Material Culture


The Australia Street Archive aims to represent and interpret people's sense of identity and heritage by examining the way that they use and decorate their domestic space. This includes items that people collect for display Ð such as spoons, ornaments, and pictures Ð and items that they collect for their own private use, such as scrapbooks, correspondence, etc.

On the significance of collections generally, the following references offer a starting point for further research.

Objects, artefacts, collecting:
Weston Bate Private Lives - Public Heritage: Family snapshots as history, Hutchinson

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi 'Why we need things,' in S Lubar and W D Kingery (eds) History from things: Essays on material culture, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1993, pp 20Ð29

Stephen Gapps 'Mr Ardill's scrapbook: Alternative sources for biography,' Public History Review , Vol 2, 1993, pp 99Ð107

Steven Lubar and W David Kingery (eds) History from things: Essays on material culture, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington and London, 1993

Jeremy Seabrook 'My life is in that box: family photographs as history,' Ten 8, 1986
This scrapbook, held in the Mitchell Library, was compiled by an unnamed enthusiast, presumably a Goulburn local. It contains newspaper cuttings and ephemera, from tickets and flyers to programmes for the centenary celebrations and specially printed stationary. As a collection of artefacts, this scrapbook becomes an artefact itself, a very visual object. A deep reading of the selections, copunterpoints, and associations made by the scrapbook would also be interesting.

For work on how scrapbooks might be analysed, see general references on material culture, and in particular:
Stephen Gapps 'Mr Ardill's scrapbook: Alternative sources for biography,' Public History Review , Vol 2, 1993, pp 99Ð107

This poster, for the Goulburn Centenary Celebrations 25th to 31st Oct 1920,' shows the logo used for the whole of the celebration. David Souter, the artist, was a well-known black and white artist whose work appeared in publications like The Lone Hand. The dog in this picture is on a train station, and the role of the railways [link to railways] in Goulburn's development and identity is significant. It also changes, as does the relationship of Goulburn to Sydney, and the role of local industry.

For further work on David Souter see:
Robert Holden A Golden Age, Angus & Robertson, 199?
For further work on anniversaries and commemoration, see:
S P Benson, S Brier and R Rosenzweig (eds) Presenting the past: Essays on history and the public, Temple University Press, Philadelphia, 1986
G Davison 'The use and abuse of Australian history,' Australian Historical Studies, Vol 23, No 91, 1988
V Burgmann 'Flogging the bicentenary,' Arena, No 82, 1988
David Lowenthal The past is a foreign country, Cambridge, 1985
Alistair Thomson 'Anzac: Exploring national myth and memory in Australia,' in P Thompson and R Samuel (eds) The myths we live by, Routledge, London, 1990
See also work on events, celebration etc.
eg Jane Connors on the Royal Tour (Australian Historical Studies)
On the third page of this scrapbook there is an entire booklet. The Booster: The official organ of the Country Promotion League, 15 Oct 1920.' This league is described as 'a citizens' movement to increase the primary wealth of New South Wales.' With civic pride foregrounded, an article 'Goulburn is on the threshold of a century and Goulburn is aglow with civic pride.' (p 7) includes the following:
Goulburn's situation, topographically, and its unique railway distributing facilities, having the main line running through, and two branch lines, would alone mark it out as a city destined in the march of decentralisation to receive attention from importers and wholesale and retail distributors as a site for stores and warehouses.

In many of the newspaper clippings in this scrapbook, although the focus is on Goulburn's celebrations, the photographs show empty streets. Photographs of places and spaces rather than people-based events. This perhaps reflects the status of photographs in newspapers in Australia, still very much a new thing despite the existence of reproductive technologies since about 1880. It also can be interpreted in terms of developing aesthetics for news photography, where these photographs reflect a nineteenth-century tradition of street photography. That is, these photographs have to be interpreted not for their content, but also in terms of the aesthetic and historical conventions that influenced their composition.

See Ann-Marie Willis's history of Photogrpahy in Australia
See Gael Newton's Silver and Grey
See also specific stories from scrapbook:
* 'Goulburn. Hundredth Birthday of City,' Sydney Daily Telegraph 22 October 1920. (Scrapbook, p 10)
* 'Goulburn grows up/ Preparations for Great Day/ Governor operns Festival,' Sydney Sun 25 October 1920.
Mary Marlowe, 'Make-believe shop/ Playing in past time/ Unfailing human foible.' (Scrapbook pp 10-11)
* 'The day we celebrate/ Programme of Festivities/ Goulburn is a fair city,' Southern Morning Herald, 25 October 1920. (Scrapbook p 11)
* '100 Years/ Goulburn Celebrates/ An historic event/ Great crowd pleaser,' Sydney Daily Telegraph, 25 October 1920. (Scrapbook p 12)
* Photograph plus caption showing members of centenary celebrations, Evening News, 25 October 1920 (scrapbook p 13)
* Special Centenary Number of the Goulburn Evening Penny Post, 26 October 1920. (Scrapbook p 25)
Back to Goulburn - Centenary Celebrations October 1920 Scrapbook.
ML Q991.8/G



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