John Rogers is the co-founder and president of Friends of the Cerberus, a not for profit community group campaigning to save the breastwork monitor warship, HMVS Cerberus, in Port Phillip Bay. John has heavily researched the career ofCerberus and the other vessels and men of Victoria’s colonial naval forces. With contributions from many members of the public John created a Victorian Naval Forces database of men who served in the Victorian Naval Forces.

Charles Fahey teaches in the History Program at La Trobe University. With Richard Broome, he co-ordinates Global Migration Stories, a unit that encourages students to use the resources of Public Record Office Victoria (PROV). In recent years his research and publications have focused on the central goldfields of Victoria and on rural Victoria. He has also published widely on the history of the labour market, with particular reference to the Sunshine Harvester factory and the Harvester Judgement of 1907.

Mary Daley, in her retirement, is undertaking history research as part of a Masters Degree at La Trobe University. When learning how to work in the records at PROV, Mary found the story of the fire at Steiglitz amongst the files of capital crimes. As a fifth-generation Victorian with relatives currently living close to the tiny town of Steiglitz, and as a bushwalker who has walked in that area, Mary was intrigued. The case of arson she uncovered proved to be complex, sad and disturbing.

Dr Michele Matthews has been a local and social historian for nearly three decades since she first used correspondence held by the then Bendigo City Council for her Honours thesis. She is an ardent advocate for the use of local history records to tell Victorian and Australian history from a grassroots perspective.

Elizabeth Denny studied Chinese history and Chinese language in Melbourne and spent a year at the Beijing Language Institute in 1979. After teaching in inner‑city Melbourne, she moved to Ballarat where she has become fascinated by the local records of early Chinese communities on the goldfields.
Author email: liz.denny@prov.vic.gov.au

Barbara Minchinton has recently completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne on land selection in the Otways in the nineteenth century. She is intending to extend her study to include settlement in the Mallee during the same period.

Dr Sarah Mirams is a freelance historian and writer who specialises in environmental history. She has a background in education and is the author of a number of history texts for secondary students. She was appointed education consultant to History Council Victoria in 2010, where she worked with Public Record Office Victoria (PROV) and Spatial Vision on the DEET-funded One place, many stories interactive website. She is currently lecturing in Australian history at Monash University Gippsland.

Richard Pennell studied Arabic and Spanish and Islamic History in Britain. He has taught the history of the Middle East and North Africa at the University of Melbourne since 1997, after earlier posts in Morocco, Libya, Turkey, Singapore and Kenya. He has published widely on North African history, most recently Banning Islamic books in Australia (Melbourne University Press, 2011). This current article is part of a long research interest in cross-cultural legal trials, a subject on which he has already published several articles.

He studied History and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, and worked on the university’s expedition to the Neo‑Assyrian (Iron Age) site of Tell Ahmar in Syria from 1990 to 1993. He completed his Masters in Archaeology in 1995, and has been employed at Heritage Victoria since 1997. In 2009 he directed the excavation of a mass grave at the former Pentridge prison.

Jeremy Smith is Heritage Victoria’s senior archaeologist. He studied History and Archaeology at the University of Melbourne, and worked on the university’s expedition to the Neo‑Assyrian (Iron Age) site of Tell Ahmar in Syria from 1990 to 1993. He completed his Masters in Archaeology in 1995, and has been employed at Heritage Victoria since 1997. In 2009 he directed the excavation of a mass grave at the former Pentridge prison.