Before social media, before streaming, before algorithms decided what you’d hear next, Sydney had the street press — and the street press had the Hopetoun Hotel.

In this episode, State Library Fellow Dr Liz Giuffre takes us inside her archival forays into On the Street and Drum Media, two free weekly publications held in the State Library of NSW’s collection that served as the first draft of Sydney’s music history from the early 1980s to the early 2010s. Combing through 375 issues of On the Street and 685 issues of Drum Media, Giuffre reconstructed the full gig history of the Hoey — a 200-capacity pub in Surry Hills that somehow managed to be the centre of a very special universe. The numbers tell part of the story: 375 slots for live music in just the first decade, the majority free, Wednesday nights the busiest, genres and genders far more diverse than the “blokey pub rock” myth would have you believe.

But archives only get you so far — the rest is memory, and this panel has plenty of it. From Machine Gun Fellatio forming almost by accident after a misprint in a gig listing, to Box the Jesuit’s anatomically ambitious birthday cakes, to the gentleman’s agreements between venue bookers that briefly kept Paul Kelly off the Hopetoun stage, the conversation ranges across what made the Hoey’s ecosystem tick: the bands, the bookers, the barflies, the street press journos, Terry the Pieman, and Johnny’s fish and chips next door. The panel also looks forward — at what’s been lost to unaffordability and dispersal, what’s quietly thriving in record stores and warehouse spaces and jewellery shops on Parramatta Road, and why culture, as one panellist puts it, always finds a way.

Voices

Dr Liz Giuffre is a Senior Lecturer in Communications at UTS, a music and arts journalist, and a fan. Her work has been published widely for academic and general audiences, and she is still an active commentator online and on radio via TheMusic, 2SER FM and ABC Radio Sydney. She was one of the Library’s Visiting Fellows in 2024. Her new book, Spirits of the Hoey, is a love letter to the iconic Hopetoun Hotel.

Chit Chat von Loopin Stab is a filmmaker, lyricist, music producer, TV presenter, radio announcer, film score composer and gardener. He cowrote The Whitlams’ hit song ‘No Aphrodisiac’, which was voted number one on the Hottest 100 of 1997 and won the 1998 ARIA Award for Song of the Year. Chit Chat is also founding member, producer, manager, keyboardist and occasional vocalist for Machine Gun Fellatio, as well as a music TV presenter on Foxtel’s Max for 12 years. His score for the 2003 Australian crime film Getting Square won multiple awards. Chit Chat’s first band Vrag were regulars at the Hopetoun, as was Machine Gun Fellatio.

Emily Collins is a seasoned music industry leader with deep expertise in strategy, policy and program development. Prior to her appointment as Head of Sound NSW, Emily served for eight years as the Managing Director of MusicNSW, where she played a pivotal role in strengthening the state’s contemporary music sector. Emily’s career began in major music festivals, including the Cockatoo Island Festival and the Great Escape Festival, before expanding into marketing roles at Underbelly Arts Festival, Sydney Writers’ Festival and Darwin Festival. A long-standing champion of the NSW music industry, she has been a prominent advocate for the sector and continues to support artists, venues, festivals and industry organisations across the state through her leadership at Sound NSW.

Lex Davidson is the manager of Cultural Strategy for the City of Sydney and the Chairperson of the Music Cities Network, a global network of music policy professionals. Under his stage name Lex Lindsay, he is a multidisciplinary artist, theatre maker and music composer with a background in directing film and music festivals. Lex has produced work for two Biennales of Sydney and is a contributing artist to pieces in the permanent collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image (ACMI). His current project, composing choral works for CREATION, a speculative queer climate action religion, has been performed at the Sydney Opera House, Art Gallery of NSW, Carriageworks, and will feature in the grand reopening of the renovated Newcastle Art Gallery in 2026.

Susie Beauchamp is half of the songwriting/performance powerhouse Box The Jesuit, an incredible live and recorded Sydney band from the mid 1980s until early 1990s. They supported Nirvana at the first Big Day Out and, more importantly, gave Hoey patrons all singing, all dancing, all death-defying, all pornographic cake eating nights to remember! The band ended when Susie’s partner in music and life, Goose (Stephen Gray) passed away. The legend remains, and the music remains completely captivating.

Tamson Pietsch is director of the Australian Centre for Public History and History Lab’s presenter.

Credits

This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at the State Library of New South Wales. For more literary events like this one, see the library’s What’s On page.

Edited and mixed by Lachlan A’Court.

History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

Further reading and listening

Explore the Spirits of the Hoey web page.

Buy Spirits of the Hoey at Melbourne Books.

For more Hoey memories, listen to another Impact Studios podcast ep featuring authors Liz Giuffre and Greg Ferris speaking with singer-songwriters Sarah Blasko and Sally Seltman, along with Hoodoo Gurus bassist Clyde Bramley about the life and times of the Hopetoun Hotel.

What made Australia’s fringe cultural scene so generative in the 1980s — and what can it teach us about sustaining creative industries today?

Tony Moore and Mark Gibson, co-authors with Chris McAuliffe and Maura Edmond) join Reg Mombassa (of Mental as Anything and Mambo fame) to launch their book Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries. In a wide-ranging discussion, hosted by journalist and academic Catharine Lumby, the panel examines how music, comedy, film and design crossed over from fringe scenes into the mainstream — and why that transition was never a sellout, but a negotiation.

The discussion ranges from the Sydney pub rock circuit and the role of Countdown, to the institutional infrastructure — public broadcasters, independent labels, accessible welfare — that quietly made it all possible. And they ask the harder question: without that scaffolding, what does the future of Australian creative life actually look like? Enjoy a cameo appearance from Paul Fenech, actor, director, producer and comedian (Pizza, Fat Pizza and Housos).

Fringe to Famous is published by Bloomsbury Academic, and the launch was held on Gadigal land, at Sydney’s Gleebooks.

Voices

Tony Moore is a cultural historian and Professor of Media and Communications at Monash University, where he leads major ARC-funded projects on Australian comedy and the convict roots of democracy. A former ABC documentary maker and book publisher, his previous books include Dancing with Empty Pockets: Australia’s Bohemians, Death or Liberty: Rebels and Radicals Transported to Australia, and The Barry McKenzie Movies. He is co-author of Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries.

Mark Gibson is Professor in the School of Media and Communications at RMIT University. His research spans cultural and creative industries, the history of cultural studies, comedy and the role of audiences in cultural production. He is the author of Culture and Power: A History of Cultural Studies and co-author of Fringe to Famous: Cultural Production in Australia After the Creative Industries.

Reg Mombassa is a New Zealand-born Australian artist and musician. A founding member of Mental as Anything — inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame in 2009 — he is also a member of Dog Trumpet alongside his brother Peter. As principal artist and designer for Mambo Graphics, his work helped define the visual identity of one of Australia’s most iconic and irreverent surf and streetwear labels. He continues to work as a visual artist and musician.

Catharine Lumby (host) is Professor of Media and Communications at the University of Sydney and foundation chair of its Media and Communications Department. The author and co-author of six books, she writes regularly for The Guardian, the Sydney Morning Herald and the ABC, and has advised the public and private sectors on cultural diversity, bullying prevention and social media. She is a leading public intellectual on media, culture and gender in Australia.

Paul Fenech is an Australian filmmaker, writer, director, producer and actor. After winning Tropfest in 1998, he was able to parlayed his 1995 third-place entry, about his life as a pizza delivery driver, into the SBS series Pizza, which ran for five seasons from 2000. He went on to create Housos — winner of the Logie for Most Outstanding Light Entertainment Program in 2014.

Credits

This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at Gleebooks. For more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page.

Edited and mixed by Daniel Wiggins.

History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

What happens to women’s art when the world stops looking?

That’s the question at the heart of A Woman’s Eye: Her Art, Drusilla Modjeska’s book about a century of women artists who made radical, visionary work — and were then, largely, forgotten. Recorded live at Gleebooks before a packed house, this is a conversation about art history as a political act: who gets remembered, who gets written out, and why it keeps happening.

In conversation with literary biographer Bernadette Brennan — who is currently writing Modjeska’s own biography — and joined by artist Julie Rrap, Modjeska moves from Wilhelmine Germany to 1920s Paris to the liberation of Dachau, tracing the lives of women who saw things their own way.

Voices

Drusilla Modjeska is the author of Poppy, Stravinsky’s Lunch, The Orchid, The Mountain, Second Half First, and A Woman’s Eye: Her Art, published by Penguin Books Australia.

Bernadette Brennan is a literary critic and the author of A Writing Life: Helen Garner and Her Work and Leaping into Waterfalls: The Enigmatic Gillian Mears. She is currently writing a biography of Drusilla Modjeska.

Julie Rrap is one of Australia’s most significant contemporary artists. Her survey exhibition Past Continuous, centred on SOMOS, was held at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia in 2024–25. SOMOS is now in the permanent collection of the Art Gallery of Western Australia.

A Woman’s Eye: Her Art is published by Penguin Books Australia.

Credits

This episode of History Lab was recorded on Gadigal Land, Sydney, at Gleebooks. For more literary events like this one, see the Gleebooks events page.

Edited and mixed by Maksim Voloshin-Cleary.

History Lab is brought to you by the Australian Centre for Public History and UTS Impact Studios. Executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

Works mentioned

Paula Modersohn-Becker

Self-Portrait on the Sixth Wedding Anniversary (1906) — nude self-portrait depicted as pregnant Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum, Bremen https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de | Google Arts & Culture entry from the Böttcherstraße Museums: https://artsandculture.google.com/story/IwVRLMk5ACZUJQ

Lying Mother with Child II (1906) — nude mother reclining with child Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum / Museen Böttcherstraße, Bremen Google Arts & Culture: https://artsandculture.google.com/asset/lying-mother-with-child-ii-paula-modersohn-becker/LgGzY69gnE9o7Q

Portrait of Clara Rilke-Westhoff (1905) — Clara with rose Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg Collection record: https://online-sammlung.hamburger-kunsthalle.de/de/objekt/HK-2362

Claude Cahun

I Am in Training, Don’t Kiss Me (c.1927) — self-portrait with pursed lips and curls Jersey Heritage Collection Jersey Heritage page on Cahun: https://www.jerseyheritage.org/history/claude-cahun-and-jersey/

Que me veux-tu? / What Do You Want From Me? (1928) — double-exposure composite self-portrait Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris Also held in the Met collection: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/838682

Self-portrait in jester jacket (c.1928) — catching the viewer’s gaze Jersey Heritage Collection (as above)

Dora Maar

Untitled [Assia] (1934) — model casting dramatic shadow Centre Pompidou, Paris (various versions held there and elsewhere) Pompidou reproduction page: https://editions.centrepompidou.fr/en/home-decor/dora-maar-reproduction-untitled-assia/1577.html

Nusch Éluard on the beach (c.1935) — photograph of Éluard lying on beach Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne, Paris AWARE Women Artists entry with collection details: https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/dora-maar/

Lee Miller

Tanja Ramm under a Bell Jar (1931) — woman’s head enclosed in glass bell jar Lee Miller Archives (Farley Farm, Sussex); widely reproduced but not in a single permanent public collection page — the Lee Miller Archives hold the primary rights: https://www.leemiller.co.uk

Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub, Munich (1945) — photographed by David Scherman Held at Tate Britain Tate collection record: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/miller-scherman-lee-miller-in-hitlers-bathtub-munich-x100252

Julie Rrap

SOMOS (Standing On My Own Shoulders) (2023) — life-sized bronze, artist standing on her own shoulders Permanent collection, Art Gallery of Western Australia; also shown at MCA Sydney Ocula interview with full context: https://ocula.com/magazine/conversations/julie-rrap-standing-on-her-own-shoulders/ MCA exhibition page: https://www.mca.com.au (search “Julie Rrap Past Continuous”)

In this episode of History Lab Live, we revisit a remarkable moment in Australian history: the 1960 visit of Paul Robeson and his wife, Eslanda Robeson.

Paul Robeson was one of the most famous voices in the world — a singer who could fill concert halls, but also a lawyer, actor, athlete, and one of the most outspoken civil rights activists of the 20th century.

Alongside him was Eslanda, an anthropologist, author, actress and political organiser. Their arrival in Australia came after nearly a decade of enforced silence during the Cold War, when the US government stripped Paul Robeson of his passport.

Recorded live at Gleebooks, historian Ann Curthoys joins journalist and academic Lorena Allam to discuss Curthoys’ book, The Last Tour – a look at what happened when the Robesons finally made it to Australia.

What emerges is a portrait of the Robesons as “figures of the future” — speaking a political language that echoes today.

History Lab Live brings you recordings of conversations about Australian history from bookshops, universities and public institutions around the country.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Gleebooks. Head to the Gleebooks events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors.

Voices

Professor Ann Curthoys is an eminent Australian historian who has researched, taught, and published on many aspects of Australian history, and also on questions of feminism, cultural studies, and historical writing and theory. Her major publications include Freedom Ride: A Freedomrider Remembers (2002); (with John Docker) Is History Fiction? (2005, 2010); and (with Jessie Mitchell), Taking Liberty: Indigenous Rights and Settler Self-government in the Australian Colonies, 1830 – 1890. The Last Tour: Paul and Eslanda Robeson’s visit to Australia and New Zealand was published in 2025 by MUP.

Lorena Allam is a multiple Walkley Award-winning journalist, a Gamilaraay and Yuwaalaraay woman, and an Industry Professor of Indigenous media at the Jumbunna Institute for Indigenous Education and Research at the University of Technology Sydney.

Credits

This episode was introduced by Tamson Pietsch, and mixed by Siobhan Moylan.

History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

In this episode from History Lab’s archive, we stay in Darlinghurst with the award winning Red Light Green Light story from our Listen to Darlinghurst series.

Going back to the street corners and safe houses where sex workers competed for customers in Darlinghurst in the 1980s, you will hear the stories of members of the community who fought for law reform and sex worker’s rights.

The last time we heard this story, a petition had been started to bring back the statue of Joy, one of relatively few statues in Sydney that represents a woman – in this case, a sex worker. We are proud and excited to say that Joy has been returned to her rightful place in Darlinghurst, now in bronze and fully permanent!

This episode of History Lab won a Signal Award in the social impact category.

Voices

Julie Bates, veteran sex worker activist; Principal of Urban Realists Planning and Health Consultants.

Chantell Martin, veteran sex worker; Co-CEO of Sex Workers Outreach Project.

Credits

This audio story is a production of the Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios at UTS, in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. It is part of the award-winning Darlinghurst Public History Initiative.

Producer: Catherine Freyne

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley

Music: Blue Dot Sessions

Archival: ABC Library Sales

In this bonus episode, History Lab’s Tamson Pietsch speaks with historian Leigh Boucher about the making of Darlinghurst’s AIDS Crisis — our three-part History Lab series exploring one of the most intense and concentrated episodes of loss, activism, and community life in Australian history (if you haven’t listened yet, go to episodes 42-44 of History Lab).

Leigh is an historian based at Macquarie University who has lived in Darlinghurst for years. Walking the streets of the neighbourhood every day, he found himself asking a question the existing histories hadn’t quite answered: what did it actually feel like to live in this neighbourhood as the epicentre of an epidemic? The series was his attempt to find out.

Here, Leigh describes the tension between oral history practice — open-ended, associative, unhurried — and what podcasting demands.

Leigh also reflects on the way his research, his interviewees and the collaborative work of making the podcast were able to complicate the story of how AIDS played out in Australia – zooming in to the local experience, and listening to voices that can help us hold that complexity rather than resolve it.

Voices

Leigh Boucher and Tamson Pietsch, presented by Regina Botros.

Credits

Recorded by Siobhan Moylan, edited and mixed by Regina Botros.

History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

Support

This series of History Lab was made with the support of the support of the Paul Ramsay Foundation and is part of the Foundation’s Darlinghurst Public History Initiative, a collaboration with UTS’ Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios.

Thanks to Macquarie University for its support of this series.

A special thanks goes to the staff and management of City Gym, Darlinghurst, for their generous hospitality. Heartfelt thanks also to Anni Turnbull at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney for her time and expertise, and to the Australian Queer Archives.

Thanks also to the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, ACON and the Pride History Group Sydney.

By the early 1990s, AIDS had reached its devastating peak in Darlinghurst. Obituaries filled the pages of the Star Observer, funerals became routine. Sickness and loss touched almost every friendship and street in the neighbourhood.

In this episode, we move inside the hospitals, hospices and homes where nurses, carers and volunteers supported a generation of young men facing terminal illness. Beyond the wards, grief and anger spilled into public life — through candlelight vigils, the AIDS Memorial Quilt, and growing activism demanding faster access to life-saving drugs.

Then, in 1996, combination therapies changed the course of the epidemic. Soon, for the first time in a decade, the Star Observer ran without a single obituary. But survival came with a new question: how do you rebuild a life — and a community — after so much loss?

This episode explores the final grueling years of the crisis and its aftermath — and the complex and unruly legacies it left for generations to come.

Voices

Narrator: Regina Botros

Historian: Leigh Boucher

Interviewees: Pierre Touma, Lizzie Griggs, Bill Patterson, Frank McCabe, Billy Kokkinos, Tim Vincent, Sara Lubowitz, Bruce Carter, Tess Ziems, Scott Petrie and Ian Innes.

Archive voice actors: Sam David Harris and Michael J Ryan.

Radio news and current affairs archive from Gaywaves, 2SER.

Credits

This special History Lab Original series was created on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.

Produced, written and narrated by Regina Botros, in collaboration with Macquarie University historian Leigh Boucher.

Story development by Leigh Boucher and Michelle Ransom-Hughes.

Interviews by Leigh Boucher.

Research assistance from Eli Branagh.

Story and script editing by Sarah Gilbert.

History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

Support

This podcast was made with the support of the support of the Paul Ramsay Foundation and is part of the Foundation’s Darlinghurst Public History Initiative, a collaboration with UTS’ Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios.

Thanks to Macquarie University for its support of this series.

A special thanks goes to the staff and management of City Gym, Darlinghurst, for their generous hospitality. Heartfelt thanks also to Anni Turnbull at the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney for her time and expertise, and to the Australian Queer Archives.

Thanks also to the National Library of Australia, the State Library of New South Wales, ACON and the Pride History Group Sydney.

Further reading

To learn more about the history and complex legacies of AIDS in Darlinghurst, read these articles by Leigh Boucher:

Reciting the names of the dead: how Australia’s response to HIV/Aids was emotionally – and politically – powerful, Guardian Australia, 1 Dec 2025.

What have we lost with 2026’s Mardi Gras Parade after party cancellation?, Star Observer, 13 Feb 2026.

By the mid-1980s, the epidemic had taken hold in Darlinghurst. Fear was rising, homophobia was intensifying, and uncertainty shaped everyday life. Who had the virus? What did a positive test mean? And could the state be trusted with that information?

In this episode, historian Leigh Boucher moves into the heart of the crisis as the neighbourhood marshals every last drop of queer energy, love, creativity and strength to hold back the tide. Safe sex campaigns and innovative health responses proliferate – in bars, on dance floors and among squat racks.

For Peter Vincent and his friends, the party is far from over, even as they face the stark reality of a disease without a cure and the homophobic judgment beyond the gaybourhood. This is Darlinghurst – dancing as fast as it can.

Voices

Narrator: Regina Botros

Historian: Leigh Boucher

Interviewees: Bill Patterson, Lizzie Griggs, Frank McCabe, Tim Vincent, Pierre Touma, Bruce Carter, Scott Petrie and Sara Lubowitz.

Archive voice actors: Sam David Harris and Michael J Ryan.

Radio news and current affairs archive from Gaywaves, 2SER.

Credits

This special History Lab Original series was created on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.

Produced, written and narrated by Regina Botros, in collaboration with Macquarie University historian Leigh Boucher.

Story development by Leigh Boucher and Michelle Ransom-Hughes.

Interviews by Leigh Boucher.

Research assistance from Eli Branagh.

Story and script editing by Sarah Gilbert.

History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

Support

This podcast was made with the support of the support of the Paul Ramsay Foundation and is part of the Foundation’s Darlinghurst Public History Initiative, a collaboration with UTS’ Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios.

Thanks to Macquarie University for its support of this series.

A special thanks goes to the staff and management of City Gym, the Albion Centre and ACON’s Needle and Syringe Program for their generous hospitality.

In the late 1970s and early 80s, Sydney’s Darlinghurst was the place to be for queer fun, sex and joy – all bubbling alongside a measure of danger.

Packed bars, late-night gyms, house music, new friendships and the thrill of seeing and being seen. For many, this was the place to connect, to belong, to “grow up under the mirror ball.”

In the first episode of this three-part series, historian Leigh Boucher steps into that world of parties, cruising, chosen families and hard-won freedom — a queer neighbourhood alive with possibility.

But as the music plays and the nights stretch on, whispers of a mysterious illness begin to circulate.

To understand how that powerful, fragile world of Darlinghurst felt and moved, Leigh talks to ordinary people who lived there and built the “gaybourhood” from the ground up.

How might their stories help us to a fresh understanding of a history we think we know?

Voices

Narrator: Regina Botros

Historian: Leigh Boucher

Interviewees: Pierre Touma, Sara Lubowitz, Bruce Carter, Gary Dunne, Lizzie Griggs, Tess Ziems and Frank McCabe.

Archive: Dr Jim Curran and Dr Ron Penny (courtesy of Gaywaves, 2SER)

Archive voice actors: Sam David Harris and Michael J Ryan.

Radio news and current affairs archive from Gaywaves, 2SER.

Credits

This special History Lab Original series was created on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.

Produced, written and narrated by Regina Botros, in collaboration with Macquarie University historian Leigh Boucher.

Story development by Leigh Boucher and Michelle Ransom-Hughes.

Interviews by Leigh Boucher.

Research assistance from Eli Branagh.

Story and script editing by Sarah Gilbert.

History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

Support

This podcast was made with the support of the support of the Paul Ramsay Foundation and is part of the Foundation’s Darlinghurst Public History Initiative, a collaboration with UTS’ Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios.

Thanks to Macquarie University for its support of this series.

A special thanks goes to the staff and management of City Gym, Darlinghurst, for their generous hospitality.

Australia’s response to HIV and AIDS is often remembered as a national success story — one shaped by public health policy, activism and community action.

But how does that history change when you zoom in close?

Darlinghurst’s AIDS Crisis is a three-part History Lab Original series with historian Leigh Boucher. Focusing on the Sydney neighbourhood at the centre of the epidemic, the series traces how the crisis was lived day by day — through friendships and care networks, and in the hospital wards, gyms, bars and streets of Darlo.

Hearing the stories of ordinary people, many of them sharing their stories for the first time, you’ll discover how their voices help us revisit this familiar history, and make it anew.

Episode 1 lands on Thursday, February 19, so subscribe to History Lab now.

Voices

Narrator: Regina Botros

Historian: Leigh Boucher

Interviewees: Sara Lubowitz, Pierre Touma, Frank McCabe and Lizzie Griggs.

Archive voice actor: Sam David Harris

Credits

This special History Lab Original series was created on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation.

Produced, written and narrated by Regina Botros, in collaboration with Macquarie University historian Leigh Boucher.

Story development by Leigh Boucher and Michelle Ransom-Hughes.

Interviews by Leigh Boucher.

Research assistance from Eli Branagh.

Story and script editing by Sarah Gilbert.

History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production, in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

Support

This podcast was made with the support of the support of the Paul Ramsay Foundation and is part of the Foundation’s Darlinghurst Public History Initiative, a collaboration with UTS’ Australian Centre for Public History and Impact Studios.

Thanks to Macquarie University for its support of this series.

Professor Heather Goodall was a pioneering historian whose research transformed understandings of Indigenous history, both in her field and in the broader community. Her work demonstrated a deep personal and professional commitment to social and environmental justice. In this episode we pay tribute to her and celebrate her legacy.

Heather died peacefully on 29 January 2026, aged 75. In this special episode, we hear her reflecting on her life’s work — more than five decades of historical research, teaching and community engagement.

Across two in-depth conversations with UTS historian Anna Clark, Heather traces the intellectual, political and personal threads that connect her work: oral history, Aboriginal land rights, rivers and environments, Indian Ocean networks, labour activism and the ethics of historical practice.

This is a conversation about history as activism, about place and belonging, and about the long afterlives of colonial power — but also about resilience, curiosity, and the joy of intellectual work done in company with others.

In Heather’s own words, “Scholarship can sit alongside activism, relationships and responsibility — it doesn’t have to be separate from life.”

From the Darling River to Salt Pan Creek, from Indian seamen in wartime Australia to the Battle of Surabaya and Indonesian independence, Heather’s scholarship consistently centred on people whose histories were ignored, dismissed, or actively erased — and asks what historians owe to the communities whose stories they tell.

To learn more about Professor Goodall, see her obituary published by the Royal Society of New South Wales,

Guests

Professor Heather Goodall was an Australian historian whose work spanned Aboriginal history, labour history, environmental history, Indian Ocean studies, and public history.

A leading figure in oral history and community-based research, she worked closely with Aboriginal organisations, activists, educators and communities for decades, helping to reshape how history is researched, written and shared in Australia.

Her publications include influential studies of the Darling River, Aboriginal land rights, Indian seamen and soldiers, and the Georges River, among many others. In 2025, she was awarded the History Council of NSW’s Annual Citation for fifty years of historical research and community engagement. Her book Invasion to Embassy won the 1996, NSW Premier Prize for Australian History. Over a long career at UTS, Goodall became a leading figure in Australian historiography, recognised through major ARC grants and influential publications. She was appointed Emeritus Professor on her retirement in 2016.

Associate Professor Anna Clark is an historian and public commentator based at the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS. Her book, Making Australian History, was published by Penguin in 2022 and was longlisted for a Walkley Award and an NIB Literary Award. I’m also the creator of the successful podcast for primary schools, Hey History!

Credits

Executive Producer, Sarah Gilbert. Mixed by Siobhan Moylan

Find more episodes of History Lab wherever you get your podcasts.

In this episode of History Lab Live, historians and political analysts step back from the daily churn to review the May 2025 Australian federal election through a long lens: a decisive Labor victory built on an historically low primary vote, a further erosion of the major-party duopoly, and a growing sense that Australian politics is both shifting, and hollowing out.

Is this a genuine realignment, or an old pattern repeating under new conditions?

Our guests track the election’s deeper storylines: the long decline of two-party dominance, the changing geography of power, the rise of “anti-politics”, and the way class, gender and asset ownership are now reshaping who votes for whom.

Hosted by Dr Emily Foley, this thoughtful, historically informed conversation brings together George Megalogenis, Frank Bongiorno, Ben Spies-Butcher and Elizabeth Humphreys to reflect on where Australian democracy has been — and where it may be headed.

Guests

George Megalogenis has thirty years’ experience in the media, including over a decade in the federal parliamentary press gallery. His book The Australian Moment won the 2013 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-fiction and the 2012 Walkley Award for Non-fiction. He is also author of Faultlines, The Longest Decade, Australia’s Second Chance, The Football Solution and three Quarterly Essays.

Frank Bongiorno is an Historian at the Australian National University. Author of “Dreamers and Schemers: A Political History of Australia” (November 2022)

Ben Spies-Butcher teaches Economy and Society in the School of Communication, Society and Culture. He is Deputy Director of the Macquarie University Housing and Urban Research Centre and co-director of the Australian Basic Income Lab.

Elizabeth Humphreys is a political economist of labour and work, and the Head of Discipline of Social and Political Sciences at UTS. Her book, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, was described in the Sydney Review of Books as a ‘tremendously important’ contribution to understanding economic change in Australia’s recent past.

Credits

This episode was introduced by Tamson Pietsch and mixed by Siobhan Moylan.

History Lab is an impact studios podcast. Its Executive Producer is Sarah Gilbert.

In this episode of History Lab Live, we bring you a conversation about the joys and challenges of translating Australian history to television.

Writer and academic Julianne Schultz joins director Benjamin Jones and producer Darren Dale to discuss the process of adapting her book, The Idea of Australia, into a four‑part documentary series for SBS. Their exchange highlights the creative decisions, editorial tensions and narrative strategies that are all part of turning big, sometimes challenging historical ideas into entertaining and informative television.

Recorded live at Gleebooks and hosted by the ABC’s Cassie McCullough, the discussion explores:

1. how the team mined Australia’s vast screen archive to build a visual language for the series
2. the responsibility of telling national stories that deal with both pride and pain
3. the challenge of engaging the TikTok generation while doing justice to complex histories
4. how they used the medium to explore the contradictions at the heart of Australia’s history and self-mythology
5. the translation process from page to screen: what is lost, what is gained, and what surprised them

If you haven’t watched the series yet, all four episodes — hosted by actor Rachel Griffiths — are still available on SBS On Demand.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Gleebooks. Head to the Gleebooks events page to discover more great history events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors.

Credits

This episode was introduced by Tamson Pietsch, and mixed by Siobhan Moylan.

History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast. Its executive producer is Sarah Gilbert.

History Lab Live presents the 2025 David Scott Mitchell Oration, delivered by Kim Williams at the State Library of New South Wales.

A passionate advocate for the arts, media, and public institutions, Williams—currently Chair of the ABC—offers a sweeping and deeply personal reflection on the role of libraries and memory institutions in preserving truth, fostering democracy, and inspiring creativity.

The episode is brought to you in partnership with the State Library of New South Wales. Williams delivered his oration at the Library, on Gadigal land, on 25 June, 2025.

Kim Williams AM has had a long involvement in the arts, entertainment and media industries here and overseas and has held various leadership positions since the late 1970s, including as Chief Executive at News Corp Australia, Foxtel, Fox Studios Australia, the Australian Film Commission, Southern Star Entertainment and Music Viva Australia.

History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast, made in collaboration with the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS.

Caribbean Convicts weaves together the story of the Caribbean men who arrived in Sydney onboard the convict ship the Moffatt on August 30, 1836. Most had been enslaved, including William Buchanan, a Jamaican man transported for participating in the Christmas Day slave uprising in Jamaica in 1831-32.

Join historical novelist Sienna Brown as she explores the diverse fates of Buchanan and the other men who arrived that day. As they fanned out across the country, some became bushrangers, others stalwarts of the community, but they all worked hard to make a new home for themselves. 

Voices

Cassandra Pybus is a FAHA Fellow and specialises in historical narratives about people who have been marginalised, forgotten or written out of history. An award-winning author she has published 13 books including Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers and the bestselling biography, Truganini. She has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King’s College London. 

Elizabeth Wiedemann is a local historian in Inverell, NSW.

Marg Young is a relative through marriage of Dick Holt, Richard Holt’s Son who is featured in the program.

Felix Cross is a composer, director and producer whose work has been performed nationally and internationally. From 1996 to 2015, he was the Artistic Director of Nitro/Black Theatre Co-op in England, developing and producing new musical-theatre from a black British perspective. He also worked as a composer for a number of major theatre companies in England. In 2012, he was awarded an MBE for services to Musical Theatre. In 2013 he moved with his family to Australia, working as a freelance director and composer. In 2025, he’s living back in London, while studying for a PhD at Western Sydney University.

Michael St George is one of the most unique performance artists to have emerged from Jamaica. Of Maroon heritage, he’s a poet/singer/songwriter who has worked with national and international artists and dedicates his work to equity, justice and universal love. St George uses poetry and music to dismantle borders, celebrate the power of diversity and self-elevation. The Ontario Federation of Labour presented St. George with the Art and Culture Award for outstanding contribution to his field.

Archival documents read by Scott Cumming and Christian Price

Credits

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs

An earlier version of this episode was made for the ABC Radio National’s History Listen programme, with Michelle Rayner as Executive Producer.

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.

In this special episode of Caribbean Echoes, series producers Ben Etherington and Sienna Brown are in conversation with star Jamaican-Australian actress Zahra Newman and acclaimed playwright Alana Valentine.

They discuss the making of the series and how performance emerged as a key theme across it. Zahra reflects on being a Black Caribbean-Australian actor today, and the persistence of the racial politics that afflicted earlier generations of Caribbean immigrants.

Alana takes us through the joys of bringing Nellie Small, the subject of History Lab episode 33, back to the stage in her cabaret Send for Nellie! And we hear about Nellie’s solidarity with Indigenous performers.

The panel also talks bloopers and highlights from their performing careers in this conversation recorded in a packed room at the Abercrombie Hotel in Sydney on October 23, 2025.

Guests

Zahra Newman was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and moved to Australia at age 14. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Newman has an extensive list of credits in theatre, television, and film. Notable works include her performance as Nabalungi in the original Australian cast of The Book of Mormon, and her lead role in the adaptation of Maxine Beneba Clarke’s memoir The Hate Race. She has received a Green Room Award, a Sydney Theatre Award, and multiple Helpmann Award nominations. Newman played all 23 characters in the Sydney Theatre Company’s recent one-person production of Dracula.

Alana Valentine is a librettist, playwright, and director who has had a long and celebrated career. One highlight is working with acclaimed First Nations performer, Ursula Yovich, on Barbara and The Camp Dogs, which toured nationally, was the recipient of four Helpmann Awards including Best Original Score and Best Musical and four Green Room Awards in Melbourne. She’s collaborated with the First nations choreographer and director Stephen Page on eight works including the multi-award winning Bennelong and the Opera ceremony Baleen Moondjan, which has just played the Brisbane Festival in 2025. Her cabaret Send For Nellie, which repositioned vaudeville legend Nellie Small in the Queer cultural firmament, debuted at the Sydney Festival in 2024.

Jamaican-born Sienna Brown writes historical fiction that centres on the Caribbean Experience in Australia. Her novel Master of My Fate (2019), won the MUD Literary Prize at Adelaide Writers Week for the best debut novel and was shortlisted for the ARA Historical Novel Prize. In 2021, she was commissioned by ABC Radio National to create Caribbean Convicts in Australia. Since 2022, she’s been a Research Associate at Western Sydney University as part of the ARC Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia.

Ben Etherington is an associate professor at Western Sydney University. His teaching and critical work centres on literary decolonisation and he’s currently writing a history of poetry in West Indian Creole languages from the end of slavery to independence. Ben has produced a number audio features including a documentary for ABC Radio National on Gangallida activist Clarence Walden, which he co-produced with Waanyi author Alexis Wright. His book Literary Primitivism (2018) won the Australian University Heads of English prize for literary scholarship and, from 2026, he will be an Australian Research Council Future Fellow working on the project The Decolonisation of Literary Culture.

Credits

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.

Writer and producer: Ben Etherington

Producer: Sienna Brown

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert

Sound designer and engineer: Simon Branthwaite

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256). We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.

Cite this podcast

When citing this episode, please use this reference:

Brown, S., Etherington, B., & Curtis, J. (2025, September 26). Caribbean Echoes. In History Lab. UTS Impact Studios. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18218321

Hear author and historian Katherine Biber tell the story of Jimmy and Joe Governor, Wiradjuri and Wonnarua brothers, who in 1900 went on a murder spree that killed nine people and terrified countless others.

The men were pursued for three months across 3000 kilometres, taunting their hunters with clues, letters and tricks. The last men in the state to be proclaimed outlaws, their pursuit and capture fascinated and terrified a nation on the eve of its Federation.

Back in 2021, History Lab published its award-winning Last Outlaws episodes (you can find them in eps 15-17) – a collaboration with Biber and the Governor family. Now, Biber has told the story in a book.

In this episode, she speaks with historian Alecia Simmonds about the connection between the fate of the Governor brothers and the birth of modern Australia.

The Last Outlaws: The crimes of Jimmy & Joe Governor and the birth of Modern Australia is published by Simon & Schuster. It is the product of decades of archival research, field work and interviews, and of a long collaboration with Jimmy Governor’s descendants.

This episode is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Gleebooks. Head to the Gleebooks events page to discover more great literary events featuring some of Australia’s best and best known authors. 

Guests

Katherine Biber is a writer, legal scholar, criminologist, historian and Professor of Law at UTS. Katherine undertook the research for The Last Outlaws in cooperation with descendants of Jimmy Governor. Her History Lab podcast trilogy, made as part of this collaboration, won multiple awards, including the NSW Premier’s History Award, the Australian Podcast Award (2022 podcast of the year) and the Australian Legal Research Award.

Katherine teaches and researches Evidence. Her scholarly interests lie in photographic evidence, documentary evidence, criminal evidence and histories of evidence.

Alecia Simmonds is a multi-award winning scholar and writer who works at the interface of law and history. Her most recent book Courting: An Intimate History of Love and the Law won the NSW Premier’s Prize for best book in Australian history, the Australian Law Research Awards for best book, the biennial Hancock Prize for best book and the Australian and New Zealand Legal History award for best book 2023. It was also shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Award and the Ernest Scott Award. 

Credits

Fully Lit is made by Impact Studios, a media production house based on Gadigal land at UTS, Sydney.

This episode was recorded at Sydney’s Gleebooks, also on Gadigal land.

What connects a VFL “Champion of the Colony” to a woman born enslaved in Jamaica?

In 1919, Richmond footballer Vic Thorp won the league’s highest honour for the second time — the equivalent of today’s Brownlow Medal. But just a century earlier, his great-grandmother Susannah Andrews was enslaved in Jamaica, before gaining her freedom.

This episode uncovers Susannah’s remarkable journey: from enslavement, to freedom, to becoming matriarch of an Australian family that would include football legends and mining startups.

We hear from her descendant Garry Chapman, who discovered Susannah’s story while sifting through his father’s papers.

Jamaican historian Suzanne Francis-Brown — a regular on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are? — helps us reconstruct Susannah’s life as an enslaved, then free, woman living with a Jewish merchant in Kingston.

So how does one woman’s survival ripple through generations?

And why does remembering Susannah’s life matter for how we tell Australian history today?

Voices

Garry Chapman taught in both primary and secondary sectors and worked in both government and independent schools over a career of 42 years. He is the author of over 50 published books, written for children and teachers. Garry developed an interest in his own family’s history when he found a folder full of notes in his late father’s belongings. It contained a photo of his great great grandfather, George Brydon Brandon with ‘Jamaica?’ written on the back. This planted a seed, and Garry has spent the ensuing years trying to fill in the missing pieces of his ancestors’ stories, uncovering the fascinating tale of Susannah Andrews in the process.

Historian Dr Suzanne Francis-Brown has worked as a journalist, lecturer in media and communications and museum curator. Her research interests include heritage interpretation, enslaved families, and enslaved runaways in Jamaica, and she has published Mona, Past and Present: The History and Heritage of the Mona Campus, University of the West Indies (2004) and the co-authored The Old Iron Bridge, Spanish Town, Jamaica, (2005), as well as several works of youth fiction. She was curator at the University of the West Indies Museum from its founding in 2012 to 2019. Dr Francis-Brown has featured many times on the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?

Credits

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.

Cite this podcast

When citing this episode, please use this reference:

Brown, S., Etherington, B., & Curtis, J. (2025, September 26). Caribbean Echoes. In History Lab. UTS Impact Studios. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18218321

Who was the Caribbean-Australian cabaret star who could bring down the house — and come back at racism with a joke?

“Come sit by me, we don’t eat people anymore.”

Nellie Small was born in Sydney in 1900, just before the White Australia policy was introduced.

She became one of the country’s most beloved performers, famous for wearing men’s suits on stage and off, and for her sharp comebacks.

In show business circles around Sydney in the 1940 and 50s, the phrase was: “When a show’s not strong enough — send for Nellie!”

“I’m proud of my Australian birth. But I’d be much happier if more of my fellow countrymen would forget my skin colour is different from them.”

Negotiating Australia’s vexed racial politics, Nellie carved out a public space for Black music and queer performance in 1950s Australia. We explore her career and uncover the previously unknown stories of her Caribbean forebears.

Nellie Small is played by Jamaican-Australian actor Zahra Newman.

Voices

Alana Valentine is a librettist, playwright, and director who is an expert at working with real life subjects and stories, dramatizing them with respect. She has three plays on the NSW HSC Syllabus: Parramatta Girls, Shafana and Aunt Sarrinah, and Cyberbile. Her play, Letters to Lindy, has seen hundreds of amateur and school productions. Valentine is particularly distinguished in her skills as a co-collaborator, notably with Barbara and the Camp Dogs, which won the 2019 Helpmann Award for Best Musical and Best Original Score. She has chronicled her practice in Bowerbird and published the memoir Wed By The Wayside.

Professor Cassandra Pybus FAHA specializes historical narratives about people who have been marginalized, forgotten or written out of history. An award-winning author she has published 13 books including Black Founders: The Unknown Story of Australia’s First Black Settlers and the bestselling biography, Truganini. She has held research professorships at the University of Sydney, Georgetown University in Washington DC, the University of Texas and King’s College London. She is descended from a colonist who received the largest free land grant on Truganini’s traditional country of Bruny Island.

Vanessa Cassin is Education Manager at Society of Australian Genealogists with extensive experience in providing training and assessment in the trustee industry, both as an in-house trainer for the NSW Trustee & Guardian and as an assessor for Western Sydney University the College’s Registered Training Organisation. Vanessa holds a Diploma in Family Historical Studies from the Society of Australian Genealogists and has been researching her own family history for over 20 years.

Zahra Newman was born in Port Antonio, Jamaica, and moved to Australia at age 14. A graduate of the Victorian College of the Arts, Newman has an extensive list of credits in theatre, television, and film. Her notable works include her performance as Nabalungi in the original Australian cast of The Book of Mormon, and her lead role in the play The Hate Race and in the film Long Story Short. She has received a Green Room Award, a Sydney Theatre Award, and multiple Helpmann Award nominations. Newman played all 23 characters in the Sydney Theatre Company’s recent one-person production of Dracula.

Graeme Rhodes’ acting career spans over 30 years and includes numerous theatre, film, television and radio credits. Most recently he has been working as a writer and director for Forum theatre based Industrial safety programs. When he’s not acting he sings with a jazz trio and builds electronic noise making machines.

Credits

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.

More reading about Nellie Small

1. Nellie Small on Wikipedia
2. Nellie Small: the trailblazing, cross-dressing cabaret star who Australia forgot The Guardian Australia
3. From the Archives: The great live music war of 1954 Sydney Morning Herald
4. Zoe Coombs Marr on Queerstralia Sydney Morning Herald
5. A letter to the editor about soup Sydney Morning Herald
6. Send for Nellie in the 2024 Sydney Festival and article by Alana Valentine on the State Library of NSW website

Cite this podcast

When citing this episode, please use this reference:

Brown, S., Etherington, B., & Curtis, J. (2025, September 26). Caribbean Echoes. In History Lab. UTS Impact Studios. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18218321

What does boxing have to do with anticolonial politics?

How did the sport become a space where Black and Indigenous fighters in Australia pushed back against racism and empire?

From Peter Jackson to Jack Johnson, Marcus Garvey to Les “Ranji” Moody, this episode explores how Black and Indigenous fighters turned the ring into a stage for resistance and anticolonialism.

Worimi historian Professor John Maynard talks about the links between Jackson and the first official Black heavyweight world champion Jack Johnson, whose world-title fight took place in Sydney in 1908.

Maynard’s grandfather spent time with Johnson, and he talks about how Johnson’s time here links to the later emergence of anticolonial politics among Indigenous people inspired by the Jamaican Marcus Garvey.

We then talk to Aboriginal author Tony Birch about his Barbadian ancestor Prince Moody, who was transported to Australia as a convict for ‘disobedience’, and his great uncle Les ‘Ranji’ Moody, who Birch knew growing up in Fitzroy.

Les was a pathbreaking boxer and journalist who was the Australian bantamweight champion during the First World War. Birch discusses how oral history and creative engagements with the colonial archive can recover marginalized stories.

Voices

Professor John Maynard is recognized as one of Australia’s foremost Indigenous historians, whose work reveals previously missing chapters in Aboriginal history. His groundbreaking research on Aboriginal political activism in the 1920s uncovered the influence of Caribbean and African American figures, particularly Marcus Garvey. Maynard has written acclaimed books, including Fight for Liberty and Freedom and The Aboriginal Soccer Tribe, a Walkley Award finalist. He has held prominent positions, such as Director of the Wollotuka Institute and Deputy Chairperson of AIATSIS, and is a recipient of numerous fellowships and awards.

Professor Tony Birch is a writer, activist, historian and essayist, and is currently the Boisbouvier Chair in Australian Literature at the University of Melbourne. He has published four novels, most recently Women & Children, which won the 2024 The Age Fiction Book of the Year. Each of his novels has won major prizes and he’s twice been shortlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary award. He has also published two poetry books and four short story collections, the most recent of which, Dark as Last Night, won both the 2022 NSW Premier’s Literary Award and the Queensland Literary Award for Fiction.

Credits

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs/jollyvolume

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.

Cite this podcast

When citing this episode, please use this reference:

Brown, S., Etherington, B., & Curtis, J. (2025, September 26). Caribbean Echoes. In History Lab. UTS Impact Studios. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18218321

Did you know that the most famous Australian in the world in 1890 was from the Caribbean?

Peter Jackson was born in St Croix in the Caribbean in the years after slavery was abolished. He arrived in Sydney as a teenager and got noticed when he single-handedly fought off seven in a brawl at Wynyard Square.

He soon stepped into Sydney’s boxing rings and, by 1890, he was Australia’s heavyweight champion and chasing the world title in the United States.

But he was no ordinary boxer.

He moonlit as an actor, quoted Shakespeare, and was a media pioneer, carefully shaping his own public image long before Instagram.

In this episode, award-winning sports journalist Grantlee Kieza charts Jackson’s rise through the boxing world, while cultural historian Professor Jordana Moore Saggese explains how he mastered self-presentation through photography and mass media. Historian Myron Jackson brings us back to St Croix, where Peter’s colonial schooling met the lessons of the street.

Peter Jackson’s story is about much more than boxing — it’s about race, representation, and the adaptability and durability of Caribbean culture.

Peter Jackson is played by British-Sierra Leonean actor Alpha Kargbo.

Voices

Grantlee Kieza OAM is an award-winning journalist who specialises in historical Australian stories. He has published more than twenty biographies, many of them bestsellers, and held senior editorial positions at The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and The Courier-Mail. He is a Walkley Award finalist, a 2025 ABIA shortlisted author for Biography of the Year, a 2025 Indie Award shortlisted author for Non-fiction, the No. 1 history author in Australia in 2024.

Jordana Moore Saggese is Professor of Modern and Contemporary American Art at the University of Maryland, College Park whose research focuses on modern and contemporary American art and photography, with an emphasis on expressions of Blackness. She is the author of The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader: Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses, and her most recent book Heavyweight: Black Boxers and the Fight for Representation (Duke University Press, 2024) engages extensively with Peter Jackson.

Myron Jackson is a historian and retired Senator who has dedicated his life to Virgin Islands history and culture, guided by the African proverb, “Go Back And Fetch It”. A graduate of Parsons School of Design, he held significant positions including Director of the Virgin Islands State Historic Preservation Office and executive director of the Virgin Islands Cultural Heritage Institute. As a Senator, Jackson served as the Chair of the Committee on Culture, Historic Preservation, Youth and Recreation. He has researched and published widely in preservation.

Alpha Kargbo is a British-Sierra Leonean actor trained at the Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama. His theatre work spans the UK, Europe, and Australia, including The Da Vinci Code (UK Tour), Malthouse Theatre, and Melbourne Theatre Company. On screen he has appeared in Bloods (Sky UK) and The Undeclared War (Channel 4), directed by Peter Kosminsky.

Graeme Rhodes’ acting career spans over 30 years and includes numerous theatre, film, television and radio credits. Most recently he has been working as a writer and director for Forum theatre based Industrial safety programs. When he’s not acting he sings with a jazz trio and builds electronic noise making machines.

Credits

This series was produced on the lands of the Gadigal people of the Eeora Nation and Burramatagal people of the Dharug nation.

Narrator, writer, and producer: Sienna Brown

Sound recordist, writer, and producer: Ben Etherington

Supervising producer: Jane Curtis, UTS Impact Studios

Executive producer: Sarah Gilbert, UTS Impact Studios

Sound designer and engineer: John Jacobs

Support

The research for this series was funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Project Creole Voices in the Caribbean and Australia: Poetics and Decolonisation (DP220101256).

We are also grateful to the Writing and Society Research Centre and School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University for their generous support in the production of this series.

Cite this podcast

When citing this episode, please use this reference:

Brown, S., Etherington, B., & Curtis, J. (2025, September 26). Caribbean Echoes. In History Lab. UTS Impact Studios. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18218321

History Lab is back—refreshed and reimagined.

From now on, you’ll hear us in regular seasonal runs, dropping new episodes once or twice a fortnight over six to eight weeks.

Each run will showcase a mix of formats:

• History Lab Originals – our signature investigative storytelling that digs into the gaps between us and the past.
• History Lab Studio – interviews and discussions with historians.
• History Lab Live – recordings of public history talks from libraries, bookshops, and university halls, where history meets its audiences.

This new approach means more variety, more regularity, and more ways to connect with the history that shapes our world.

What’s in this run?

• ORIGINALS Caribbean Echoes: A powerful four-part History Lab Original by Sienna Brown and Ben Etherington that uncovers the lives and legacies of Caribbean people in Australia, including boxer Peter Jackson and cabaret star Nellie Small.
• LIVE David Scott Mitchell Oration: ABC Chair Kim Williams reflects on the role of libraries and archives in preserving truth and democracy.
• LIVE The Last Outlaws: Professor Katherine Biber discusses her gripping new book on crime, justice, and truth telling.

Why this matters

Since 2018, History Lab has produced 29 episodes across six seasons, exploring not only what happened in the past, but how we can know about it.

Now, in a crowded world of podcasts, we’re focusing on what makes us different: investigative history, bold conversations, and live public storytelling.

By listening and sharing, you’re helping build a platform for public history in Australia, something we need now more than ever. Thank you.

Host: Tamson Pietsch, Director of the Australian Centre for Public History

Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert

Produced on Gadigal land at UTS, Sydney by Impact Studios.

What is the work of truth-telling? How is evidence collected? What happens next?

What role should schools play in teaching Australia’s full history?

Australia has completed its first, formal truth-telling process — the Yoorrook Justice Commission of Victoria.

We joined Commissioner Travis Lovett on his 500-kilometre Walk for Truth from Portland on Gunditjmara Country, to Parliament House on Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Country in Melbourne, to hear firsthand of the Commission’s work.

Along the way, you’ll hear testimonies from Elders and Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, reflections from researcher Dr Matthew Keynes, and insights into how truth-telling can transform education, policy, and our shared future.

Guests

Travis Lovett is a proud Kerrupmara/Gunditjmara man and Traditional Owner and the Deputy Chair and Commissioner of the Yoorrook Justice Commission.

Dr Matthew Keynes is a non-Indigenous scholar working on unceded and sovereign Wurundjeri land. His research investigates the ways that education contributes to justice, peace, and social transformation by repairing historical injustices and legacies of violence.

Links

• Yoorrook Justice Commission Truth Archive
• Yoorrook Justice Commission Reports and Recommendations
• We have always been here by Dr Matthew Keynes
• National Indigenous Youth Education Coalition
• Truth-telling in early education by Gowrie Victoria
• Day Break by Amy McQuire
• How do you prepare your child for truth-telling? by Shelly Ware
• Teaching truth-telling: Children’s Ground panel on YouTube

Credits

• Produced on Gadigal and Gunditjmara Country by Jane Curtis.
• Sound engineering by Jollyvolume.
• Production assistance from Alexandra Morris.
• Hosted by Tamson Pietsch.
• History Lab is produced by the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS and UTS Impact Studios.
• Impact Studios’ executive producer is Sarah Gilbert. 

Thank you

This episode was made possible by Dusseldorp Forum, a family foundation committed to a just and equitable Australia, one that is caring, ethical and honours our First Peoples.

Special thanks to Rachel Fyfe and the Yoorrook team.

This special episode from our archives speaks to this year’s NAIDOC Week themes of strength, vision and legacy.

Fishing for Answers explores the sophistication of the fishing practices of Eora women in Sydney Harbour, and asks, How can we hear from the women themselves and find out what their world sounded like? 

Content warning: If you are an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander person this episode may contain the names of people who have died.

Credits

• Producers: Tom Allinson and Ninah Kopel 
• Collaborators: Anna Clark, Nathan Sentance, Tim Ella and Maddison Lyn Collier
• Executive Producer: Emma Lancaster
• Associate Producer: Anna Clark
• Sound Design: Joe Koning
• Host: Tamson Pietsch
• Voice Actor: Steve Ahern
• Additional production assistance: Ellen Leabeater and Miles Herbert
• Marketing and communications: Andy Huang

Thanks to Les Bursill OAM for his advice on the Darug language, and Grace Karskens and Renee Cawthorne.

This episode was made on Gadigal Country.

Colonial portraits have long dictated how Indigenous people were seen. But Indigenous artists continue to challenge that power. Through satire, reinterpretation, and resistance, they’re using art to question history—and reshape the future.  

In this episode, historians Kate Fullagar and Mike McDonnell speak with contemporary Indigenous artists who are confronting the legacy of empire. Michel Tuffery, a New Zealand-based artist of Samoan, Tahitian, and Cook Islander heritage, reimagines Captain Cook through the eyes of those he encountered. Daniel Boyd, one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary artists, subverts colonial iconography, turning figures like Cook into symbols of piracy and exploitation. Daniel Browning, an Aboriginal journalist and art critic, reflects on the power—and the lies—embedded in colonial paintings. 

Can art break the cycle of representation, or does it always carry the weight of its past? Join us on this final episode of Unsettling Portraits to find out. 

Episode images 

Cookie in the Islands 

This representation of Captain James Cook belongs to a narrative series titled ‘First Contact’. The series retells the story of James Cook’s Pacific voyages from a Polynesian perspective, focusing on the profound way in which Cook himself was altered through his experiences in the Pacific. His identity is altered, as marked by hibiscus flowers, hei-tiki around his neck and his Polynesian features. The name Cookie is not only a more familiar name for Captain Cook but it is also a nickname for a Cook Islander. (Curator’s comments) 

By Michel Tuffery. 2009. British Museum. 

Portrait of Captain James Cook RN 

By John Webber, 1782. National Portrait Gallery Australia   

Captain No Beard  

By Daniel Boyd, Kudjla/Gangalu/Kuku Yalanji/Jagara/Wangerriburra/Bandjalung peoples, 2005. National Gallery of Australia.  

Nannultera, a young Poonindie cricketer 

By J.M. Crossland, 1854. National Gallery of Australia. 

Portrait – Eva Johnson, writer 

By Destiny Deacon, 1994. Queensland Art Gallery. 

Guests 

Michel Tuffery, a New Zealand-based artist of Samoan, Rarotongan, and Ma’ohi Tahitian heritage, creates work that bridges environmental, cultural, and historical divides. Known for his role as a connector between people and places, he engages communities through exhibitions, research, and residencies across the Pacific and beyond. A passionate educator, he shares his kaupapa and knowledge with young people through workshops in New Zealand and abroad. Appointed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2008 for his contributions to art, he continues to enrich communities through his creative practice. 

Daniel Boyd, one of Australia’s leading artists, is a Kudjala, Ghungalu, Wangerriburra, Wakka Wakka, Gubbi Gubbi, Kuku Yalanji, Bundjalung, and Yuggera man with ni-Vanuatu heritage. Based on Gadigal/Wangal Country, his work reinterprets Eurocentric histories through historic photographs, art references, and personal narratives. He first gained recognition in 2005 with his No Beard series, challenging colonial iconography, and later developed his signature ‘lens’ technique—clear dots that fragment the image plane, exploring perception and hidden histories. In 2014, he became the first Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander artist to win the Bulgari Art Prize, further cementing his impact on contemporary art. 

Daniel Browning is an award-winning Bundjalung and Kullilli writer, journalist, and radio broadcaster. Currently serving as the ABC’s Editor of Indigenous Radio, he presents The Art Show and Arts in 30 podcasts. His debut book, Close to the Subject: Selected Works, was hailed as “an outstanding contribution to arts journalism,” winning the 2024 Prime Minister’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the Indigenous Writing Prize at the Victorian Premier’s Literary Awards and was also shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards. Beyond his literary achievements, Browning is a sound artist and documentary maker, known for curating Blak Box, an award-winning sound pavilion amplifying First Nations voices. He is also a widely published freelance writer on arts and culture, with a particular focus on Australian Indigenous art. 

Credits 

Producers: Catherine Freyne and Helene Thomas.  

Story Editor: Siobhan McHugh 

Sound Engineer: Martin Peralta  

Additional production and editorial support: Jane Curtis, Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey 

Additional Tile Design and Podcast Artwork: Alexandra Morris 

Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert

To cite this episode

Fullagar, K (researcher and host), Freyne, C (producer), McDonnell, M (researcher and host), Thomas, H (producer) (2025), ‘Unsettling Portraits’ Episode 3. In History Lab by Impact Studios, https://impactstudios.edu.au/podcasts/history-lab/s6/ and 10.5281/zenodo.15086322  

In this episode, historians Kate Fullagar and Mike McDonnell revisit Bennelong’s portraits to examine how colonial art encountered Indigenous identity. Indigenous scholar Jo Rey, a Dharug woman, challenges these depictions, questioning their accuracy and impact.  

The conversation then expands to the Pacific, where Māori scholar Alice Te Punga Somerville discusses the story of Tupaia, a Polynesian navigator and artist who traveled with Captain Cook. His illustrations of first contact tell a different story—one of Indigenous agency, not just European discovery. 

What do we see when we look at these portraits today? And more importantly, what do they obscure? Join us on Unsettling Portraits to find out. 

Episode images 

Ben-nel-long

By the Port Jackson Painter, c. 1790. Watling, Thomas. Courtesy of the Natural History Museum, London.

Ben-nil-long 

By James Neagle, 1798. Courtesy National Library of Australia. 

Australian Aborigines paddling bark canoes and spear fishing 

DRAWINGS, in Indian ink, illustrative of Capt. Cook’s first voyage, 1768 -1770. 

This may record the fishing party observed by Joseph Banks at Botany Bay on 26 April 1770. 

By A. Buchan, John F. Miller, and others. Courtesy British Library. 

A Maori bartering a crayfish with an English naval officer 

DRAWINGS, in Indian ink, illustrative of Capt. Cook’s first voyage, 1768 -1770, chiefly relating to Otaheite and New Zealand. 

By A. Buchan, John F. Miller, and others. Courtesy British Library. 

Guests 

Jo Rey is a Dharug scholar and Macquarie University Fellow for Indigenous Researchers in the Department of Indigenous Studies. Her research focuses on Dharug Ngurra/Country, which spans much of the Sydney metropolitan area, examining key cultural sites, including Shaw’s Creek Aboriginal Place and the Blacktown Native Institution. Building on her doctoral research on Dharug cultural continuity, her post-doctoral work explores Indigenous cultural agency through the concept of ‘Living Law’—a framework of sustainable relationality based on Recognition, Respect, Rights, Responsibility, and Reciprocity. 

Alice Te Punga Somerville (Māori – Te Āti Awa, Taranaki) , professor of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia, is a poet, scholar, and irredentist whose work explores Indigenous connections, colonial histories, and the power of language. She is the author of Once Were Pacific: Māori Connections to Oceania, 250 Ways to Write an Essay about Captain Cook, and the poetry collection Always Italicise: How to Write While Colonised, each challenging dominant narratives and centering Indigenous perspectives. 

Credits 

Producers: Catherine Freyne and Helene Thomas.  

Story Editor: Siobhan McHugh 

Sound Engineer: Martin Peralta  

Additional production and editorial support: Jane Curtis, Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey 

Additional tile design and podcast artwork: Alexandra Morris 

Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert 

To cite this episode

Fullagar, K (researcher and host), Freyne, C (producer), McDonnell, M (researcher and host), Thomas, H (producer) (2025), ‘Unsettling Portraits’ Episode 2. In History Lab by Impact Studios, https://impactstudios.edu.au/podcasts/history-lab/s6/ and 10.5281/zenodo.15086322 

Bennelong, a Wangal man of the Eora nation, was among the first Aboriginal people to travel to Europe and return. As a crucial interlocutor between his people and the British colonists, he navigated two worlds but the way he was depicted in colonial portraits raises complex questions. In one, he appears in traditional body paint. In another, years later, he is dressed in European clothing, his identity seemingly reshaped for a colonial gaze. Do these portraits tell us more about Bennelong or the people who painted him? 

Portraiture has long been a tool of empire, used to categorize, control, and mythologize. But can these images also reveal Indigenous agency? In this first episode, historians Kate Fullagar and Michael McDonnell visit the National Portrait Gallery to examine Bennelong’s likeness and trace a broader history of representation. They are joined by Anishinaabe writer Gordon Henry, who reflects on 17th-century depictions of Indigenous North Americans, and Cherokee scholar Joseph Pierce, who challenges the sanitized portrait of Cherokee diplomat Ostenaco. 

Who really controls the stories that portraits tell? And how do these images continue to shape our understanding of Indigenous identity today? Join us on Unsettling Portraits to find out. 

Episode Images 

Bennelong 

Drawing 41 from the Watling Collection titled ‘Native name Ben-nel-long, as painted when angry after Botany Bay Colebee was wounded.’ By Thomas Watling c 1790. Courtesy Natural History Museum London.  

Portrait of a Famous One-eyed Man 

By Louis Nicolas, 1675. Codex Canadensis, page 14. Courtesy Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma USA. 

Portrait of Syacust Ukah, Cherokee Chief 

By Joshua Reynolds, 1762. Courtesy Gilcrease Museum, Tulsa, Oklahoma USA. 

Hosts

Kate Fullagar, professor of history at the Australian Catholic University and Vice President of the Australian Historical Association, specializes in eighteenth-century world history, particularly the British Empire and Indigenous resistance. In her role at the AHA, she advocates for truth-telling in Australian historiography, working to integrate Indigenous perspectives and confront colonial legacies. Through works like Bennelong & Phillip, she engages both academic and general audiences, challenging traditional narratives. 

Michael McDonnell, professor of Early American History at the University of Sydney, is currently working on several research projects with collaborators, including studies on comparative Indigenous experiences of empire, the American Revolution’s role in Black American life, and memoirs of lower-class Revolutionary War veterans. His work highlights the value of history in fostering diverse perspectives and uncovering new insights about both the past and present.  

Guests 

Gordon Henry is a member of the White Earth Anishinaabe Nation in Minnesota, USA and was professor of English at Michigan State University for 29 years. A widely published essayist, poet and fiction writer, he won the American Book Award for is novel The Light People. His creative work focuses on American Indian survival and adaptability, offering different Indigenous ways of relating to American history.  

Joseph Pierce is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and associate professor in the department of Hispanic Languages and Literature at Stony Brook University. His research focuses on the intersections of kinship, gender, sexuality, and race in Latin America, as well as culture, queer and Indigenous studies. Along with SJ Norman (Koori, Wiradjuri descent) he is co-curator of the performance series and indigenous-led gathering space Knowledge of Wounds. 

Credits 

Producers: Catherine Freyne and Helene Thomas.  

Story Editor: Siobhan McHugh 

Sound Engineer: Martin Peralta  

Production support: Jane Curtis, Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey 

Additional tile design and podcast artwork: Alexandra Morris 

Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert 

History Lab is an Impact Studios podcast.  

To cite this episode

Fullagar, K (researcher and host), Freyne, C (producer), McDonnell, M (researcher and host), Thomas, H (producer) (2025), ‘Unsettling Portraits’ Episode 1. In History Lab by Impact Studios, https://impactstudios.edu.au/podcasts/history-lab/s6/ and 10.5281/zenodo.15086322 

Can colonial depictions of Indigenous people tell us anything useful about the past?   

How do Indigenous people today feel about these enduring images?    

Unsettling Portraits is a three-part series exploring the history of portraiture and colonialism, alongside contemporary First Nations responses. 

Indigenous artists and historians in Australia, the Pacific and North America discuss the practice of colonial portraiture, including Daniel Browning, Jo Rey, Alice Te Punga Somerville, Gordon Henry and Joseph Pierce. 

And you’ll hear about the ways in which contemporary artists like Daniel Boyd, Michel Tuffery and the late Destiny Deacon have turned back the gaze on settlers with their art. 

Join acclaimed historians Kate Fullagar and Mike McDonnell as they and their collaborators wrestle with the portraits of our colonial past in History Lab Season 6: Unsettling Portraits.

Credits

History Lab is a UTS Impact Studios production.

• Producers: Catherine Freyne and Helene Thomas.  
• Story Consultant: Siobhan McHugh 
• Sound Engineer: Martin Peralta  
• Production support: Jane Curtis, Britta Jorgensen and Celine Teo-Blockey 
• Additional tile design and podcast artwork: Alexandra Morris 
• Executive Producer: Sarah Gilbert 

If you’re an old friend, hello and thank you for hitting play. If you’re a new listener, welcome.

History Lab, as many of you will know, was Australia’s first investigative history podcast. 

We’ve made five seasons so far, and our tagline is exploring the gaps between us and the past.

And while you notice that from season to season our storytelling style changes, we’re still always asking questions that provoke curiosity, that are attentive to sources and their limits, and that challenge us to think about how we live in the present.

Things have been a bit quiet on the History Lab feed lately, so we want share two bits of exciting news, and preview what’s coming up in 2025!

History Lab season 5 won an international Signal award for the Red Light Green Light episode of Listen to Darlinghurst. 

And, History Lab had a baby! It’s called Hey History!, and it’s an Australian history podcast for kids and their adults. Each episode explores a different topic, from first meetings at Kamay Botany Bay, to the Gold Rush.

This year, there’s three new seasons of History Lab coming your way. 

First up is Unsettling Portraits, a series that looks closely at the history of portraiture, colonialism, and First Nations responses.  You’ll hear historians Kate Fullagar and Mike McDonnell speaking with Indigenous scholars, critics and artists about what these pictures mean today. 

Ancestral Echoes is a second History Lab season hosted by researcher, producer and historical novelist Sienna Brown.  

Brown hails from Jamaica, and across three episodes, she explores the stories of some significant but little-known Caribbean Australians.

In unearthing these stories, she’s looking for a connection with the past that will help her feel more at home here.  

And in a third History Lab series, historian Leigh Boucher explores the untold histories of the HIV epidemic in Sydney in the 80s and 90s.

The series tells the story from a new perspective, focusing in on the very tight but by no means homogenous ‘gaybourhood’ of Darlinghurst. 

History isn’t the only thing we do here at Impact Studios, of course. 

You can hit play on the three-part narrative podcast Sink or Swim, where host Angelica Ojinnaka Psillakis learns to swim as an adult and works out how to survive in our ever hotter suburbs. 

And for lovers of books and as well as history, check out Fully Lit – a new podcast about Australian books. The trailer’s out and episodes release soon.

A special History Lab episode with a soundwork that explores the history of Sydney’s South Head, followed by an interview with the maker Sinead Roarty and Director of the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS, Tamson Pietsch.

About the soundwork: On the Edge

The Gap at South Head in Sydney’s eastern suburbs is a place of extreme beauty. It is also famous for being Australia’s most well-known suicide destination.

On the Edge is a long-form binaural/VR soundwork exploring South Head’s spatial history and its varied conflicting narratives. The work addresses multiple levels of ‘silencing’ from the time of colonial contact and uses sound to give a voice to the unheard. South Head’s ruptured history has shaped the perception of it in the past and this soundwork suggests a way to reanimate it in the present.

The thirteen-minute soundwork is best experienced at the Don Ritchie Grove, located a few minutes’ walk from The Gap lookout and can be accessed on a mobile phone from the website https://www.ontheedge.space/

On the Edge was created as part of a non-traditional PhD at the University of Technology Sydney. The PhD was subsequently recognised as the best doctoral thesis from the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences in 2023 and was included on The Chancellor’s List, which recognises ‘exceptional scholarly achievement in PhD research’.

On the Edge transcript

• Word doc transcript
• PDF transcript

On the Edge Credits

• Writer/Director: Dr Sinead Roarty
• Primary Supervisor: Dr Delia Falconer
• Alternate Supervisor: Assoc Professor Debra Adelaide
• Sound Studio: MassiveMusic
• For all credits see https://www.ontheedge.space/

Episode credits

Sound engineering: Simon Branthwaite

Episode image photo by Sinead Roarty.

History Lab is a production of UTS Impact Studios. 

We’ve got a new history podcast for you and the kids in your life, called Hey History! 

With immersive, sound rich storytelling and Australia’s top historians and experts, dive into key events in our history.

Find out…

• How did First Nations people learn on Country? How does learning happen today?
• What really when Captain Cook and First Nations people met at Kamay Botany Bay?
• What was life like as a convict kid? How did you remember your loved ones?
• How did everyone get along in the Gold Rush? 

In each episode, kids from around Australia share questions, ideas and reflections on our history. Hey History! aligns with the upper primary curriculum,  so teachers can use it in class.

The Bonus episode answers your questions on how to talk with kids about Australian history, and answer curly questions. 

Hey History! is made by Professor Anna Clark, a previous guest on the History Lab, Professor Clare Wright OAM, and the team at UTS Impact Studios. 

Subscribe, get Learning Materials and more on the Hey History website http://heyhistory.net or in your podcast app.

In 1887 there were no less than 22 hotels in Darlinghurst. Over the next century and a half, the character, culture and clientele of Darlinghurst pubs evolved. This story explores the impact on Darlinghurst of two episodes of liquor licensing restrictions in NSW: six o’clock closing and the Sydney lockout laws. 

Image: Royal Sovereign Hotel, corner Darlinghurst Rd and Liverpool St, 1921 (City of Sydney Archives) 

Credits 

This audio story is a production of the Australian Centre for Public History in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. 

‍ 

Producer: Catherine Freyne 

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley 

Music:  

• Blue Dot Sessions  
• When Paris is Singing by Dazie Mae licensed under CC by NC-SA 3.0 US 

Archival: ABC Content Sales 

‍ 

Featuring: 

• Paul Solomon, publican’s son and grandson 
• Max Burns-McRuvie, owner of Journeywalks 
• Tyson Koh, founder of Keep Sydney Open 

Terraces, flats, squats, bedsits, mansions, towers, camps and hostels: in Darlinghurst, housing is a mixed bag. This audio story explores the range of lifestyles afforded by Darlinghurst’s dense diversity of dwellings.

Voices

• Jan Cornall, former resident of Darlinghurst squats
• Paul Solomon, publican’s son and grandson
• Phillip Adams, former owner of Stoneleigh
• Shannon Dalton, former Assistant Manager of the Darlo Bar

Credits

This audio story was made on Gadigal land. It is a production of Impact Studios, with the Australian Centre for Public History and in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. ‍

Producer: Catherine Freyne

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley

Music

• Blue Dot Sessions
• Sum of My Fears, When Paris is Singing and A New Love Affair by Dazie Maelicensed under CC by NC-SA 3.0 US
• Garage by Monplaisir licensed under CC by CC0 1.0
• Korobushka by the Rosen Sisters licensed under CC by NC-ND 4.0

Image: Pad with a View, Kings Cross 1970-71 (Photographer: Rennie Ellis © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive)

At St Vincent’s Hospital, the Sisters of Charity have been delivering care to the people of Darlinghurst since 1857. This audio story visits St Vincent’s during three historic public health emergencies: the Spanish Flu, the HIV/AIDS crisis and COVID-19. 

Image: Sister and nurse with home visitation car, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney (Courtesy of the Congregational Archives of the Sisters of Charity of Australia) 

Credits 

This audio story is a production of the Australian Centre for Public History in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. 

‍ 

Producer: Catherine Freyne 

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley 

Music: Blue Dot Sessions; The Tudor Consort licensed under CC by 3.0  

Archival: ABC Content Sales 

‍ 

Featuring: 

• David Polson, former patient at Ward 17 South at St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. 
• Erin Longbottom, Nursing Unit Manager, Homeless Health Outreach Service, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney. 
• An excerpt from St Vincent’s Hospital Annual Report 1919 read by Marie Freyne. 

In the rapidly gentrifying Darlinghurst of the 1980s, a turf war raged over one of its earliest trades. In this story, we visit the street corners and safe houses where sex workers competed for customers, looked out for each other and stood their ground. Along the way, veterans of the street-based trade describe a changing industry, sharing stories from the frontline of the fight for law reform and workers’ rights.

Image: Woods Lane 1968 (Tribune negative; Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales courtesy SEARCH Foundation)

Credits

This audio story is a production of the Australian Centre for Public History in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation.

‍

Producer: Catherine Freyne

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley

Music: Blue Dot Sessions

Archival: ABC Library Sales

‍

Featuring:

1. Julie Bates, veteran sex worker activist; Principal of Urban Realists Planning and Health Consultants.
2. Chantell Martin, veteran sex worker; Co-CEO of Sex Workers Outreach Project.

Darlinghurst has always been a magnet and a haven for exiles and misfits. With writer and Darlo-phile Sunil Badami as guide, this audio story celebrates a handful of local characters and eccentrics, reflecting on the material conditions that enable unconventional people to thrive.    

Image: Hare Krishna, Kings Cross 1970-71 (Photographer: Rennie Ellis © Rennie Ellis Photographic Archive)  

Credits 

This audio story is a production of the Australian Centre for Public History in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. 

Producer: Catherine Freyne 

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley 

Music:  

• Blue Dot Sessions 
• I Love Her, She Loves Me by Atlantic City Orchestra licensed under a Public Domain / Sound Recording Common Law Protection License 
• Eyes Getting Louder and Hope Its Today by Mod Fun licensed under CC by NC 4.0 

Featuring: 

• Sunil Badami, writer and raconteur 

If you listen after rain, you can still hear the rush of water that used to flow from the sandstone ridge at the apex of Darlinghurst down to the harbour. This audio story goes in search of the creeks and cascades that sustained life and industry for Gadigal people, colonists and Chinese market gardeners, before being covered over by the concrete and tarmac of the modern city. 

Image: Rushcutters Creek, 1870-75 (Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW – ON 4 Box 56 No 253) 

Credits 

This audio story is a production of the Australian Centre for Public History in partnership with the Paul Ramsay Foundation. 

‍ 

Producer: Catherine Freyne 

Sound engineer: Judy Rapley 

Music: Blue Dot Sessions 

Featuring: 

• Saskia Schut, Landscape architect 
• Ray Ingrey, Chair, Gujaga Foundation 
• Mark Dunn, Historian 
• Daphne Lowe-Kelly, Co-deputy Chair, Museum of Chinese in Australia 
• Phil Bennett, Lead Heritage Advisor, Sydney Water 
• An excerpt from E.W. West (ed) The Memoirs of Obed West: A Portrait of Early Sydney (Bowral: Barcom Press 1988), read by Russell Cheek. 

After Jimmy’s trial, what happened to his brother Joe?

Joe has mostly been forgotten by history, and his presence in the archives is little more than a whisper.

From coronial records, family tales and a visit to a country pub, it becomes clear that Joe fell foul of the frontier, in life and death.

And yet, more questions remain: Was Joe Governor, an outlaw, killed lawfully?

How do his ancestral remains become another transactional asset in the murky world of race science? And why is western knowledge still entangled in its colonial past?

The Last Outlaws is the latest audio series to be released by Impact Studios, an audio production house embedded in the University of Technology Sydney.

The trilogy podcast is based on UTS Law Professor Katherine Biber’s tenacious and careful research of Jimmy and Joe Governor, Australia’s last proclaimed outlaws.

The Governor brothers’ story has been told in books and film before, but never like this.

For the Governor family descendants this is a difficult story to tell, but one that demands to be heard.

Coming September 22nd.

Three days before Spain’s general elections in 2004 a series of bombs exploded on crowded Madrid commuter trains, killing almost 200 people.

The Spanish authorities found a plastic bag a few blocks away from one of the bomb sites with a single, incomplete fingerprint.

This was the trace linked to a man living 9000 kms away, a US Attorney in Oregon by the name of Brandon Mayfield.

We’ve been told that every fingerprint is unique to every finger, but what if this is the wrong question to ask?

Forensic Science was founded on the principle that ‘every contact leaves a trace’ but history shows we can’t always rely on one trace alone.

When was the last time you were asked to sign something and did you stop to think how the strange squiggly mark you make on a page could be used?

The signature is a performative act, crucial to the law’s way of knowing, but it’s also been used as an instrument of power and control.

In this episode of History Lab we hear from a boy who was stolen, the man who took him away and the Judge who was asked to decide if a mother’s thumbprint was a sign of consent.

The presence or absence of a signature on a legal document can speak volumes and throughout history Aboriginal people have been reclaiming this marker of individual identity to represent the many and speak back to an empire.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people should be aware that this episode contains the voices and names of deceased persons.

‘Making a Fortune’ looks at the popularity and persecution of two of the most formidable fortune tellers of Federation Australia.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Australians were focused on the future. It was the dawn of a new century, and a newly-formed nation. But during this time, police were cracking down on a booming industry dominated by women—it was a service that society deemed superstitious, archaic and fraudulent and one that is unlawful to this day in some parts of Australia. This is a story of entrepreneurship, independence and the force of the law.

Why were these female fortune tellers so aggressively pursued by the police and how did they use the law to fight back?

History Lab host Dr Tamson Pietsch hands over the mic to Dr Alecia Simmonds, an interdisciplinary scholar of law and history at the University of Technology Sydney. In this bonus episode they dissect how it is the law ‘knows’ and discuss how both history and the law rely on traces from the past to draw conclusions in the present. If truth is uncertain in historical archives – is it even harder to find in the courtroom?

Season 3 of History Lab will be taking a short break returning February 4 2020.

Episode two ‘Making a fortune’ is dropping in the new year with Dr Alana Piper from the Australian Centre for Public History.

Death, money and family are the key ingredients in any last will and testament. They also make a killer cocktail that unleashes a special force not present in any other part of the law.

In this episode of History Lab, we’re looking at how the law determines your last wishes through some truly unusual cases. Whether it’s for reasons of urgency, eccentricity or expediency, courts around the world regularly have to make calls on the wishes of the dead. But how does the law know it’s getting it right and what does it mean for those left behind.

In the aftermath of World War One, nations came together in an attempt to ensure war on the same devastating scale could never occur again. The result? The League of Nations: a revolutionary idea to form the world’s first international organisation. But clearly it did not stop the world from going to war.

A century later we are still questioning our ability to come together. In this episode, Glenda Sluga and Ninah Kopel search for the ephemeral traces of a unified past. They find stories of hope, ambition but also skeletons lurking in the closet. Many say the League failed. But did the spirit live on?

Sydney’s iconic Opera House plays host to musicians and dancers, actors and singers. But beneath the notes of their voices, another song echoes across the city’s waters.

Indigenous Eora fisherwomen passed down their knowledge through their songs while paddling their canoes, a cooking fire at one end and their kids on their shoulders.

Historian Anna Clark and host Tamson Pietsch go looking for the fisherwomen’s world, and discover that, if you listen closely, the past of Sydney Harbour still sings.

Credits

• Producers: Tom Allinson and Ninah Kopel 
• Collaborators: Anna Clark, Nathan Sentance, Tim Ella and Maddison Lyn Collier
• Executive Producer: Emma Lancaster
• Associate Producer: Anna Clark
• Sound Design: Joe Koning
• Host: Tamson Pietsch
• Voice Actor: Steve Ahern
• Additional production assistance: Ellen Leabeater and Miles Herbert
• Marketing and communications: Andy Huang

Thanks to: Les Bursill OAM for his advice on the Darug language, and Grace Karskens and Renee Cawthorne.

What does it take to make History Lab?

This bonus interlude episode lifts the curtain on all that goes into making history for your ears!

Executive Producer Emma Lancaster steps out from behind the headphones and asks you to listen hard as she and host Tamson Pietsch discover that in the gap between historians and journalists, great things can happen.

The History Lab final episode for Season One ‘Fishing for Answers’ will be available 25 July 2018.

To find out more about the History Lab pitching process head to https://historylab.net/pitch/

In the middle of a mining town in outback Australia, over 400 kilometres from the closest ocean, stands a monument dedicated to the memory of the Titanic.

On the surface the story of Broken Hill’s Titanic Memorial can be seen as a simple tale of memory and humanity, one community expressing their sympathy for another.

But on closer inspection, the politics of memory starts to unravel and raises questions about the power of remembering and why we do it in the first place.

Quietly buried away in Western Sydney’s state archives is a secret history of love.

Lists of lingerie, love letters and lockets of hair, are stapled to writs from over 200 years ago.

In the 19th century a broken engagement could damn a woman for life. But scorned women had an unexpected way to get square.

A now somewhat forgotten law known as ‘breach of promise to marry’ saw women awarded massive damages after being left jilted at the altar.

But why would the courts be interested in the failed love lives of working class people? And what does a convict’s daughter, a barrister and a former Prime Minister have to do with it?

In this episode of History Lab we sift through the historical remains to discover litigious lovers, colonial love triangles and the emergence of medicalised heartbreak on a quest to understand the history of love.