Still, Cowlishaw’s essay is a timely reminder that constructing balanced and substantial history involves listening carefully to marginalised voices. Janet Butler’s article (No. 127) does just that. She argues that the egalitarian ANZAC legend, so associated with male soldiers, also influenced the way that her subject, a World War I nurse, chose to present herself and her experiences in her travel diary. Butler’s argument seems plausible, but left me wondering whether the nurse’s view of the world was also informed substantially by ideas about the Australian character popularised by the Bulletin and other periodicals since the 1880s. Several contributors tackle issues relating to colonialism. Diane Collins (No. 128) investigates the contribution of sound in the history of exploration in Australia, a task made difficult by the bias in explorer’s diaries towards the visual image. Among other things, the author points out that the manipulation of sound was truly a colonial weapon in the hands of explorers, who intimidated Aborigines through noise (gunshots, rockets, exclamations etc.) as they sought to safely traverse land subsequently dominated by Europeans.

Sianan Healy also deals with aspects of colonialism in a fascinating article on country Victoria in the 1930s (No. 128). Healy analyses letters from country Victorians to the Victorian Board for the Protection of Aborigines (BPA). These letters were requests for permission to include Aborigines from Lake Tyers Aboriginal Station in 1934 state centennial celebrations. Citizens were seeking Aboriginal inclusion for a wide variety of reasons, such as nostalgia for pioneering days and an unconsciously racist desire to represent Aborigines as the ‘primitive’ part of the story of successful European settlement. The BPA generally refused access to Aborigines under its control, partly because, as Healy writes, ‘public interest was seen as encouraging traditional cultural practices that were antithetical to the assimilationist goal’.

Many contributors to AHS cover highly specialised topics, including Australian anthropology in World War II (Geoffrey Gray), Australian films and film criticism (Felicity Collins and Therese Davis) and industrial arbitration in the early twentieth century (Mark Hearn). All are written in an accessible style. However, Bradley Bowden and Beris Penrose’s article on the 1911 Queensland Royal Commission on Miner’s Phthisis (No. 128) stands out for its capacity to inform the lay reader of crucial technical knowledge about the general subject – the nature of 1910s underground mining and associated lung diseases – without clogging up the narrative. The authors emphasise how difficult it was to improve conditions for workers in the 1910s because of internal divisions among mining unionists. Many of these unionists were working for mine owners as relatively autonomous independent contractors, and, as such, were sometimes at odds with the collective mentality of wage-earning company miners. Bowden and Penrose’s article gives the reader a rare glimpse of the ‘aspirational classes’ that existed in Australia well before the Howard era.

A few of these essays would have benefited from a greater emphasis on interstate comparisons. Generalisations made about Victoria, New South Wales and the ACT still dominate our understanding of the nation and its past. More work needs to be done to correct this distortion. This is a minor quibble, however. The 2006 issues of Australian Historical Studies contain several articles which break new historical ground, especially in the broad areas of gender, race and class. Each article reflects a concern for balance, moderation and empathy which is sadly lacking in the work of some of the more prominent history warriors of our age.