Public Record Office Victoria administers the funding for the annual Victorian Community History Awards, which recognise the contributions made by Victorians to the preservation of Victoria’s heritage. The awards are presented by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria.

The winners of the Victorian Community History Awards 2011 were announced by the State Member for Bentleigh, Ms Elizabeth Miller MP, at a ceremony held on Thursday, 20 October 2011, at Queens Hall, Parliament House.

OVERALL WINNER 2011

The People of Budj Bim by Gunditjmara people with Gib Wettenhall

A Book which brings to life the amazing, unknown history of their traditional eel aquaculture systems and associated stone house settlements, once scattered throughout the lakes, streams and ponds that pockmark the Mt Eccles lava flow from peak to sea.

The people of Budj Bim (Mt Eccles) are characterised in the sub-title as ‘engineers of aquaculture, builders of stone house settlements and warriors defending country’. This wonderful exposition about the Gunditjmara people and their country around Budj Bim and Tae Rak (Lake Condah) is well-researched, clearly presented and shows a profound knowledge and understanding of the natural, cultural and historical elements that made the landscape and its people in their many manifestations through to present times. This publication is a superb community history.

BEST PRINT PUBLICATION: COMMERCIAL

The Victorian Bush: its ‘original and natural’ condition by Ron Hateley

A compelling read which has extracted excepts from logs, reports and diaries of Victorian explorers, early settlers, travellers and officials that describe the vegetation and fauna they encountered.

This book brings all of the wisdom, knowledge and curiosity of a long term forester to a probing analysis of early European observations in words and images of the Victorian bush, and their implications for current management practices, especially related to fire. The blend of practical experience with a conscious wrestling with what the historical literature suggests makes for a most engaging book, attractively presented, wide ranging, well written and documented. Its commonsense arguments challenge our assumptions about ‘original and natural’ landscapes and question the extent of Indigenous management.

BEST PRINT PUBLICATION: SELF OR COMMUNITY PUBLICATION

The Catalysts: Change and Continuity 1910-2010 by Anne Longmire

This book documents the story of a women’s club based on the sharing of a meal and discussion panel once a month with insights into some of Melbourne’s most influential women.

The Catalysts’ club was formed in 1910 in response to social changes, such as women’s tertiary education and suffrage, which resulted in the emergence of the ‘new woman’, ready to challenge traditional constraints. To this day The Catalysts is a low profile women’s club without property which focuses on informed discussion, wit and civility, and has close ties with the Lyceum Club, founded in 1912. Talented Catalysts of varied views such as Dr Constance Ellis, Dr Georgina Sweet, Jessie Webb Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Margaret Sutherland and Myra Roper have been prominent in the professions and arts, in the paid and volunteer spheres and at national and international levels. Anne Longmire has assembled a wealth of information for this absorbing centenary history, and the vibrancy of her writing matches the vitality of the Catalysts.

BEST COLLABORATIVE/COMMUNITY WORK

Our Boys at the Front, The Mornington Peninsula at War 1914-18 from the pages of the Peninsula Post, Book & DVD by Michael Collins and others, Mornington & District Historical Society, 2011

This book and accompanying DVD explores the accounts of nearly 700 Mornington Peninsula ‘boys’ who served overseas in The Great War. Drawn from letters, diaries and reminisces from the war zones.

This publication involved community effort by individuals, historical societies, and funding sources. The weekly Peninsula Post was first published in 1913. Throughout the war it was a major vehicle for war news with an emphasis on local news: letters from the front, diary extracts and news of local ‘boys’. The book and accompanying DVD provide a chronological account of the war through local eyes based on the Post. It is exhaustive in its coverage and suitably illustrated. It is an excellent example of a local history that illustrates the interconnectedness of its community with dominating world events. Appendices list the ‘boys’ and their districts and military rank and unit.

BEST COMMUNITY RESEARCH, REGISTER, RECORDS

‘I Succeeded Once’: The Aboriginal Protectorate on the Mornington Peninsula, 1839-1840 by Marie Hansen Fels

Marie Fels work has supplemented the diary of Assistant Protector William Thomas who wrote about the original inhabitants of the Boon Wurong people and their early contact with European colonists.

A very thorough explication of the details in Assistant Protector William Thomas’s diary dealing with the Mornington Peninsula Aboriginal Protectorate in 1839-40, years of early contact between the Boon Wurong people and European colonists. It demonstrates much about Boon Wurong individuals and culture, using Thomas’s diary as the major source supplemented by extensive research as commentary. This book is an important addition to our knowledge and understanding of life on the peninsula at the time of first contacts.

BEST WALK/TOUR

Henry Handel Richardson in Maldon by Peter Cuffley, Helen McBurney, Geoff Palmer & Janey Runci

An illustrated booklet that contains three walks around the Maldon community including a detailed map and features 16 historic buildings; the cemetery and significant graves and a guide to places fictionalised in Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom.

Mary Richardson, accompanied by her two young daughters, Ethel and Lil, arrived in the small gold mining town of Maldon in 1880 to take up the position of postmistress. Here the family found a haven after the trauma of the decline and death of their husband and father, Walter Richardson. Maldon nourished the imagination of Ethel, later famous as Henry Handel Richardson. The authors, assisted by the Maldon community, have produced a well-illustrated and carefully researched booklet that contains 3 walks: the first, which has a clear map, describes 16 buildings that would have been familiar to the Richardsons; the second focuses on significant cemetery graves from the 1880s period; and the last records places fictionalised in Richardson’s The Getting of Wisdom.

BEST EXHIBIT OR MULTIMEDIA

‘Mameloshn: How Yiddish Made a Home in Melbourne’ The Jewish Museum of Australia

Curated in consultation with a dynamic Yiddish committee the exhibition documents the journey of Eastern European Jews who came to Melbourne to recreate their lives with over fifty percent of the exhibition drawn from the Museum’s Collection.

This entry won through the high quality of its various elements, the excellence of its design and implementation and the strong community involvement in its development and production. The exhibition gives a comprehensive account of the broader history of the Yiddish language, while still being firmly anchored on the Yiddish speaking community in Victoria. The central focus of the exhibition is ‘the Jewish street’ of Carlton and St Kilda, which is evocatively recreated in documents, artefacts, photographs, books and films. Deeply moving, historically coherent and brilliantly presented, this exhibition is of lasting importance and relevance.

JUDGE’S SPECIAL PRIZE FOR EXCELLENCE

‘Early Navigators of Bass Strait, 1770-1803’ Map by Gregory C. Eccleston and others

 This extraordinary Map shows all the routes of the [European] navigators who were passing near or through Bass Strait between 1770 and 1803. Drawn primarily from primary sources including the original charts by the navigators themselves it also includes aboriginal placenames along northern Tasmania and southern Victoria.

This magnificent map arose out of the work of the Victorian committee of the ‘Australia on the Map’ organisation, set up to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the first known charting of part of Australia’s coastline by Willem Janszoon in the Duyfken in 1606. Gregory Eccleston, a member of that committee, conceptualised the map and carried out a vast amount of research in its preparation. Based almost entirely on primary sources, including original charts drawn or published by the navigators themselves, the map shows all the routes through Bass Strait of the navigators up to early 1803. In order to put the achievements of the navigators in context and dispel ideas that the land was terra nullius when the European navigators arrived, the map includes hundreds of aboriginal placenames of the contiguous land masses of northern Tasmania and southern Victoria.