‘Koorie Boogaja’ 1971

Beth Marsden

‘This is our land and we are proud of it. After all, you white fellows weren’t the first to discover Australia—we were here first.’ Charlie Carter[1]

This poster shows a map of Australia produced by the Aborigines Advancement League in 1971. Entitled ‘Koorie Boogaja’, this eloquent graphic illustration shows Aboriginal tribal boundaries traced across the Australian continent, with a key provided to locate each tribe. Measuring 60 x 70 cm, the sub-heading ‘School Project’ shows the aim of this poster was to encourage students to develop and build an awareness of the history and complexity of Aboriginal Australia and the creator of the map—the Aborigines Advancement League— is written at the base. Continue reading “‘Koorie Boogaja’ 1971” →

The Trades Hall Poster collection

Initially compiled by George Seelaf, the inaugural Arts Officer of Victorian Trades Hall Council, this collection of political posters was donated to the University of Melbourne Archives by Trades Hall secretary Brian Boyd in 2006 (2006.0038). In addition to the union campaign posters and various papers, photographs and audio recordings, the collection comprises political and activist art produced by broader organisations sympathetic to the labour movement. Five posters in particular address the theme of Aboriginal self-determination and identity, and were produced by the Victorian Aborigines Advancement League, Melbourne; National Aboriginal and Islanders Day Observance Committee (NAIDOC), Canberra; Community Media Association (later CoMedia), Adelaide; the Australian Film Institute, Melbourne; and Winja Ulupna: Aboriginal Women’s Alcohol Recovery House, Melbourne. Created and  distributed for a range of audiences, each item responds to a different aspect of the Indigenous activist movement in Australia. Spanning a period of 20 years from the early 1970s, they capture the growing intersection of Aboriginal Australian political activism and resistance with the labour movement by the early 1990s. The digitisation of these posters will increase accessibility to the collection while also developing new links between the visual culture of paper-based political posters and contemporary online political activism in the labour and Indigenous rights movements. Continue reading “The Trades Hall Poster collection” →

Aunt Mavis’ Basket Maker: Germaine Greer’s CUNT index cards

Carly Pettiona

The Germaine Greer Archive offers insight into the thoughts, correspondences, writing and planning processes of one of the most controversial and well-known feminists of the 20th century. This archive includes a collection of index cards she made while writing and editing The Female Eunuch. Nestled in the collection, between index cards that contain notes about references and commentary on history, there are two cards simply labelled CUNT (Items: 2014.0039.0351 and 2014.0039.0358). Both are dated 1968 and have been digitised as part of the curation of the Germaine Greer archive undertaken by the University, and you can learn more about the index cards from Rachel Buchanan’s University of Melbourne Archives blog post.

Still from YouTube video: Germaine Greer on the Etymology of "the C word".. BabyradfemTV, 2016
Still from YouTube video:, Germaine Greer on the Etymology of “the C word”.. BabyradfemTV, 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vy36G-BRFRQ

Continue reading “Aunt Mavis’ Basket Maker: Germaine Greer’s CUNT index cards” →

First industry steps for those who feed us

Argyris Karavis

The formation of the Master Caterers Association (MCA) is connected to two major shifts in Australian social life at the turn of twentieth century Australia. The first is a boom in public venues for the consumption of food – restaurants, refreshment rooms, cafes and oyster saloons – in Melbourne and Sydney between 1890 and 1910[1]. The second is the emergence of organised national industrial relations[2].  The minutes from the first two years of the Master Caterers Association reveal how the owners of those businesses who feed us had to grapple with setting up an employer body to represent this newly emerging industry and the issues to be addressed for participation in the newly established industrial relations system. Continue reading “First industry steps for those who feed us” →

“Fraser meets digger”

Pauline Georgelin

"Fraser meets digger", unknown paper, 1966
“Fraser meets digger”, unknown paper, 1966. Una Fraser collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2008.0058 unit 2

This photo “Fraser meets digger” differs from most of the scrapbook clippings in that it has no date, nor is it pasted into the scrapbook. Dating from a later period, it is simply “popped in” as though Una was going through a busy time. Perhaps she thought she would return to it later. Continue reading ““Fraser meets digger”” →

Number of posts found: 413

Post type

Previous posts