Anna Clark leaves no rock unturned in Making Australian History

A new account of the making of Australia reveals how the school subject of our history has been so radically reconceptualised.

Anna Clark’s seeking study of Australia’s historical myth-making and stories is an outstanding work of research, reckoning and reconciliation.

Anna Clark’s Making Australian History is an impressive and detailed chronicle of the various historical movements within our national story. It is also a ruminative and absorbing attempt to recast popular understandings of our history – that is, our changing understanding of ourselves – into a wider and more diverse narrative.

To start, the lauded historian Anna Clark warns us to be cautious of letting the archives do all the talking. As much as our history here is enshrined in records and artefacts, so much of former history-making efforts can be obscured by narrow, prescriptive approaches to it. Take the example of the Ngunnhu rocks in Brewarrina, NSW, one of many relics emblematic of Clark’s method for rethinking Australian history.

The Ngunnhurocks are an ancient formation of stone river networks that demonstrate fishing practices for our First Peoples. They are some of oldest human-made structures in the world. What makes the rocks so apt here is how they resist clear historical scripts, as archaeological reports remain unclear about their history and historians dispute their date of origin (“dating the Ngunnhu is perhaps impossible”).

According to Clark, the rocks remind us of how we have many ancient stories in Australia. But ancientness can often rub badly against usual historical ideas of chronology, structure and precision here and so some stories have been written out for these reasons. The Ngunnhu rocks serve as a necessary reminder of our changing peoples, contexts and cultures throughout time, and the need to recognise narratives beyond the easily categorised. It’s indeed only recently that some resolution has taken place in our history books: “Acceptance of Australia’s ancientness is, paradoxically, the latest chapter of its historiography”.

The fishing rocks at once make Clark’s efforts writ large: the story of Australian history may have first started with colonial projects (setting all start dates at 1787), but with evolved thinking and re-centering of what is considered historical (such as these sites and resisting usual timescales), Australia’s story can be so much more inclusive and inspiring.

But Making Australian Historyis much more than reconceptualising rocks. It broadens the tellings of our national story by using thematic movements (instead of straight years or places) to defy the temptations of dates and chronology that Clark so contests throughout. These efforts are far-reaching and richly told.

We learn how the school subject of Australian history has so radically reconceptualised over the decades, from some rather sobering and stark origins; we understand how family ties (especially to convict histories) have acted as complex yet key markers of national identity; we read how notions of memory (especially when connected to war) have represented efforts at nation-making in spite of great trauma, with “forgetting … a vital part of remembering”. Clark leaves no stone (rock) unturned, and her chapter on Australia’s immigration history “Colour” is particularly revelatory.

A key academic idea pushed by Clark is that of “Deep Time”, which “extend[s] the scales of history to the deep past”. It asks us historians (and us, alike) to think beyond written records, archives and sources to broaden and democratise access to larger historical stories, especially for Indigenous ones. This can range from local Aboriginal knowledge, geological timescales and oral histories. Taking an exploratory and open-ended search ultimately shows us how “Aboriginal people were also history-making all this time”.

Readers will be enlivened by Clark’s own personal stories –digging through colonial archives or meditating under the hot Australian sun at ancient sites – and her candid, even confessional, approach to unpacking her role as a historian today. Her writing on historical scholarship is delivered with a light hand, so even the uninitiated can still appreciate some abstruse thinking that challenges our national story: from “New History” to “Memory Studies” and even “Deep History”.

While there is a heavy bibliography underpinning her research (even citations to grandfather historian Manning Clark), Clark’s labours to challenge the shortfalls of former histories never overwhelm readers. Some important reassessments to even look out for include that of the infamous colonial text The History of New Holland (1787) and the potent The Tyranny of Distance (1966), the latter which wrestled with how our remoteness from Great Britain informed our national identity. In spite of the myopia of past approaches to Australia’s story, there is always compassion from Clark for these tellers and guardians of history. We learn why narratives were thrust on the nation at certain times and why they themselves are illustrative of cultural values and morals now long past.

Making Australian Historysynthesises complex historical narratives about Australia to welcome diverse voice to our national storyline in a way that is both needed and deeply compelling. As many of us consider the national identity today (amidst a pandemic and our mantel as “Fortress Australia”), Clark’s seeking study of Australia’s historical myth-making and stories is an outstanding work of research, reckoning and reconciliation.

Nathan Smith is a freelance writer

Making Australian History

By Anna Clark
Vintage Australia, History
432pp, $34.99