Inking our stories

In the paddock my foot kicks over a horseshoe rusted brown with age. It lies on the top of the soil, the wind having blasted the surface layer away exposing its rusted fragility. I pick it up and ponder about the horse. I put it back, leaving it there to rust some more.

Friday I went to a workshop hosted by Public Records Victoria and held in the Trench Room at the Town Hall. I love ascending that staircase to the Trench Room, the ornate carvings, the ceiling roses, the walls painted in Heritage colours. The Mysteries of Dr. Blake is filmed in this building and in watching it I am able to return to times past, which is also the purpose of my visit here today. The workshop is called ‘Getting around the block: property and land research’, and on first glance it might seem a topic that doesn’t inspire fascination, but as the morning unfolds it opens up a treasure trove of quirks and intricacies from our local history. I’ve come with a dual purpose: one- to see if I can find some keys to unlocking more about our property’s history; and two- to see what ideas I can take away for my teaching, or even research.

I’m instantly hooked when they begin talking about how the sources we will explore today will give us an ability to build a better picture of the past, and therefore, of the present. I love this notion of continuity and change, of looking at tangible artifacts and seeing what we can glean from those about the less tangible aspects of our heritage. I’m the youngest person in the room by years and I wonder if this is because it’s a Friday morning and I have the ability to integrate this into my work day, or if it is because it is only when people are older that they have the time, space and perhaps even, inclination, to pause and wonder how things came to be as they are.

I’m soaking up resources I haven’t used before – Niven’s directory of Ballarat, the Sands & McDougall street directories, the list of Parish maps, the links to wills and probates, to rate notices, to township plans. As we learn how to dig through the archives holding over 170 years of Victorian history stored in Ballarat and Melbourne, I’m becoming seduced by the notion of leaping off the edge of the present and into the past. I wonder why I never took my history studies further than my undergraduate degree – this idea of sleuthing through carefully inked records is wholly romantic. Perhaps in real life it’s less romantic, more a series of hits, misses and dead ends that can lead to disenchantment. Here in this room though, I see how each archive reveals a new piece and each piece contributes to the making of the whole. I often talk about my love for Tasmania as being comprised of the fact that when I’m there I can feel history breaking through into the present and in this workshop I’m reminded of how Ballarat can be the same. Perhaps looking into history is like looking at those 3D image puzzles, once you stare long enough and find the picture, it is impossible to ‘unsee it’ – every time you look at the puzzle, the picture emerges almost unbidden. Perhaps history is the same, once you alert yourself to the horses that rattled down the road, the women who ran private hospitals and pubs, the men who left their daughters hotels and a ‘set of bees and honey’ so that they could live ‘independently of any man’, once you find and listen to their stories, you cannot walk down the streets of your town without seeing history flashing through the fabric of the present.

I depart the workshop, a set of keys in hand and I come home ready to use them to unlock the past and continue the journey. We are all each of us already and always in the process of making history, of inking our own story into the fabric of existence.