Hamilton Hume and William Hovell won and still hold much ​​respect. Theirs is an intrepid explorer story that earned national ​​acclaim. Their statues are on the​​ Lands Department building in inner Sydney. Representations of their faces appeared on stamps and on ​​currency in the heady 1950s. Their names dot the map.  Nationally popular memory has admired their achievement as the first Europeans to trace what has become the principal inland route between  Australia’s largest capital cities.  

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In late 1994, on a visit to Fremantle, I was impressed to read a plaque added to the ‘Explorers Monument’ that commemorated the deaths of white men in conflict on Western Australia’s colonial frontier. The plaque was erected ‘by people who found the monument before you offensive’, and gave an essential corrective to the story, stating ‘the ‘right of the Aboriginal people to defend their land … [and] the history of provocation which led to the explorers’ deaths’. The new plaque commemorated those killed at La Grange and ‘all other Aboriginal people who died during the invasion of their country’. 

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Being a professional historian takes you places you never imagined going, such as standing outside the Sunday service of All Saints Anglican Church in Ainslie, ACT, recording a creaky old bell, for a project set in Newnes, NSW. Going down rabbit holes is one of the best parts of this job, especially when it allows you to solve questions you’ve long wondered about. 

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