Evening everybody, very warm welcome to all
of you and thank you for joining us. My name
is John Vallance. I'm the State Librarian
and along with my friend the Honourable George
Souris, the President of the Library Council,
we are very, very pleased to have you with
us at this year's New South Wales History
Awards presentation ceremony. Normally we
do this in person at the Library. We obviously
can't do that this year, although I am physically
at the State Library. I'm sitting on Gadigal
Land, in a Library which is built out of Gadigal
Land. I don't know obviously where you're
sitting, but wherever we all are, I think
it's appropriate that we start by acknowledging
the traditional owners and custodians on the
land on which we're meeting, pay our respect
to elders, past, present and emerging. The
New South Wales Premier's History Awards are
presented each year by the New South Wales
Government and we at the Library are delighted
to be able to administer them, in conjunction
with the History Council of New South Wales
and Create New South Wales. So we thank all
of our partners. As for history itself, it's
a pretty big area as you know. I'm a classicist
by trade, and I was brought up with the idea
in the western tradition that Herodotus was
the father of history and that etymologically,
the word history relates to the process of
making sense of things, making sense of evidence.
That's what, etymologically the word means
and Herodotus wrote his famous history of
the Persian Wars, trying to make sense of
the nature of the relations between Greece
and Persia. For his trouble, as many of you
will know, Plutarch much later called him
the father of lies and ever since, writing
history has been one of the most controversial,
and highly contested of all human endeavours.
Evidence is constantly changing the way in
which evidence presents itself to us is constantly
changing and so every generation has to write
its own new histories and that's part of the
excitement I think of being alive. So these
awards every year are a way for us to underline
the importance of history, the historical
research and of historians in our culture.
This year, I'm very pleased to start by thanking
the Judges. The Senior Judge for the 2020
awards is Associate Professor Tanya Evans
and her fellow judges who've had a huge job
this year putting the shortlists together
and deciding on the winners. If you're tweeting
tonight, could you please use the hashtag
#NSWPHA I'm very pleased that the Honourable
Don Harwin MLC Minister for the Arts, we like
to say Minister for Libraries as well here
has sent us a message. Good evening everyone.
I've had a lifelong love of history. I studied
it at school and University and like anyone
involved in politics, you quickly realise
that what's taking place around you really
can't be understood without taking history
into account. As a parliamentarian, I've never
been in any doubt that our parliamentary democracy
would benefit if citizens had had more opportunities
to engage with information about where we've
come from as a society. Along the way I've
done a number of things that have shaped my
views on this issue. In particular, I've researched
and written history. Over the years, a number
of people in the history community have raised
the issue about whether our state cultural
institutions do enough to focus on our state's
history before and since 1788. In particular,
there's a thirst for more Aboriginal stories.
I'm focusing on that now and I thank everyone
has taken the time to comment on my proposal
to ensure that one of our states cultural
institutions has history embedded in its legislated
mission statement. All this feedback to the
parliamentary committee will help us get it
right, making sure more Australians can engage
and make up their own minds about our history.
Meanwhile, one organisation that's making
a great contribution is the State Library
of New South Wales and with the Premier I
thank them for their ongoing stewardship of
these awards. I hope celebrating outstanding
history writing will highlight our stories
and helps secure an informed society, better
equipped to make decisions about its future.
Congratulations to all those have been nominated.
Congratulations to those who've won the prizes
tonight, thanks.
Well, these are the New South Wales Premier's History Awards.
So obviously the Premier has an important role in proceedings.
I am absolutely delighted in the circumstances
that our Premier, the Honourable Gladys Berejiklian
has agreed to send us a message.
I'd like to welcome you all to the 2020 Premier's History
Awards. The New South Wales Premier's History
Awards were first presented in 1997 to honour
achievements, obviously, in history. These
are the most highly valued awards for history
in New South Wales. The work of historians
are critical to our progress as a modern society.
You provide valuable insights into our future
as well as our past during such difficult
times that allows us to consider other times
when humanity showed resilience and character.
Tonight we come together to celebrate the
achievements of Australian historians. Being
a historian requires a profound responsibility.
It requires extensive research, objectivity,
fairness and of course, the ability to engage.
Tonight I would also like to congratulate
the winners and those who have been shortlisted
for these awards. I'd also like to thank all
historians for helping us to better understand
ourselves and our own place in history. Tonight
I'm also pleased to be launching History Week
2020. This year we mark History Week as never
before. We do so as part of an online community.
During this difficult time, we're living through
our own moment in history and it's reshaping
the world before our very eyes, we must all
be constant students of history and mindful
of how we shape it. Again, congratulations
to the winners tonight and keep up the great
work.
Thank you Premier. Every year at these
Awards we have a brief address and this year's
address is going to be given by Professor
David Christian, distinguished historian at
Macquarie University and along with Bill Gates,
the co-founder of Big History. Professor Christian.
Hi. First, I'd like to say how honoured I
am to have been asked to give this talk. My
thanks to the State Library of New South Wales
for inviting me and warm congratulations,
by the way, to all the prize winners. In this
brief talk, I want to make one rather unfashionable
argument about why I think history is important.
Why do we invest so much time and effort and
so much of our education resources in studying
and teaching about the past? Surely not just
because it's fun. Well, one possible answer
is that understanding the past can help us
think about and prepare for the future. Now
this used to be a very common argument. Immanuel
Kant, for example, once wrote that, and I
quote: "Recalling the past (remembering) occurs
only with the intention of making it possible
to foresee the future". His argument can be
rephrased in biological terms as saying that
natural selection has equipped us with memory,
not so we can wallow in the past, but to help
us cope with uncertain futures. Indeed, recent
neurological research has shown that when
our brains are thinking about possible futures,
the same areas are active as when our brains
are pondering the past. They seem to be the
same brain areas. Today I would say that most
historians get a bit queasy about this sort
of argument, and perhaps with good reason.
If the past repeated in regular cycles, like
the famed Kondratiev, cycles of economic history,
it will be obvious that studying the past
really does help us prepare for the future,
but such patterns are actually very rare in
human history and as with the Kondratiev cycles,
the repetitions are never exact. So what we
actually see most of the time is events that
could not have been predicted in advance and
don't point clearly to events in the future.
We see contingency, accidents, flukes everywhere
in history. And the flukiness really matters.
During the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which
I remember very well, I was a schoolboy in
England at the time and thought I was going
to be blown up during that crisis Nikita Khrushchev
could have decided not to back down and the
result could have been all out nuclear war
just a few days after the crisis, John F Kennedy
said in an interview that the odds of all
out war had been between 1 in 2 and 1 in 3.
A slightly different outcome from that crisis
and we would be living in a very different
world today, so contingency really matters
in history. So perhaps it's no surprise that
most historians are a bit uncomfortable about
the idea that history can help us predict.
Edmund Burke said flat out that one and I
quote "can never plan the future by the past".
R.G. Collingwood the historiographer put it
more strongly the historians business, he
thundered "is to know the past not to know
the future and whenever historians claim to
be able to determine the future in advance
of its happening, we may know with certainty
that something has gone wrong with their fundamental
conception of history". Ouch, I feel sort
of rapped on the knuckles every time I read
that. But not all historians agree. In 'What
is History?'. E.H. Carr agrees that historians
"cannot predict specific events" and I'm quoting
"because the specific is unique and because
the element of accident enters into it". Nevertheless,
he argues there are large patterns in history
that can offer, and I quote again "general
guides for future action which, though not
specific predictions, are both valid and useful".
That's an argument that Carr borrowed from
Marx. Confucius, by the way, would have agreed
with Carr and Marx. "Study the past" he wrote
"if you would divine the future". Now I'm
sort of with Carr and Confucius on this. If
it really is true that history teaches us
nothing about the future, then why do we spend
so much money on a discipline that seems to
be so useless? And in fact, I think the idea
that history can't tell us anything about
the future arises from a blinkered understanding
of knowledge in general, it's the sort of
failure that inevitable in a world where most
scholars spend most of their time researching
within one particular domain of knowledge
and they remain largely blind to how things
work in other fields of scholarship. Historians
are sceptical about prediction because they
work in a domain of knowledge where contingency
is everywhere they deal with the activities
of human beings and these are notoriously
hard to predict, even probabilistically. Do
we have any idea how Australian politicians
will be handling climate change in two years
time for example? I certainly don't. But other
fields of knowledge are very different. Many
scientists work in domains that are full of
pretty regular patterns, which is why they're
often puzzled by historians' coyness about
future thinking. Indeed, many scientists will
tell you that the test of good science is
that it can predict. True, most modern scientists
are less confident about predictions than
they were in the nineteenth century. Nevertheless,
they do expect that good experiments should
offer powerful predictions about likely results.
And modern work on climate change offers a
powerful and important example of this sort
of thinking? No climate scientist will offer
precise predictions about the climate in 50
years' time. But what climate scientists are
willing to do is offer more cautious, probabilistic
predictions.
Now, this illustration
This illustration
is from the 2018 Special Report of the IPCC
(Inter-Governmental Panel on Climate Change).
That's a body consisting of hundreds of distinguished
and cautious scientists. The report argues
that at current rates of increase of greenhouse
gases, average global temperatures will reach
at least 1.5 degrees above preindustrial levels
by 2050, and maybe a lot more. But they embed
those predictions within probability bands
that you can see on the chart. The point is
that different domains of knowledge offer
different degrees of regularity or pattern
and therefore different possibilities for
prediction. Some domains, such as astronomy,
contain many long-term regularities which
allow predictions. So despite being a historian,
I'm willing to make a pretty hefty bet that
the sun will rise tomorrow.
Now I hope the
following diagram can clarify this idea.
Over
on the far left we have very regular processes,
we have sunrise, death and taxes. Here we
can make reasonably confident predictions.
Over on the far right we have domains in which
we cannot detect any real regularities. The
arrows point to the domains in which historians
do most of their work there, mostly on the
right hand side of the table, where contingency
trumps pattern and where there are lots of
unknown unknowns. But even history is not
completely free of patterns. Demographic history
lies in a zone, where the free decisions of
many individuals lead to clear statistical
regularities in the behaviour of large numbers
of people and that allows some degree of prediction,
which is why demographers do engage in predictions,
such as the likely size and age distribution
of the world population in 20 or 50 years'
time and these general trends are immensely
important. Governments, businesses, corporations
and individuals invest billions of dollars
every year in predictions about the way things
will unfold. These are the general trends
that EH Carr was talking about. Finally, it's
important to remember that the only evidence
on which predictions of any kind could be
made come from knowledge of the past. The
sun rose yesterday and the day before and
the day before, so I predict or spending billions
on new projects has helped governments recover
from economic crashes in the past, so, data
from the past provide the only evidence we
have for the future, and historians sit on
the only raw material we have for thinking
seriously about possible futures for human
societies. So let me end. Links between the
past and the future are extraordinarily complex
and subtle, but they're also extraordinarily
interesting and potentially very important,
so I hope I may have persuaded some of you
that it really is worth returning to the ancient
idea that historians should study the past,
at least in part, in order to provide guidance
for the future. I thank you for your attention.
And now we move on to the presentation of
awards. Each award this evening is worth $15,000.
There is a total of $75,000 being awarded
across the five categories in all and the
first award this evening is the Digital History
Prize, which is given for the interpretation
of a historical subject using non print-media
and the shortlist for this year's Digital
History Prizes is
'Experiment Street- the true history of a city lane'
by Noëlle Janaczewska,
Ros Bluett and Russell Stapleton, ABC Radio
National: The History Listen. The Eleventh:
Introduction, Episode 1 and 6 by Alex Mann,
Nikki Tugwell and Tim Roxburgh. ABC Audio
Studios. History Lab Season 3: The Law's Way
of Knowing Podcast episodes 'Making a fortune'
and 'Reading the Signs' by Tamson Pietsch.
Emma Lancaster Alana Piper, Trish Luker, Zoe
Ferguson Olivia Rosenman, Belinda Lopez, Sarah
Mashman, Julia Carr- Catzel and Allison Chan.
Impact studios at the University of Technology, Sydney,
and the winner is
'Experiment Street-
the true history of a city Lane' by Noëlle
Janaczewska, Ros Bluett and Russell Stapleton,
ABC Radio National: The History Listen.
Experiment Street is an excellent all round package,
says the Judges. It's well researched, well
composed in it's telling and professionally
edited. An engaging story, they say, balanced
in assessment and compellingly told. It's
a brilliant piece of social history for a
very small place.
I first noticed Experiment
Street when I moved into the area well, not
so much the street itself. It's a small non-descript
back lane. I noticed its name and I was intrigued.
Eventually, I decided to find out how it got
that name and in the course of my archival
research, discovered so much more about the
history of Experiment Street. Thanks to ABC
RN for 'The History Listen' for commissioning
the program and to the people who brought
their knowledge and skills to the project.
Much appreciated. The very helpful staff at
the City of Sydney Archives. To public historian
Doctor Shirley Fitzgerald, and to actor Jeanette
Cronin, who played my fiction based in fact,
narrator, thank you so much.
And huge acknowledgement
and thanks to key collaborators producer Ros
Bluett and sound designer Russell Stapleton.
Ever resourceful, ever inventive, always committed,
it was a great journey, bringing decades of
Experiment Street history to radiophonic life.
I'm thrilled and deeply honoured to receive
this award and delighted to be in such strong
company. It's interesting that this year's
digital history shortlist are all audio works.
I love writing for audio. It's a wonderful
medium, always has been and it's a medium
that seems to be having a moment and on that
note, thank you again for this award.
The Young People's History Prize is for a work
that increases the understanding and appreciation
of history for children and young adults and
the shortlist for this year's Young Peoples
History Prize is:
'Pirate Boy of Sydney Town'
by Jackie French HarperCollins Publishers.
'The Good Son: A story from the First World
War, Told in Miniature' by Pierre-Jacques
Ober, Jules Ober and Felicity Coonan, Candlewick
Press and 'Australia's Second World War #2:
Haywire- The Dunera Boys' by Claire Saxby,
Scholastic Australia
And the winner is
'The
Good Son: A story from the First World War,
Told in Miniature' by Pierre-Jacques Ober,
Jules Ober and Felicity Coonan, published
by Candlewick Press. The judges observed that
this book stood out from the other entries
in the way in which it combined innovative
illustration with verbal economy to make a
work of emotional power and the moral intelligence
accessible to all ages.
To win such a price,
it's an absolutely marvellous and proud moment.
So, on behalf of myself, Jules and Felicity,
I would like to thank you for your recognition
of our work. We are also extremely grateful
for your generosity for dedicated independent
artist, the practice of their passion is too
often a labour of love. So to be financially
rewarded is just fantastic. Thank you. For
the book to be officially associated with
a history prize is very important to me. I
was born in a military family and history
has always, been an integral part of my life.
I was also touched by the fact that the panel
rewarded a story set during wartime, but not
glorifying war. I would like to think that
someone doesn't have to win medals or accomplished
feats of arms to be a hero. The fact of leaving
your family and loved ones behind to go and
fulfill your patriotic duty is in itself heroic.
I cannot accept this prize without praising
my beautiful and talented wife. It took me
a while to lure her into this project as she
has never been a fan of war stories. But through
photographing these little plastic men, she
grew closer to the plight of the young men
they represent and began to get a sense for
the terrible area of emotion they experience,
she started to feel for them, to feel with
them and in the process she understood a little
bit better of the importance of history, not
only as a way to not forget the past, but
as a way to better understand what it means
to be human. Our artistry has been able to
show us that even plastic soldiers can have
a soul. I would like to thank you once more
and I hope that through the attention drawn
to the book by your prize, we will be able
to modestly contribute to keep writing in
the interest of history, it's learning and
it's teaching. Thank you.
Next category is
the New South Wales Community and Regional
History Prize for a work which makes a significant
contribution to the understanding of community,
institutional, urban or regional history in
New South Wales. The shortlist for the 2020
New South Wales Community and Regional History
Prize, is 'Surviving New England: A History
of Aboriginal Resistance and Resilience Through
the First Forty Years of Colonial Apocalypse'
by Callum Clayton-Dixon, Nēwara Aboriginal
Corporation. 'Hotel Kosciusko: The History
and Legacy of Australia's First Planned, Alpine
Resort' by Donald A. Johnston, published by
the Perisher Historical Society Inc. NSW and
'Griffin Rising: The First Decade of the Griffin
Theatre Company, 1979 to 1988' by John Senczuk,
published by Janus.
And the winner is
'Surviving
New England: The History of Aboriginal Resistance
and Resilience Through the First Forty Years
of Colonial Apocalypse' by Callum Clayton-Dixon,
Nēwara Aboriginal Corporation and the Judges
said this is a timely history written with
clarity, empathy and an eye on the relevance
of a contested history to an unresolved present
and future. [Speaking Anaiwan] Dhanggana.
The primary aim of 'Surviving New England'
was to tell our ancestors' remarkable story
of survival against all odds through the first
few decades of the colonial apocalypse. To
me, this award is an acknowledgement of their
story, their struggle, their fierce resistance
and of the Tableland's true history. It is
recognition of the importance of truth telling,
which I believe is absolutely critical to
advancing genuine reconciliation. And that
means land justice, that means reparations.
The prize money will go towards buying back
a block of bushland on our Country a place
which I hope will foster the reclamation and
revival of language, culture and tradition.
I dedicate this award to the memory of my
grandfather Norman Dixon and of my uncle William
'Bimbo' Widders. It was uncle Bim and the
yarns that we had that really motivated me
to undertake the research for this book. 'Surviving
New England' was by no means the effort of
just one person. It is the product of many
meaningful collaborations and crucial conversations.
In particular, I'd like to thanks my good
friend Barry McDonald, whose mentoring and
tutelage, honed my research and writing skills
enormously, and to my bawa Narmi Collins Widders.
Thank you for your hard work, your passion
and your dedication in creating such an extraordinary
set of illustrations for the book. Thanks
are also due to my bãwana Gabi Briggs and
to my academic supervisor, Finex Ndhlovu and
of course, the book would not have been possible
without the support of everyone involved with
the Anaiwan Language Revival Program now Nēwara
Aboriginal Corporation and thank you to all
the other members of my family and my community
who contributed to the development of 'Surviving
New England' in one way or another. My thanks
go as well to the New South Wales State Library
and the Judges and congratulations of course
to the other writers whose books were also
shortlisted. And Lastly, a shout out to my
Warriors of the Aboriginal Resistance. Comrades
keep the fire burning. Resist. Revive. Decolonize.
The General History Prize is awarded to a
major work of international history that's
of national or international significance. The 
shortlist for the 2020 General History Prize is
'Amboina, 1623: Fear and Conspiracy
on the Edge of Empire' by Adam Clulow, Columbia
University Press. 'The Warrior, the Voyager
and the Artist: Three Lives in an Age of Empire'
by Kate Fullager. Yale University Press and
'Sundowner of the Skies: The Story of Oscar
Garden, The Forgotten Aviator' by Mary Garden,
published by New Holland.
And the winner of this year's General History Prize is
'The Warrior, the Voyager and the Artist: Three
Lives in an Age of Empire' by Kate Fullagar,
published by Yale, the Judges said 'Every
sentence of this book is being crafted with
care. Its scholarship is worn lightly and
Fullagar's insights are both enticing and
exciting. To evoke one complex culture from
the past, so convincingly, is a challenge;
to bring three worlds alive with such flair
is outstanding'.
Thank you for tuning in and
thank you so much for this award. This is
a very meaningful award for me to come from
the New South Wales Premier and State Library
because I'm packing up from New South Wales,
from my 13 years in New South Wales and moving
to the ACT so this award will always remind
me of my time here in this state and particularly
of the institution that supported me for most
of that time, Macquarie University. I'd really
like to thank the Judges, for their very kind
words about my book 'The Warrior, the Voyager,
and the Artist' and to thank them for their
service in reading all of the books in all
of the categories, I know that it is a lot
of reading. Congratulations to all the shortlisted
authors in all the categories tonight I think
I speak for all of them when we acknowledge
the Premier and the State Library for their
continuing recognition of historians with
these awards. It really does make a big difference
to historical research in this state and in
this country. I'd like to take my one minute
of limelight here to acknowledge as well,
all the Indigenous scholars and Indigenous
knowledge makers that I came across and who
I engaged with in the writing of this book.
They really were essential for me to delve
into this book in the way that I did that
includes Native American scholars and Pacific
Islanders scholars. It's not always easy for
them to see Non-Indigenous peoples kind of
wading into their Indigenous pasts they're
right to be cautious given the record of researchers
in those fields. I don't certainly pretend
to tell anything new to the descendants of
Ostenaco or of Mai about their 18th century
communities, but I do hope that they agree
with me that their stories can help us revise
our understanding of global Imperial history
such a pertinent theme in today's world, it
should help us see that Imperial history in
greater detail and from fresh perspectives,
fresher than have been known until now, at
least. I wish I could be there with you all
tonight with a drink. I will be having a drink
somewhere with someone at the time and I hope
you do too, and I hope you enjoy picking up
all the books that were shortlisted this year.
Thanks so much.
And now we come to the final
award of the evening the Australian History
Prize. This award is for a major work addressing
subjects of Australian national significance. The
shortlist for the 2020 Australian History Prize is
'Bedlam at Botany Bay' by James Dunk,
NewSouth Publishing. 'British India, White
Australia: Overseas Indians, Intercolonial
Relations and the Empire' by Kama Macleann,
New South Publishing and 'The Shelf Life of
Zora Cross' by Cathy Perkins,
Monash  University Publishing.
And the winner is
'Bedlam at Botany
Bay' by James Dunk, NewSouth Publishing. The
Judges said: 'Beautifully crafted and deeply
empathetic, this is a book with genuine literary
and scholarly merit. It makes a significant
and invigorating impact on the field of Australian
history and deserves to be read and discussed
for many years to come.
I'm thrilled and humbled
to receive this award. Like all books, this
is the product of a lot of hard work and patience
and generosity of other people. It builds
on the brilliant work of other scholars and
storytellers. This book began its life as
a PhD thesis at the University of Sydney.
It owes a lot to the historians there, the
fine historians, particularly those who had
a hand in shaping it to completion. Kirsten
McKenzie, Hans Pols, Warwick Anderson and
Christine Winter. I also want to thank those
who really supported the book since it came
to life. Catharine Coleborne and Tom Griffiths.
The people at NewSouth Press have been so
wonderful in taking a chance on this book
in the first place and then bring it into
life. Pip McGuinness, Emma Hutchinson and
Harriet McInerney.
I guess families give up
things always to bring books into the world
and my mother Joy and my brother Jonathan
have been really supportive and insightful
all through, but particularly my own small
family and my wife Stephanie and my sons Aubrey
and Ira. This book belongs to each of you
and so thank you so much for your support
of me and your love. I'm deeply grateful to
the library and to the New South Wales Government
for supporting and funding these awards. They
mean so much, particularly in a time like
this when history and the humanities are under
threat, to support them in such a public and
profound way is wonderful, wonderfully, encouraging
to us and I'm especially grateful to the Judges
for the recognition of this book. This book,
which in the end is a book in which disorder,
chaos, suffering, and the accidental all find
their place in the histories that we know.
It's sometimes difficult to read. It was certainly
difficult to write. I think it restores awareness
of the way that breakdown and failure as well
as compassion and kindness and goodness, all
laid into the history of our city and our
state so thank you very much.
Well warmest
congratulations to the winners to all the
shortlisted authors and I thank all of you
for joining us online for this year's New
South Wales Premier's History Awards. One
of the most important features of award ceremonies
like this is not so much rewarding the winners
and the shortlisted authors, important though
that is, but I think also, it's the contribution
it makes to generating an atmosphere where
historical work, where writing, where reading
is valued, and I'm hoping that all of you
who have joined us this evening will go away
with the sense that we're dealing with something
that's really quite important. I hope that
you will continue to read. I hope that you'll
be encouraged by this evening's proceedings
to consider writing yourselves, and obviously,
I hope that you'll be able to join us for
next year's awards. Thanks so much.
