An Indigenous Australian Dictionary of Biography

Abstract

IADB) is a new Australian Research Council-funded research project I am leading with Malcolm Allbrook and Tom Griffiths, which seeks to redress the long-standing underrepresentation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people within the Australian Dictionary of Biography (ADB) by doubling the number of Indigenous biographies within the online ADB, and producing a stand-alone published volume of Indigenous short biographies. Yet, rather than just producing 190 new entries, our aim is also to rethink how Indigenous biographies can be conceptualised, being attentive to how and why Indigenous biography is distinctive, and how Indigenous people, who have long been marginalised and excluded from the national imaginary, can now be better accommodated with the ADB, and hence be better incorporated within the national story.

The Dutch East India Company (VOC) Tasman Map and Australia: Competing Interests, Myth Making, and an Australian Icon

“…The crowning glory of the Map's new role was to be its reproduction as a mosaic in the vestibule of the Mitchell Library's £300,000 redevelopment (figure 7). Set in Wombeyan russet marble to resemble the tone of the original map's paper (Jones 1948, 18), the firm chosen in 1939 to create the mosaic, Melocco Brothers of Annandale, were estimated to be responsible for 90% of the marble, scagliola and terrazzo work in Sydney between 1910 and 1965 (Kevin 2005). Jacob Swart's 1860 lithograph was used as the model, as a more detailed copy was not completed until 1945 (Jones 1948, 18-19).…”