Locating, labelling and listing: the Locations Data Upgrade Project

As a substantial project approaches its culmination, UMA celebrates a number of benefits for researchers and staff and donors.

Due to the UMA Digital Finding Aids Project sponsored by the RE Ross Trust and the Locations Data Upgrade Project sponsored by the Miegunyah Fund, there are now 1520 lists of detailed (box or file level) collection data published in the Archives online catalogue – an increase of 60% since January 2012.

Recent months have seen the addition of 323 finding aids collated from the front of boxes of previously unlisted collections, as part of the Locations Data Upgrade Project supported by the Miegunyah Fund.

University records have been uncovered in previously unlisted collections such as the Melbourne University Film Society, University of Melbourne Department of Statistics, University of Melbourne Department of Fine Arts and a long range of minutes from the Melbourne University Student Union.

Black and white photograph of Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, 1895
Flinders Street Station, Melbourne, 1895, Photographer unknown, Australian Railways Union, Victorian Branch Collection, 1985.0097, OSBA/783

Some of the larger collections which are now listed at a box level include; the Patterson Family, with pastoral and mining records covering 1880 – 1923; business records of Repco Ltd. 1926 – 1980; editorial records for four past editors of literary journal Meanjin; Victorian biscuit manufacturing company Swallow & Ariell Pty. Ltd and 270m worth of material from the Australian Stock Exchange (Melbourne).

Two people seated in front of beach huts, Victoria, c.1925
Beach scene, Victoria, c.1925, Photographer unknown, Charles Edward Howlett Collection, 1990.0037, NN/2595

Unfortunately however, not all unlisted collections held data on the outside of each box, or with time the pencil notes faded or the 40 year old handwriting is illegible. These are the idiosyncrasies of archives.

The Locations Data Upgrade Project brings together many of the activities common and crucial to how collecting institutions manage their collections. Knowing where in the repository every single box of material is so it can be retrieved and transported for researcher use in the Reading Room may seem like a simple matter, but with over 18km of shelf space the logistics are anything but straightforward.

The outcome of the Locations Data Upgrade Project will see each box of material in each collection labelled correctly, stored with the rest of its collection, and its exact location on the shelf recorded in the database. Previously, the location of the range of boxes in each collection was known, but now each box is controlled. Better location data will support efficient retrievals, security and eventually online ordering of material.

There are also significant outcomes for reference staff, with the process of locating boxes in unlisted collections becoming more efficient. With staff having to travel to the repository and manually search the shelves to locate relevant boxes of materials for research requests, turning box data into a finding aid that is available online can save hours of time for staff and reduce the unnecessary transportation of material.

Further posts will reveal the depth of content that has become more accessible due to the Locations Data Upgrade Project.

Hartnett on the Road again in ‘Shifting Gear’

'The Harnett Tourer', Laurence Harnett, 1986.0124, University of Melbourne Archives
‘The Harnett Tourer’, Laurence Harnett, 1986.0124, University of Melbourne Archives

In March 2015 the National Gallery of Victoria will launch its exhibition ‘Shifting Gear’ which will showcase the work of many of Australia’s top local designers who contributed to the development of Australia’s automobile industry during the twentieth century. One such designer is Sir Laurence Hartnett who was a well known twentieth century industrialist who had been the Managing Director of the Australian firm General Motors Holden (GMH), one of the founders of the wartime Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation CAC and who designed the ‘Australian car that almost was…’ the prototype of the Harnett car. The Hartnett papers and other company collections which contributed to the Australian automotive story such as Repco and Shell can be found at the University of Melbourne Archives UMA.

One such story is the time Jack Brabham won the 1966 German Grand Prix in his 1.3 litre Repco-Brabham car. The engine was designed, developed and produced by Repco in Australia. In this same year Repco-Brabham cars gained four firsts, two seconds, three thirds and one fouth place and Brabham achieved his third world championship. The was the first non-European engine to win.

Contributors: Melinda Barrie and Sophie Garrett

 

Crying in the Wilderness or, Nursing in the Twilight of Australian Colonialism

Charles Cornwallis (University of Melbourne Bachelor of Arts student)

The last 15 years of Australian administration in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea were a period of rapid social and political change. Even within this context, a particularly unusual position was occupied by the expatriate public servants working in the Territory’s Administration. Evidence in the Royal Australian Nursing Federation (RANF) collection in the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) allows us explore the situation of these workers through the actions of one group, the nurses of the Territory’s health service. Their attempt to form an industrial organisation during the 1960s offers a new perspective on the period, allowing us to see the final years of Administration through the concerns of those working right along its fault-lines.

The Papua New Guinea Nurses Association

In her grand survey of 75 years of nursing in Papua New Guinea, Ellen Kettle devotes little more than a paragraph to the Territory’s first professional nursing association. She records that an initial attempt was made in 1962 but that progress was slow and the actual goal was not reached until a decade later, in 1972. Archival evidence, while by no means a complete account of the formation of the PNG Nurses Association, allows us to add to the story outlined by Kettle.

In the RANF collection, the first mention of a nurses association actually appears in 1956, six years earlier than Kettle records. Towards the end of that year, the Assistant Secretary of the RANF in Melbourne wrote to Jean Henderson, an Anglican mission nurse working in Oro Bay in Papua. She was writing in response to a call (from who is unclear) for a link to be established between nurses in the Territory and the RANF, and suggested that she could assist them in joining one of the Australian state branches. Henderson however replied that she wished to establish something more – a professional organisation for nurses in the Territory. Such an association would, she felt, greatly assist them in achieving uniformity in methods and training, and help to encourage indigenous involvement in the profession. She thanked the RANF for its offer, but indicated that she would work towards establishing an association on her own.

The issue then seems to disappear until 1961, when the RANF once again began to receive requests for information. This time the push was coming from two women in very senior positions in the Administration. In 1961 Joyce Jones was writing as a Senior Matron of the Department, and within a few years she would be appointed Principal Matron, putting her in command of all nursing services in the Territory. Violet Bignold, the other correspondent, had military experience during the war, and at the time occupied a senior administrative position in the ICMH Division.

They both contacted the RANF with similar requests – nurses in the Territory were considering organisation, and any information or advice on how to go about it would be greatly appreciated. The RANF happily mailed off the relevant rules and instructions, but once again the association failed to eventuate. Why is not exactly clear. Kettle merely states that “many stumbling blocks were presented”, but the archives suggest that an application was actually taken to the RANF in 1962 and that there it was either rejected or simply not acted upon. Nevertheless, the ball was now well and truly rolling and over the next few years the project would not only continue, but would also become entangled with the political changes of the time.

On 20 July 1963, “Pixie” Annatt arrived in Port Moresby on what had originally been holiday from her work as the Assistant Secretary of the Queensland Branch of the RANF. However, the trip to see her sister had been too valuable an opportunity to miss and Annatt’s holiday had duly been co-opted for another purpose by the Federal branch. As a result of the RANF’s anxieties about “changes emerging” in the Territory, Annatt was asked to embark on an extensive fact-finding mission of interviews and investigations.

The report that Annatt produced is one of the most interesting documents of the collection. It contains firsthand information which was gathered from all over the Territory and shipped back to the headquarters in Melbourne. It also describes the state of the nursing profession as seen by one who had made their professional and industrial advancement her career. Annatt was not impressed with what she found. In centres right across the territory the same complaints were recorded again and again. Nurses were frustrated with the lack of professional autonomy – in areas like training and promotion they were being overruled by the Department, and the result was a clear decline in standards of care. Coupled with this were the perennial problems of work in the Territory. Conditions were poor, with equipment and personal amenities in very short supply. Nurses worked for low wages in often isolated areas and had little more than basic supplies and the goodwill of the local population (not always forthcoming) on which to survive. Annatt declared that these problems were creating a desperate situation – indeed, her report provides the evocative quote which gives this article its title.

Annatt’s report seems to have precipitated a flurry of activity back in Australia. Meetings were held with the Minister for External Territories where the plight of Territory nurses was explored in detail. When a wage deductions dispute (or more accurately, the threat that this might drive nurses to join a rival organisation, the Public Service Association) was thrown into the mix in 1964, a further series of letters and visits to the Territory appear in the records. In early 1965 Annatt returned to the Territory, this time to witness a meeting which resulted in the creation of a Nursing Committee which was charged with first establishing an Association and then deciding whether to affiliate with the RANF.

After 1965 the records become a little patchier but it can be assumed that the work of the committee quietly continued, requiring little further input from Australia. Eventually a constitution was adopted and the Association came into being in 1972, although the RANF had little to do with it. With independence only a few years away, the Territory nurses had created an independent, national organisation which would have no official links to the Australian one.

After more than a decade of work from the RANF, this result seems slightly anticlimactic. However, if viewed in light of the social and political context of the Territory in the 1960s, this story illustrates what must have been a common tension experienced by those expatriates working in the Territory in the lead-up to independence. The nurses of the Territory’s Department of Health had long worked on the frontlines of public health in PNG. The Department’s Infant, Child and Maternal Health (ICMH) Division was able to ‘reach out’ into indigenous Territory society far more than other, urban-based services. Indeed, this ‘reaching out’ operated in both directions; the ICMH was also one of the earliest government services to begin official training of indigenous staff, with nursing orderly courses being opened in 1951.

By the beginning of the 1960s however, the character of Australian administration in the Territory was changing. The day when Australia would hand over its responsibilities to Papua and New Guinean nationals was coming.

The drive to create a nurses association was naturally influenced by these changes in the Territory. From the very beginning, the Territory nurses leading the push described the project in terms of creating a sustainable profession, by giving indigenous nurses the experience and authority to continue co-ordinating activities after independence.

At the same time however, the project was also an effort to resist the effects of localisation. Horrified as Annatt was at the conditions in the Territory, this was not what had prompted the nurses there to request her help. It seems far more likely that the “changes” which had prompted Annatt’s mission were the imminent completion of a new nursing syllabus and the formation of a Nursing Council within the Department of Health. Both of these moves can be seen as efforts by the Department to gain more control over a profession which had to be restructured to outlive Australian involvement. The Territory nurses also faced a more personal threat – in one letter, Lyn Mcalister voiced her concerns that the jobs of expatriate nurses were not safe.

The nurses’ push to create an industrial association thus reveals the curious double-bind in which many in the Administration found themselves. On the one hand, they were committed to preparing the Territory for self-sufficiency and independence but on the other, forced to react personally against the very processes which they began for this purpose. Ultimately, and in spite of their dealings with the RANF, it was this first objective which would win out, resulting in an independent, national association.

 

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Report of the Assistant Secretary to the Council of the RANF Queensland Branch, on her return from Papua and New Guinea; July-August 1963. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/63, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Report of Meeting, 2nd February 1965, Turama Hospital, Papua New Guinea. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/65, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

“New Guinea Call to Clear Way for Independence.” The Canberra Times. 23rd January 1965. Accessed [online] from <http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/105824965?searchTerm=papua%20new%20guinea%20independence&searchLimits=dateFrom=1950-01-01|||dateTo=1970-12-31>.

Bignold, Violet. Letter to the Secretary-General of the RANF. 9th June 1961. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/61, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Department of Public Health, Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Annual Report, 1962-1963. Port Moresby, 1963.

Hall, V.M. Letter to C. E. Barnes, Minister for Territories. 25th June 1964. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/64, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Henderson, Jean. Letter to the Assistant Secretary. 13th January 1957. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/56, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Jarrett, L. Letter to the Executive. 20th February 1963. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/63, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Jarrett, L. Letter to Dr Symes. 23rd December 1968. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/68, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Jones, Joyce. Letter to Secretary of the RANF. 24th May 1961. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/38/61, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Kirchner, J. V. Letter to Jean Henderson. 24th December 1956. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/56, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Lalor, W. A. Statement: Public Service Ordinance. September 1964, Port Moresby. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/64, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Mcalister, Lyn. Letter to L. Jarrett. 15th February 1963. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/38/63, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Secondary Sources

Denoon, Donald. “The Political Economy of Western Medical Services in Papua New Guinea.” In A History of Medicine in Papua New Guinea: Vignettes of an Earlier Period, ed. Burton Burton-Bradley, 77-100. Kingsgrove, N.S.W: Australasian Medical Publishing, 1990.

Kettle, Ellen. That They Might Live. Sydney: F. P Leonard, 1979.

Nelson, Hank. “Liberation: The End of Australian Rule in Papua New Guinea.” Journal of Pacific History 35, 3 (2000): 269–280.

Scragg, Roy. “Medical tul-tul to Doctor of Medicine.” In A History of Medicine in Papua New Guinea: Vignettes of an Earlier Period, ed. Burton Burton-Bradley, 15-46. Kingsgrove, N.S.W: Australasian Medical Publishing, 1990.

 

Fletcher Jones ‘Pleasant Hill’ Water Tower (otherwise known as the ‘Silver Ball’)

'The Elevated Water Tower in its Factory and Garden Setting at Warrnambool, Victoria', Ralph Jones, Ralph Jones Water Tower Submission & Business Papers, 2014.0112, University of Melbourne Archives
‘The Elevated Water Tower in its Factory and Garden Setting at Warrnambool, Victoria’, Ralph Jones, Ralph Jones Water Tower Submission & Business Papers, 2014.0112, University of Melbourne Archives

In late 2014 the University of Melbourne Archives UMA acquired Ralph Jones’ 1975 Engineering Awards Competition submission ‘Elevated Steel Water Tower and Associated Project and his papers about the construction of the water tower at ‘Pleasant Hill’, (otherwise known as the ‘Silver Ball’) at the old Fletcher Jones Factory site, Warrnambool. The water tower is an iconic and distinctive feature in the Warrnambool local area and is a useful landmark for the visitor as they enter the town. In discussions with Ralph Jones his motivation for depositing his collection with the Archives is to ensure others are aware of the design and construction method used to build the tower and to raise awareness about the factory site’s significance.
The elevated steel water tower has an attractive appearance which enhances the famous landscape and garden setting of the Fletcher Jones & Staff Pty. Ltd. Production centre, “Pleasant Hill” at Warrnambool. The water tower is 37.8 m (124 ft.) high with a total capacity of 205,000 litres (45,000 gallons). It is in the form of a sphere 7.32 m (24 ft.) diameter, supported on three lets each 0.76 m (2’-6”) diameter.

As space was at a premium, the design permitted the base frame of the water tower to be incorporated in the factory fabric.

The Ralph Jones Water Tower Collection is now available for research access.

The many stories of the Commercial Travellers Association

W.H. Ell's 'Safechek' sovereign changer c. 1907 Commercial Travellers' Association of Australia 1979.0162
W.H. Ell’s ‘Safechek’ sovereign changer c. 1907 Commercial Travellers’ Association of Australia 1979.0162

The Commercial Travellers Association of Australia (CTA) represents a professional organisation of otherwise previously unrepresented workers – a white collar union for travelling salesmen – that experienced a long decline as the economy evolved and steadily made them redundant. As such, the CTA’s interests were in providing services and supports to their membership such as insurance, supera

nnuation, educational opportunities, negotiating deals with hotels to support the commercial travellers’ work, providing display rooms for goods, a place for the commercial travellers to meet and socialise both together and with customers in the CTA Clubs.

It was initially a large and active body, conducting annual conferences and publishing a monthly magazine (The Australian Traveller), with an annual supplement (Australia Today). It had active branches in every State and especially prior to the Depression, was filled with that 19th Century ethos of civic duty and public good and the idea that the CTA was helping to create a bigger and better nation. After the Second WW, the economic changes occurring in Australia steadily began to wear the CTA down and much of the later years (60s-70s) were dominated by its declining finances and membership. Despite the problems of the later years, the CTA still tried to promote Australia and Australian achievements and never lost that pride in the nation building role that they saw for themselves.

The CTA collection, documents the rise and fall of the association over 100 years and includes the iconic original artwork of the flagship publication Australia Today by artists such as Norman Lindsay, Napier Waller, Lionel Lindsay and C Dudley Wood. The collection includes a rare sovereign changer. Once prolific in bars, and like establishments the ‘Safechek’ gold changer provided a canister of change in exchange for a sovereign or a half sovereign when it was inserted in the appropriate slot.

Contributor: Carl Temple

Source: Primary Sources: 50 Stories from 50 Years of Archives

Links

Commercial Travellers Association

Number of posts found: 382

Post type

Previous posts