Published in Overland Issue 233 Summer 2018 · Uncategorized Introducing Overland 233 Jacinda Woodhead Last month, I attended a symposium in Newport about memorialisation and the thirty-five bridge workers who died when the West Gate Bridge collapsed in 1970. The ‘past is never over’, observed visiting Canadian academic Tara Goldstein, because we are always reinterpreting history and, therefore, must always interrogate ‘veracity’. The royal commission into the accident held unions and workers partly accountable; as one of the speakers argued, in the lead-up to the fifty-year anniversary of the disaster, this is a narrative that must be corrected. There is a partisan nature to remembering. Hegemonic history, presented as contained and indisputable, is a fiction, and rarely takes into account the class forces that shape these events. There are also the questions of the pasts we choose to remember. This edition examines the memorialisation of Australian medievalism (and the fall of Constantinople) and reconsiders the history of the notion of ‘Australia Day’ and its insignificance. Elsewhere, there is a comparison of century-old Noongar letters and the #IndigenousDads twitter campaign; a survey of the contemporary Australian essay; and an account of women’s wrestling, popular culture and spectacle. Our writers remember the past in order to change the future, something Jennifer Mills reflects on in her memorial for utopias and dystopias, as do the four writers she commissioned as departing Overland fiction editor. We are indebted to for her magnificent work and the role she played in shaping the fiction within and outside these pages. Included in this issue are the winners of the 2018 Fair Australia Prize, powerful renderings of labour, each and every one. And a selection of poetry by Toby Fitch that makes the personal urgent. With the discovery of the illustration of a cockatoo in a medieval manuscript, we are reminded that the past is indeed ‘not over’, that it is not fixed or known, but shaped by external forces and thinking. Prior to invasion, there are countless histories; some have been shared or uncovered, but there is more to learn. Read the rest of Overland 233 If you enjoyed this piece, buy the issue Or subscribe and receive four outstanding issues for a year Jacinda Woodhead Jacinda Woodhead is a former editor of Overland and current law student. More by Jacinda Woodhead › Overland is a not-for-profit magazine with a proud history of supporting writers, and publishing ideas and voices often excluded from other places. If you like this piece, or support Overland’s work in general, please subscribe or donate. Related articles & Essays 18 December 202418 December 2024 · Nakata Brophy Prize Dawning in the rivulet of my father’s mourning Yasmin Smith My father floats words down Toonooba each morning. They arrive to me by noon. / Nothing diminishes in his unfolding, not even the currents in midwinter June. / He narrates the sky prehistorically like a cadence cutting him into deluge. 16 December 202416 December 2024 · Palestine Learning to see in the dark Alison Martin Images can represent a splice of reality from the other side of the world, mirror truths about ourselves and our collective humanity we can hardly bear to face. But we can also use them to recognise the patterns of dehumanisation that have manifested throughout history, and prevent their awful conclusions in the present. To rewrite in real time our most shameful histories before they are re-made on the world stage and in our social media feeds.
