Oral History Australia Journal No. 39, 2017
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Moving Memories: Oral Histories in a Global World Oral History Australia (formerly the Oral History Association of Australia) Journal No. 39, 2017 Moving Memories: Oral Histories in a Global World Oral History Australia (formerly the Oral History Association of Australia) Journal No. 39, 2017 Oral Journal 2017 final final.indd 1 2/1/18 7:49 pm Oral History Australia (formerly Oral History Copyright of articles is held by individual authors. Association of Australia) Journal Apart from fair dealing for the purposes of private No. 39, 2017 study, research, criticism or review as permitted by the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this publication may The Journal of Oral History Australia is published be reproduced by any process without permission annually. Its content reflects the diversity and vitality of the author/s. Please address any correspondence of oral history practice in Australia, and includes concerning copyright to the Editor. contributions from overseas. The Editor of the Journal welcomes offers of material The views expressed by contributors do not necessarily for possible publication in the 2018 issue, No. 40. See reflect the views of the Editor, the Editorial Board or Call for Papers at the end of this Journal, or the Oral the publisher of the Journal of Oral History Australia. History Australia website, www.oralhistoryaustralia. Editor: Dr Sue Anderson org.au. Suitable items include papers for peer-review, [email protected] un-refereed (such as project and conference reports) and book reviews. Editorial Board: Dr Ariella van Luyn, Chair Enquiries: Dr Sue Anderson [email protected] Beth M Robertson, Dr Francesco Ricatti, Dr Sue [email protected] Anderson Reviews Editor: Dr Jayne Persian [email protected] Cover, content design and typesetting: LeighSet Design 18 Hill Street, Plympton Park SA 5039 Phone: 08-82974375 [email protected] ISSN: 2208 4541 ii Oral Journal 2017 final final.indd 3 2/1/18 7:49 pm Editor’s notes This is a momentous year for the Oral History Australia I also look forward to receiving more exciting Journal as we go online. It may seem like a simple submissions from the 2018 International Oral History exercise to go digital these days, but there is more to it Association conference to be held in Finland in June than meets the eye. Having hoped to achieve this last next year. I know that there will be a significant year, we found that there were issues to address with Indigenous contingent attending, so perhaps we will Informit, who provides past editions of the Journal have some lively papers forthcoming. Watch this to the public. Our contract with Informit meant that space! we had to consider implications for them and for Oral History Australia with this change. Fortunately, these I wish you all the best for the festive season, the new have now been resolved and we can finally join the year and oral history in 2018! twenty-first century! Sue Anderson I hope everyone is happy with the arrangement of Editor accessing the Journal this way once your membership is confirmed. This Journal was very slow coming due to a lack of submissions by the due date. As a result, we decided to wait until the 2017 conference to invite further submissions. This was a good strategy, as we now have an interesting selection of articles and two terrific peer-reviewed papers. For all these reasons it means that we are very late in issuing this edition of the Journal, and I hope you will all understand that the changes this year should now be well and truly ironed out and that we can look forward to reading about people’s projects next year in a more timely manner. I hope those who presented at the 2017 Sydney conference who have not already been published here will consider submitting for the 2018 edition of the Journal. Peer reviewed papers need to be in by 28 February 2018 and non-peer reviewed articles by 1 April. For further information, please see the Call for Papers at the end of this issue or online at www. oralhistoryaustralia.org.au. iiii Oral Journal 2017 final final.indd 4 2/1/18 7:49 pm Contents Articles Stories of Indigenous Australians Deborah Wall 3 Traveling for business behind the Iron Curtain (Czechoslovak business, seafarers, and aircraft crews in the 1970s and 1980s Lenka Krátká 9 Journeys through space and time: Interviewing the military Stephanie Boyle 16 Little known South Australian History: Uncovering the truth behind the nuclear weapons project at Maralinga Mikalea Borg 23 Following the Trail of ‘Happy Accidents’: the benefits of serendipity in oral history research Rena Henderson 32 Reliving the memories: World War 1 Remembered Jane Britten, Joan Ruthven and Libby Watters 37 Can historians capture refugees’ voices from the records of their applications for asylum? Richard Pennell 43 ‘Only the ends of your hair don’t hurt’: mothering and memories of touch Miranda Francis 55 1 The Hazel de Berg Award for Excellence in Oral History 2017 awarded to Dr Karen George 63 Notes on Contributors 64 OHA 2016/2017 Financial Report 65 Reviews and Book Notes 69 Membership information 78 Call for Papers 79 2 Movement across and within borders: Stories of Indigenous Australians of Filipino descent from Torres Strait and Broome Deborah Wall (Queensland) 1868 to curb the abuses of workers, Abstract the Pearlshell Fishing Regulation Act (WA) 1871 and From the mid 1870s less than a decade after pearl shell the Pearlshell Fishery Regulation Act (WA) 1873 to was discovered in Torres Strait, Asian indentured divers stop Aboriginal people, particularly women, from were recruited from the Philippines and the Dutch boarding vessels and from being employed as divers. East Indies. Some Filipino divers who were recruited The shortage of labour supply paved the way for the stayed in Northern Australia and formed relationships importation of indentured labourers from the Asia with Indigenous Australians. My paper examines their Pacific region. Under the Imported Labour Registry descendants’ narratives in terms of the consequences Act (WA) 1874, ship masters were required to keep of their forebears’ migration from a Spanish territory a detailed listing of ‘natives of India, China, Africa, to a British colony. The subsequent movement of their Islands of Indian and Pacific Oceans and Malays’ forebears across and within borders, both culturally and who were brought to Western Australia as indentured 3 geographically, embodies the personal and collective workers. history of Indigenous Australians of Filipino descent. Some seafarers from the Spanish colony of the Considering the challenges of oral history gathering Philippines signed up to work in the pearling fields in such as the reliability of the narrators’ memory and the British colony of Queensland. In fact some of them the re-construction and re-presentation of narratives, were already working as ‘swimming divers’ and later I have applied an approach for interpreting oral as ‘dress divers’ as early as 1869 on the tip of Cape 4 narratives for this project that include: 1) preserving the York. Part of the push factor was the political turmoil distinctiveness of voice drawn from lived experiences in the Philippines after the execution in 1872 by the retrieved from the memories of narrators; 2) helping Spanish authorities of three local priests. The priests, narrators tie in any loose ends in their stories through Fathers Mariano Gomez, Jacinto Zamora and Jose collaborative story gathering; 3) adding relevant Burgoz, were active in the movement for Filipinisation 5 material to their original stories through cumulative and secularization of the Catholic clergy. They were narrative that forms part of the building blocks of story implicated on a trumped–up charge in the mutiny of re-construction. The stories of the descendants were native workers in an arsenal in Cavite. The mutiny was gathered in Broome in 2008 and in Torres Strait in sparked by a tribute imposed on workers previously 2015. exempt from it. The political tension motivated seafarers to escape to a more liberated environment to the British colonies of Singapore and Hong Kong for better prospects. Many Manila men6 were recruited from Introduction these ports into Northern Australia. In Torres Strait, Since 1846 due to a shortage of labour across Northern there were 49 Manila men divers and masters in 1895 Australia, enterprising sea captains decided to recruit and 66, in 1896.7 In 1898, dissidents in the Philippines crews and general labourers from Southeast Asia.1 proclaimed Independence from Spain ending the After the discovery of commercial quantities of pearl 327-year long colonial rule of the Spaniards in the shell from the 1870s, European captains brought into Philippines.8 By 1899, 334 Filipinos were engaged in Torres Strait pearl divers who were indentured and pearl shell, beche-de-mere, and tortoise shell fishing in paid about a third of the wages of whites. Prior to Torres Strait. With hardly any Asian women around, this time, pearling masters engaged in blackbirding the men formed relationships with Indigenous women. or kidnapping Aboriginal people and Pacific and Malays and Filipinos tended to marry local Indigenous Torres Strait Islanders to work as labourers for the women unlike the Japanese, Chinese and Sri Lankans.9 pearling industry.2 This practice led to the introduction In 1901, some 320 Filipinos worked in the pearling of a number of laws: Polynesian Labourers Act industry in the northwest, around Broome.10 3 Deb wall final.indd 1 2/1/18 7:32 pm Race relations The stories that the descendants shared about their forebears’ travel from a Spanish territory across to a British colony and within Australia’s borders were set in times that marked Australia’s emergence into nationhood.