City Road Podcast

Dallas is talking with Anna Clark about her bold and expansive history that traces the changing and contested project of Australia’s national story. You will think about this country differently after reading this book.

A few years ago Anna Clark saw a series of paintings on a sandstone cliff face in the Northern Territory. There were characteristic crosshatched images of fat barramundi and turtles, as well as sprayed handprints and several human figures with spears. Next to them was a long gun, painted with white ochre, an unmistakable image of the colonisers. Was this an Indigenous rendering of contact? A work of history?

Each piece of history has a message and context that depends on who wrote it and when. Australian history has swirled and contorted over the years: the history wars have embroiled historians, politicians and public commentators alike, while debates over historical fiction have been as divisive. History isn’t just about understanding what happened and why. It also reflects the persuasions, politics and prejudices of its authors. Each iteration of Australia’s national story reveals not only the past in question, but also the guiding concerns and perceptions of each generation of history makers.

Making Australian History is bold and inclusive: it catalogues and contextualises changing readings of the past, it examines the increasingly problematic role of historians as national storytellers, and it incorporates the stories of people.

Author

Anna Clark is an award winning historian, author and public commentator. She has a PhD in History from the University of Melbourne and currently holds a prestigious Australian Research Council Future Fellowship at the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS. Anna is an internationally recognised scholar in Australian history, history education and the role of history in everyday life.

She has written influential books such as The History Wars (with Stuart Macintyre), which won the NSW Premier’s Prize and Queensland Premier’s Prize for History, History’s Children (about students’ attitudes to Australian history), and Private Lives, Public History, as well as two history books for children (Convicted!—listed as a Children’s Book Council of Australia notable book—and Explored!).

Dallas talks with Jarrod Hore about Visions of Nature, which revives the work of late nineteenth-century landscape photographers who shaped the environmental attitudes of settlers in the colonies of the Tasman World and in California. Despite having little association with one another, these photographers developed remarkably similar visions of nature. They rode a wave of interest in wilderness imagery and made pictures that were hung in settler drawing rooms, perused in albums, projected in theaters, and re-created on vacations. In both the American West and the Tasman World, landscape photography fed into settler belonging and produced new ways of thinking about territory and history. During this key period of settler revolution, a generation of photographers came to associate “nature” with remoteness, antiquity, and emptiness, a perspective that disguised the realities of Indigenous presence and reinforced colonial fantasies of environmental abundance. This book lifts the work of these photographers out of their provincial contexts and repositions it within a new comparative frame.

Author

Jarrod Hore is an environmental historian of settler colonial landscapes, nature writing, and geology, and is currently postdoctoral fellow with the New Earth Histories Research Program, University of New South Wales, Sydney. His work on wilderness photography, early environmentalism, and the Romantic tradition in the antipodes has been published in Australian Historical Studies and History Australia. His first book, Visions of Nature: How Landscape Photography Shaped Settler Colonialism is published by University of California Press.

Dallas talks with Paul Daley about this his multi-generational saga about Australian frontier violence and cultural theft, and the myths that stand between us and history's unpalatable truths.

Morally bereft popular historian Patrick Renmark flees London in disgrace after the accidental death of his infant son. With one card left to play, he reluctantly takes a commission to write the biography of his legendary pioneering adventurer-anthropologist grandfather.

With no enthusiasm and even less integrity, Patrick travels to Jesustown, the former mission town in remote Australia where his grandfather infamously brokered 'peace' between the Indigenous custodians of the area and the white constabulary. He hasn't been back there since he was a teenager when a terrible confrontation with his grandfather made him vow never to return.

Of course nothing is as it seems or as Patrick wants it to be. Unable to lay his own son to rest, Patrick must re-examine the legacy of his renowned grandfather and face the repercussions of his actions on subsequent generations. Will what he finds bring him redemption or add to the vault of family secrets and terrible guilt he keeps uncovering?

Author

For more than a decade Paul Daley has focused his non-fiction on the yawning gaps in the story of Australia's national birth and identity, and on the imperative of refocusing on the Indigenous historical experience. In Jesustown, he explores poignantly and with gentle humour an Australian foundation myth that omits too much bitter truth about frontier violence against proudly resistant Indigenous people - the massacres and violent dispossession, and the hoarding of their cultural property including the shameful white theft of ancestral human remains. A two-time Walkley award-winning columnist for Guardian Australia who regularly writes on Indigenous affairs, he is also a short story writer, essayist and playwright. His most recent book is the political novel, Challenge. His non-fiction books have been shortlisted for the Prime Minister's History Prize, the Manning Clark House Awards, the Nib and the ACT Book of the Year.

2022 Festival of Urbanism and City Road Podcast Bookclub

Join us for a series of fascinating conversations about some of the most interesting books about cities and urban life.

A 2021 Festival of Urbanism panel discussion.

Leading urbanists from North America to Australia discuss the lessons from the COVID-19 Pandemic for future city planning and urban life.

Hear from Sam Assefa, former Seattle Planning Director and at the frontline of that city’s COVID-19 experience; Irene Figueroa Ortiz, New York City urban designer and transport planner; and Glenn Grimshaw urban planner, researcher and adviser based in the Australian Embassy, Washington DC. Professor Ann Forsyth, planner, architect and expert on healthy cities at the Harvard Graduate School of Design will lead the international discussion, followed by an address by Hon Dr Rob Stokes, Minister for Planning and Public Spaces introduced Mark Scott AO, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney.

Chair: Dr Ann Forsyth, Harvard Graduate School of Design

Speakers:

Irene Figueroa Ortiz, Senior Project Manager, New York City Department of Transportation

Glenn Grimshaw, Senior Research Officer, Australian Embassy, Washington DC

Sam Assefa, Former Director Seattle Office of Planning and Community Development

The Hon Dr Rob Stokes Minister for Planning and Public Spaces

Professor Mark Scott, Vice Chancellor the University of Sydney

Professor Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney (Session chair)

http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2021-events/2021/9/22/planning-for-recovery-leading-urbanists-in-conversation

Endangered governance: Public trust, urban decisions, and ethical practice

A 2021 Festival of Urbanism panel discussion.

Clear and transparent ethical frameworks can and should feature much more overtly in decision making across development processes, which are uniquely exposed to risks associated with conflicts of interest, politicisation, compromise, and corruption. This panel explores the realities facing planners and policy makers, and highlights strategies for those committed to ethical practice.

Chair: A/Professor Dallas Rogers, University of Sydney

Panel includes:

Han Aulby, Centre for Public Integrity

Sue Weatherley MPIA, Georges River Council

A/Professor Crystal Legacy, University of Melbourne

Michael West, Michael West Media

http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2021-events/2021/9/22/endangered-governance-public-trust-urban-decisions-and-ethical-practice

Endangered discourse: Improving the quality of public debate on urban and housing policy.

A 2021 Festival of Urbanism panel discussion.

An informed citizenry, independent analysis, and robust public debate are all essential for good public policy particularly in relation to housing and urban policy. This panel event, which also celebrates the work of the inaugural Director of the Henry Halloran Trust, Peter Phibbs, features perspectives from University and industry research, independent journalism, and the public sector.

Chair: Professor Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney

Panel includes:

Professor Emeritus, Peter Phibbs, University of Sydney

Tina Perinotto, Managing Editor, The Fifth Estate

Dr Erin Brady, ACT Department of Environment, Planning and Sustainable Development

Eliza Owen, CoreLogic

http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2021-events/2021/8/3/endangered-discourse-improving-the-quality-of-public-debate-on-urban-and-housing-policy

Endangered Communities and Resurgent Urbanism

A 2021 Festival of Urbanism panel discussion.

With ongoing processes of dispossession, marginalisation, gentrification and exclusion threatening urban and regional communities, what forms of insurgent and resurgent urbanism are emerging and how might urban policy makers and planners support these efforts?

Chair: Professor Nicole Gurran, University of Sydney

Panel includes:

Warren Roberts, Redfern Waterloo Aboriginal Affordable Housing Campaign

Shannon Burt, Byron Shire Council

Lena Nahlous, Executive Director, Diversity Arts Australia

Prof Jioji Ravulo, University of Sydney

http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2021-events/2021/9/23/endangered-communities-and-resurgent-urbanism

Endangered Country? Indigenous perspectives on planning, and development

A 2021 Festival of Urbanism yarn of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander experts discussing their perspectives on planning, land management, cultural heritage, economic opportunity and what must be changed.

Chair: Elle Davidson, Aboriginal planning lecturer, University of Sydney

Panel includes:

Chels Marshall, Urban Apostles and Director Flying Fish Blue

Christian Hampson, CEO, Yerrabingin

Belle Arnold, Consultant, Zion Engagement and Planning

http://www.festivalofurbanism.com/2021-events/2021/9/20/endangered-country-indigenous-perspectives-on-planning-and-development

Image credit: ‘Yanhambabirra Burambabirra Yalbailinya’ (Come, Share and Learn), 2020 by Luke Penrith for the One Sydney, Many People Strategy.

Kurt Iveson talks with Elizabeth about her blueprint for the future of Sydney in a radically changing world.

Columnist Elizabeth Farrelly brings her unique perspective as architectural writer and former city councillor to a burning question for our times: how will we live in the future? Can our communities survive pandemic, environmental disaster, overcrowding, government greed and big business?

Using her own adopted city of Sydney, she creates a roadmap for urban living and analyses the history of cities themselves to study why and how we live together, now and into the future.

Killing Sydney is part-lovesong, part-warning: little by little, our politics are becoming debased and our environment degraded. The tipping point is close. Can the home we love survive?

Author

Dr Elizabeth Farrelly trained in architecture and philosophy, practiced in Auckland, London and Bristol, holds a PhD in urbanism from the University of Sydney, and is a former Associate Professor (Practice) at the University of NSW Graduate School of Urbanism. Born in Dunedin, New Zealand, she has made Sydney her home since the late 1980s. The author of several books, including Three Houses – a 1993 monograph on renowned architect Glenn Murcutt and Blubberland; the dangers of happiness (2007) – she is a Walkley-shortlisted journalist, critic and essayist and served as a Councillor for the City of Sydney from 1991 to 1995. Her portrait by Mirra Whale was a finalist in the 2015 Archibald Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and she is currently building a passive off-grid dwelling in rural NSW.

Join us for a series of fascinating conversations about some of the most interesting books about cities and urban life.

Host

Fenella Kernebone, Head of Programming, Sydney Ideas at the University of Sydney

Interviewed by

Kurt Iveson, Associate Professor, School of Geosciences, University of Sydney

Preston Peachey reflects on the book Benevolence with author Julie Janson.

Julie’s intensely visual prose interweaves historical events with fictionalised characterisation in a story that shatters European stereotypes about life on the colonial frontier. Julie gives voice to an Aboriginal experience of early-settlement.

Benevolence is a story about this important era in Australia’s history from an Aboriginal perspective.

Told through the fictional characterisation of Darug woman Muraging (Mary James), Benevolence is a compelling story of first contact. Born around 1813, Muraging is among the earliest Darug generations to experience the impact of British colonisation – a time of cataclysmic change and violence, but also remarkable survival and resistance.

At an early age Muraging is given over to the Parramatta Native School by her Darug father. Fleeing the school in pursuit of love, she embarks on a journey of discovery and a search for a safe place to make her home. Spanning the years 1816–35, Benevolence is set around the Dyarubbin/Hawkesbury River area, the home of the Darug people, in Parramatta and Sydney.

Join us for a series of fascinating conversations about some of the most interesting books about cities and urban life.

Author

Julie’s career as a playwright began when she wrote and directed plays in remote Australian Northern Territory Aboriginal communities. She is now a novelist and award-winning poet. Julie is a Burruberongal woman of Darug Aboriginal Nation. She is co-recipient of the Oodgeroo Noonuccal Poetry Prize, 2016 and winner of the Judith Wright Poetry Prize, 2019.

Host

Fenella Kernebone, Head of Programming, Sydney Ideas at the University of Sydney

Interviewed by

Preston Peachey, a Wiradjuri and Malyangapa man. Preston is a creative living on Bediagal Country and works for local government on Gadigal Country.