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History Lab
The series
At History Lab we’ve got some good stories to tell
But we are interested in much more than just the story. Instead of an academic or other expert telling you what to think, History Lab wants to draw you in to the investigative process. It wants you to come along with us as we try to make sense of the traces the past leaves in the present. You’ll find that this can sometimes be confusing and frustrating: records are patchy, evidence is destroyed and a lot of the time people disagree about what happened and what it means.
But more often than not, trying to make sense of the traces of the past is also pretty exciting. Things are not always what they seem. Aren’t we always in the process of finding that out? Come and join us, as together we try and make sense of the big and little questions all around us.
Did you know that the most famous Australian in the world in 1890 was born in St Croix in the Caribbean? That the great-grandmother of one of the Richmond Football Club’s six ‘immortals’ was born into slavery in Jamaica? That one of Australia’s most celebrated contemporary novelists is descended from a slave-cum-convict from Barbados?
Caribbean Echoes is a six-part series that recovers the stories and experiences of Black Caribbean people in Australia. It’s produced by award-winning Jamaican novelist Sienna Brown and Caribbean literature scholar Ben Etherington.
Follow Brown, who pioneered creative research into Australia’s Caribbean convict past with her 2019 historical novel Master of My Fate, as she explores the lives of Caribbean arrivants to Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. Blending archival research, interviews, and fictional recreation, Brown enters into the lives of the great heavyweight boxer Peter Jackson, the cabaret star Nellie Small, and formerly enslaved woman Susannah Andrews, members of whose family went onto become institutional figures in colonial Australia.
The series also looks into connections between Caribbean and First Nations experiences and politics. We talk to Aboriginal author Tony Birch’s about his creative explorations of his family’s Barbadian past, and Worimi historian John Maynard about his grandfather’s politicisation through contact with West Indian political organisations and ideas.
Podcast playlist
EPISODE 6
Caribbean Convicts
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.
EPISODE 5
Caribbean Echoes Live with Zahra Newman and Alana Valentine
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 Caribbean Echoes episode 3, 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.
EPISODE 4
Caribbean Echoes: Susannah Andrews – Jamaican Matriarch to Footy Legends and Mining Startups
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?
EPISODE 3
Caribbean Echoes: Nellie Small – Queer Black Caribbean-Australian Icon
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.
EPISODE 2
Caribbean Echoes: From slavery to anticolonialism – John Maynard and Tony Birch on Black and Indigenous boxing
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 marginalised stories.
EPISODE 1
Caribbean Echoes: Peter Jackson – Boxing Champion and Pioneer of Black Self-Representation
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.
