Friends of Lutheran Archives

Speaker: Peter Monteath

Thursday 19 May at 7.30pm

139 Archer St, North Adelaide SA 5006

This presentation explores the history of the Loveday internment camp in South Australia’s Riverland during the Second World War. Though its history is not well known, Loveday was the largest of the Australian internment camps; at its maximum size it held over 5000 civilian internees from many different parts of Australia and many parts of the world. For a time it was perhaps the most multicultural location in Australia, with substantial numbers of Italians, Japanese, Germans and many others. A primary point of focus will be German internees in the camp, with particular attention devoted to a group of several hundred men who had been arrested and detained in Persia before deportation to the Antipodes.

Peter Monteath is Professor of History at Flinders University. His latest book, edited with Yuriko Nagata, is titled Four Years in a Red Coat (Wakefield Press 2022) and is the diary of the Japanese internee Miyakatsu Koike. This book will be available for purchase at the meeting.

He also curates the website www.lovedaylives.com, which provides insight into the history of Loveday and the biographies of those who spent time there.

Bookings are essential. Please book before Wednesday 18 May, 3pm. Phone/text Helen Schubert 0447 740 711.

• Please wear a face mask, and use the FoLA QR code, or add your name, signature and contact details to the check-in sheet.
• Don’t forget to also write your name legibly in the FoLA attendance book.
• Please use the hand sanitiser provided after checking in.

• Please wear a face mask, and use the FoLA QR code, or add your name, signature and contact details to the check-in sheet.
• Don’t forget to also write your name legibly in the FoLA attendance book.
• Please use the hand sanitiser provided after checking in.

Speaker: Tom Gara, Skye Krichauff, Clara Stockigt

Thursday 23 June at 7.30pm

139 Archer St, North Adelaide SA 5006

Within the legal setting of native title, historians, anthropologists, and linguists are engaged by the Federal Court to provide expert and non-advocatory opinions about Aboriginal societies that have maintained traditional and customary rights and interests in areas of country since their earliest contact with Europeans. Lutheran missionaries recorded languages, births, deaths and marriages, the movement of Aboriginal people and their relations with both Europeans and neighbouring and distant Aboriginal groups. Their diaries, correspondence and vocabularies are crucial primary documents that deepen current generations’ understanding of Aboriginal culture and society. In this presentation, three experts who have drawn heavily on records held by Lutheran Archives demonstrate how access to this material has enriched their findings.

Tom Gara is an historian who has worked for three decades researching native title claims in South Australia, and has also undertaken consultancies relating to native title claims in Western Australia, Victoria and Queensland. From 2010 to 2021 he was employed as Senior Research Officer in the Native Title Section of the SA Crown Solicitor’s Office. He is currently employed as
a Research Officer at the South Australian Museum. He has published a number of papers on various aspects of South Australian Aboriginal history and, with Peggy Brock, edited the book Colonialism and its aftermath: a history of Aboriginal South Australia (2017).

Skye Krichauff is an ethno-historian who is interested in colonial cross-cultural relations, the relationship between history and memory, and how societies live with historical injustices (in particular how Australians live with the enduring legacies of colonialism). She has convened courses on Australian history, colonial history and Aboriginal-settler history at Flinders University,
worked as a history researcher for an Aboriginal Community organisation and as an expert historian for South Australian Native Title Services. She is currently employed as an ARC Research Fellow on the linkage project Reconciling with the Frontier.

Clara Stockigt is a linguist who is interested in the history of linguistic ideas, specifically in the early descriptions of Australian Aboriginal languages. Her PhD thesis was awarded the 2018 University of Adelaide Postgraduate Alumni Medal. She has worked within the fields of native title and language reclamation, and is about to commence a post-doctoral position as part of the Australian Research Council Discovery Project: The building blocks of language: Words in Central Australian languages, in which she will work with speakers of Anmatyerr.

Bookings are essential. Please book before Wednesday June 22, 3pm. Phone/text Helen Schubert 0447 740 711.

• Please wear a face mask, and use the FoLA QR code, or add your name, signature and contact details to the check-in sheet.
• Don’t forget to also write your name legibly in the FoLA attendance book.
• Please use the hand sanitiser provided after checking in.