‘Re-Living the Early Days’: memory, childhood and self-indigenization, North Melbourne, 1934–1935

Abstract

In 1934, during the centenary celebrations commemorating Melbourne’s European settlement, the Age newspaper published a short history of the inner suburb of North Melbourne. By this time only people who had been children in the early years of the suburb were left to reminisce and they did so with great enthusiasm, writing a string of over 80 letters to the editor in response to the article. The analysis of the letters in this co-authored paper, pairing the insights of local history and childhood studies, appreciably illuminates the urban settler-colonial identity that developed in Hotham/North Melbourne. This paper uses the lens of memory to show how childhood recollections were mobilized by the letter writers to naturalize and normalize settler presence. Several themes in the letters evidence this narrative: conquering the space through play; local personalities positioned in the settler space; pride in key colonial moments; positioning First Nations people as wandering fringe-dwellers; and claims of colonial childhood as ‘original’ or ‘native’ to the area. We identify a gendered nature to these reminiscences. Significantly, we argue that the adult employment of childhood memories is a particularly powerful mode of erasure and self-indigenization.