Making a Biography of Place: the History of Old North Melbourne

In this talk, historian Dr Fiona Gatt presents a history of old North Melbourne while reflecting on the process of ‘making’ that history.

Fiona will reflect on why she turned her attention to this small but much-loved suburb, the development of the research process and the key findings of her research. In her book Old North Melbourne, municipal rate books reconstruct the physical nature of the town, the occupational groups, and the rates of home ownership. Alongside this, newspapers, local government and charity organisation records, memoirs and a host of other archives provide insight into the felt connections and aspirations for the local area.

In Old North Melbourne, Fiona argues that class and community were made in the tensions between the aspirations, processes and outcomes of urbanisation, complicated by hierarchies of occupations, religion and ethnicity. It was a place characterised by shifting anxieties which, by the turn of the century, finally settled into its identity as a working-class area. As Fiona will reflect, the history was ‘made’ already; it was her role to uncover the story and to write a history read forwards in time, to capture the biography of the place.

Fiona Gatt works on commissioned histories for significant organisations. She has taught history at Deakin and La Trobe universities. Fiona is currently a Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology (remotely) and Senior Research Officer at the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung Cultural Heritage Aboriginal Corporation.

 

When