Making history

A PAIR of Geelong academics have been shortlisted for the Premier’s History Award for their efforts investigating and presenting the history of Geelong and the Bellarine Peninsula.

Professor David Jones and Dr Phillip Roӧs’ book Geelong’s Changing Landscape: Ecology, Development and Conservation is one of 48 projects to be nominated for the award.

Professor Jones, an urban planning expert in the School of Architecture and Built Environment, and Dr Roӧs, director of Deakin’s Live+Smart Research Laboratory, edited the book, which included contributions from more than 20 experts.

Professor Jones said the book’s reception has been a testament to the quality of its many contributors.

“The book is laden with chapters written by some of the most authoritative and respected authors in their fields.”

Professor Jones said they were able to attract people to work on the book because of the unique opportunity it presented.

“It presents a vast collection of knowledge that is not in the public domain and has never been comprehensively packaged in this way including descriptions of places, names, histories, translating culture and presents, for the first time, a Wadawurrung seasonal calendar which people will find a valuable source of information.”

Dr Roӧs said the information in the book had the potential to inform future decision-making.

“It tells us that a great deal of valuable work in design, planning and thinking has been attained but not respected and we are constantly reinventing the same things.

“We also learn about the animal and plant species that shaped the early landscape and have since disappeared and come to better understand the very special ecology of the Bellarine Peninsula.”

Professor Jones and Dr Roӧs already knew many of those who contributed to the book.

Professor Jones said it was nonetheless an enormous undertaking to organise the input of all these individuals to be cohesive.

“It is quite challenging in terms of getting some degree of consistency and removing any overlap between chapters.”

Professor Jones said a similarly difficult task was ensuring the information was presented in a way that the book would be accessible.

“We wanted to make sure it was available to the community at large as well as easily accessible to secondary or tertiary students.”

This seems to be the case, as most secondary schools in Geelong now have it as one of their prescribed texts for various units.

Premier’s History Award winners will receive prizes of up to $5,000.

To see the full shortlist, head to prov.vic.gov.au/community/grants-and-awards/community-history-awards.