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Rogue nation, 2009: NSW in 1819, convict gulag or place of opportunity?

This clip is an excerpt from the 2009 documentary 'Rites of passage', the second of a two-part series entitled 'Rogue nation'. The clip begins with historian Michael Cathcart providing contextual information about England in the early 1800s. He says that in the midst of the industrial revolution, millions of people were ...

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Talkback Classroom, 2007: Yirrkala bark petition

In this clip Franchesca Cubillo (senior curator at the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory) talks to secondary students about the significance of Aboriginal artwork and the Yirrkala bark petition of 1963. She says that when a bauxite mine was proposed on the Gove Pensinsula, the Yolngu people at Yirrkala had ...

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John Curtin's Australian Journalists Association badge, 2007

Prime Minister John Curtin's journalistic instincts came in handy during World War II when he kept the media onside with secret press briefings. He wore his AJA badge every day he was in office. 'John Curtin's Australian Journalists Association badge' is an episode from the series 'The prime ministers' national treasures', ...

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Immigration: fill it or lose it, 1992

This video clip looks at the political forces and propaganda campaigns that tried to fill Australia with 'pure white' immigrants. 'Immigration: fill it or lose it' is an excerpt from the documentary 'Admission impossible' (54 min), produced in 1992. For much of the 20th century, successive Australian governments pursued ...

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Lowitja O'Donoghue, 1994: the Stolen Generations

This clip shows Lowitja O'Donoghue talking about her name and about being removed from her mother at the age of two, the youngest child in her family. She says that Lois, the name she went by when she was younger, was a biblical name that had been given to her by the missionaries after she was removed from her mother. As ...

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Two convicts steal a place in history, 2009

'Two convicts steal a place in history' is a video excerpt from the documentary 'Rites of Passage' - the second episode of the two-part series entitled 'Rogue Nation' produced in 2009. In this clip, two soldiers in colonial NSW steal a piece of cloth with the intention of getting caught. In 'Rogue Nation' historian Michael ...

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Neville Bonner, 1991: beginnings

This clip shows Aboriginal activist and politician Neville Bonner talking about his early life. He says that his mother was deserted by her first husband, after which the family moved to Lismore and lived on the bank of the Richmond River. The conditions there were 'very shocking'. Bonner's grandfather cleared an area under ...

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Rogue nation, 2009: Democracy and the colony of NSW

This clip is an excerpt from the 2009 documentary 'Honour among thieves', the first of a two-part television series entitled 'Rogue nation'. In a dramatised re-enactment, British Commissioner John Thomas Bigge investigates the colony of NSW in 1819. He is advised by John Macarthur, a member of the 'exclusives' class of ...

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Pipe dreams, 2007: O'Connor's dream for water

This clip is an excerpt from the 2007 film 'Pipe dreams' (55 min), the second episode of a three-part series entitled 'Constructing Australia'. Over black-and-white photographs and dramatised video of the key players, a narrator describes the significant challenges of supplying water to the WA goldfields in the late 19th ...

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Australia's heritage, 2009: Wattie Creek

'Wattie Creek' is an episode from the series 'Australia's heritage - national treasures with Chris Taylor', produced in 2009. In the clip, Taylor talks about the Wave Hill walk-off. He asks the viewer to imagine being asked to work for little or no money while being given only flour, sugar and tea for food, and only a tin ...

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National treasures, 2004: Gallipoli boat

'Gallipoli boat' is an episode of the series 'National treasures' produced in 2004. The episode features Lifeboat 6, a small lifeboat that was retrieved from Gallipoli five years after it had landed at Anzac Cove. The boat is now held at the Australian War Memorial. Warren Brown describes the difficult conditions on the ...

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Women unionists marching on Black Friday during the Brisbane General Strike, 1912

This is a black-and-white photograph of an orderly procession of women walking four or five abreast past Brisbane's Treasury Building in the city centre on 2 February 1912, a day that became known as 'Black Friday'. The majority of the women appear to be dressed in their best and wearing hats for the occasion. Several horsedrawn ...

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Chinese men on the road to the Palmer River gold field, 1875

This black-and-white wood engraving shows a stereotypical image of Chinese men walking in a line to the Palmer River gold field in northern Queensland. It appeared in the Australasian Sketcher with the title 'CHINESE ON THE ROAD TO THE PALMER'. The six men in the foreground are wearing a variety of traditional clothing ...

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Convicts at work, Norfolk Island, 1840s

This is a hand-coloured wood engraving, measuring 10.3 cm x 24 cm, used to illustrate a newspaper article published on 12 June 1847. It shows a group of convicts undertaking hard physical work, making a bridge over a shallow stream. Uniformed and armed guards are evident, although the convicts appear to be working under ...

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'Cradling, Forrest Creek', 1853

This is an 1853 hand-coloured lithographic print, entitled 'Cradling. Forrest Creek'. It was made by Samuel Thomas Gill (1818-80) from a sketch done on the spot as he watched gold miners cradle for gold at Forest Creek (as it was more commonly spelled), in Victoria. One miner scoops water into the cradle, while the other ...

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Outside gold miners' huts, Mount Dromedary, 1890s

This is a photograph, taken by William Henry Corkhill (1846-1936) in the late 1890s, showing four gold miners standing outside a simple slab hut on the Mount Dromedary diggings in southern New South Wales. The hut stands on a narrow terrace cut into the hillside amid the bush. Firewood and housekeeping utensils lie on the ...

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Successful explorers at the South Pole, 1911

This is a mounted sepia photograph, measuring 7.6 cm x 12.6 cm, taken by Olar Bjaaland (1873-1961) at the South Pole on 14 December 1911. It shows his four companions paying tribute to the Norwegian flag flying from their tent. Written across the mount below the photograph is the caption, 'The successful explorers at the ...

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Sketch of Moreton Bay penal settlement, 1835 - item 1

This detailed pencil sketch, attributed to Henry Boucher Bowerman, depicts Moreton Bay (Brisbane) penal settlement from present-day Kangaroo Point. The panoramic landscape view takes in the Brisbane River in the foreground and existing government buildings necessary to a convict settlement, spread across the land behind. ...

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Portrait of political activist Emma Miller, c1910s

This posed black-and-white portrait photograph of Emma Miller, probably taken in Queensland in the 1910s, shows a thin and elderly woman, fashionably dressed for the time, sitting on a chair in a studio. She is staring straight at the camera with a resolute look on her face. Her dark clothing includes a richly embroidered ...

Audio

Alexandra Shackleton discusses Ernest Shackleton, 2005

This is an edited sound recording of the Hon Alexandra Shackleton, grand-daughter of the Antarctic explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton. She recounts aspects of his leadership of a 1907-09 expedition to Antarctica, relating how, for the sake of the survival of his team, he abandoned his bid to be the first to reach the geographic ...