Collecting Narratives of Migration: Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Collections at Museums Victoria, Melbourne
Introduction
Migration is a complex, varied, and global experience that has impacted directly or indirectly on all Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, for nearly 230 years. Australians have been migrants, been related to migrants, known, worked with and married migrants, been part of diverse communities and held opinions on policies of colonialism, migration, refugees and multiculturalism. Some are newly arrived, many swept in during the post-World War II boom, and many others trace ancestry back to the earliest arrivals. Whatever the story, whatever the connection and regardless of the passage of time, there is one constant – we are our family narratives, and sooner or later, most people go searching for meaning and understanding through uncovering their ancestry. These narratives and their related material culture are frequently contributed to public collections such as Museums Victoria.
Migration is a complex, varied, and global experience that has impacted directly or indirectly on all Australians, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, for nearly 230 years. Australians have been migrants, been related to migrants, known, worked with and married migrants, been part of diverse communities and held opinions on policies of colonialism, migration, refugees and multiculturalism. Some are newly arrived, many swept in during the post-World War II boom, and many others trace ancestry back to the earliest arrivals. Whatever the story, whatever the connection and regardless of the passage of time, there is one constant – we are our family narratives, and sooner or later, most people go searching for meaning and understanding through uncovering their ancestry. These narratives and their related material culture are frequently contributed to public collections such as Museums Victoria.
Public archives and libraries offer the paper trails to help trace people; their origins, birth, marriage and death dates, their ships, places of settlement, work, and children. They can also house gems in the form of personal diaries and letters, photographs, artworks, and artefacts. Museums Victoria offers another layer – since 1990, the Museum has been documenting (through objects, images, diaries, letters, and oral histories) the personal experiences of the people who have arrived in Australia, most particularly in Victoria, since the 1830s. Also acquired has been material relating to policy-making, processing, protest, racism, and multiculturalism.
The emphasis on the personal layer which lies beneath the material object highlights the Museum’s belief that seemingly simple or ordinary objects can be symbols of extraordinary experiences and have great emotional power. This essay, and the associated collection objects, highlights migration collection material from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and all artefacts referenced are featured in this resource. The collections focus on settlement histories in the colony of Port Phillip which became the state of Victoria in 1851. While this earlier period of Australian migration history has a relatively modest array of artefacts held in the Museum’s collections, letters, diaries, promotional publications, and personal artefacts provide researchers interested in this subject with a rich and well-documented resource – and with the layer of personal connections not often associated with similar items in libraries and archives.