The National Museum of Australia has just unveiled a new resource for secondary and tertiary students. It is called Australian Journey: The Story of a Nation in 12 Objects and it can be found on the NMA website and on YouTube.
Australian Journey consists of a dozen short videos on topics ranging from the Tasmanian Tiger to Multiculturalism and the Stolen Generations to Anzac, linked to objects in the Museum’s collection (like the Kenya Station windmill and a collection of convict love tokens), plus associated interviews with historians and others, including Ruth Morgan, Julian Burnside, Rae Frances, Peter Read, Waleed Aly, Jenny Hocking, Peter Yu, and Honest History President, Frank Bongiorno).
Susan Carland and Bruce Scates and the Twelve Apostles, Victoria (ANU)
The series took three years to make. It was supported by funding from Monash University and made with the assistance of the Museum and the Australian National University. The hosts – or, perhaps, ‘guides’ is a better term, given this is a journey – are Professor Bruce Scates of the ANU, formerly of Monash, and Dr Susan Carland of Monash.
Honest History has previously praised the NMA’s Defining Moments initiative because of its broad-ranging approach to our history, its recognition of many stories. Some of the stops on the Australian Journey link to some Defining Moments. (We contrasted the NMA’s take with that of the Australian War Memorial, whose marketing slogan at that time was ‘Every nation has its story. This is our story [that is, the story told by the Memorial].’)
30 January 2018
If any secondary or tertiary teacher – or student – would like to do a review (for posting on Honest History) of the Australian Journey videos and interviews (or a selection of them) please get in touch with us (email to admin@honesthistory.net.au with ‘Australian Journey review’ in the subject line) and we’ll organise something. HH
