Nicholas E. Manganas has been a history teacher in Sydney high schools for over 24 years. He has researched and written numerous historical podcasts on the local history of the Burwood and Ashfield areas in Sydney, where he currently lives. Nicholas is interested in Australian life during the colonial period and the early twentieth century, and has visited national, state and private archives all over Australia. This is his first published work.

Author email: mangonick415@gmail.com

Natica Schmeder is an architectural historian and buildings conservator who has trained and worked in the United States and Europe. She has worked as a built-heritage consultant in Victoria for the past 20 years and is the principal at Landmark Heritage. Prior to emigrating to Australia, she worked as a translator in Poland, specialising in architectural and historical texts, and is now applying her linguistic skills to research the training and early work of Polish architects and their contribution to Australia.

Catherine Townsend graduated from the Bachelor of Architecture at the University of Melbourne with first class honours and is a PhD candidate in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. Her doctoral research focuses on the global spread of modern architecture, specifically the diaspora of architects who fled Europe leading up to, and in the aftermath of, World War II.

Ilona Fekete received a PhD from the University of Queensland in 2025. Her dissertation examines case studies of identity maintenance within the Hungarian diaspora in Australia, investigating the triangular relationship of the diaspora with Australia and Hungary and its influence on identity maintenance. Her research interests include diaspora heritage and diaspora nationalism.

Author email: feketeilona49@gmail.com

Dr Susan Walter is a professional historian who originally worked as an agricultural scientist, focusing on quality assurance and technical management in horticulture and organic waste-management. After researching and writing local history on a voluntary basis for the Malmsbury Historical Society, she combined a passion for natural landscapes, maps, land use history and science in her 2019 doctoral thesis at Federation University Australia titled Malmsbury Bluestone and Quarries: Finding Holes in History and Heritage.

Tara Oldfield is the senior communications advisor at Public Record Office Victoria where she delves into fascinating files of Victoria’s past, writes regular blogs for the PROV website and presents episodes of the award-winning Look History in the Eye podcast. Tara has written articles for history publications such as Traces Magazine and Ancestor. Last year she won a Mander Jones Award for her short archival story Bitter Salts.

Author email: tara.oldfield@prov.vic.gov.au

Dr Sarah Mirams is an independent historian who specialises in environmental history, historic archaeology and archival research. Sarah’s early career was in secondary education and she worked as an education officer at Museums Victoria and Heritage Council Victoria. Sarah lectured and tutored at Monash University and Federation University. She is the author of ‘Escaping the Claws of the Machine’: A History of the Darebin Parklands and ‘Coasts of Dream’: A Biography of EJ Brady.