Archives Office Tasmania
Projects 2007
NEW NORFOLK CONVICT HOSPITAL
Healthcare and medicine played an important role in the management of convict labour in Van Diemen’s Land. This project will investigate the development and organization of the hospital at New Norfolk, in the Derwent Valley, first established in 1827 and the role that it played within a wider colonial healthcare system. The study will make extensive use of materials held by the Archives Office of Tasmania, including ward registers and patient histories.
MARKETING TASMANIA
The Office of the Agent-General in London was responsible for marketing Tasmania as a destination for tourists and migrants. This project will use records relating to the four decades from the 1950s to the 1980s to make an examination of changing promotional strategies.
THE CAPE BARREN ISLAND RESERVE ACT, 1912
Between 1897 and 1912 the policies of Australian governments towards the Aborigines were revolutionised. The protectionist and authoritarian legislation introduced in this period remained in place until the 1950s and 1960s. The legislation in 1897 in Queensland, 1906 in Western Australia and 1911-12 in the Northern Territory are well known and have been given serious scholarly attention.
The Tasmanian Cape Barren Island Reserve Act 1912 has been neglected and awaits examination both to place it in its local context but also to see it in relation to contemporaneous national development. Using the resources of the Archives Office of Tasmania, this project will examine the processes and decisions behind the Cape Barren Island Reserve Act, and place these processes within the national context.
LIGHTHOUSES AND LIGHTKEEPERS
Lighthouses are not only beacons for mariners, but also a source of inspiration for writers and artists who are drawn to their implied narratives of remoteness, solitude and maritime adventure. The Tasmanian Archives Office houses the records and logbooks for Tasmania's historic and dramatically-situated lightstations. This project has two components: the first, a research project on the literary representation of lighthouses and/or lightkeepers; the second, a creative writing project that responds imaginatively to discoveries made in the course of archival research.
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