A Case of Mistaken (Gender) Identity, 1802

Gender & History, 2009

Stretton, later reported, 'it has been a difficult matter to induce the different tribes to amalgamate and fraternise'. 1 This forced grouping was part of the government's plan to sustain Darwin's meagre white population by providing the support of domestic help. While today, the predominant image of the domestic worker is female, in Darwin in the 1930s, Aboriginal men made up more than half of domestic servants. 2 Their jobs usually involved the more arduous, outdoor work such as gardening, chopping wood, shopping, sweeping and hanging out clothes. Drawing on the language of other British tropical colonies, such as nearby Singapore, these workers were known as 'houseboys'. Aboriginal Australian historian, Jackie Huggins, has noted that the experiences of Aboriginal domestic workers are now well documented in the autobiographical and other writing of Aboriginal women, including works by Glenyse Ward, Jennifer Sabbioni and Marnie Kennedy. 3 While this may be true of the experiences of Aboriginal women, almost nothing is known of the Aboriginal men who were employed in domestic service. The process of feminisation of domestic service is perhaps one reason why men have been neglected in the historical literature, not just in Australia, but internationally. 4 A forum on domestic service in this journal pointed to the growing scholarly interest in domestic service. 5 That forum was primarily focused on accounts of domestic service in Europe; our study is concerned with the colonial domain where constructions of gender and masculinity were framed within racialised discourses. In the context of southern Australia, the literature on domestic service mostly deals with white servants and tends towards a class rather than 'race' analysis. This is illustrated by Paula Hamilton's discussion of the home as a political site where 'inter-class tension' and gender politics played out through the domestic service relationship. 6 Hamilton explores representations of white female domestics during the late nineteenth century in

Migrant Nation: Australian Culture, Society and Identity, 2018

Journal of Australian Studies, 2017

Journal of Australian Colonial History, 2008

2015

By locating this gender forum issue geographically in Australia, this issue provides a specific area focus in gender studies, utilizing theories and approaches from both gender and post-colonial studies and thereby concentrates on giving voice to those marginalized by the myth of the 'typical Australian'. 2 The myth of the Australian national identity continues to render homage to the Australian Legend, published by Ward in 1958, the "typical Australian" being "a practical man, rough and ready in his manners and quick to decry any appearance of affectation in others" (2). While one might imagine the pull of the legend having waned over the years, the Australian "people's idea of itself" (1) that Ward sketched has nevertheless influenced Australian identity both home and abroad. Exposing the hidden stories of those unnamed by this definition is at the heart of this issue. The following contributions discuss examples of Australian literature, TV series, and art that represent the female voices in the largely masculinist as well as nationalistic visions of Australia's national context, thus exploring in how far the position of the white Australian male may or may not remain unchallenged. 3 The issue opens with Katrin Althans' "Forgotten Voices: The Female ANZAC and Male National Identity". The image and iconic status of the ANZAC soldier is promoted by various post-memory retellings of the Great War but, as Althans argues, it was specifically Peter Weir's film Gallipoli of 1981 which finalized the contemporary idea of ANZAC as a male-dominated, anti-imperial and nationalistic version. In the lead-up to the Gallipoli centenary in 2015, TV productions such as ANZAC Girls have taken to sharing the lost voices of the war, focussing on the stories of women's, more precisely, nurses' experiences in WWI. Katrin Althans explores these representations of female voices and the role they play in relation to the idea of a white male ANZAC legend as present in today's consciousness. As her analysis shows, however, instead of criticizing this one-sided representation of Australian involvement in WWI, productions like ANZAC Girls confirm the established ANZAC myth and help to perpetuate an interpretation of the ANZAC legend which is based on postmemory only. Remembering the ANZAC legend thus reveals in how far the mechanisms of this particular cultural memory have worked, and still work, to 'invent Australia' and with it a collectively shared identity. 4 In the second article, "Fleshed Out: Bodies of Language in Kate Grenville's Lilian's Story and Dark Places", Kathleen Denison draws the connection between language and the 4 Works Cited