be relevant to them. After the formal training, there will be an opportunity for them to exchange information about the grants they have applied for in the past—sometimes finding out what’s available can be difficult—and work in small groups to critique each other’s grant applications.The group chooses options two and three, as they want more practical skills development. They take a break in the middle of the day for lunch, which gives them the opportunity to exchange anecdotes from their volunteer work and listen to and support each other. They feel validated and affirmed. They have gained new skills and don’t feel so isolated. Before they leave, Alice agrees to get in touch with everyone to organise their next regional training day.Harnessing Technology and Using Regional Library Infrastructure to Provide Training: BenefitsThese scenarios need not be futuristic. The training needs are real, as is the desire to learn and the capacity of libraries to support regional groups. While funding for regional museums has stagnated or declined in recent years, libraries have been surging ahead. In August 2018, the New South Wales Government announced an “historic investment” of $60 million into all 370 public libraries that would “transform the way NSW’s public libraries deliver much-needed services, especially in regional areas” (Smith). Libraries are equipped and charged with the responsibility of enabling local community groups to make best use of their resources. Most state and national museum workers are keen to share their expertise with their regional colleagues: funding and distance are often the only barriers. These scenarios allow national conference keynote speakers to reach a much larger audience than the conference attendees. While this strategy might reduce the number of workers from regional areas who pay to attend conferences, the reality is that due to distance, other volunteer commitments, expense and family responsibilities, they probably would not attend anyway. Most regional museums and galleries and their staff might be asset-rich, but they are cash-poor, and the only way their workers get to attend conferences is if they win a bursary or grant. In 2005, Winkworth said: “the future for community museums is to locate them within local government as an integral part of the cultural, educational and economic infrastructure of the community, just like libraries and galleries” (“Fixing the Slums” 7). Fourteen years on, very little progress has been made in this direction. Those museums which have been integrated into the local council infrastructure, such as at Orange and Wagga Wagga in western New South Wales, are doing much better than those that are still stuck in ‘cultural poverty’ and trying to operate independently.However, the co-location and convergence of museums, libraries and archives is only successful if it is well managed. Helena Robinson has examined the impact on museum collection management and interpretation of five local government funded, converged collecting institutions in Australia and New Zealand and found that the process is complex and does not necessarily result in “optimal” cross-disciplinary expertise or best practice outcomes (14158).ConclusionRobinson’s research, however, did not consider community-based collecting institutions using regional libraries as sites for training and networking. By harnessing local library resources and making better use of existing communications technology it is possible to create regional hubs for professional development and collegiate support, which are not reliant on grants. If the current competitive, fly-in fly-out, self-funded model of providing professional development and support to regional museums continues, then the future for our cultural heritage collections and the dedicated volunteers who care for them is bleak. Alternatively, the scenarios I have described give regional museum workers agency to address their own professional development needs. This in no way removes the need for leadership, advocacy and coordination by national representative bodies such as AMaGA and Museums Aotearoa. If AMaGA partnered with the Australian Library and Information Association (ALIA) to stream their conference keynote sessions to strategically located regional libraries and used some of their annual funding from the Department of Communication and the Arts to pay for museum professionals to travel to some of those sites to deliver training, they would be investing in the nation’s social and cultural capital and addressing the professional development needs of regional museum workers. This would also increase the sustainability of our cultural heritage collections, which are valuable economic assets.ReferencesAustralian Bureau of Statistics. “2071.0—Census of Population and Housing: Reflecting Australia—Snapshot of Australia, 2016”. 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In a TEXT essay in 2004, Philip Edmonds wrote about the publication prospects of graduates of creative writing programs. He depicted the publishing industry of the 1970s and 1980s as a field driven by small presses and literary journals, and lamented the dearth of these publications in today’s industry. Edmonds wrote that our creative writing programs as they stand today are under-performing as they do not deliver on the prime goal of most students: publication. “Ultimately,” he wrote, “creative writing programs can only operate to their full potential alongside an expanding and vibrant publishing culture” (1). As a creative writing and publishing lecturer myself, and one who teaches in the field of publishing and editing, this anxiety rings quite true. I am inherently interested in the creation of a strong and vibrant publishing industry so that promising students and graduates might get the most out of their degrees. As the popularity of creative writing programs grows, what relationships are being formed between writing programs and the broader publishing industry? Furthermore, does a role and responsibility exist for universities themselves to foster the publication of the emerging writers they train? Edmonds argued that the answer could be found not in universities, but in state writers’ centres. He advocated a policy whereby universities and the Australia Council funded the production of literary magazines through state writers’ centres, resulting in a healthier publishing marketplace for creative writing graduates (6). This paper offers a second alternative to this plan, arguing that university presses can play a role in the development of a healthier Australian publishing industry. To do so, it cites three examples of university press interactions with both the broad writing and publishing industry, and more specifically, with creative writing programs. The paper uses these examples—University of Queensland Press, University of Western Australia Press, and Giramondo Publishing (UWS)—in order to begin a broader conversation regarding the role universities can play in the writing and publishing industry. Let us begin by thinking about the university and its traditional role in the development of literature. The university can be thought of as a multi-functional literary institution. This is not a new concept: for centuries, there has been an integral link between the book trade and the university, with universities housing “stationers, scribes, parchment makers, paper makers, bookbinders, and all those associated with making books” (Clement 317). In universities today, we see similar performances of the various stages of literary production. We have students practising creative writing in both undergraduate and postgraduate coursework programs. We have the editing of texts and mentoring of writers through postgraduate creative writing supervision. We have the distribution of texts through sales from university bookshops, and the mass storage and loans of texts in university libraries. And we have the publication of texts through university presses.This point of literary production, the publication of texts through university presses, has traditionally been preoccupied with the publication of scholarly work. However, a number of movements within the publishing industry towards the end of the twentieth century resulted in some university presses shifting their objectives to incorporate trade publishing. The globalization of the publishing industry in the early 1990s led to a general change in the decision-making process of mainstream publishers, where increasingly, publishers looked at the commercial viability of texts rather than their cultural value. These movements, defined by the takeover of many publishing houses by media conglomerates, also placed significant financial pressure on smaller publishers, who struggled to compete with houses now backed by significantly increased fiscal strength. While it is difficult to make general statements about university presses due to their very particular nature, one can read a trend towards trade publishing by a number of university presses in an attempt to alleviate some of these financial pressures. This shift can be seen as one interaction between the university and the broader creative writing discipline. However, not all university presses waited until the financial pressures of the 1990s to move to trade publishing. For some presses, their trade lists have played a significant role in defining their relationship with literary culture. One such example in the Australian landscape is University of Queensland Press. UQP was founded in 1948, and subsisted as purely a scholarly publisher until the 1960s. Its first movements into trade publishing were largely through poetry, originally publishing traditional hardback volumes before moving into paperback, a format considered both innovative and risky at the time. David Malouf found an early home at UQP, and has talked a number of times about his relationship with the press. His desire to produce a poetry format which appealed to a new type of audience spawned the press’s interest in trade publishing. He felt that slim paperback volumes would give poetry a new mass market appeal. On a visit to Brisbane in 1969 I went to talk to Frank Thompson (general manager) at the University of Queensland Press… I told him that I did have a book but that I also had a firm idea of the kind of publication I wanted: a paperback of 64 pages that would sell for a dollar. Frank astonished me by saying … that if his people told him it was financially viable he would do it. He picked up the phone, called in his production crew … and after a quarter of an hour of argument and calculations they came up with the unit cost of, I think, twenty-three cents. ‘Okay, mate,’ Frank told me, ‘you’re on.’ I left with a firm undertaking and a deadline for delivery of the manuscript. (Malouf 72-73) That book of poetry, Bicycle and Other Poems, was Malouf’s first solo volume. It appeared in bookstores in 1970 alongside other slim volumes by Rodney Hall and Michael Dransfield, two men who would go on to become iconic Brisbane poets. Together, these three bold experiments in paperback poetry publishing sold a remarkable 7,000 copies and generated these sales without school or university adoptions, and without any Commonwealth Literary Fund assistance, either. UQP went on to publish 159 new titles of poetry between 1968 and 1996, becoming a significant player in the Australian literary landscape. Through University of Queensland Press’s poetry publishing, we see a way of how the university can interact with the broader writing and publishing industry. This level of cohesion between the publishing house and the industry became one of the distinguishing features of the press in this time. UQP garnered a reputation for fostering Australian writing talent, launching the careers of a generation of Australian authors. Elizabeth Jolley, Roger McDonald, Beverley Farmer, Thea Astley, Janette Turner Hospital, and Peter Carey all found their first home at the press. The university’s publishing house was at the forefront of Australian literary development at a time when Australia was beginning to blossom, culturally, as a nation. What this experience shows is the cultural importance and potential cultural benefit of a high level of cohesion between the university press and the broader writing and publishing industry. UQP has also sought to continue a high level of social cohesion with the local community. The press is significant in that it inhabits a physical space, the city of Brisbane, which is devoid of any other significant trade publishers. In this sense, UQP, and by association, the University of Queensland, has played a leading role in the cultural and literary development of the city. UQP continues to sponsor events such as the Brisbane Writers Festival, and publishes the winning manuscript for the Emerging Queensland Author award at the annual Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. Another point of interest in this relationship between the press and the university at University of Queensland can be seen in the relationship between UQP and some of the staff in the university’s creative writing department. Novelist, Dr Venero Armanno, senior lecturer in the creative writing program at UQ, shifted from a major international publisher back to his employer’s publishing house in 2007. Armanno’s move to the press was coupled with the appointment at UQP of another University of Queensland creative writing senior lecturer, Dr Bronwyn Lea, as poetry editor (Lea has recently left this post). This sort of connection shapes the public face of creative writing within the university, and heightens the level of cohesion between creative writing programs and university publishing. The main product of this interaction is, perhaps, the level of cohesion between university press and creative writing faculty that the relationship outwardly projects. This interaction leads us to question whether more formal arrangements for the cohesion between creative writing departments and university presses can be put in place. Specifically, the two activities beg the question: why can’t university publishers who publish trade fiction make a commitment to publish work that comes out of their own creative writing programs, and particularly, work out of their research higher degrees? The short answer to this seems to be caught up in the differing objectives of university presses and creative writing programs. The matter is not as cut-and-dry as a press wanting to publish good manuscripts, and a creative writing program, through its research by creative practice, providing that work. A number of issues get in the way: quality of manuscripts, editorial direction of press, areas of specialisation of creative writing faculty, flow of numbers through creative writing programs, to name a few. University of Western Australia Publishing recently played with the idea of how these two elements of creative writing within the university, manuscript production and trade publishing, could work together. UWA Publishing was established in 1935 as UWA Press (the house changed its name to UWA Publishing in 2009). Like University of Queensland Press, the house provides an important literary and cultural voice in Perth, which is not a publishing hub on the scale of Sydney or Melbourne. In 2005, the press, which had a tradition as a strong scholarly publisher and emerging trade publisher, announced a plan to publish a new series of literary fiction written by students in Australian creative writing courses. This was a new idea for UWA Publishing, as the house had previously only published scholarly work, along with natural history, history and children’s books.UWA Publishing fiction series editor Terri-Ann White said that the idea behind the series was to use creative writing postgraduate degrees as a “filter” to get the best emerging writing in Australia.There’s got to be something going for a student writer working with an experienced supervisor with all of the resources of a university. There’s got to be an edge to that kind of enterprise. (In Macnamara 3) As this experiment began in 2005, the result of the press’s doctrine is still unclear. However, it could be interesting to explore the motivations behind the decision to focus fiction publishing on postgraduate student work. Many presses publish student work—N.A. Bourke’s The Bone Flute and Julienne van Loon’s Road Story come to mind as two examples of successful work produced in a creative writing program—but few houses advertise where the manuscript has come from. This is perhaps because of the negative stigma that goes along with student work, that the writing is underdeveloped or, perhaps, formulaic, somehow over-influenced by its supervisor or home institution. UWA Publishing’s decision to take fiction solely from the pool of postgraduate writers is a bold one, and can be seen perhaps as noble by those working within the walls of the university. Without making any assumptions about the sales success of the program, the decision does shape the way in which the press is seen in the broader writing and publishing industry. We can summise from the decision that the list will have a strong literary focus, that the work will be substantial and well-researched, to the point where it could contribute to the bulk of a Masters degree by research, or PhD. The program would also appear to appeal to writing students within the university, all of whom go through their various degrees being told how difficult publication can be for first time writers. Another approach to the relationship between university presses and the broader writing and publishing industry can be seen at the University of Western Sydney. UWS founded a group in 2005 called the Writing and Society Research Group. The group manages the literary journal Heat Magazine and the Giramondo book imprint. Giramondo Publishing was established in 1995 with “the aim of publishing quality creative and interpretative writing by Australian authors”. It states its objectives as seeking to “build a common ground between the academy and the marketplace; to stimulate exchange between Australian writers and readers and their counterparts overseas; and to encourage innovative and adventurous work that might not otherwise find publication because of its subtle commercial appeal” ("Giramondo History"). These objectives demonstrate an almost utopian idea of engaging with the broader writing and publishing industry—here we have a university publisher actively seeking to publish inventive and original work, the sort of work which might be overlooked by other publishers. This philosophical approach indicates the gap which university presses (in an ideal world) would fill in the publishing industry. With the financial support of the university (and, in the case of Giramondo and others, funding bodies such as the Australia Council), university presses can be in a unique position to uphold more traditional literary values. They can focus on the cultural value of books, rather than their commercial potential. In this way, the Writing and Society Research Group at UWS demonstrates a more structural approach to the university’s engagement with the publishing industry. It engages with the industry as a stakeholder of literary values, fulfilling one of the roles of the university as a multi-functional literary institution. It also seeks directly to foster the work of new and emerging writers. Not all universities and university presses will have the autonomy or capacity to act in such a way. What is necessary is constant thought, debate and action towards working out how the university press can be a dynamic and relevant industry player. References Clement, Richard. “Cataloguing Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts.” The Library Quarterly 55 (1985): 316-326. Edmonds, Philip. “Respectable or Risqué: Creative Writing Programs in the Marketplace.” TEXT 8.1 (2004). 27 Jan. 2010 < http://www.textjournal.com.au/april04/edmonds.htm >. “Giramondo History.” Giramondo Publishing. 27 Jan. 2010 < http://www.giramondopublishing.com/history >. Greco, Albert N., Clara E. Rodriguez, and Robert M. Wharton. The Culture and Commerce of Publishing in the 21st Century. Stanford: Stanford Business Books, 2007. Macnamara, Lisa. “Big Break for Student Writers.” The Australian 2 Nov. 2005: Features 3. Malouf, David. In Munro, Craig, ed. UQP: The Writer’s Press: 1948 – 1998. St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1998.

IntroductionFood Studies is a relatively recent area of research enquiry in Australia and Magazine Studies is even newer (Le Masurier and Johinke), with the consequence that Australian culinary magazines are only just beginning to be investigated. Moreover, although many major libraries have not thought such popular magazines worthy of sustained collection (Fox and Sornil), considering these publications is important. As de Certeau argues, it can be of considerable consequence to identify and analyse everyday practices (such as producing and reading popular magazines) that seem so minor and insignificant as to be unworthy of notice, as these practices have the ability to affect our lives. It is important in this case as these publications were part of the post-war gastronomic environment in Australia in which national tastes in domestic cookery became radically internationalised (Santich). To further investigate Australian magazines, as well as suggesting how these cosmopolitan eating habits became more widely embraced, this article will survey the various ways in which the idea of “abroad” is expressed in one Australian culinary serial from the post-war period, Australian Wines & Food Quarterly magazine, which was published from 1956 to 1960. The methodological approach taken is an historically-informed content analysis (Krippendorff) of relevant material from these magazines combined with germane media data (Hodder). All issues in the serial’s print run have been considered.Australian Post-War Culinary PublishingTo date, studies of 1950s writing in Australia have largely focused on literary and popular fiction (Johnson-Wood; Webby) and literary criticism (Bird; Dixon; Lee). There have been far fewer studies of non-fiction writing of any kind, although some serial publications from this time have attracted some attention (Bell; Lindesay; Ross; Sheridan; Warner-Smith; White; White). In line with studies internationally, groundbreaking work in Australian food history has focused on cookbooks, and includes work by Supski, who notes that despite the fact that buying cookbooks was “regarded as a luxury in the 1950s” (87), such publications were an important information source in terms of “developing, consolidating and extending foodmaking knowledge” at that time (85).It is widely believed that changes to Australian foodways were brought about by significant post-war immigration and the recipes and dishes these immigrants shared with neighbours, friends, and work colleagues and more widely afield when they opened cafes and restaurants (Newton; Newton; Manfredi). Although these immigrants did bring new culinary flavours and habits with them, the overarching rhetoric guiding population policy at this time was assimilation, with migrants expected to abandon their culture, language, and habits in favour of the dominant British-influenced ways of living (Postiglione). While migrants often did retain their foodways (Risson), the relationship between such food habits and the increasingly cosmopolitan Australian food culture is much more complex than the dominant cultural narrative would have us believe. It has been pointed out, for example, that while the haute cuisine of countries such as France, Italy, and Germany was much admired in Australia and emulated in expensive dining (Brien and Vincent), migrants’ own preference for their own dishes instead of Anglo-Australian choices, was not understood (Postiglione). Duruz has added how individual diets are eclectic, “multi-layered and hybrid” (377), incorporating foods from both that person’s own background with others available for a range of reasons including availability, cost, taste, and fashion. In such an environment, popular culinary publishing, in terms of cookbooks, specialist magazines, and recipe and other food-related columns in general magazines and newspapers, can be posited to be another element contributing to this change.Australian Wines & Food QuarterlyAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly (AWFQ) is, as yet, a completely unexamined publication, and there appears to be only three complete sets of this magazine held in public collections. It is important to note that, at the time it was launched in the mid-1950s, food writing played a much less significant part in Australian popular publishing than it does today, with far fewer cookbooks released than today, and women’s magazines and the women’s pages of newspapers containing only small recipe sections. In this environment, a new specialist culinary magazine could be seen to be timely, an audacious gamble, or both.All issues of this magazine were produced and printed in, and distributed from, Melbourne, Australia. Although no sales or distribution figures are available, production was obviously a struggle, with only 15 issues published before the magazine folded at the end of 1960. The title of the magazine changed over this time, and issue release dates are erratic, as is the method in which volumes and issues are numbered. Although the number of pages varied from 32 up to 52, and then less once again, across the magazine’s life, the price was steadily reduced, ending up at less than half the original cover price. All issues were produced and edited by Donald Wallace, who also wrote much of the content, with contributions from family members, including his wife, Mollie Wallace, to write, illustrate, and produce photographs for the magazine.When considering the content of the magazine, most is quite familiar in culinary serials today, although AWFQ’s approach was radically innovative in Australia at this time when cookbooks, women’s magazines, and newspaper cookery sections focused on recipes, many of which were of cakes, biscuits, and other sweet baking (Bannerman). AWFQ not only featured many discursive essays and savory meals, it also featured much wine writing and review-style content as well as information about restaurant dining in each issue.Wine-Related ContentWine is certainly the most prominent of the content areas, with most issues of the magazine containing more wine-related content than any other. Moreover, in the early issues, most of the food content is about preparing dishes and/or meals that could be consumed alongside wines, although the proportion of food content increases as the magazine is published. This wine-related content takes a clearly international perspective on this topic. While many articles and advertisements, for example, narrate the long history of Australian wine growing—which goes back to early 19th century—these articles argue that Australia's vineyards and wineries measure up to international, and especially French, examples. In one such example, the author states that: “from the earliest times Australia’s wines have matched up to world standard” (“Wine” 25). This contest can be situated in Australia, where a leading restaurant (Caprice in Sydney) could be seen to not only “match up to” but also, indeed to, “challenge world standards” by serving Australian wines instead of imports (“Sydney” 33). So good, indeed, are Australian wines that when foreigners are surprised by their quality, this becomes newsworthy. This is evidenced in the following excerpt: “Nearly every English businessman who has come out to Australia in the last ten years … has diverted from his main discussion to comment on the high quality of Australian wine” (Seppelt, 3). In a similar nationalist vein, many articles feature overseas experts’ praise of Australian wines. Thus, visiting Italian violinist Giaconda de Vita shows a “keen appreciation of Australian wines” (“Violinist” 30), British actor Robert Speaight finds Grange Hermitage “an ideal wine” (“High Praise” 13), and the Swedish ambassador becomes their advocate (Ludbrook, “Advocate”).This competition could also be located overseas including when Australian wines are served at prestigious overseas events such as a dinner for members of the Overseas Press Club in New York (Australian Wines); sold from Seppelt’s new London cellars (Melbourne), or the equally new Australian Wine Centre in Soho (Australia Will); or, featured in exhibitions and promotions such as the Lausanne Trade Fair (Australia is Guest;“Wines at Lausanne), or the International Wine Fair in Yugoslavia (Australia Wins).Australia’s first Wine Festival was held in Melbourne in 1959 (Seppelt, “Wine Week”), the joint focus of which was the entertainment and instruction of the some 15,000 to 20,000 attendees who were expected. At its centre was a series of free wine tastings aiming to promote Australian wines to the “professional people of the community, as well as the general public and the housewife” (“Melbourne” 8), although admission had to be recommended by a wine retailer. These tastings were intended to build up the prestige of Australian wine when compared to international examples: “It is the high quality of our wines that we are proud of. That is the story to pass on—that Australian wine, at its best, is at least as good as any in the world and better than most” (“Melbourne” 8).There is also a focus on promoting wine drinking as a quotidian habit enjoyed abroad: “We have come a long way in less than twenty years […] An enormous number of husbands and wives look forward to a glass of sherry when the husband arrives home from work and before dinner, and a surprising number of ordinary people drink table wine quite un-selfconsciously” (Seppelt, “Advance” 3). However, despite an acknowledged increase in wine appreciation and drinking, there is also acknowledgement that this there was still some way to go in this aim as, for example, in the statement: “There is no reason why the enjoyment of table wines should not become an Australian custom” (Seppelt, “Advance” 4).The authority of European experts and European habits is drawn upon throughout the publication whether in philosophically-inflected treatises on wine drinking as a core part of civilised behaviour, or practically-focused articles about wine handling and serving (Keown; Seabrook; “Your Own”). Interestingly, a number of Australian experts are also quoted as stressing that these are guidelines, not strict rules: Crosby, for instance, states: “There is no ‘right wine.’ The wine to drink is the one you like, when and how you like it” (19), while the then-manager of Lindemans Wines is similarly reassuring in his guide to entertaining, stating that “strict adherence to the rules is not invariably wise” (Mackay 3). Tingey openly acknowledges that while the international-style of regularly drinking wine had “given more dignity and sophistication to the Australian way of life” (35), it should not be shrouded in snobbery.Food-Related ContentThe magazine’s cookery articles all feature international dishes, and certain foreign foods, recipes, and ways of eating and dining are clearly identified as “gourmet”. Cheese is certainly the most frequently mentioned “gourmet” food in the magazine, and is featured in every issue. These articles can be grouped into the following categories: understanding cheese (how it is made and the different varieties enjoyed internationally), how to consume cheese (in relation to other food and specific wines, and in which particular parts of a meal, again drawing on international practices), and cooking with cheese (mostly in what can be identified as “foreign” recipes).Some of this content is produced by Kraft Foods, a major advertiser in the magazine, and these articles and recipes generally focus on urging people to eat more, and varied international kinds of cheese, beyond the ubiquitous Australian cheddar. In terms of advertorials, both Kraft cheeses (as well as other advertisers) are mentioned by brand in recipes, while the companies are also profiled in adjacent articles. In the fourth issue, for instance, a full-page, infomercial-style advertisement, noting the different varieties of Kraft cheese and how to serve them, is published in the midst of a feature on cooking with various cheeses (“Cooking with Cheese”). This includes recipes for Swiss Cheese fondue and two pasta recipes: spaghetti and spicy tomato sauce, and a so-called Italian spaghetti with anchovies.Kraft’s company history states that in 1950, it was the first business in Australia to manufacture and market rindless cheese. Through these AWFQ advertisements and recipes, Kraft aggressively marketed this innovation, as well as its other new products as they were launched: mayonnaise, cheddar cheese portions, and Cracker Barrel Cheese in 1954; Philadelphia Cream Cheese, the first cream cheese to be produced commercially in Australia, in 1956; and, Coon Cheese in 1957. Not all Kraft products were seen, however, as “gourmet” enough for such a magazine. Kraft’s release of sliced Swiss Cheese in 1957, and processed cheese slices in 1959, for instance, both passed unremarked in either the magazine’s advertorial or recipes.An article by the Australian Dairy Produce Board urging consumers to “Be adventurous with Cheese” presented general consumer information including the “origin, characteristics and mode of serving” cheese accompanied by a recipe for a rich and exotic-sounding “Wine French Dressing with Blue Cheese” (Kennedy 18). This was followed in the next issue by an article discussing both now familiar and not-so familiar European cheese varieties: “Monterey, Tambo, Feta, Carraway, Samsoe, Taffel, Swiss, Edam, Mozzarella, Pecorino-Romano, Red Malling, Cacio Cavallo, Blue-Vein, Roman, Parmigiano, Kasseri, Ricotta and Pepato” (“Australia’s Natural” 23). Recipes for cheese fondues recur through the magazine, sometimes even multiple times in the same issue (see, for instance, “Cooking With Cheese”; “Cooking With Wine”; Pain). In comparison, butter, although used in many AWFQ’s recipes, was such a common local ingredient at this time that it was only granted one article over the entire run of the magazine, and this was largely about the much more unusual European-style unsalted butter (“An Expert”).Other international recipes that were repeated often include those for pasta (always spaghetti) as well as mayonnaise made with olive oil. Recurring sweets and desserts include sorbets and zabaglione from Italy, and flambéd crepes suzettes from France. While tabletop cooking is the epitome of sophistication and described as an international technique, baked Alaska (ice cream nestled on liquor-soaked cake, and baked in a meringue shell), hailing from America, is the most featured recipe in the magazine. Asian-inspired cuisine was rarely represented and even curry—long an Anglo-Australian staple—was mentioned only once in the magazine, in an article reprinted from the South African The National Hotelier, and which included a recipe alongside discussion of blending spices (“Curry”).Coffee was regularly featured in both articles and advertisements as a staple of the international gourmet kitchen (see, for example, Bancroft). Articles on the history, growing, marketing, blending, roasting, purchase, percolating and brewing, and serving of coffee were common during the magazine’s run, and are accompanied with advertisements for Bushell’s, Robert Timms’s and Masterfoods’s coffee ranges. AWFQ believed Australia’s growing coffee consumption was the result of increased participation in quality internationally-influenced dining experiences, whether in restaurants, the “scores of colourful coffee shops opening their doors to a new generation” (“Coffee” 39), or at home (Adams). Tea, traditionally the Australian hot drink of choice, is not mentioned once in the magazine (Brien).International Gourmet InnovationsAlso featured in the magazine are innovations in the Australian food world: new places to eat; new ways to cook, including a series of sometimes quite unusual appliances; and new ways to shop, with a profile of the first American-style supermarkets to open in Australia in this period. These are all seen as overseas innovations, but highly suited to Australia. The laws then controlling the service of alcohol are also much discussed, with many calls to relax the licensing laws which were seen as inhibiting civilised dining and drinking practices. The terms this was often couched in—most commonly in relation to the Olympic Games (held in Melbourne in 1956), but also in relation to tourism in general—are that these restrictive regulations were an embarrassment for Melbourne when considered in relation to international practices (see, for example, Ludbrook, “Present”). This was at a time when the nightly hotel closing time of 6.00 pm (and the performance of the notorious “six o’clock swill” in terms of drinking behaviour) was only repealed in Victoria in 1966 (Luckins).Embracing scientific approaches in the kitchen was largely seen to be an American habit. The promotion of the use of electricity in the kitchen, and the adoption of new electric appliances (Gas and Fuel; Gilbert “Striving”), was described not only as a “revolution that is being wrought in our homes”, but one that allowed increased levels of personal expression and fulfillment, in “increas[ing] the time and resources available to the housewife for the expression of her own personality in the management of her home” (Gilbert, “The Woman’s”). This mirrors the marketing of these modes of cooking and appliances in other media at this time, including in newspapers, radio, and other magazines. This included features on freezing food, however AWFQ introduced an international angle, by suggesting that recipe bases could be pre-prepared, frozen, and then defrosted to use in a range of international cookery (“Fresh”; “How to”; Kelvinator Australia). The then-new marvel of television—another American innovation—is also mentioned in the magazine ("Changing concepts"), although other nationalities are also invoked. The history of the French guild the Confrerie de la Chaine des Roitisseurs in 1248 is, for instance, used to promote an electric spit roaster that was part of a state-of-the-art gas stove (“Always”), and there are also advertisements for such appliances as the Gaggia expresso machine (“Lets”) which draw on both Italian historical antecedence and modern science.Supermarket and other forms of self-service shopping are identified as American-modern, with Australia’s first shopping mall lauded as the epitome of utopian progressiveness in terms of consumer practice. Judged to mark “a new era in Australian retailing” (“Regional” 12), the opening of Chadstone Regional Shopping Centre in suburban Melbourne on 4 October 1960, with its 83 tenants including “giant” supermarket Dickens, and free parking for 2,500 cars, was not only “one of the most up to date in the world” but “big even by American standards” (“Regional” 12, italics added), and was hailed as a step in Australia “catching up” with the United States in terms of mall shopping (“Regional” 12). This shopping centre featured international-styled dining options including Bistro Shiraz, an outdoor terrace restaurant that planned to operate as a bistro-snack bar by day and full-scale restaurant at night, and which was said to offer diners a “Persian flavor” (“Bistro”).ConclusionAustralian Wines & Food Quarterly was the first of a small number of culinary-focused Australian publications in the 1950s and 1960s which assisted in introducing a generation of readers to information about what were then seen as foreign foods and beverages only to be accessed and consumed abroad as well as a range of innovative international ideas regarding cookery and dining. For this reason, it can be posited that the magazine, although modest in the claims it made, marked a revolutionary moment in Australian culinary publishing. As yet, only slight traces can be found of its editor and publisher, Donald Wallace. The influence of AWFQ is, however, clearly evident in the two longer-lived magazines that were launched in the decade after AWFQ folded: Australian Gourmet Magazine and The Epicurean. Although these serials had a wider reach, an analysis of the 15 issues of AWFQ adds to an understanding of how ideas of foods, beverages, and culinary ideas and trends, imported from abroad were presented to an Australian readership in the 1950s, and contributed to how national foodways were beginning to change during that decade.ReferencesAdams, Jillian. “Australia’s American Coffee Culture.” Australian Journal of Popular Culture 2.1 (2012): 23–36.“Always to Roast on a Turning Spit.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 17.“An Expert on Butter.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 11.“Australia Is Guest Nation at Lausanne.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 18–19.“Australia’s Natural Cheeses.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 23.“Australia Will Be There.” The Magazine of Good Living: Australian Wines and Food 4.2 (1960): 14.“Australian Wines Served at New York Dinner.” Australian Wines & Food Quarterly 1.5 (1958): 16.“Australia Wins Six Gold Medals.” Australian Wines & Food: The Magazine of Good Living 2.11 (1959/1960): 3.Bancroft, P.A. “Let’s Make Some Coffee.” The Magazine of Good Living: The Australian Wine & Food 4.1 (1960): 10. 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On 19 January 1975, Australia’s first youth station 2JJ (Double Jay) launched itself onto the nation’s airwaves with a NASA-style countdown and You Only Like Me ‘Cause I’m Good in Bed by Australian band Skyhooks. Refused airtime by the commercial stations because of its explicit sexual content, this song was a clear signifier of the new station’s intent—to occupy a more radical territory on Australian radio. Indeed, Double Jay’s musical entrée into the highly restrictive local broadcasting environment of the time has gone on to symbolise both the station’s role in its early days as an enfant terrible of radio (Inglis 376), and its near 40 years as a voice for youth culture in Australia (Milesago, Double Jay). In this paper we explore the proposition that Double Jay functioned as an outlet for youth counterculture in Australia, and that it achieved this even with (and arguably because of) its credentials as a state-generated entity. This proposition is considered via brief analysis of the political and musical context leading to the establishment of Double Jay. We intend to demonstrate that although the station was deeply embedded in “the system” in material and cultural terms, it simultaneously existed in an “uneasy symbiosis” (Martin and Siehl 54) with this system because it consciously railed against the mainstream cultures from which it drew, providing a public and active vehicle for youth counterculture in Australia. The origins of Double Jay thus provide one example of the complicated relationship between culture and counterculture, and the multiple ways in which the two are inextricably linked. As a publicly-funded broadcasting station Double Jay was liberated from the industrial imperatives of Australia’s commercial stations which arguably drove their predisposition for formula. The absence of profit motive gave Double Jay’s organisers greater room to experiment with format and content, and thus the potential to create a genuine alternative in Australia broadcasting. As a youth station Double Jay was created to provide a minority with its own outlet. The Labor government committed to wrenching airspace from the very restrictive Australian broadcasting “system” (Wiltshire and Stokes 2) to provide minority voices with room to speak and to be heard. Youth was identified by the government as one such minority. The Australian Broadcasting Commission (ABC) contributed to this process by enabling young staffers to establish the semi-independent Contemporary Radio Unit (CRU) (Webb) and within this a youth station. Not only did this provide a focal point around which a youth collective could coalesce, but the distinct place and identity of Double Jay within the ABC offered its organisers the opportunity to ignore or indeed subvert some of the perceived strictures of the “mothership” that was the ABC, whether in organisational, content and/or stylistic terms. For these and other reasons Double Jay was arguably well positioned to counter the broadcasting cultures that existed alongside this station. It did so stylistically, and also in more fundamental ways, At the same time, however, it “pillaged the host body at random” (Webb) co-opting certain aspects of these cultures (people, scheduling, content, administration) which in turn implicated Double Jay in the material and cultural practices of those mainstream cultures against which it railed. Counterculture on the Airwaves: Space for Youth to Play? Before exploring these themes further, we should make clear that Double Jay’s legitimacy as a “counterculture” organisation is observably tenuous against the more extreme renderings of the concept. Theodore Roszak, for example, requires of counterculture something “so radically disaffiliated from the mainstream assumptions of our society that it scarcely looks to many as a culture at all” (5). Double Jay was a brainchild of the state: an outcome of the Whitlam Government’s efforts to open up the nation’s airwaves (Davis, Government; McClelland). Further, the supervision of this station was given to the publicly funded Australian national broadcaster, the ABC (Inglis). Any claim Double Jay has to counterculture status then is arguably located in less radical invocations of the term. Some definitions, for example, hold that counterculture contains value systems that run counter to culture, but these values are relational rather than divorced from each other. Kenneth Leech, for example, states that counterculture is "a way of life and philosophy which at central points is in conflict with the mainstream society” (Desmond et al. 245, our emphasis); E.D. Batzell defines counterculture as "a minority culture marked by a set of values, norms and behaviour patterns which contradict those of the dominant society" (116, our emphasis). Both definitions imply that counterculture requires the mainstream to make sense of what it is doing and why. In simple terms then, counterculture as the ‘other’ does not exist without its mainstream counterpoint. The particular values with which counterculture is in conflict are generated by “the system” (Heath and Potter 6)—a system that imbues “manufactured needs and mass-produced desires” (Frank 15) in the masses to encourage order, conformity and consumption. Counterculture seeks to challenge this “system” via individualist, expression-oriented values such as difference, diversity, change, egalitarianism, and spontaneity (Davis On Youth; Leary; Thompson and Coskuner‐Balli). It is these kinds of counterculture values that we demonstrate were embedded in the content, style and management practices within Double Jay. The Whitlam Years and the Birth of Double Jay Double Jay was borne of the Whitlam government’s brief but impactful period in office from 1972 to 1975, after 23 years of conservative government in Australia. Key to the Labor Party’s election platform was the principle of participatory democracy, the purpose of which was “breaking down apathy and maximising active citizen engagement” (Cunningham 123). Within this framework, the Labor Party committed to opening the airwaves, and reconfiguring the rhetoric of communication and media as a space of and for the people (Department of the Media 3). Labor planned to honour this commitment via sweeping reforms that would counter the heavily concentrated Australian media landscape through “the encouragement of diversification of ownership of commercial radio and television”—and in doing so enable “the expression of a plurality of viewpoints and cultures throughout the media” (Department of the Media 3). Minority groups in particular were to be privileged, while some in the Party even argued for voices that would actively agitate. Senator Jim McClelland, for one, declared, “We say that somewhere in the system there must be broadcasting which not only must not be afraid to be controversial but has a duty to be controversial” (Senate Standing Committee 4). One clear voice of controversy to emerge in the 1960s and resonate throughout the 1970s was the voice of youth (Gerster and Bassett; Langley). Indeed, counterculture is considered by some as synonymous with a particular strain of youth culture during this time (Roszak; Leech). The Labor Government acknowledged this hitherto unrecognised voice in its 1972 platform, with Minister for the Media Senator Doug McClelland claiming that his party would encourage the “whetting of the appetite” for “life and experimentation” of Australia’s youth – in particular through support for the arts (160). McClelland secured licenses for two “experimental-type” stations under the auspices of the ABC, with the youth station destined for Sydney via the ABC’s standby transmitter in Gore Hill (ABCB, 2). Just as the political context in early 1970s Australia provided the necessary conditions for the appearance of Double Jay, so too did the cultural context. Counterculture emerged in the UK, USA and Europe as a clear and potent force in the late 1960s (Roszak; Leech; Frank; Braunstein and Doyle). In Australia this manifested in the 1960s and 1970s in various ways, including political protest (Langley; Horne); battles for the liberalisation of censorship (Hope and Dickerson, Liberalisation; Chipp and Larkin); sex and drugs (Dawson); and the art film scene (Hope and Dickerson, Happiness; Thoms). Of particular interest here is the “lifestyle” aspect of counterculture, within which the value-expressions against the dominant culture manifest in cultural products and practices (Bloodworth 304; Leary ix), and more specifically, music. Many authors have suggested that music was pivotal to counterculture (Bloodworth 309; Leech 8), a key “social force” through which the values of counterculture were articulated (Whiteley 1). The youth music broadcasting scene in Australia was extremely narrow prior to Double Jay, monopolised by a handful of media proprietors who maintained a stranglehold over the youth music scene from the mid-50s. This dominance was in part fuelled by the rising profitability of pop music, driven by “the dreamy teenage market”, whose spending was purely discretionary (Doherty 52) and whose underdeveloped tastes made them “immune to any sophisticated disdain of run-of-the-mill” cultural products (Doherty 230-231). Over the course of the 1950s the commercial stations pursued this market by “skewing” their programs toward the youth demographic (Griffen-Foley 264). The growing popularity of pop music saw radio shift from a “multidimensional” to “mono-dimensional” medium according to rock journalist Bruce Elder, in which the “lowest-common-denominator formula of pop song-chat-commercial-pop-song” dominated the commercial music stations (12). Emblematic of this mono-dimensionalism was the appearance of the Top 40 Playlist in 1958 (Griffin-Foley 265), which might see as few as 10–15 songs in rotation in peak shifts. Elder claims that this trend became more pronounced over the course of the 1960s and peaked in 1970, with playlists that were controlled with almost mechanical precision [and] compiled according to American-devised market research methods which tended to reinforce repetition and familiarity at the expense of novelty and diversity. (12) Colin Vercoe, whose job was to sell the music catalogues of Festival Records to stations like 2UE, 2SER and SUW, says it was “an incredibly frustrating affair” to market new releases because of the rigid attachment by commercials to the “Top 40 of endless repeats” (Vercoe). While some air time was given to youth music beyond the Top 40, this happened mostly in non-peak shifts and on weekends. Bill Drake at 2SM (who was poached by Double Jay and allowed to reclaim his real name, Holger Brockmann) played non-Top 40 music in his Sunday afternoon programme The Album Show (Brockmann). A more notable exception was Chris Winter’s Room to Move on the ABC, considered by many as the predecessor of Double Jay. Introduced in 1971, Room to Move played all forms of contemporary music not represented by the commercial broadcasters, including whole albums and B sides. Rock music’s isolation to the fringes was exacerbated by the lack of musical sales outlets for rock and other forms of non-pop music, with much music sourced through catalogues, music magazines and word of mouth (Winter; Walker). In this context a small number of independent record stores, like Anthem Records in Sydney and Archie and Jugheads in Melbourne, appear in the early 1970s. Vercoe claims that the commercial record companies relentlessly pursued the closure of these independents on the grounds they were illegal entities: The record companies hated them and they did everything they could do close them down. When (the companies) bought the catalogue to overseas music, they bought the rights. And they thought these record stores were impinging on their rights. It was clear that a niche market existed for rock and alternative forms of music. Keith Glass and David Pepperell from Archie and Jugheads realised this when stock sold out in the first week of trade. Pepperell notes, “We had some feeling we were doing something new relating to people our own age but little idea of the forces we were about to unleash”. Challenging the “System” from the Inside At the same time as interested individuals clamoured to buy from independent record stores, the nation’s first youth radio station was being instituted within the ABC. In October 1974, three young staffers—Marius Webb, Ron Moss and Chris Winter— with the requisite youth credentials were briefed by ABC executives to build a youth-style station for launch in January 1975. According to Winter “All they said was 'We want you to set up a station for young people' and that was it!”, leaving the three with a conceptual carte blanche–although assumedly within the working parameters of the ABC (Webb). A Contemporary Radio Unit (CRU) was formed in order to meet the requirements of the ABC while also creating a clear distinction between the youth station and the ABC. According to Webb “the CRU gave us a lot of latitude […] we didn’t have to go to other ABC Departments to do things”. The CRU was conscious from the outset of positioning itself against the mainstream practices of both the commercial stations and the ABC. The publicly funded status of Double Jay freed it from the shackles of profit motive that enslaved the commercial stations, in turn liberating its turntables from baser capitalist imperatives. The two coordinators Ron Moss and Marius Webb also bypassed the conventions of typecasting the announcer line-up (as was practice in both commercial and ABC radio), seeking instead people with charisma, individual style and youth appeal. Webb told the Sydney Morning Herald that Double Jay’s announcers were “not required to have a frontal lobotomy before they go on air.” In line with the individual- and expression-oriented character of the counterculture lifestyle, it was made clear that “real people” with “individuality and personality” would fill the airwaves of Double Jay (Nicklin 9). The only formula to which the station held was to avoid (almost) all formula – a mantra enhanced by the purchase in the station’s early days of thousands of albums and singles from 10 or so years of back catalogues (Robinson). This library provided presenters with the capacity to circumvent any need for repetition. According to Winter the DJs “just played whatever we wanted”, from B sides to whole albums of music, most of which had never made it onto Australian radio. The station also adapted the ABC tradition of recording live classical music, but instead recorded open-air rock concerts and pub gigs. A recording van built from second-hand ABC equipment captured the grit of Sydney’s live music scene for Double Jay, and in so doing undercut the polished sounds of its commercial counterparts (Walker). Double Jay’s counterculture tendencies further extended to its management style. The station’s more political agitators, led by Webb, sought to subvert the traditional top-down organisational model in favour of a more egalitarian one, including a battle with the ABC to remove the bureaucratic distinction between technical staff and presenters and replace this with the single category “producer/presenter” (Cheney, Webb, Davis 41). The coordinators also actively subverted their own positions as coordinators by holding leaderless meetings open to all Double Jay employees – meetings that were infamously long and fraught, but also remembered as symbolic of the station’s vibe at that time (Frolows, Matchett). While Double Jay assumed the ABC’s focus on music, news and comedy, at times it politicised the content contra to the ABC’s non-partisan policy, ignored ABC policy and practice, and more frequently pushed its contents over the edges of what was considered propriety and taste. These trends were already present in pockets of the ABC prior to Double Jay: in current affairs programmes like This Day Tonight and Four Corners (Harding 49); and in overtly leftist figures like Alan Ashbolt (Bowman), who it should be noted had a profound influence over Webb and other Double Jay staff (Webb). However, such an approach to radio still remained on the edges of the ABC. As one example of Double Jay’s singularity, Webb made clear that the ABC’s “gentleman’s agreement” with the Federation of Australian Commercial Broadcasters to ban certain content from airplay would not apply to Double Jay because the station would not “impose any censorship on our people” – a fact demonstrated by the station’s launch song (Nicklin 9). The station’s “people” in turn made the most of this freedom with the production of programmes like Gayle Austin’s Horny Radio Porn Show, the Naked Vicar Show, the adventures of Colonel Chuck Chunder of the Space Patrol, and the Sunday afternoon comic improvisations of Nude Radio from the team that made Aunty Jack. This openness also made its way into the news team, most famously in its second month on air with the production of The Ins and Outs of Love, a candid documentary of the sexual proclivities and encounters of Sydney’s youth. Conservative ABC staffer Clement Semmler described the programme as containing such “disgustingly explicit accounts of the sexual behaviour of young teenagers” that it “aroused almost universal obloquy from listeners and the press” (35). The playlist, announcers, comedy sketches, news reporting and management style of Double Jay represented direct challenges to the entrenched media culture of Australia in the mid 1970s. The Australian National Commission for UNESCO noted at the time that Double Jay was “variously described as political, subversive, offensive, pornographic, radical, revolutionary and obscene” (7). While these terms were understandable given the station’s commitment to experiment and innovation, the “vital point” about Double Jay was that it “transmitted an electronic reflection of change”: What the station did was to zero in on the kind of questioning of traditional values now inherent in a significant section of the under 30s population. It played their music, talked in their jargon, pandered to their whims, tastes, prejudices and societal conflicts both intrinsic and extrinsic. (48) Conclusion From the outset, Double Jay was locked in an “uneasy symbiosis” with mainstream culture. On the one hand, the station was established by federal government and its infrastructure was provided by state funds. It also drew on elements of mainstream broadcasting in multiple ways. However, at the same time, it was a voice for and active agent of counterculture, representing through its content, form and style those values that were considered to challenge the ‘system,’ in turn creating an outlet for the expression of hitherto un-broadcast “ways of thinking and being” (Leary). As Henry Rosenbloom, press secretary to then Labor Minister Dr Moss Cass wrote, Double Jay had the potential to free its audience “from an automatic acceptance of the artificial rhythms of urban and suburban life. In a very real sense, JJ [was] a deconditioning agent” (Inglis 375-6). While Double Jay drew deeply from mainstream culture, its skilful and playful manipulation of this culture enabled it to both reflect and incite youth-based counterculture in Australia in the 1970s. References Australian Broadcasting Control Board. Development of National Broadcasting and Television Services. ABCB: Sydney, 1976. Batzell, E.D. “Counter-Culture.” Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought. Eds. Williams Outhwaite and Tom Bottomore. Oxford: Blackwell, 1994. 116-119. Bloodworth, John David. “Communication in the Youth Counterculture: Music as Expression.” Central States Speech Journal 26.4 (1975): 304-309. Bowman, David. “Radical Giant of Australian Broadcasting: Allan Ashbolt, Lion of the ABC, 1921-2005.” Sydney Morning Herald 15 June 2005. 15 Sep. 2013 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/news/Obituaries/Radical-giant-of-Australian-broadcasting/2005/06/14/1118645805607.html›. Braunstein, Peter, and Michael William Doyle. Eds. Imagine Nation: The American Counterculture of the 1960s and '70s New York: Taylor and Francis, 2002. Brockman, Holger. Personal interview. 8 December 2013. Cheney, Roz. Personal interview. 10 July 2013. Chipp, Don, and John Larkin. Don Chipp: The Third Man. Adelaide: Rigby, 2008. Cunningham, Frank. Theories of Democracy: A Critical Introduction. London: Routledge, 2002. Davis, Fred. On Youth Subcultures: The Hippie Variant. New York: General Learning Press, 1971. Davis, Glyn. "Government Decision‐Making and the ABC: The 2JJ Case." Politics 19.2 (1984): 34-42. Dawson, Jonathan. "JJJ: Radical Radio?." Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 6.1 (1992): 37-44. Department of the Media. Submission by the Department of the Media to the Independent Inquiry into Frequency Modulation Broadcasting. Sydney: Australian Government Publishers, 1974. Desmond, John, Pierre McDonagh, and Stephanie O'Donohoe. “Counter-Culture and Consumer Society.” Consumption Markets & Culture 4.3 (2000): 241-279. Doherty, Thomas. Teenagers and Teenpics: The Juvenilization of American Movies in the 1950s. Boston: Unwin Hyman, 1988. Elder, Bruce. Sound Experiment. Unpublished manuscript, 1988. Australian National Commission for UNESCO. Extract from Seminar on Entertainment and Society, Report on Research Project. 1976. Frolows, Arnold. Personal interview. 10 July 2013. Frank, Thomas. The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. Gerster, Robin, and Jan Bassett. Seizures of Youth: The Sixties and Australia. Melbourne: Hyland House, 1991. Griffen-Foley, Bridget. Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio, Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009. Harding, Richard. Outside Interference: The Politics of Australian Broadcasting. Melbourne: Sun Books, 1979. Heath, Joseph, and Andrew Potter. Nation of Rebels: Why Counterculture Became Consumer Culture. New York: Harper Collins, 2004. Hope, Cathy, and Adam Dickerson. “The Sydney and Melbourne Film Festivals, and the Liberalisation of Film Censorship in Australia”. Screening the Past 35 (2012). 12 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.screeningthepast.com/2012/12/the-sydney-and-melbourne-film-festivals-and-the-liberalisation-of-film-censorship-in-australia/›. Hope, Cathy, and Adam Dickerson. “Is Happiness Festival-Shaped Any Longer? The Melbourne and Sydney Film Festivals and the Growth of Australian Film Culture 1973-1977”. Screening the Past 38 (2013). 12 Aug. 2014 ‹http://www.screeningthepast.com/2013/12/‘is-happiness-festival-shaped-any-longer’-the-melbourne-and-sydney-film-festivals-and-the-growth-of-australian-film-culture-1973-1977/›. Horne, Donald. Time of Hope: Australia 1966-72. Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1980. Inglis, Ken. This Is the ABC: The Australian Broadcasting Commission, 1932-1983. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1983. Langley, Greg. A Decade of Dissent: Vietnam and the Conflict on the Australian Homefront. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1992. Leary, Timothy. “Foreword.” Counterculture through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House. Eds. Ken Goffman and Dan Joy. New York: Villard, 2007. ix-xiv. Leech, Kenneth. Youthquake: The Growth of a Counter-Culture through Two Decades. London: Sheldon Press, 1973. Martin, J., and C. Siehl. "Organizational Culture and Counterculture: An Uneasy Symbiosis. Organizational Dynamics, 12.2 (1983): 52-64. Martin, Peter. Personal interview. 10 July 2014. Matchett, Stuart. Personal interview. 10 July 2013. McClelland, Douglas. “The Arts and Media.” Towards a New Australia under a Labor Government. Ed. John McLaren. Victoria: Cheshire Publishing, 1972. McClelland, Douglas. Personal interview. 25 August 2010. Milesago. “Double Jay: The First Year”. n.d. 8 Oct. 2012 ‹http://www.milesago.com/radio/2jj.htm›. Milesago. “Part 5: 1971-72 - Sundown and 'Archie & Jughead's”. n.d. Keith Glass – A Life in Music. 12 Oct. 2012 ‹http://www.milesago.com/Features/keithglass5.htm›. Nicklin, Lenore. “Rock (without the Roll) around the Clock.” Sydney Morning Herald 18 Jan. 1975: 9. Robinson, Ted. Personal interview. 11 December 2013. Roszak, Theodore. The Making of a Counter Culture. New York: Anchor, 1969. Semmler, Clement. The ABC - Aunt Sally and Sacred Cow. Carlton: Melbourne University Press, 1981. Senate Standing Committee on Education, Science and the Arts and Jim McClelland. Second Progress Report on the Reference, All Aspects of Television and Broadcasting, Including Australian Content of Television Programmes. Canberra: Australian Senate, 1973. Thompson, Craig J., and Gokcen Coskuner‐Balli. "Countervailing Market Responses to Corporate Co‐optation and the Ideological Recruitment of Consumption Communities." Journal of Consumer Research 34.2 (2007): 135-152. Thoms, Albie. “The Australian Avant-garde.” An Australian Film Reader. Eds. Albert Moran and Tom O’Regan. Sydney: Currency Press, 1985. 279–280. Vercoe, Colin. Personal interview. 11 Feb. 2014. Walker, Keith. Personal interview. 11 July 2013. Webb, Marius. Personal interview. 5 Feb. 2013. Whiteley, Sheila. The Space between the Notes: Rock and the Counter-Culture. London: Routledge, 1992. Wiltshire, Kenneth, and Charles Stokes. Government Regulation and the Electronic Commercial Media. Monograph M43. Melbourne: Committee for Economic Development of Australia, 1976. Winter, Chris. Personal interview. 16 Mar. 2013.

In recent years a number of dramas focussing on Indigenous Australians and Australian history have appeared on the ABC, one of Australia's two public television channels. These dramas have different foci but all represent some aspects of Australian Indigenous history and how it interacts with 'mainstream' representations of Australian history. The four programs I will look at are Cleverman (Goalpost Pictures, 2016-ongoing), Glitch (Matchbox Films, 2015-ongoing), The Secret River (Ruby Entertainment, 2015) and Redfern Now (Blackfella Films, 2012), each of which engages with the past in a unique way.Clearly, different creators, working with different plots and in different genres will have different ways of representing the past. Redfern Now and Cleverman are both produced by Indigenous creators whereas the creators of The Secret River and Glitch are white Australians. Redfern Now and The Secret River are in a realist mode, whereas Glitch and Cleverman are speculative fiction. My argument proceeds on two axes: first, speculative genres allow for more creative ways of representing the past. They give more freedom for the creators to present affective representations of the historical past. Speculative genres also allow for more interesting intellectual examinations of what we consider to be history and its uncertainties. My second axis argues, because it is hard to avoid when looking at this group of texts, that Indigenous creators represent the past in different ways than non-Indigenous creators. Indigenous creators present a more elliptical vision. Non-Indigenous creators tend to address historical stories in more overt ways. It is apparent that even when dealing with the same histories and the same facts, the understanding of the past held by different groups is presented differently because it has different affective meanings.These television programs were all made in the 2010s but the roots of their interpretations go much further back, not only to the history they represent but also to the arguments about history that have raged in Australian intellectual and popular culture. Throughout most of the twentieth century, indigenous history was not discussed in Australia, until this was disturbed by WEH Stanner's reference in the Boyer lectures of 1968 to "our great Australian silence" (Clark 73). There was, through the 1970s and 80s, increased discussion of Indigenous history, and then in the 1990s there was a period of social and cultural argument known locally as the 'History Wars'. This long-running public disagreement took place in both academic and public arenas, and involved historians, other academics, politicians, journalists and social commentators on each side. One side argued that the arrival of white people in Australia led to frontier wars, massacre, attempted genocide and the ongoing oppression of Indigenous people (Reynolds). The other posited that when white people arrived they killed a few Aborigines but mostly Aboriginal people were killed by disease or failure to 'defend' their culture (Windschuttle). The first viewpoint was revisionist from the 1960s onwards and the second represented an attempt at counter-revision – to move the understanding of history back to what it was prior to the revision. The argument took place not only among historians, but was taken up by politicians with Paul Keating, prime minister 1993-1996, holding the first view and John Howard, prime minister 1996-2007, aggressively pursuing the second. The revisionist viewpoint was championed by historians such as Henry Reynolds and Lyndall Ryan and academics and Aboriginal activists such as Tony Birch and Aileen Moreton Robinson; whereas the counter-revisionists had Keith Windschuttle and Geoffrey Blainey. By and large the revisionist viewpoint has become dominant and the historical work of the counter-revisionists is highly disputed and not accepted.This argument was prominent in Australian cultural discourse throughout the 1990s and has never entirely disappeared. The TV shows I am examining were not made in the 1990s, nor were they made in the 2000s - it took nearly twenty years for responses to the argument to make the jump from politicians' speeches and opinion pieces to television drama. John Ellis argues that the role of television in popular discourse is "working through," meaning contentious issues are first raised in news reports, then they move to current affairs, then talk shows and documentaries, then sketch comedy, then drama (Ellis). Australian Indigenous history was extensively discussed in the news, current affairs and talk shows in the 1990s, documentaries appeared somewhat later, notably First Australians in 2008, but sketch comedy and drama did not happen until in 2014, when Black Comedy's programme first aired, offering sketches engaging often and fiercely with indigenous history.The existence of this public discourse in the political and academic realms was reflected in film before television. Felicity Collins argues that the "Blak Wave" of Indigenous film came to exist in the context of, and as a response to, the history wars (Collins 232). This wave of film making by Indigenous film makers included the works of Rachel Perkins, Warwick Thornton and Ivan Sen – whose films chronicled the lives of Indigenous Australians. There was also what Collins calls "back-tracking films" such as Rabbit-Proof Fence (2002) and The Tracker (2010) made by white creators that presented arguments from the history wars for general audiences. Collins argues that both the "blak wave" and the "back track" created an alternative cultural sphere where past injustices are acknowledged. She says: "the films of the Blak Wave… cut across the history wars by turning an Indigenous gaze on the colonial past and its afterlife in the present" (Collins 232). This group of films sees Indigenous gazes relate the past and present whereas the white gaze represents specific history. In this article I examine a similar group of representations in television programs.History is not an innocent discourse. In western culture 'history' describes a certain way of looking at the past that was codified in the 19th century (Lloyd 375). It is however not the only way to look at the past, theorist Mark Day has described it as a type of relation with the past and argues that other understandings of the past such as popular memory and mythology are also available (Day). The codification of history in the 19th century involved an increased reliance on documentary evidence, a claim to objectivity, a focus on causation and, often though not always, a focus on national, political history. This sort of history became the academic understanding of history – which claims to be, if not objective, at least capable of disinterest; which bases its arguments on facts and which can establish its facts through reference to documentary records (Froeyman 219). Aileen Moreton-Robinson would call this "white patriarchal knowledge" that seeks to place the indigenous within its own type of knowledge production ("The White Man's Burden" 414). The western version of history tends to focus on causation and to present the past as a coherent narrative leading to the current point in time. This is not an undisputed conception of history in the western academy but it is common and often dominant.Post-colonialist analyses of history argue that western writing about non-western subjects is biased and forces non-westerners into categories used to oppress them (Anderson 44). These categories exist ahistorically and deny non-westerners the ability to act because if history cannot be perceived then it is difficult to see the future. That is to say, because non-western subjects in the past are not seen as historical actors, as people whose actions effected the future, then, in the present, they are unable to access to powerful arguments from history. Historians' usual methodology casts Indigenous people as the 'subjects' of history which is about them, not by them or for them (Tuhiwai Smith 7, 30-32, 144-5). Aboriginal people are characterised as prehistoric, ancient, timeless and dying (Birch 150). This way of thinking about Indigenous Australia removes all agency from Aboriginal actors and restoring agency has been a goal of Aboriginal activists and historians. Aileen Moreton Robinson discusses how Aboriginal resistance is embodied through "oral history (and) social memory," engaging with how Aboriginal actors represent themselves and are represented in relation to the past and historical settings is an important act ("Introduction" 127).Redfern Now and Cleverman were produced through the ABC's Indigenous Department and made by Indigenous filmmakers, whereas Glitch and The Secret River are from the ABC drama department and were made by white Australians. The different programs also have different generic backgrounds. Redfern Now and The Secret River are different forms of realist texts; social realism and historical realism. Cleverman and Glitch, however, are speculative fiction texts that can be argued to be in the mode of magical realism, they "denaturalise the real and naturalise the marvellous" they are also closely tied ideas of retelling colonial stories and "resignify(ing) colonial territories and pasts" (Siskind 834-5).Redfern Now was produced by Blackfella Films for the ABC. It was, with much fanfare, released as the first drama made for television, by Aboriginal people and about Aboriginal people (Blundell). The central concerns of the program are issues in the present, its plots and settings are entirely contemporary. In this way it circumvents the idea and standard representation of Indigenous Australians as ancient and timeless. It places the characters in the program very much in the present.However, one episode "Stand Up" does obliquely engage with historical concerns. In this episode a young boy, Joel Shields, gets a scholarship to an expensive private school. When he attends his first school assembly he does not sing the national anthem with the other students. This leads to a dispute with the school that forms the episode's plot. As punishment for not singing Joel is set an assignment to research the anthem, which he does and he finds the song off-putting – with the words 'boundless plains to share' particularly disconcerting. His father supports him saying "it's not our song" and compares Joel singing it to a "whitefella doing a corrobboree". The national anthem stands metaphorically for the white hegemony in Australia.The school itself is also a metaphor for hegemony. The camerawork lingers on the architecture which is intended to imply historical strength and imperviousness to challenge or change. The school stands for all the force of history white Australia can bring to bear, but in Australia, all architecture of this type is a lie, or at least an exaggeration – the school cannot be more than 200 years old and is probably much more recent.Many of the things the program says about history are conveyed in half sentences or single glances. Arguably this is because of its aesthetic mode – social realism – that prides itself on its mimicry of everyday life and in everyday life people are unlikely to set out arguments in organised dot-point form. At one point the English teacher quotes Orwell, "those who control the past control the future", which seems overt but it is stated off-screen as Joel walks into the room. This seeming aside is a statement about history and directly recalls central arguments of the history wars, which make strong political arguments about the effects of the past, and perceptions of the past, on the present and future. Despite its subtlety, this story takes place within the context of the history wars: it is about who controls the past. The subtlety of the discussion of history allows the film makers the freedom to comment on the content and effects of history and the history wars without appearing didactic. They discuss the how history has effected the present history without having to make explicit historical causes.The other recent television drama in the realist tradition is The Secret River. This was an adaptation of a novel by Kate Grenville. It deals with Aboriginal history from the perspective of white people, in this way it differs from Redfern Now which discusses the issues from the perspective of Aboriginal people. The plot concerns a man transported to Australia as a convict in the early 19th century. The man is later freed and, with his family, attempts to move to the Hawksbury river region. The land they try to settle is, of course, already in use by Aboriginal people. The show sets up the definitional conflict between the idea of settler and invader and suggests the difference between the two is a matter of perspective. Of the shows I am examining, it is the most direct in its representation of historical massacre and brutality. It represents what Felicity Collins described as a back-tracking text recapitulating the colonial past in the light of recovered knowledge. However, from an Indigenous perspective it is another settler tale implying Aboriginal people were wiped out at the time of colonisation (Godwin).The Secret River is told entirely from the perspective of the invaders. Even as it portrays their actions as wrong, it also suggests they were unavoidable or inevitable. Therefore it does what many western histories of Indigenous people do – it classifies and categorises. It sets limits on interpretation. It is also limited by its genre, as a straightforward historical drama and an adaptation, it can only tell its story in a certain way. The television series, like the book before it, prides itself on its 'accurate' rendition of an historical story. However, because it comes from such a very narrow perspective it falls into the trap of categorising histories that might have usefully been allowed to develop further.The program is based on a novel that attracted controversy of its own. It became part of ongoing historiographical debate about the relationship between fiction and history. The book's author Kate Grenville claimed to have written a kind of affectively accurate history that actual history can never convey because the emotions of the past are hidden from the present. The book was critiqued by historians including Inge Clendinnen, who argued that many of the claims made about its historical accuracy were largely overblown (Clendinnen). The book is not the same as the TV program, but the same limitations identified by Clendinnen are present in the television text. However, I would not agree with Clendinnen that formal history is any better. I argue that the limitation of both these mimetic genres can be escaped in speculative fiction.In Glitch, Yurana, a small town in rural Victoria becomes, for no apparent reason, the site of seven people rising from the dead. Each person is from a different historical period. None are Indigenous. They are not zombies but simply people who used to be dead. One of the first characters to appear in the series is an Aboriginal teenager, Beau, we see from his point of view the characters crawling from their graves. He becomes friendly with one of the risen characters, Patrick Fitzgerald, who had been the town's first mayor. At first Fitzgerald's story seems to be one of working class man made good in colonial Australia - a standard story of Australian myth and historiography. However, it emerges that Fitzgerald was in love with an Aboriginal woman called Kalinda and Beau is his descendant. Fitzgerald, once he becomes aware of how he has been remembered by history, decides to revise the history of the town – he wants to reclaim his property from his white descendants and give it to his Indigenous descendants. Over the course of the six episodes Fitzgerald moves from being represented as a violent, racist boor who had inexplicably become the town's mayor, to being a romantic whose racism was mostly a matter of vocabulary. Beau is important to the plot and he is a sympathetic character but he is not central and he is a child. Indigenous people in the past have no voice in this story – when flashbacks are shown they are silent, and in the present their voices are present but not privileged or central to the plot.The program demonstrates a profoundly metaphorical relationship with the past – the past has literally come to life bringing with it surprising buried histories. The program represents some dominant themes in Australian historiography – other formerly dead characters include a convict-turned-bush-ranger, a soldier who was at Gallipoli, two Italian migrants and a girl who died as a result of sexual violence – but it does not engage directly with Indigenous history. Indigenous people's stories are told only in relation to the stories of white people. The text's magical realism allows a less prescriptive relationship with the past than in The Secret River but it is still restricted in its point of view and allows only limited agency to Aboriginal actors.The text's magical realism allows for a thought-provoking representation of relationships with the past. The town of Yurana is represented as a place deeply committed to the representation and glorification of its past. Its main street contains statues of its white founders and war memorials, one of its main social institutions is the RSL, its library preserves relics of the past and its publican is a war history buff. All these indicate that the past is central to the town's identity. The risen dead however dispute and revise almost every aspect of this past. Even the history that is unmentioned in the town's apparent official discourse, such as the WWII internment camp and the history of crimes, is disputed by the different stories of the past that the risen dead have to tell. This indicates the uncertainty of the past, even when it seems literally set in stone it can still be revised. Nonetheless the history of Indigenous people is only revised in ways that re-engage with white history.Cleverman is a magical realist text profoundly based in allegory. The story concerns the emergence into a near future society of a group of people known as the "Hairies." It is never made clear where they came from or why but it seems they appeared recently and are unable to return. They are an allegory for refugees. Hairypeople are part of many Indigenous Australian stories, the show's creator, Ryan Griffen, stated that "there are different hairy stories throughout Australia and they differ in each country. You have some who are a tall, some are short, some are aggressive, some are friendly. We got to sort of pick which ones will fit for us and create the Hairies for our show" (Bizzaca).The Hairies are forced to live in an area called the Zone, which, prior to the arrival of the Hairy people, was a place where Aboriginal people lived. This place might be seen as a metaphor for Redfern but it is also an allegory for Australia's history of displacing Aboriginal people and moving and restricting them to missions and reserves. The Zone is becoming increasingly securitised and is also operating as a metaphor for Australia's immigration detention centres. The prison the Hairy characters, Djukura and Bunduu, are confined to is yet another metaphor, this time for both the over-representation of Aboriginal people in prison and the securitisation of immigration detention. These multiple allegorical movements place Australia's present refugee policies and historical treatment of Aboriginal people within the same lens. They also place the present, the past and the future within the same narrative space.Most of the cast is Aboriginal and much of the character interaction is between Aboriginal people and Hairies, with both groups played by Indigenous actors. The disadvantages suffered by Indigenous people are part of the story and clearly presented as affecting the behaviour of characters but within the story Aboriginal people are more advantaged than Hairies, as they have systems, relationships and structures that Hairy people lack. The fact that so much of the interaction in the story is between Indigenous people and Hairies is important: it can be seen to be an interaction between Aboriginal people and Aboriginal mythology or between Indigenous past and present. It demonstrates Aboriginal identities being created in relation to other Aboriginal identities and not in relation to white people, where in this narrative, Aboriginal people have an identity other than that allowed for in colonialist terms.Cleverman does not really engage with the history of white invasion. The character who speaks most about this part of Aboriginal history and whose stated understanding of himself is based on that identity is Waruu. But Waruu is also a villain whose self-identity is also presented as jealous and dishonest. However, despite only passing mentions of westernised history the show is deeply concerned with a relationship with the past. The program engages with Aboriginal traditions about the past that have nothing to do with white history. It presents a much longer view of history than that of white Australia. It engages with the Aboriginal tradition of the Cleverman - demonstrated in the character of Uncle Jimmy who passes a nulla nulla (knob-headed hardwood club), as a symbol of the past, to his nephew Koen and tells him he is the new Cleverman. Cleverman demonstrates a discussion of Australian history with the potential to ignore white people. It doesn't ignore them, it doesn't ignore the invasion but it presents the possibility that it could be ignored.There is a danger in this sort of representation of the past that Aboriginal people could be relegated to the type of ahistorical, metahistorical myths that comprise colonialist history's representation of Indigenous people (Birch). But Cleverman's magical realist, near future setting tends to undermine this. It grounds representation in history through text and metaphor and then expands the definition.The four programs have different relationships with the past but all of them engage with it. The programs are both restrained and freed by the genres they operate in. It is much easier to escape the bounds of formal history in the genre of magical realism and both Glitch and Cleverman do this but have significantly different ways of dealing with history. "Stand up" and The Secret River both operate within more formally realist structures. The Secret River gives us an emotional reading of the past and a very affective one. However, it cuts off avenues of interpretation by presenting a seemingly inevitable tragedy. Through use of metaphor and silence "Stand up" presents a much more productive relationship with the past – seeing it as an ongoing argument rather than a settled one. Glitch engages with the past as a topic that is not settled and that can therefore be changed whereas Cleverman expands our definition of past and understanding of the past through allegory.It is possible to draw further connections. Those stories created by Indigenous people do not engage with the specifics of traditional dominant Australian historiography. However, they work with the assumption that everyone already knows this historiography. They do not re-present the pain of the past, instead they deal with it in oblique terms with allegory. Whereas the programs made by non-Indigenous Australians are much more overt in their representation of the sins of the past, they overtly engage with the History Wars in specific historical arenas in which those wars were fought. The non-Indigenous shows align themselves with the revisionist view of history but they do so in a very different way than the Indigenous shows.ReferencesAnderson, Ian. 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