Objects of Connection: The Overland Telegraph

We live surrounded by material things. Some are mundane and utilitarian, others exotic objects of desire, but all our belongings have something to say about who we are and how we live. Objects reflect both culture and history. Individually and collectively, they shape our lives, link us to others and connect us to the past. Yet objects are often strangely absent from accounts of past lives. This seminar series aims to unpack some of the stories that objects can tell about the present and about the past.  We also hope to provide a forum for discussion for those of us interested in material histories. We aim to cast the net widely, with no limitations on either time or space.

In 2022, a virtual exhibition was launched to mark 150 years of the Overland Telegraph Line. A collaboration between Australian Catholic University, the History Trust of South Australia, the State Library of South Australia and the South Australian Museum, the exhibition re-tells the Line’s significance through a more inclusive cultural narrative, beyond its place in European-centred colonial history. In particular, it seeks to emphasise First Nations perspectives on the Line’s paths through Aboriginal Country, and highlights the vital role of other non-European actors in its construction. It reveals the Line’s important transcultural history - both as a tool of colonial expansion and as a complex zone of cross-cultural contact and exchange. The exhibition draws on the collections of three of South Australia’s cultural institutions, and the re-interpretation of items of material culture is a key aspect of the exhibition’s approach.

Speakers:

Mandy Paul is responsible for the management of the South Australian State History Collection. Understanding and sharing complex and contested histories has been a thread running through her career, informing her work over three decades as a social history curator, museum director and collections manager, and as a consultant historian on native title claims. Mandy holds postgraduate qualifications in history and museum studies and has published widely in on Australian social history, museology, and native title.  Mandy is also a member of State Records Council and a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Adelaide.

Amanda Nettelbeck is a Professor of History at the University of Adelaide and the current Australia-Japan Foundation Visiting Professor in Australian Studies at the University of Tokyo (2024-25). Her fields of research include a focus on the application of colonial law to Indigenous people, including through policing and the courts, and the history and memory of Australia's frontier wars. Her last book, Indigenous Rights and Colonial Subjecthood (Cambridge University Press, 2019) won the 2020 Australia & New Zealand Law & History Society legal history prize. She is a member of the South Australian Libraries Board, and is current chair of the Editorial Board for the journal Australian Historical Studies.

Material Histories is presented by Old Treasury Building in partnership with Deakin University and Australian Catholic University.