Monthly Archives: May 2011 Back

Tea & Me

Posted on 26 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

Governor of Queensland, Penelope Wensley AC was our special guest as she launched the Tea & Me project on Tuesday 24 May with a fabulous morning tea on the State Library’s Queensland Terrace. As well as lots of lovely pots of tea, pretty tea cups and delicious little treats, the Kransky Sisters helped us to celebrate the project launch with some very interesting tea stories of their own!

Tea & Me aims to collect tea cups and stories from all over Queensland. We are asking people to delve into their cabinets and memories for their favourite tea cups and stories to contribute to the project.

Pictures of teacups and stories that you would like to share, can be uploaded to the Tea & Me facebook page www.facebook.com/teaandme

We are aiming to collect enough teacups to fill the cabinets on Queensland Terrace at State Library for a permanent display. A virtual Queensland Terrace is also underway so that tea cups and stories can be shared online. Submissions for the project close 31 August 2011.

Tea & Me is funded by an anonymous donation through the Queensland Library Foundation.

Tea & Me is partnering with Australia’s Biggest Morning Tea in the collection of tea cups and stories for the project.

For more information please call Chrissi on 3840 7879.

Warwick: 150 Years Old Today!

Posted on 25 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

Warwick is famous, not just as the birthplace of Premier Anna Bligh and shearer Jackie Howe, but as the first free European settlement in Queensland outside Brisbane. The town of 12,500 people is 480 m above sea level and lies on the Condamine River. It is 162 km southwest and 2 hours drive from Brisbane. The Warwick region is the traditional land of the Gidhabal People who knew the Warwick area as Gooragooby.

Although Allan Cunningham first explored the area in 1827 it wasn’t until 13 years later that the first Europeans, the Leslie brothers (Patrick and George), made their home on the rich fertile flats. They established Canning Downs run in 1840 and built their home in 1846 . The station became an important centre for the region and in 1847 the New South Wales Government gave Patrick Leslie permission to select a site for a town on his Canning Downs station. Originally called Canningtown it eventually became known as Warwick. The town was surveyed in 1849 and became a municipality in 1861 and is now the second largest city on the Darling Downs.

From then on, Warwick developed rapidly. By 1848 a store was established and by 1862 a state school had been completed. Cobb and Co. reached town in 1865 and by 1871 the railway from Ipswich had reached the town and for a short time Warwick was the end of the line. This led to the establishment of a brewer(1873), a co-operative flour mill (1874) and a brick works in 1874.

Today, Warwick is the headquarters of the Australian Rough Riders Association and promotes itself as “The Rose and Rodeo City”. 150 years old this year, people still flock to Warwick to see its fine original architecture and the grand sandstone buildings. Many of these historic buildings will be open to the public for the celebrations.

Happy birthday Warwick!

Karen Hind

Librarian – John Oxley Library

Death at the Beach

Posted on 18 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

In this month’s Out of the Port lunchtime lecture Dr Jonathan Richards explored fatalities on Queensland’s beaches and coastal waterways between 1890 and 1960. The presentation was based on the extensive research he has carried out at the Queensland State Archives looking through Coronial Inquest files into drownings, shark attacks, deaths by crocodiles and stingers and the many other events in which people have lost their lives at our land’s edge.

Dr Richards, a lecturer in Australian history at the School of Humanities, Griffith University, specialises in archival research into violence and death in Queensland. He is the author of the acclaimed The Secret War: A True History of Queensland’s Native Police.

Thanks to Jonathan for a stimulating talk reminding us that while “Life is a Beach”…Death is a beach also. Thankyou to the audience for coming and the interesting questions and observations that concluded the session. I don’t think any of us who attended Death at the Beach will be swimming in Townsville’s Ross Creek any time soon.

State Library’s John Oxley Library and the Department of Environmental Resources Management come together to present the monthly Out of the Port series of talks promoting new research on Queensland. Sessions are recorded and made available through the State Library’s website.

Join us on the 15 of June for the next Out of the Port lecture in which Carol Low will describe her experience of co-curating the Museum of Brisbane’s award winning Prejudice and Pride exhibition of gay, bisexual, lesbian and transgender culture and history.

Simon Farley – John Oxley Library

What's a "Soft Drink"? Gospel, Temperance, and (Not) Raising a Glass

Posted on 17 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

In July 1885, Helen Ferguson had to pause in the middle of describing an event to her sister in Scotland, to explain what a “soft drink” was. She’d been to the Exhibition Buildings in Brisbane to an event that was full of gospel and storytelling, laughter and tears, and a great pinning-on of ribbons . . . and “soft drinks” were served which, if you’re wondering, is what they called “non-intoxicants”.

“General Booth the great advocate of the Blue Ribbon Movement is here at present and the Exhibition buildings are crowded and hundreds unable to obtain admission . . . The meetings combine the gospel and temperance and I do hope there will be a revival.”

The Red Ribbon of HIV Aids awareness has been in use since the 1980s, and since then more and more ribbons are worn regularly as markers of social issues; one hundred years before that, the blue ribbon showed the wearer had taken a pledge of abstinence from alcohol.

The “Blue Ribbon Movement” of the 1880s was an international one. It has a complex history and relationship to other temperance movements both in Australia and around the world – from its charismatic style to the use of the ribbons themselves (ostentatious? genuine? easily put aside?), to rumours of the misappropriatin of funds in some places. It was also immensely popular, while some other movements that had been working for years, on both personal and social reform, did not capture the imagination in the same way. Feminist organisations in Australia (such as the Women’s Christian Temperance Union), for example, had long campaigned on issues of sobriety as a way to address what was not-then called Domestic Violence, and were often called Wowsers and worse for their pains.

Scots woman Helen Ferguson was religious and upright, Presbyterian and given to asides about the oddness of Catholics and the perfidy of Sunday trading. She had quite a sense of humour and was not afraid of looking as fiercely at herself as at others (as she said one day, when it was hot – February in Brisbane! – and the children were sick, “I feel used up and consequently low in the spirits and (say this low) very high in the temper”) But for all her commitment to the cause, she was also a little amused by the meeting she attended, surrounded by the other devotees of temperance.

Because the music was an important part of it. Hymns to uplift the soul, be as intoxicating as anything out of a bottle, and keep those feet marching on the right path. Military images were much in evidence. And the pleasure of her diary, is the way Ferguson takes us inside an event. She’s a participant, with an eye for detail. And one rousing hymn, she says, was sung over and over and over again, until she wanted to laugh. Really wanted to laugh. Had to concentrate hard on maintaining her respectable air.

Richard T Booth, though, didn’t make her want to laugh – although his reputation lead her to expect someone rather different:

“I expected to see a portly impressive figure but instead of that a small slim wiry man with no whiskers and a heavy moustache but with exceedingly bright eyes and a restless agility in every movement of his body.”

But once she got over this lack of fit with what she’d heard and what she saw; not to mention the fit of the giggles that was threatening to undo her, then she felt the force of his charisma. This was a man who, when he was in Australia, lead to thousands and thousands donning that ribbon – while being sent-up by other parts of society. But the power of his speech making was, evidently, something that could sway a crowd:

“He has anecdotes pathetic and droll and some times you could weep and sometimes laugh but he never loses sight of the main topic, the drunk. Neither does he exalt temperance to fill the place of the gospel. He told us plainly that all it would do for us after death would be to give us a decent funeral, it was of no use behind the pearly gates.”

A dry funeral, however.

Not as dry as they became in America, though, because Australia never did embrace prohibition.

Ferguson did note, however, that the movement had had an impact on politics, and an increase in duty on alcohol, “and lighter sales are making the publicans howl I can tell you.”

Kate Evans, Historian in Residence, John Oxley Library, SLQ

Item referred to: OM75-91, Helen Ferguson Diary, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Australia. Please follow through hypertext links above for the (many) other items related to Temperance in the JOL collection, or click here and scroll throough a fascinating list.

Puliima 2011 Indigenous Languages and Technology Forum

Posted on 16 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

The State Library of Queensland recently hosted Puliima 2011 Indigenous Languages and Technology Forum from 10-13 May. The Forum was well-attended with participants drawn from across Australia as well as International visitors from the First nations of Canada and the USA including Hawaii.

Puliima is an opportunity to showcase the use of technology in the documentation, preservation and promotion of languages and the 2011 Forum was no exception. The program featured plenary/keynote sessions in the morning sessions followed by concurrent workshops organised around 4 strands of community, linguistics, technology and education.

Some of the highlights included:·

Indigenous Languages Institute (US First Nations) – [www.ilinative.org] presented a session on a self-paced/self study language pilot program being used for Navajo language; the young students and the teacher who presented highlighted the program’s success in attracting/retaining young people in language.·
Sharing Culture online – [www.sharingculture.com.au] Gadj & Jodie Maymuru talked about their software program for the teaching/learning of culture and how it also can be used for language work and the production of language resources.·
Miromaa 4 – [www.miromaa.com.au] Daryn McKenny launched the latest version of this innovative language software and highlighted the newest features; while on the optional Friday program, Jedda Priman ran a training session which was well-attended by conference participants including IKC Coordinators from Injinoo [Sandra Sebasio] and Pormpuraaw [Rosie Lowdown]. ·
Muurrbay/Many Rivers Language Centre – [www.muurrbay.org.au] presented a session on their new methodology for teaching language; this approach blends Total Physical Response (TPR) with Accelerated Second Language Acquisition (ASLA). The end result is an oral-based strategy using language, images and non-verbals via a minimal list of everyday words. Michael Jarrett gave an impressive demonstration lesson that featured audience participation. Muurrbay’s approach is based on the work of Professor Greymourning [www.nsilc.org/] from First Nations US – the ASLA approach appears to be very successful and producing results in language teaching.·
Trade Displays – several information/trade displays were set up in kuril dhagun over the course of the conference and attracted plenty of interest; Printing Asia [www.printingasia.com] proved very popular with their Language Pen and the Gambara Gamu Biyu interactive Body Chart. State Library of Queensland will be distributing copies of the resource to IKCs, Language Centres and community language workers in the near future.

All in all, it was a very informative few days with lots of networking and sharing of language ideas – several State Library staff were in attendance including officers from Cairns, IKCs and kuril dhagun.

Des Crump and Simon Farley

Queensland Memory – State Library of Queensland

Food in Books and the Australian Library of Art

Posted on 13 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

When it comes to food, the Australian Library of Art holds a number of artists’ books which may not be edible but are on the theme of food, books which are works of art in themselves, inspired by an experience or a memory relating to food.

As Queensland artist Normana Wight writes about her book Jam Doughnuts – Fragments of Foreign Food, having taken many photos of food in Britain and France, she wanted to make a recipe book of foods as a work of art, having seen “a wonderful artists’ recipe book at the Victoria and Albert Museum.”

A good companion to Normana’s book would be Rita Erlich and Mary Newsome’s Art of the Cake : Paris pâtisseries. This is an elaborate affair, comprising a box in which sits a luscious looking French “cake”, accompanied by a pair of gloves.

The food theme comes up again in Towards Comfort, where Normana uses digital printing to create images of the making of a cup of tea. Just Desserts a phrase which suggests much, from lustful food, right through to come-uppance is another of Normana’s offerings, this time mentoring third year printmaking students and staff of the University of Southern Queensland.

The work of Brisbane artist Helen Sanderson graces Artists Books Online on the slq website. Licorice Allsorts consists of a cellophane bag of paper licorice allsorts which look very real indeed. Helen too, has been inspired by food. As Artist-in-Residence with Edwards Dunlops Paper, she had the idea of making a series of paper sandwiches, contained in heat sealed wrapping.

She created Ham & Lettuce Sandwich and Sandwich IV, a unique item made of coloured sheets of paper in the form of a triangular sandwich.

From Brisbane textile artist, Kay Faulkner, we have Indulge, a rather lurid purple-textured fabric covered book, made of chocolate wrappers, where the artist requested friends, mostly Queenslanders, state their preferred indulgence on the wrappers. In another work, Indulgence, a catalogue of an exhibition of the artist’s weaving, the connection to chocolate is maintained, the exhibited works being described as shimmery silver foils of chocolate wrappers being woven with natural fibres. As Faulkner writes; “Chocolate is ambrosia, food of the gods to my mind.”

In her artist’s book, Eat, Jo Pursey set out to visually document “all the foods I’ve eaten in 2001” The ALA holds volume one of the work. It seems there is no end to what artists consider fodder to creating these beautiful artists’ books.

Irene Sourgnes

Librarian, The Australian Library of Art

What to do with a kangaroo…and a pot!

Posted on 12 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

Many a new bride coming to what must have felt like the ‘exile’ of the new Colony would have despaired over the most fundamental of issues – what to cook for Dinner!

Coming to their aid were the inventive (and courageous) women pioneers, not only to this landscape but to the strange new animal life around them. The John Oxley Library’s collection of early cookery books is a joy to look through. One such treasure is a copy of the earliest cook books to feature Queensland ingredients, namely Mrs Lance Rawson’s The Queensland Cookery and Poultry Book. I’m not quite sure that the RSPCA would allow one to boil a bandicoot in our own kitchens but if we ever need to there is a recipe for us!

Oh – and by the way Kangaroo meat can be quite dry – no doubt the colonial housewife cum Jill-of-All-Trades can find a way around this in the helpful hints found in another of the cookbooks here.

Cathy Blanchfield

Librarian, Published Materials

Queensland Memory

Young Historians Workshop 2011

Posted on 11 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

This week on 9 and 10 May a Young Historians Workshop, jointly conducted by Heritage Collections and Reference Services, was held at the State Library of Queensland. The workshop was sponsored by the State Library and the Queensland History Teachers’ Association.

Ten year 11 and 12 students of ancient and modern history from regional and metropolitan schools attended the workshop including three students from Kingaroy, Bundaberg and Roma.

Participants learned about the collections held at the State Library, including the John Oxley Library of historical material relating to Queensland as well as books, journals, databases and associated resouces accessable in the State Reference Library. This was a great opportunity for them to develop their research skills and tap into the rich resources available at SLQ.

Displays and tours were a key feature of the workshop. Students particularly enjoyed seeing and holding the items on show in the ‘white gloves displays’ in the Fox Family White Gloves Room on level 4 of the State Library. These included rare photographs, letters and diaries from the Oxley collection from the 1830s onwards and antiquities from the History and Art of the Book Collection including cuneiform and Roman tablets and papyri from Ancient Egypt.

Comments from students included the following:

It is difficult to express in words the gratitude I feel towards the staff.
Thank you so much for this experience, and the kind staff who helped us all with any problems we had and our research.
Thank you for the two days. I have learnt so much and had a great time.
The staff were amazing and very friendly.
I was unaware of the extensive library of resources that have to do with Queensland and Australian History and I found it intriguing.
It was amazing to be able to use the cataloguing and the databases for information.
I was amazed by the books in repositories, I thought in libraries what you see is what you get.

It was a pleasure to meet and work with such an interesting and bright group students with a passion for history. We certainly wish them every success in their current and future studies.

Special thanks to event organiser Linda Barron, SLQ’s Client Learning Coordinator.

Simon Farley

Manager, Client Services – John Oxley Library

Queensland Author Wins National Science Fiction Award

Posted on 10 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

Queensland author, Anita Bell, who also writes as AA Bell, is this year’s proud recipient of the Norma K Hemming Award for her psychological thriller Diamond Eyes. This prestigious award is sponsored and administered by the Australian Science Fiction Foundation to recognise excellence in the exploration of themes of race, gender, sexuality, class and disability in science fiction or fantasy in works produced either in Australia or by Australian citizens.

When I caught up with Anita to congratulate her on her recent award, she was understandably jubilant, ‘I’ve been doing a lot of champagne glass clinking’, she said.

Other awards and credits Anita has received for Diamond Eyes include:
2007 – 2010 QUT Scholarship awarded for the development of Diamond Eyes (AA Bell) as a research project.
2009 – Highly Commended award for an unpublished manuscript, Jim Hamilton Awards, Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW)

The multi-award winning story is about a young, blind woman named Mira Chambers, who lives in two worlds at once: the real one she can feel but not see; and the colonial past, which she can see happening all around her, but not feel. When the story opens, Mira is trapped in a very dark and frightening place in her life. With the arrival of two medical scientists who begin an exploration of Mira’s strange perspectives it becomes a story of Mira’s fight for freedom, understanding and independence.

The story is set throughout the south east corner of Queensland from Toowoomba to the islands of Moreton Bay and from the Sunshine Coast to the Gold Coast.

The ninth generation Queensland writer from Lockyer Valley explains, ‘The mental health facility in Diamond Eyes is located on a fictional island in Moreton Bay, but it’s an amalgamation of three real locations: Peel Island, which was formerly a leper colony; St Helena’s Island, famous for its use as a Gaol; and the Challinor Centre in Ipswich, formerly known as the Sandy Gallop ‘Benevolent Asylum’. Aspects of those centres provided Anita with rich sources of inspiration, not only for settings, but also for quirky and memorable characters.

Anita worked in the spooky halls of Sandy Gallop for nearly 10 years. ‘I was mainly in the office, where the architecture was really quite exquisite, but it was a very old and chilling place to work, especially at night,’ she said. ‘Many of the old buildings are still historically listed, and have been extensively renovated as part of the new Ipswich University’s campus. Some of the scariest buildings were demolished and turned into car parks, including some that were built over dungeons – complete with brick walls and shackles!’

Diamond Eyes is the first book in a trilogy of fantasy thrillers. Some of the secondary characters from the trilogy have appeared in some of Anita’s other stories. ‘Allowing them to come to the new series with fully developed back-stories made sense to me and I think adds an extra layer of believability’.

Anita’s publishing repertoire includes:

The Diamond Eyes series of Fantasy Thrillers under the pen name AA Bell (HarperCollins Voyager):
Diamond Eyes (2010)
Hindsight (2011)
Leopard Dreaming (2012)

Thrillers for Young Adults as Anita Bell (Random House Australia):
Crystal Coffin (2001)
Project apocalypse (2006)

For children as Anita Bell:
Fluff on my Brain, (30 Australian Ghost Stories, Random House Australia, 2004)
Voices from Beyond, (30 Australian Ghost Stories, Random House Australia, 2004)
Terror under the Rockies and Winkle, (Stories for 8 year olds, Random House Australia, 2005)
The Moon Serpent’s Garden, (Picture This!, Pearson Australia, 2009)

Kirby’s Crusaders series of novellas as Anita Bell (Random House Australia) :
Tagged by Dead Dogs (2003)
Hunt the Hunters (2004)

Anita has also written these choose-your-own-adventure stories for State Library’s popular Summer Reading Program for children and young adults that are available online:
Kirby and the Deadly Dungeon

Enter the Dead Zone

As Anita fulfils State Library’s working definition of a ‘Queensland Author’, it is my job to obtain all of her imaginative works for the John Oxley Library’s collection where they will be housed for future generations of researchers. (I purchase them if they are published outside Queensland and obtain them through legal deposit if they are published within the state. Click here for State Library’s working definitions of ‘Queensland Author’ and ‘imaginative works’.)

If you are an emerging Queensland author of imaginative writing (or if you know of someone else who is), please, please let me know so that I don’t miss out on obtaining your early works for the John Oxley Library’s collection!

Like many other readers, I now have another great title to add to my reading list!!

Dr Leanne Day
Queensland Authors Librarian
Leanne.Day@slq.qld.gov.au

Ruby Velvet with Cream Lace: What the streetgirls are wearing in the 1880s

Posted on 09 May 2011| by JOL Admin |

It seems that the sex workers of Brisbane in the 1880s favoured strong contrasts in their clothes: red velvet trimmed with cream; peacock blue satin also with cream lace; black and gold; and trailing feathers in their hats. How do I know this? Why, I read it in the diary of a (very) godfearing Scots woman, Helen Ferguson, who wrote about it in her diary in the Oxley Collection.

She writes vividly, and has a rather arch sense of humour.

“When I first landed here I thought there was a great many grandees here, but though their taste in dress rather ‘loud’, I little suspected what they were, for there are some very handsome and ladylike girls amongst them.”

Again, it raises the question of what diaries do, and who they’re for. This one was a document for “home”, for her family in Scotland. This means it can be difficult to work out the practicalities of how it worked: were sections copied out and sent? Was it sent back and forward? She has a clear audience, and it’s her sister. She’s also describing a new land and – often – unusual landscapes and social practices. This makes her ridiculously useful, because she’s self-conscious about describing that texture and detail that is usually so presumed as to be imbedded or invisible. In a diary for yourself, or even for members of your family who live in the same town or country, there’s no need to describe the opening hours of shops or the price of milk.

Which is why she’s happy to tell us, or rather to tell her sister, that, “Vice flaunts itself in gaudy colours here”, before spelling out the exact colours of that vice. The velvet, the lace, the “abundance of jewellery of every description”. The codes of fashion are clear to her, and to her sister.

But she’s not telling us simply to titillate. Certainly, prostitution is there on the streets, part of the world she describes, but she’s also a reformer. She was part of that “great movement now of what is called the social purity society.”In other parts of her diary, she’s quite emphatic and unwavering, especially about the breaking of the Sabbath. She rails against the butcher’s boys on their ponies and the bakeries that are open on a Sunday. And yet she takes a benevolent approach to these women workers in vice.

She explains the Contagious Diseases Act and its workings, lamenting its unfairness.“It is an act which compels all women who have chosen a life of that sort to go up every week on a certain day and be examined by the doctor. Those of them who have any disease are consigned to the Locke Hospital and those who have not received a clear certificate duly signed and attested so.”

The problem, as she sees it, is that it labels these women for life.

“This debars the poor girl from a chance of ever being reclaimed, for unless she leave the colonies she is known to the police where-ever she goes, and not only so but the last remaining traces of womanhood vanish after they pass this Rubicon.”

And so she allows us a glimpse of the lives of these women, the role of the police, the line taken by the church, the sexual inequality that is – unfortunately – not astonishing, and reveals the perceived power of petition. This represents just a few pages in a diary that takes us inside a range of stories. I’m sure I’ll return to her, but in this very brief selection of pages in a small diary that skips dates and travels a wide variety of moods, better to end with her own observations:

“ I have seen cases too of virtuous girls who have got unwittingly led in to bad company being trumped up by the police as suspected women and compelled to undergo this degrading examination and in the recklessness of sheer despair abandoning themselves to the life thus mapped out for them. Thus Queensland says to her Sons, ‘Sir you lust but will try to make it as safe for you as we can’ but to her poor fallen daughters no such protection is accorded; and it is against this iniquitous legislation that this social purity society is waging the hottest warfare. It is uphill work but they are bound to succeed for they are terribly in earnest about it and nearly all the ministers and influential members of churches have allied themselves with it . . . 1000 names have been signed to the petition already in the Valley district alone.”

Selections from: OM75-91, Helen Ferguson Diary, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland, Australia.

Kate Evans, Historian in Residence, John Oxley Library