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Maria Nugent

This special issue of La Trobe Journal is guest edited by Lynette Russell from Monash University, and John Arnold, the Journal’s new general editor (since No. 82). Titled Indigenous Victorians: Repressed, Resourceful and Respected, it showcases new historical scholarship that draws on the State Library of Victoria’s unrivalled collections. Topics covered in the twelve essays are diverse: Aboriginal guides to the Victorian goldfields, fisheries in western Victoria, cricketers at Coranderrk, Lake Tyers Aboriginal settlement, the Victorian Aboriginal Advancement League, and government legislation relating to Aboriginal Victorians, among others.

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There is a term used in archaeology to describe the process of collecting material from the top of the ground as opposed to digging or excavating for it. It’s called ‘surface collection’. I learnt this recently when I read a new book by that name on archaeology and heritage in South-East Asia by the Sydney-based archaeologist Denis Byrne. It was a useful concept to have in mind as I read Writing Heritage: The Depiction of Indigenous Heritage in European–Australian Writings, which overflows with vignettes and descriptions about men (and it was mostly men) who spent their time scouring the Australian landscape’s surface for things made by indigenous people.

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Tasmania was named Tasmania, instead of Van Diemen’s Land, because of a need to push the island’s history back as far as possible beyond 1803. The Dutch explorer Abel Janszoon Tasman was usefully iconic partly because he had nothing to do with convicts. But yearning for a distant past, a past cut off from the present, was common among nineteenth-century Europeans. As John Stuart Mill remarked, ‘comparing one’s own age with former ages’ was suddenly an everyday habit. The fact that several generations divided Tasman’s visit from British settlement was almost an advantage.

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