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Imagining a Collection Creating Australia’S Records of War John Treloar in 1941 photograph by Edward Cranstone Australian War Memorial, negative number 005915 Imagining a collection Creating Australia’s records of war by Anne-Marie Condé Abstract lasting impact on understanding of Australia and the war. The second was largely unused In this article I discuss three groups of until the late 1960s, when it became central archival records held by the Australian to the work of historians exploring new War Memorial: firstly, some records put to historical approaches. The potential of immediate use after the First World War the last group is only now being realised. for the writing of Australia’s official war I seek to join the creation of the records history; secondly, a collection of private with their acquisition and use (or non-use) records acquired by the Memorial in the as archives. I try to see past their content 1920s and 1930s, and, lastly, a large quantity to explore their histories, and in so doing of administrative (as distinct from combat- I hope to contribute to an enlivened related) records, acquired in 1931. discussion of the creation and use of The first group had an immediate and museum, library and archives collections. reCollections: Journal of the National Museum of Australia March 2007, vol. 2, no. 1, pp. 25–36 Introduction most are not. To borrow from the Book of Genesis, the event — like the earth at In the interests of the national the moment of creation — is ‘without history of Australia and in order that form, and void’ until it is imagined into Australia may have the control of her being by the record creator, who then uses own historical records, especially in so whatever method might be appropriate far as they relate to the present war, for transmission (an entry in a register, a the Australian War Records Section report, a letter, a diary entry, an email, a has been formed, and is located at the photograph or whatever). The events chosen Public Record Office, Chancery Lane, for recording are socially and culturally London W.C.2.1 determined, and the technology used to record the event can help to shape it and So begins a document that marks the the way it is understood in the future. start of Australia’s efforts to collect the Furthermore, the process by which a records of war. It was a memorandum record makes it into an archive, and how issued from London in July 1917 to all it is arranged, stored, made accessible and commanding officers in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) notifying them of their used, all help to ‘create’ the record and add responsibilities to ensure that records of meaning to it. The postmodern archivist their units were properly kept and preserved. seeks to understand these processes, and It was in the interests of the national history of to make transparent his or her active 3 Australia that a collecting facility had been role in them. established. It would ensure that Australia Such an archivist is open to the idea that had control of her own historical records. The a record can mean various things to various records would form an ‘Australian National people, and in this he or she joins with Collection’ from which the history of the museum curators and historians in reading war would be written. There was at the records and artefacts around and against the time no Australian national record office, intentions of their creators. (Most museum so Australia’s official military records were curators know, too, that visitors will often being passed to British authorities. But the make their own meanings out of objects on establishment in May 1917 of the Australian display, whatever we say about them.) If we War Records Section (AWRS) represents a allow that the material evidence of the past is moment when a few influential Australians transmitted to us by a variety of non-neutral, overseas, especially Charles Bean, Australia’s culturally determined processes, we will official war correspondent and later official naturally all be interested in the people who historian, imagined an ‘Australia’ which by create, keep and use that evidence. Their its efforts and sacrifices was at last making lives, their backgrounds, their choices, its own history, and which therefore had their acts of imagination and creativity earned the right to keep its own records. It are part of the story.4 was a powerful mix: nationalism, historical All of this suggests that the history of consciousness and an obligation to the dead.2 collecting and collectors is worthy of study, Before records exist, there is a moment, something that the patient reader probably according to some archivists, when someone already knew.5 But my purpose here is to has to decide that an event or a thought focus on a few people who have imagined is worth recording. Of the myriad events archival collections into being, starting that occur every day, some are recorded but from nothing. I want to look at how these 26 Imagining a collection people conceived of the need to collect and imaginative man in the usual sense; nor preserve records, how they achieved that, was he a visionary or a lobbyist or a social how they envisaged the collections’ future networker, still less an activist or radical. use and how the collections have actually But if there could be such a thing as been used. I have here three collection ‘administrative imagination’, he had it. He history sketches to offer, all concerning had a way of swinging between the detail the experience of Australians at war, and and the bigger picture of any given situation, all further linked by the involvement of of thinking around a problem to find a a circle of people at the centre of which range of solutions, and of understanding was John Treloar, long-time director of the people and systems within which he the Australian War Memorial and one of worked. As an example, the memorandum Australia’s great collectors. to commanding officers (quoted above) was largely his work, although it was amended Records of war: fighting here and there by Bean and others. It carries all the information and detail that its The experience of Australia at war was recipients needed and nothing they didn’t. a grand way of imagining a collection. It He had it printed as a small pamphlet, was not just that twentieth-century warfare compact and handy, rather than on the usual created a lot of stuff, but also that the stuff typed foolscap sheets which he knew could of history was thought to be war and battles be overlooked or lost by busy commanding and great struggles for freedom and national officers. This typified his perception determination. Australians in 1914 tended and foresight. to believe that they had not had enough of Out of Treloar’s good state school this kind of thing. And while there had been, education in Victoria had emerged an idea at this time, some talk about establishing for him of an ‘Australia’ worthy of the formal mechanisms for collecting cultural best he could give. What he wanted, he material on behalf of the new nation, there told Charles Bean a little later, was ‘to do had not been much action. So when the something really worthwhile for Australia’. First World War broke out, the timing for And it pleased him that the Public Record imagining a collection on a national scale Office (PRO) in London, which held the was just right. ‘records of the Motherland from the earliest The chief imaginer at this point was times’, had commenced the task of ‘bringing Charles Bean, but turning dreams into together the records of the events in which reality needed someone of the calibre of the daughter dominion of Australia realised John Treloar, the 23-year-old army officer her nationhood’.7 selected as officer-in-charge of the AWRS.6 As a result of Treloar’s efforts in mid- Treloar had been a military clerk with the 1917, records started pouring into his two Defence Department before the war and rooms at the PRO and later he moved the had enlisted in the AIF in August 1914, as section to larger premises in Westminster, soon as the war broke out. Hardworking opposite AIF Administrative Headquarters and ambitious, he served on Gallipoli, in in Horseferry Road. The records he was the Middle East and on the Western Front soliciting constituted a large part of the in a variety of administrative positions records later used by Charles Bean to write that gained him a thorough knowledge his volumes of Australia’s First World War of military recordkeeping. He was not an official history. Not Bean’s own diaries, Anne-Marie Condé 27 notes, correspondence, and records of as were regular statements of the strength of interviews, vital though that material was, the unit and relevant information about the but the records created by Australian military enemy. Maps and reports on operations had units and formations: their war diaries to be attached as appendices. Routine as well and administrative records. On a ‘careful as outstanding matters were worth noting. estimation’, Bean later remarked, the total of And surely, he thought, no unit would be these ran to 21,500,000 foolscap sheets.8 content to leave this as the only permanent An army in the field generates a lot of record of a ‘gallant fight’: paper, but the AWRS was the first agency 23/7/1916: took part in an attack. enforcing standards for the way Australian Captured all objectives.
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