Here
is my story. I first became interested in the past, the web,
and what might be understood as adventurous forms of history
during my honours thesis at the university of New South Wales
in Sydney. My thesis was on the Japanese
bombing of Darwin in Australia's far north during the Second
World War. Similar in style to the Historian Simon Schama, I
attempted a 'narrative history' that relies heavily on story,
plot and character.
I
then completed a masters degree
at the University of Melbourne that focussed on some of the
new developments in on-line media and what this means for history
making. It was a somewhat theoretical encounter that utilised
the tools developed by hypertext theorists and applied them
to the notion of historical authorship. After theoretically
disentangling myself, I decided to actually engage with the
materiality of the medium which led me to the construction of
milkbar.com.au at RMIT University in Melbourne.
I
grew up in Tasmania, one of the world's more naturally unusual
Islands off the south coast of (mainland) Australia. My family
and its decedents have lived in Tasmania for one hundred and
fifty nine years since the Irish convict Francis
Fitzmaurice arrived in Hobart on 23 September 1845. Francis
was sentenced to 'life in a Penal Settlement for mutinous conduct
on board the Brig Governor Phillip'. He was released on a conditional
pardon on Jan 1, 1856.
I
lived on the North West coast of the island in a small community
called Blyth
Heads. It was a reasonably pleasant place to grow up, except
for the pigment factory just up the road called Tioxide that
used to dump all its waste into the ocean. The ocean would turn
brown as the slick wove its way far out to the horizon. My father
had a ship that was contracted by a local environmental authority
to monitor the drift of the slick. He would go out into the
slick
in the evenings and drop these plastic things called 'drifters'
in the water. The drifters had a led weight and a sealed certificate
and envelope inside, and if someone found the drifter somewhere
on a beach, then they could send the certificate back to the
environmental monitoring company and receive $2.
My
father was also a contact hard-hat
diver and had various jobs such as building and repairing
pylons for bridges. Creatures called Teredo Worms used to eat
the numerous wooden pylons of Tasmanian bridges, so they had
to be replaced or sealed. Eventually the Toredo
Worms got the better of him and he died of a heart attack
during a dive.
My mother still lives and works in Tasmania in a place called
Ulverstone
(the town that produces most of the French Fries for Australia's
fast food chains).Tasmania
also has the oldest tree
in the world, but I am not going to tell you how to find it.
I
now live with in a small 19th Century workman's
cottage in Fitzroy, Melbourne, next to a derelict town hall
and over the road from four high-rise housing commission towers.
I have lived in Fitzroy on-and-off for about fourteen years
since escaping from Tasmania. I
chose Fitzroy as the focus of Milkbar.com.au because
I have access to, and knowledge of, many of the locals in the
district. Fitzroy is Melbourne's oldest suburb, and has a unique
ability to express and contextualise some of the many layers
of contemporary historicism. This history includes the post-industrialisation
of the Australian economy and the benefits and problems associated
with this.
I
have studied at six universities in both Australia and abroad
that include the University
of California, Santa Cruz, (whose mascot is a Banana
Slug) and more recently, I was a Visiting Fellow at the University
of Virginia,
(whose mascot is Thomas Jefferson). I have also travelled extensively
as an independent traveller in Europe, East and South East Asia,
and North America.
I
am an avid supporter of a broad, general, liberal arts education
and the valuable contribution that these set of ideas and values
make to both an individual, and a progressive, optimistic, and
flexible democratic society. A critical set of skills should
be combined with a technical education as to empower students
to understand what could become draconian economic and political
forces.
As a colonial country in the later half of the 19th Century,
Australia civilised some of the most brutal forms of inequality
imposed through the industrialisation of our economy. In fact
it was in a pub
in Fitzroy in 1856 (the Belvedere Hotel on the corner of Brunswick
St and Victoria parade) that the first eight hour day anywhere
in the world was proposed.
The
full revolutionary potential of information technologies can
not be realised until the revolutionary classes have access
to the medium. In the 19th Century, class was defined by those
who worked in factories, versus those who owned them. Today
it is more about a battle of ideas, between those that contribute
to a vibrant and complex society, and those that feel the need
to turn it into a system of economic exchange values.
In
many ways milkbar.com.au is an insiders view of the community
in which he lives, thus in one story the camera is turned on
myself. One of the other participants in this documentary recorded
the interview, but you will have to figure out which interview
it is yourself.
Also
see research>>
Authored
by Craig BellamyŠ 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002
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