Voices and Memory: Australian Oral History: 8 March 1997
Oral History and Ethnic History / Barry York
In this paper I offer some ideas on oral history drawn from 14 years of fieldwork experience. Over that time I have specialised in recording interviews with people who settled in Australia as migrants from other countries. These interviews about the migrant experience have been mainly with the Maltese-people from the Mediterranean archipelago of Malta-in parts of Australia as far away from each other as the sugar district of Mackay in north Queensland and the industrial suburb of Bassendean in Perth. I have also worked among the Italians in Canberra and in 1988 I co-authored a commemorative book, Canberra: Our Italian Heritage, which drew on 20 or so interviews with Italians who settled in Canberra during the 1950s.
More recently, I was asked to record the experiences of some Poles in Australia, under the auspices of a project conducted jointly by the National Library of Australia and the Polish Historical Institute in Australia.
While my training is in history, and while I think of myself broadly as an Australian historian, the fact is that my specific contribution has been in the researching and writing of Australian ethnic history; that is, the history of particular communities who were born overseas and who, to an extent, remain bonded in Australia by a sense of common identity, culture, religion and race. Thus I tend to think of myself as an ethnic historian, or ethno-historian to use a more precise term.
My view of oral history, and indeed of Australian ethno-history, has changed somewhat since I first went out with a small, cheap cassette recorder back in 1984, relying on second-hand cassette tapes kindly given to me by the supervisor of my PhD thesis, Dr David Walker, to do my first recording with a Maltese migrant.
Back then, my interviewing had a direct and immediate purpose, namely the gathering of memories which I hoped would lead to corroborated facts, or which I hoped would lead me to other sources of information; all with a view to completing a doctoral thesis, and a book, on the history of the Maltese in Australia between 1881 and 1949. I gave priority to Maltese who had emigrated prior to the Second World War. The earliest Maltese migrant whom I captured on tape was a woman who migrated to Woolloomooloo in Sydney in 1912. As far as I know, she is still alive but many of the others I interviewed back then are now dead. In the four years of my PhD research, I completed about a hundred interviews with early Maltese settlers. I still have these poor quality cassette tapes stacked away in several shoe-boxes in a dry, shaded part of my study at home.
My thesis was published as a book called Empire and Race: The Maltese in Australia 1881-1949 (1990). My oral history interviews formed the basis of two chapters intended to generalise about the migration and settlement experiences of Maltese men and women in Australia in the 1920s. On reflection, this was not the best way to use oral history. I compartmentalised it into two chapters instead of integrating it into the whole body of work. On reflection, I think I went for the easy option or maybe I just wasn't confident enough as a writer to opt for the integrated approach. Whatever the case, I did those interviews with a specific purpose, and that was to gather information for a book. What happened to the tapes, in the long run, did not concern me.
Also, I must point out that my primary theoretical rationale for using oral history was a belief that it is more democratic than conventional sources and that, as Paul Thompson (1978) said, it gives history back to the people. Today-250 interviews later-I no longer believe that oral history is necessarily more democratic than the more conventional sources used by historians, and I certainly do not think that it always allows the voice of the people to be heard in their own words. I have come to regard such claims as a highly romantic view of oral history and, while I'm grateful for the inspiration these beliefs gave me then, I now think a more balanced approach, which recognises oral history's limitations as well as its strengths, will result in its better use. The fact is that when I, or anybody else, interviews one of 'the people', we are setting out a framework, a set of conceptual limits, by the nature of our questioning. Then, along the way, we edit the transcript-preferably in consultation with the interviewee-and then we edit it further when we select which bits are to be used for publication.
It is time to drop this notion about giving history back to the people and to recognise oral history for its real advantages in modern historical research. If there is to be a slogan, it should be about learning from the people rather than the pretence of letting them express history in their own words.
The strength of my work in ethno-historical studies is that I combine oral history with the conventional sources, such as newspapers, government reports, census data and so on. I regard census data and oral history interviewing as equally important. I would never consider asking a migrant to tell me how many of his/her countrymen and women were in Australia in 1933, unless of course he/she had consulted the 1933 Australian census. From the censuses one can find basically reliable, objective information about numbers and spatial distribution of particular ethnic groups, as well as their sex ratios, age patterns, occupations and so on. Yet for some strange reason, census data has fallen out of fashion and is rarely used by historians. Perhaps it has something to do with the extreme form of post-modernism which seems to deny objective reality altogether. But for me, the various Commonwealth censuses have been a starting point to research, laying down a type of crude skeletal structure on which to build flesh.
The flesh adds greater shape and form to the structure and, I might add, also comes frequently from conventional sources found in musty archives and libraries-not to mention the wonderfully well-lit and air-conditioned National Library!
So, where does oral history fit in? Why am I a strong supporter of oral history? Why have I now completed about 250 interviews which preserve individual recollection of the migrant experience (50 of which are here, permanently preserved, in the National Library of Australia)?
I have found oral history indispensable to the historian's goal of capturing the full human story and giving it meaning. And that is what history is all about, in my opinion: the interaction of human beings over time, and what it has meant. Having put together the skeletal structure, and added the necessary flesh, we still don't have a human being. As Dr Victor Frankenstein found out in Mary Shelley's novel, it's the intellectual and emotional sides that finally create the being-and that cause all the problems!
Oral history is definitely problematic. If only it were so simple as letting the people tell their own story! I suppose what I am getting at is that oral history alone is not history at all; it's just edited memory, containing all the shortcomings of memory and all the in-built biases of whoever is doing the questioning and the editing. When I was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University, I edited two books based on oral history interviews. One was Emmanuel Attard: From Gozo (Malta) to Gallipoli and Australia (1994), which I compiled with my friend Mark Caruana, and the other was Michael Cigler: A Czech-Australian Story (1995). In both cases, I was motivated by the exceptional circumstances of both men, and by my belief that such publications would be valuable sources to other researchers. I was careful to publish an introduction in which I explained the basis on which the editing had been done; something I think should be obligatory for all books based on oral history. I have no regrets about either book-but they are edited oral histories, not history books in the sense of offering an argument or arguments based on as many different sources and perspectives as possible. To Paul Thompson, I was probably giving history back to the people. To me, I was just rendering a service to other researchers, here and in the future, and paying tribute to two great lives of men now deceased.
Speaking of the future brings to mind another way in which my approach to oral history has changed over 14 years. Since becoming involved with the National Library of Australia's oral history program in 1988, I have had to adjust my sights considerably. For one thing, I am no longer interviewing primarily with publication in mind. I now find I ask myself one main question before deciding to embark on an interview, namely: will this interview be regarded as worthwhile 50 years from now? I am now interviewing for the future rather than the present and, curiously, I find it more satisfying that way. In 20 years' time, the eight-hour interview I did with Mr Emmanuel Attard in 1989, in which he spoke about his migration to Australia in 1916, will be a recording of a migrant talking about a personal migration that occurred 100 years earlier. In other words, it will be the equivalent of us today being able to listen to migrants of the 1890s talking about their migration and settlement. And, with the new technologies, it can safely be said that such recordings should still be here more than a hundred years from now. It's mind-boggling. It's exciting. It's something that only oral history can do!
We are not just preserving memories on tape but also preserving human voices. As an ethno-historian, I am particularly interested in accents and manner of speech. As a Maltese specialist, I try to record some spoken Maltese in the course of an interview. I do this whenever an old saying is used, or a phrase which is obviously an English transliteration from the original Maltese language. I recently did this with a Polish interview, too. My subject was expressing his hostile view of the poor economic performance of Poland under the old communist government and he said, in English, 'Whether one keeps standing up or is lying down, 2000 zlotys is due anyway'. I immediately had him say it in Polish and the rhythm of the saying made sense even to my non-Polish ears. It is a simple saying but there is a lot in it when you think about it. It is one of those sayings that is more commonly muttered quietly at home, or in a pub or park, or on a tram, rather than being written down or recorded. These are the gems to be uncovered when historians go out of the musty archives and libraries-and even when we go out of the well-lit National Library-and do our digging among the people and learn from them.
Learning from them does not, and should not, mean accepting everything they say. Their memories are as flawed as yours and mine. They are sometimes just plain wrong, by which I mean individual memory sometimes conflicts with the contemporary published record over a matter of fact.
I have found that much of the learning comes from the process of arranging and doing an interview, and following up afterwards; as much as from the transcript itself. For this reason, I am a great believer in oral historians using a 'preliminary questionnaire' as a way of getting the interviewee into a reminiscing mood and, in cases where the interviewee and interviewer are not known to each other, of making mutual introductions. The 'preliminary questionnaire' [see example in Appendix] is sent to the interviewee after initial contact is made and agreement for an interview secured. It is explained to the subject that the questionnaire should be seen as a way of providing basic information from which the interviewer can devise a question guide for the actual interview. The preliminary questionnaire results in tighter, more effective interviewing because a question guide can then be designed specifically for the individual and because the interviewer has the benefit of an overview of the subject's life and achievements. The preliminary questionnaire, usually completed in the subject's own hand, also eventually becomes an historical document and that is why I deposit the completed questionnaires with the Oral History Collection [at the National Library].
A lot of my learning about the Maltese comes simply from mixing with them, individually and in group situations. Oral history provides a great excuse for meeting people on their own territory, where they are at ease and relaxed and where their cultural milieu is exposed.
So having put together the skeletal structure and added some flesh, let's look now at the final ingredients: spirit, emotion, intelligence and personality. I once lived for a week at Broken Hill in the home of a Maltese who had settled there in 1926 and who worked in the mines for 40 years. What an experience! What an education! There is not a book on earth that could have provided the insights into the Maltese psyche and character that I gained in that intense week. The whole point of it, though, was to record an interview. It was a very good interview (if I do say so myself) and full of detailed descriptions of the old working conditions for miners, replete with Maltese transliterated expressions and quite a few Australianisms too.
In my opinion, the best oral histories are those that are structured. There is a need for balance between structured questioning and flexibility as one answer so often leads to a new unforeseen question. My formula for interviewing migrants covers four key areas of questioning: (1) background in homeland and reasons for emigration, (2) voyage to Australia and disembarkation, (3) settlement experiences (work, home, community) and (4) notions of identity today.
Much of my questioning seeks to bring out the purely subjective, human side of the story. Maltese Department of Emigration statistics can tell us how many Maltese migrated to Australia in a given year, and Australian census data tells us how many settled in particular Local Government Areas, but these essential sources cannot possibly tell us why people felt the need to emigrate in the first place, or why they chose Australia over other destinations, or why they settled in Blacktown in Sydney or St Albans in Melbourne. Only oral history can do that.
Forty-seven years from now, or maybe even 97 years from now, my son Joseph, who is currently three years old, will be able to visit the National Library-or maybe just plug into the Library's holdings via a home computer, or whatever the latest technology allows-and listen to the voices of Australians who lived 100 to 200 years earlier. He will be able to hear Irish-Australians in the Siobhan McHugh collection, Greek-Australians in the NSW Bicentennial collection, Vietnamese-Australians in the Cultural Context of Unemployment project, Chinese-Australians in Diana Giese's and Paul MacGregor's recordings and Maltese-Australians and Polish-Australians in my recordings-and hopefully many others-all talking about their experiences as 'migrants' or descendants of migrants in periods ranging from the 1910s to the 1980s.
It will be like us today in the 1990s being able to listen to detailed, professionally structured, high-quality recorded interviews with Australians talking about their experiences of life in the 1850s. Imagine it. Having access to scores of sound recordings of people recalling their experiences on the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s. Or of Peter Lalor, interviewed as part of the 'Former Members of the Nineteenth Century Victorian Parliament Oral History Project', describing conditions at Ballarat and reflecting with complete frankness (ie, he set a restricted access condition on the interview) on his role in the Eureka uprising. Did he think his Irish origins influenced his role in the diggers' rebellion? Hopefully the interviewer would have thought to ask Lalor about his birth and upbringing in Ireland and his emigration to Victoria in 1852. Had there been an oral history project titled 'Irish Migrants in Australia in the 1850s', it is hard to see how any interviewer could have avoided such issues.
Of course, it is all fantasy-sound recordings for oral history purposes are a phenomenon of the second half of the twentieth century in Australia. But it illustrates a point. What we record and preserve today will still be here one hundred, two hundred, who-knows-how-many-hundred, years from now.
In the year 2093, as my son approaches his hundredth birthday, he will be able to listen to an incredible array of diverse Australian voices. It will be a spine-tingling experience, and one that none of us here today can really appreciate. It will be like the deceased talking to the living about experiences that will be totally removed from their own way of life and probably distant from their knowledge of history. Hopefully, in 2093, my son will be shocked by references to the two World Wars. Hopefully, world war will be a thing of the past. And he will probably be amazed at how people once worked, with picks and shovels, in quarries and mines. And amazed at how some people didn't like other people just because their skin was a different tone.
It will be as though time has somehow been breached, and the dead resurrected to remind us-in an intimate, conversational way-of certain things that should not be forgotten. And what is more intimate and personable than the human voice?
The Library's Oral History Collection already contains vast quantities of material that is unique and historically very important. It is important today but tomorrow its value will be priceless. It is like a diamond mine, with the precious stones becoming greatly more valuable with the passing of time.
This is a feature of oral history that the myopic do not understand but one which will reap dividends for future Australians in their quest to understand themselves and their society-which is what proper historical research and study are really all about.
Notes:
1. During 1997 Barry York was a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia.
2. In association with the Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies at the Australian National University, the National Library published Barry York's compilation Our Multicultural Heritage 1788-1945: An Annotated Guide to the Collections of the National Library of Australia (1995).
3. Barry York reviewed the 'Voices and Memory' seminar in the May 1997 issue of National Library of Australia News. His article is reproduced on the Library's WWW server.
Reference
Thompson, Paul The Voice of the Past: Oral History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978
Appendix
Example of preliminary questionnaire used by Barry York with prospective Maltese-Australian oral history interviewees.
Name in full:
What is the date of your birth?
In which village or town of Malta or Gozo were you born?
Did you grow up there?
What were your parents' names?
What did they do for a living?
How many brothers and sisters did you have?
Was there a family nickname?
When did you go to school? For how long were you there?
What was your first job in Malta?
What jobs did you have prior to coming to Australia?
When did you emigrate?
Did you have any friends or relatives in Australia?
What was the name of the ship on which you travelled to Australia?
Did you come to Australia with other members of your family?
What was the reaction of the family when you told them of your plans?
For how long did you envisage you would remain in Australia?
When did you arrive and at which port did you disembark?
Where was your first accommodation? How did you find it?
Where have you lived in Australia?
What was your first job here?
How did you find your first job?
What jobs have you had in Australia over the years?
What is your current position?
Did other members of your family, including cousins, come to Australia at a later stage?
When you landed in Australia, how well could you speak English?
Have you been back to Malta?
Did you marry a Maltese?
How many children do you have?
How do you regard yourself today? As Maltese? Australian? Or what?
