Provenance 2016–17 Issue 15, 2016-17 ISSN: 1832-2522 2 Index About Provenance 4 Editorial 6 Refereed articles 8 Lisa Hay 9 Finding Thomas Brookhouse: Locating the nineteenth-centry Western District rural working class through public records Nicole Davis, Nicolas Coyne, Andrew J May 18 World War I on the Home Front: The City of Melbourne 1914–1918 Susan Walter 35 Quarry and stone research methods: Looking for holes in history Geoffrey Robinson 47 The Victorian railways strike of 1950: A study in public sector enterprise bargaining before its time Tiernan Morrison 60 Beyond Coranderrk: Station era Aboriginal political resistance in the Victorian archives Miranda Francis 69 One Woman’s creche is a bureaucrat’s child-minding centre: ‘The Flat’ at Footscray High School 1976–1986 Forum articles 78 Yosanne Vella 79 The search for Maltese troublemakers and criminals in Australia Richard Turner 88 The battle for Bears Lagoon Dr Eric Frazer 94 Mary (Molly) Winifred Dean (1905–1930): The murder, inquest and abandoned trial 3 About Provenance The journal of Public Record Office Victoria Provenance is a free journal published online by Public • Tsari Anderson, Co-Editor, Provenance; Coordinator, Record Office Victoria. The journal features peer-reviewed Koorie Records Unit, Public Record Office Victoria articles, as well as other written contributions, that • Dr David ‘Fred’ Cahir, Senior Lecturer, contain research drawing on records in the state Federation University Australia, Ballarat archives holdings. • Dr Sebastian Gurciullo, Co-Editor, Provenance; Provenance is availe online at www.prov.vic.gov.au Community Archives Officer, Public Record Office Victoria The purpose of Provenance is to foster access to PROV’s • Dr Adrian Jones, Associate Professor, archival holdings and broaden its relevance to the wider Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Victorian community. La Trobe University The records held by PROV contain a wealth of information • Dr Antonina Lewis, Research Fellow, regarding Victorian people, places, communities, events, Centre for Organisational and Social Informatics, policies, institutions, infrastructure, governance, and law. Monash University Provenance provides a forum for scholarly publication • Dr Seamus O’Hanlon, Associate Professor, drawing on the full diversity of these records. School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies, Monash University Contact the Editor • Dr Dianne Reilly, Fellow, School of Historical Studies, The University of Melbourne Please direct any queries, comments and submissions regarding Provenance to the editor, who can be contacted • Katherine Sheedy, Professional Historians Association by email at [email protected] or by telephone (Vic) Inc. on (03) 9348 5600, or post to: • Dr Judith Smart, Royal Historical Society of Victoria; The Editor, Provenance Adjunct Professor, RMIT University; Principal Fellow, Public Record Office Victoria The Australian Centre, The University of Melbourne PO Box 2100 • Dr Rachel Standfield, Monash Indigenous Centre North Melbourne Victoria 3051 Australia All dealings between authors, referees and the editorial board should be directed to the journal editor in the first Provenance journal publishes peer-reviewed articles, as instance. well as other written contributions, that contain research drawing on records in PROV’s holdings. Assessment of submitted articles Editorial Board Assessment of all submitted articles is overseen by the editor in consultation with the editorial board. All articles The editorial board includes representatives of: intended for the peer-reviewed section of the journal • Public Record Office Victoria access services; undergo double-blind peer review by at least two referees with expertise relevant to the submitted article. The • the peak bodies of PROV’s major user and stakeholder editorial board also makes recommendations regarding groups; the publication of informal articles in the Forum Section. • and the archives, records and information For guidelines and information for authors interested management professions. in submitting an article to Provenance, see the Author An editor is appointed to the board to co-ordinate Guidelines. production of the journal and the activities of the Available at www.prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/ editorial board. All board members are appointed to provenance-journal/author-guidelines the board by the PROV Director and Keeper of Public Records for a period of two years. 4 Open access policy • Copies are distributed at or below cost; Provenance is an Open Access journal which means that • The author and Provenance are attributed on each all content is freely available without charge to the user or copy; his/her institution. Users are allowed to read, download, • Notice of relevant copyright ownership is attached to copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the each copy; and articles, or use them for any other lawful purpose, without asking prior permission from the publisher or the author. • The Editor, Provenance, is notified of the use within one This is in accordance with the Budapest Open Access calendar month of use. Initiative (BOAI) definition of Open Access. Archiving of journal Provenance is archived regularly in PANDORA, Australia’s Web Archive, which is a growing collection of Australian online publications, established initially by the National Library of Australia in 1996, and now built in collaboration with nine other Australian libraries and cultural collecting organisations. The name, PANDORA, is an acronym that encapsulates the web archive’s mission: Preserving and Accessing Networked Documentary Resources of Australia. Since 2015, the journal has been aggregated and indexed as full text on the Informit Humanities and Social Science database. Copyright The authors who contribute to Provenance must clear any copyright for material and images in their articles before their articles are published. It is the responsibility of the author to supply copies of images or other material that will be published in the article. Copyright in each article remains with the author of the relevant article. Authors have the right to publish their articles elsewhere subject to acknowledgment of prior publication in Provenance. Users of the Provenance website may have rights to reproduce material from this site under provisions of the Commonwealth of Australia’s Copyright Act 1968. In addition to any such rights, unless there is a statement to the contrary, the author of each article has given permission for physical or electronic copies of the text and graphics in that article to be made for classroom or research use, provided: 5 Editorial The 2016–17 issue of Provenance introduces inquest and subsequent trial inadvertently reveal much some changes to the journal. As part of a complete about daily life and habits, as well as the living and redevelopment of the Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) working conditions, of the rural working class in Western website, you will notice that layout and design elements Victoria during the 1850s. of the journal have changed in conjunction with PROV’s Miranda Francis reveals a tension between archival and new website design. Additionally, while the journal retains oral sources in her article about Footscray High School its integrity as a standalone online publication, links to Crèche, which operated for ten years between 1976 articles in the journal will also appear throughout the and 1986. ‘One woman’s crèche is a bureaucrat’s child- PROV website wherever the content of an article may be minding centre’ shows the role of oral history in filling of relevance. The publication cycle of the journal has also gaps in the written record about the crèche, particularly in changed and it will now be published annually in March, understanding of the meaning of the crèche in the lives of to allow us to better promote its content throughout the women who were involved in its operations and made the calendar year. Along with these changes to the look use of its services. of the journal and its publication cycle, the journal is now being co-edited by Tsari Anderson and Sebastian Susan Walter’s methodological essay ‘Quarry and stone Gurciullo. Despite these changes, the journal will continue research methods’ highlights the growing importance of to present scholarly and general interest articles that the history of building stone materials in understanding illuminate the breadth and depth of PROV’s holdings Victoria’s built heritage. Given the complexity of for historical research, as well as providing a valuable historical land use research, Walter’s case study into resource for researchers accessing records in the PROV Malmsbury’s bluestone quarries, quarrying and stone collection. use demonstrates the breadth of public records that are available at PROV for undertaking this kind of research, The six peer reviewed and three forum articles in this and has broader relevance as a resource for anybody issue demonstrate the wide range of subject areas and interested in tracing the history, heritage and significance research opportunities presented by public records, of places, building stone or land use in Victoria. and the ways in which archival and primary research can reveal fascinating stories – whether personal, There has been a growing awareness within the Victorian social or political – and bring new perspectives of our community of the history of Coranderrk Aboriginal past to light that are not always possible through