Linkage Success for the National Centre for Australian Studies
Professor Bruce Scates Director of the National Centre for Australian Studies has secured over $300,000 in funding in the latest ARC linkage round. His project involves the first extended study of soldier settlement in New South Wales, which ‘opened up’ vast tracts of the state in the aftermath of the Great War. ‘A Land Fit for Heroes’ involves collaboration with Department of Veterans’ Affairs and State Records NSW. Based on recently opened archives it will address emerging themes in transnational and environmental history, enrich regional/community histories and recover the largely forgotten experience of soldier settlers and their families as they battled with the land.
“The digger has an iconographic status in Australian society”, Professor Scates commented “and thousands of families have charted the service records of relatives who served in the first AIF. This project will recover the returned soldier as important an historical entity as the men (and women) who went to war. It will look at ways our society tried to recover from the trauma of war, examine veterans’ return to Australia and their difficult readjustment to civil society”. The project is perfectly placed in the National Centre for Australian Studies addressing as it does issues of national significance. “Like many in regional NSW today soldier settlers struggled against isolation, drought and financial hardship. This project will evaluate the role soldier settlement played in populating remote districts and assess its long-term environmental impacts”.
Included in the grant is an Australian Postgraduate Scholarship and amongst the projected outcomes is a website charting the fate of some 9000 settlers. Professor Scates’ fellow chief investigator is A/Professor Melanie Oppenheimer.