Other Articles
This page curates various articles and talks on a range of subjects, published over a couple of decades.
Belsen — Mapping the Memories
Nadia Wheatley, Griffith Review, 2015.
In April 2015 I attended the 70th anniversary of the Liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. In this photographic essay, I map some of the memories held in that place, including my own problematic recollections of my father, who in late 1945 became superintendent of the hospital at the Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, where many of the survivors were living.
Published digitally by the Griffith Review in August 2015 (where it received 10,000 ‘hits’), the essay was republished digitally by Griffith Review in April 2022.
The article (text only) was included in Best Australian Essays, 2015, edited by Geordie Williamson.
Learning from Country Exhibition: Fisher Library, University of Sydney, 15 May – 31 July 2017
Curatorial Essay
Nadia Wheatley, Fisher Library, University of Sydney, 15 May – 31 July 2017.
From 1998 to 2001, artist Ken Searle and I worked as curriculum consultants at the school in the Aboriginal community of Papunya, Northern Territory. As part of our work, we assisted Anangu staff and students to produce the multi-award-winning Papunya School Book of Country and History. Inspired by the Papunya Model of Education, which puts Country at the centre of learning, we produced a number of other books. Visual and written text from these projects was displayed at Fisher Library of the University of Sydney in 2017. The exhibition was opened by Professor Jakelin Troy, Director of Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander research at the University of Sydney.
The Politics of Children’s History
Nadia Wheatley, State Library of NSW, 2001.
In 2001, there was controversy when the judges for the NSW History Awards did not select a shortlist for the category of books for children and young people, and made derogatory remarks in the media about the state of history-writing for young people in this country. I did not have a book entered for the award, but I was outraged on behalf of fellow authors. As I had been a judge of the NSW History awards on two previous occasions, including the first year of these awards, I believed I had an understanding of both sides of the awards situation. This is the paper I gave at the panel discussion that ensured from the media storm.
Writing Australians All
Nadia Wheatley, Agora, Journal of the History Teachers Association of Victoria, Vol 48, No 3, 2013.
Why did I spend nine years of my life writing a history book that would be marketed to young Australians in the second decade of the twenty-first century — a time when kids are supposedly not interested in either (a) history or (b) books?
The Inspiration of Story
Nadia Wheatley, CBCA News, June 2012.
Looking back on what it was that made me into a reader, I believe it was really important that the written stories I first encountered when my mother read me books were enfolded in this larger embrace of the spoken stories that she told me over and over again.
Keynote Address given to Children’s Book Council of Australia, New South Wales Branch, 3 April 2012. Published CBCA News, June 2012.
Remembering Jan Mark
Nadia Wheatley, Magpies, Vol 21, issue 2, May 2006.
When I think of Jan Mark talking during those days and nights in the Blue Mountains, I always think of her fiercely intelligent eyes blazing out from behind her English-sheepdog fringe. And yet, although Jan took no prisoners in her attitudes to politicians and publishers, I remember too how genuinely interested she seemed in chatting with my twelve-year-old stepdaughter, who was not a bookish child.
Remembering Mary Malbunka
Nadia Wheatley, Magpies, May 2005.
Mary Malbunka, of the Pintupi/Luritja nation, was one of the Anangu teachers with whom I worked at Papunya School. She became a dear friend. Subsequently, Ken Searle and I acted as her mentors when she wrote the award-winning picture book memoir When I was Little, Like You.
Remembering Mary Malbunka - Download article as a PDF
The Unemployed who Kicked: A Study of the Political Struggles and Organisations of the NSW Unemployed in the Great Depression. Masters Thesis, Macquarie University
Nadia Wheatley, 1975
Introduction & Chapter 1, 'Unemployment and the Unemployed: Who, Where and Why
Chapter 2, 'The Beginnings of the Unemployed Movement — 1925-1929'
Chapter 3, 'The Unemployed Movement in 1930'
Chapter 6, 'The Relief Workers' Movement, 1933-1936' - pages 927 to 1049
Chapter 6, 'The Relief Workers' Movement, 1933-1936' - pages 1050 to 1157