13 October 2009
MEDIA RELEASE
KEY DOCUMENTS IN AUSTRALIA’S EARLY HISTORY HONOURED BY UNESCO
Documents relating to Indigenous languages, the voyage of the First Fleet and the
foundation of the colony of New South Wales, the convict system, and the
establishment of private legal transactions in the growing colony have been
inscribed on UNESCO’s Australian Memory of the World Register for documentary
heritage of world significance.
The latest inscriptions to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register are the Australian
Indigenous Languages Collection (AILC) held in the Library of the Australian Institute of
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS); the First Fleet journals held in the State
Library of New South Wales; the Registers of Assignments and Other Legal Instruments 1794-
1824 (The ‘Old Registers’), held by the Land and Property Management Authority (NSW); and the
Convict Records of Queensland 1825-1842, held in Queensland State Archives and the State
Library of Queensland. Citations containing information about each of these inscriptions are
included below.
The Convict Records of Western Australia, inscribed along with the corresponding records for
New South Wales and Tasmania on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register in
Pretoria, South Africa in 2007, have also been formally added to the Australian Register.
A ceremony will be held on 14 October 2009 at the State Library of Queensland to mark these
inscriptions on the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register also celebrated the
inscription of the Manifesto of the Queensland Labour Party to the people of Queensland
(dated 9 September 1892) on the UNESCO Memory of the World International Register in
Barbados in July this year.
The Manifesto is regarded as one of the modern Labor Party’s formative documents that led to the
first labour government in the world, the Anderson Dawson government in Queensland in December
1899. Although the government only survived for seven days, its formation influenced and
encouraged other political labour movements across the world, as it demonstrated that working
class political organisations could achieve government. The inclusion of the Manifesto in the
UNESCO Memory of the World Register ‘reflects its exceptional value and signifies that it should be
protected for the benefit of all humanity,’ said Mr Abdul Waheed Khan, UNESCO’s Assistant
Director-General for Communication and Information. The inscription, along with others on the
UNESCO Memory of the World registers, draws attention ‘to the importance of the collective
memory and the need to safeguard it to enable as many people as possible to have access to it,’
said Mr Kahn.
Roslyn Russell, Chair, Assessment Sub-Committee, UNESCO Australian Memory of the
World Committee; and Chair, International Advisory Committee, UNESCO Memory of the
World Programme is available for interviews. Contact T: 02 6281 6805, mobile: 0421 311 369,
email: roslyn@rrms.com.au.
CITATIONS
Australian Indigenous Languages Collection (AILC)
Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) Library
The Australian Indigenous Languages Collection (AILC) was established in 1981 and is held in the Library
of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS). The collection brings
together over 3700 published items written in 102 of the over 250 Australian Indigenous languages, and is
the only one of its kind housed in one location and catalogued as one collection.
Before the European colonisation of Australia there were over 250 languages and 500 dialects spoken by
Indigenous people. Of these languages, only 145 are still spoken, and over 100 will cease to be used over
the next three decades. Australian Indigenous languages are unique and spoken nowhere else in the
world, so their loss is not only a loss for Australia, but for the world. The AILC plays a vital role in
preserving these languages, and assisting Indigenous groups to revive them, and thus is of considerable
community significance for Australia’s Indigenous people.
The collection covers languages from all parts of Australia: from Tasmania to the Torres Strait and from the
Kimberley to the southern parts of Australia, and is a storehouse of cultural knowledge and tradition for
Indigenous Australians. The collection provides examples of the types of materials produced in Indigenous
languages, including early works such as children’s readers and Bible translations, dictionaries, grammars,
vocabularies and language learning kits produced by Indigenous Language Centres, and works of the
imagination. It provides an historical overview of languages that have been recorded for teaching and
learning purposes. Some of the items in the collection are of aesthetic significance, particularly children’s
readers illustrated by celebrated Indigenous artists such as Mawalun Marika, Djoki Yunupingu, both from
Arnhem Land; and Dennis Nona and Alick Tikopi from the Torres Strait.
The Registers of Assignments and Other Legal Instruments 1794–1824 (The ‘Old Registers’)
Land and Property Management Authority (NSW)
The Old Register is a nine-volume series commenced in 1802 and concluding in 1824, in which private
legal transactions and dealings between individuals and businesses in New South Wales, ranging from
marriages and separations to convict/master relationships, through to land transactions and sealing and
whaling agreements, were registered and made available on the public record. They provide a unique and
irreplaceable insight into the social record of the colony of New South Wales from January 1794 to May
1824.
The system of registering private legal transactions in books kept by the Office of the Judge Advocate was
begun in November 1800 by Governor King, however none of the books survived. Further instructions
issued by Governor King on 26 February 1802 allowed instruments dating back to 1794 to be added to the
new surviving Registers. The Supreme Court of New South Wales was established in May 1824, and the
functions of the Office of Judge Advocate were transferred to the Court, which retained the Register and
the function of land registration until 1844, when the Office of Registrar-General was established. This
function is now part of the former Department of Lands (NSW), now the Land and Property Management
Authority, which records dealings related to land transactions.
The Old Registers document the first step in this continuing system of registration. The process of
registering transactions has been fundamental to legal proceedings and daily business in Australia for over
200 years. The Old Registers represent the beginning of private business in the colony being recognised in
the courts, and reveal an important step in the development of the cultural landscape of early Australia as
they indicate the growing involvement of government in everyday life. They provide valuable information to
researchers on the nature, demographics and values of the colony, as no other comparable records exist
for this period.
First Fleet Journals
State Library of New South Wales
The Mitchell and Dixson Libraries at the State Library of New South Wales hold the most comprehensive
collection of First Fleet journals in the world. The nine journals, written at the time or as memoirs, provide
eyewitness accounts of the voyage to and the early settlement of Australia from 1787 to the 1790s. They
occupy a central place in Australian documentary history, recording the most profound social, cultural and
political revolution experienced on the Australian continent.
Written by men of different ranks, each journal offers a unique perspective, and several also record
Indigenous vocabularies. Two journals containing original drawings contribute to the significant
documentary record of European settlement, the foundation and development of Sydney, and natural
history, including species that are now extinct.
The journals provide evidence of the equipping of the First Fleet, and the British Government’s motives in
creating a penal colony in New South Wales. They deal with relations between Governor Phillip and his
officers and Marines; relationships between convicts and Marines, Royal Navy officers and free settlers;
sexual relations and tensions; and punishment, law and order.
The First Fleet journals are significant as an invaluable record of the foundations of Sydney and the
beginnings of the Australian nation; of the Indigenous lifestyle at the time of colonisation by Britain in 1788,
and the genesis and development of relations between the British and Indigenous people in the Sydney
region. They are also a significant record of the native flora and fauna; and of the European aesthetic
response to this new and alien topography and landscape.
The Convict Records of Queensland 1825-1842
Queensland State Archives and State Library of Queensland
The penal settlement at Moreton Bay was established in 1824 in response to a recommendation of the
Bigge Reports that another place of secondary punishment be provided to deal with a crime wave in
Sydney and the sentences imposed on repeat offenders. The first settlement at Redcliffe proved
unsuitable, and in 1825 a principal settlement was established on the Brisbane River. The Moreton Bay
penal settlement became self-sufficient in 1826 after the arrival of Captain Patrick Logan, a harsh
disciplinarian, and became a byword for severity, described in the old song, ‘Moreton Bay’, as a place
where ‘excessive tyranny each day prevails’. Between 1826 and 1829 the number of prisoners at Moreton
Bay rose from 200 to nearly 1000, but throughout the 1830s increasing agitation to bring about the end of
the system of convict transportation led to a decline in prisoners coming to Moreton Bay, and by 1839 only
107 prisoners remained in the settlement. It was closed in 1842, when the Moreton Bay area was opened
to free settlement, with Brisbane Town as its centre. The colony of Queensland was separated from New
South Wales in 1859.
Records held in Queensland State Archives and the State Library of Queensland document the relatively
short period of Moreton Bay’s life as a penal settlement before the modern city of Brisbane grew and all but
obliterated the physical traces of its existence, with the exception of two buildings which have survived into
the 21st century, the Commissariat Store and the Windmill. Prominent in this documentation are the
architectural plans of buildings in the penal settlement that accompanied the report compiled by Andrew
Petrie, Clerk of Government Works, in 1837 to investigate Brisbane’s potential as a future port. These
plans are held by the Queensland State Archives, as are records of trials conducted at the penal
settlement, and of public labour performed by Crown prisoners, as well as other records relating to the
penal settlement period, including a chronological register of convicts at Moreton Bay. The State Library of
Queensland also holds records relating to the Moreton Bay penal settlement, including artworks depicting
the settlement during the convict period,.
The records of the convict period in Queensland complement those already inscribed on the UNESCO
Australian Memory of the World Register from New South Wales, Tasmania and Western Australia, and
are significant as documentation of this key period in the history of Australia. They are also significant as
the earliest documents to describe the settlement of Brisbane, and the foundation of what became the
colony then state of Queensland. The architectural plans in the Petrie report also have aesthetic
significance, and are significant for their capacity to illustrate the broad reach of military architecture across
the British Empire.
Roslyn Russell, Chair, Assessment Sub-Committee, UNESCO Australian Memory of the World
Committee; and Chair, International Advisory Committee, UNESCO Memory of the World
Programme is available for interviews. Contact T: 02 6281 6805, mobile: 0421 311 369, email:
roslyn@rrms.com.au.
NEWS 
