People and Place: Local History

Local history as a genre tends to attract research and writing by two, often overlapping, groups. There are local residents who have a belief in the importance of documenting and telling stories about their locality, their home, their place. Some have formal training as historians; some are self-taught. The second group are professional historians, people who have some level of formal training in history as a discipline. They can be 'insiders', residents of the locality about which they are writing. They can also be 'outsiders'; professionals engaged for their expertise or who are attracted to the history of a locality for the ways in which it illuminates bigger issues. Across these groups, and across time, local history in Australia has demonstrated different preoccupations. There is the now familiar observation that, in its origins, local history was concerned with 'pioneers' - white, male, prominent local residents who are seen to lay the foundations for a particular locality. These men 'tame' the land, establish towns, create prosperous local businesses. These are histories of achievement and progress against tough circumstances.