Dr Fred Cahir is a lecturer in the School of Behavioural Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Ballarat. Fred has a Masters and Doctorate in Victorian Aboriginal history and was the recepient of the Australian Historical Association’s Alan Martin Award in 2008 for his PhD thesis, ‘Black Gold: A History of the Role of Aboriginal People on the Goldfields of Victoria, 1850-1870’. He lectures in Indigenous History and Indigenous Health.

Dr Frances Thiele is a freelance historian currently working in the area of Aboriginal cultural heritage management. In 1995 she was a visiting research scholar at Cambridge University and in 1997 won the EW Benham Prize for a PhD in Early Modern English History from the University of Adelaide. She worked for seven years as Field Historian at the State Library of Victoria developing websites and exhibitions, and collecting material for the Library’s Manuscript, Picture and Map Collections.

Kirstie Close completed her honours degree in history at La Trobe University in 2006. She went on to a Master of Arts at the University of Melbourne, which she completed by coursework and research in 2009. Kirstie is currently working on her PhD project at Deakin University, which looks at the independence of the Fijian Methodist Church. This piece was written for an undergraduate class at La Trobe and involved Kirstie’s first archival experience, at PROV.

Donna Bourke was raised on a property near Nathalia, in Northern Victoria. She completed a Bachelor of Education/Librarianship degree and embarked on a career teaching secondary school boys in Melbourne and Canada. Then, at a time of life when many are consolidating their careers, Donna and her partner left their jobs and began restoring historic homesteads. Longerenong Homestead in the Wimmera was one of their purchases and inspired Donna to undertake the detective work that brought to light the fate of the camels that survived Burke and Wills’ expedition to the Gulf

Christine Graunas is a retired editor and instructional designer with an interest in local history, art and architecture. Born in the United States, she emigrated to Australia twenty-five years ago. Christine holds a Bachelor of Arts in the history of art from Boston University. She presently lives in North Melbourne with her husband, Edward Terrell, artist and lecturer in the history of art, who provided the photographs for this article.

Helen D Harris OAM, is a professional genealogist and historian who has been researching at PROV for more than thirty years. She specialises in police, court and criminal records and is the co-author of Cops and robbers: a guide to researching 19th century police and criminal records in Victoria (Harriland Press, 1990). She has a Master of Arts from Monash University and was awarded an Order of Australia Medal in 1993 for services to community history.

Dr Janet Marles is a research fellow and lecturer at Griffith University and lecturer at Higher Colleges of Technology in the United Arab Emirates. Her current practice-based research is a biographical online documentary project exploring the conflation of non-linear and linear narrative, and how these seemingly disparate narrative structures come together through an interactive platform to deliver the story in a way that echoes its content. This work stems from her extensive career as an editorial photographer, audio-visual producer and short-form filmmaker.

Alison Wishart has worked as a curator for the past seven years at the Museum of Tropical Queensland in Townsville, the State Library of Queensland in Brisbane and the National Museum of Australia (NMA) in Canberra. She has a BA (Hons) from the University of Queensland and a Masters in Museum Studies and Cultural Heritage from Deakin University. She has curated stories for the Eternity Gallery at the NMA, and a story about Flora Pell and her passion for cooking will be included in the gallery in late 2011.

Kath Ensor is a genealogist and public historian, having completed her MA in public history at Monash University in 2008. For the past fifteen years Kath has worked as a probate genealogist, researching hundreds of family trees with branches all around the world. She is currently undertaking doctoral research into the effects of institutionalisation of the mentally ill or disabled on individuals, families and communities.

Catharine Coleborne studied History at the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University and is now an Associate Professor of History at the University of Waikato in Hamilton, New Zealand. She recently published Madness in the family: insanity and institutions in the Australasian colonial world, 1860-1914 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).