In historical and cultural studies one of the new buzz words or perspectives is transnationalism with its emphasis on moving beyond the nation-state and seeing links which bind people, events, issues across and, indeed, in spite of national boundaries. In migration studies and in the international oral history movement, it is a concept that, without enunciating it as such, has played an important part in the way we work, think, exchange and meet. It is also a concept that underpins or perhaps extends Alexander von Plato's recent evaluation of one of the key aims of the International Oral History Association when it was formed in 1996, namely that 'it would support international projects and the international exchange of theory and methodology in oral history.' (Plato 2006) So, let me from my vantage point here in a rural town 160 kilometres north of Sydney in Australia and four months after co-hosting the 14th International Oral History Conference in Sydney, pick up on these themes and offer some reflections. They are intentionally fairly personal reflections which draw on my own encounters with various oral history networks, issues and methodologies and which, hopefully, offer a sense of the form and texture of oral history as it has emerged in Australia and the conversations which Australian oral historians have had with their counterparts elsewhere in the world. In this vein it is also hopefully a fitting tribute to the role that Alexander von Plato has played in sustaining and challenging international links and in furthering and deepening the use of oral history.

The aim of this thesis is to examine, in the form of a qualitative study, the formation of a criminal milieu in Sydney following the Great War. I shall consider the roles played by the prison system, and the police, judges, politicians and criminals themselves, in the making of this underworld subculture in an attempt to understand why the milieu developed as it did. The study investigates why and how the underworld evolved to the point where authorities felt its threat was serious enough to introduce draconian legislation to deal with it. My thesis will suggest that while state legislation had a crucial effect on the development of the milieu, criminals and their associates exercised a degree of individual and collective agency that also influenced the progress towards a culture of organised crime. I shall also look at some of the legal, social and political consequences of the consorting law to determine whether this legislation did, in fact, have the effect for which it was claimed to have been framed. The press played a critical, although indirect, part in the formation of a criminal milieu. While the various media appeared to act with autonomy, many of those, on both sides of the law, who engaged in conflict and the exercise of power and control in and around the underworld, sought to use them as a tool to achieve their various aims. The thesis explores the role of the tabloid and broadsheet newspapers and also their use by police and other authorities in the creation of a moral panic during the 1920s in relation to the prevalence of firearms, razor attacks, prostitution, drugs and gang battles. I shall then consider whether the passage of harsh legislation was justified by the actual level of criminal activity in Sydney, or whether it was simply a 'knee-jerk' reaction by politicians, fuelled by a moral panic initiated by police and the media.

The value of material objects in stimulating memory is profound. Yet, as this article argues, where the role of objects is recognised at all, their use can be too readily confined to discussion of photographs or memorabilia, or can focus myopically on those objects most readily available. In an insightful revisiting of some of her own interviewing practices and situations, the author of this piece shows how objects can sometimes serve to drive interviews in the wrong direction, but can also be used more productively as a tool for exposing deeper layers of memory and meaning. Through a series of interviews with her mother, the author explores the possibilities of acknowledging the role of objects in memory while recognising the significance of context, and avoiding the pitfalls inherent in making the objects themselves, as material traces and remains, too central a focus of the interview process.

Golden threads tells the story of the Chinese people who came to and sometimes settled in NSW from the first arrivals in the early 19th century, through the turbulent goldrush years and into the 20th century. Through their compelling and largely previously unpublished stories, the book explores their experiences, working lives, hopes and beliefs, and the attitudes of a white Australia which viewed the Chinese at one extreme as a menacing threat and at the other an exotic presence.

This special edition of the 'Otherland Literary Journal' is drawn from a conference held in 2000 as part of the Chinese Heritage of Australian Federation project (www.chaf.lib.latrobe.edu.au/). It marks, refreshingly and with inspiration, the growing interest in Chinese-Australian history and the innovative directions in which scholars and community members are heading. The introduction by Asian-American studies scholar, Adam McKeow, sets the tone, with his emphasis on 'the synthesis of local, national and transnational perspectives' and his recognition of the texturing and different insights provided through combining generalized overviews with in-depth encounters with 'individuals, families, communities and institutions'. These, he argues, are new directions that are taking the history of the Chinese in Australia away from a myopic focus on either racism and the administration of the White Australia Policy or the resilience and significance of Chinese community histories. The new directions are clearly there in the contributions. There are three groupings in the collection, under the titles 'Regulation', 'Participation' and 'Communities and cultures'.

In the mid 1980s when I began my own journey into Australia's Chinese history I was guided by Jennifer Cushman's plea to move away from the obsession with the White Australia policy and to relocate the Chinese within their own communities and, in so doing, to make reference to the expanding literature on the overseas Chinese elsewhere (Cushman 1984). How pleased Cushman would be now. Twenty years later, the hole which was the history of the Chinese in Australia is starting to be filled by a variety of approaches and emphases. Community and family historians, archaeologists, sociologists, sinologists, museum curators, public historians, academic historians and archivists are all wielding their individually shaped tools of trade. A measure of this growth in activity is Paul Jones' 'Chinese-Australian journeys'. This is Number 21 in the Research Guides commissioned by the National Archives of Australia (NAA). Tellingly, Number 1 in the series is Julie Stacker and Perri Stewart's earlier and New South Wales focused 'Chinese immigrants and Chinese Australians in NSW' (1997). These guides mark the increased usage of the very rich National Archives of Australia records on the Chinese, and the organisation of Jones' 'Chinese-Australian journeys' reflects the increasing focus on the Chinese communities and the experiences of individual Chinese-Australians. Jones provides a very brief overview of the history of the Chinese presence in Australia and of the legislation generated to control the flow of immigrants and to shape their settlement patterns and experiences. The guide is then divided into thematic sections which focus on policy, arrival and settlement patterns, naturalisation and alien registration, wartime experiences, community, and Chinese in New Guinea and Pacific Island territories. Each section offers a brief introduction explaining the historical context, government actions and legislation that created the documentation, and the nature of the records and the evidence they offer. This is followed by a detailed listing of the relevant holdings by capital city. Occasional photographs from the records and reproductions of documents give a taste of the look and feel of the material available.

Voices, performances, novels, playscripts, poems, memoirs, re-enactments, all telling stories about past and present relations between Aboriginal people and Asians in Australia - these are at the core of Stephenson's 'The Outsiders Within'. Oral histories are an integral part. Included are interviews the author conducted, the use of interviews others conducted, and the ever-present reality that the stories retold in the book could only be collected through listening, hearing, and sharing memories within and across communities. And Stephenson presents the stories for a clear purpose: they join a growing body of studies and other cultural products that challenge, reconfigure, and even upend established orthodoxies about the boundaries that, in Australian life, have kept Indigenous, Asian, and European Australians in separate compartments. This is a book that relates the dark history of Australian racism and discriminatory practices. There are stories of children taken from parents, fathers deported or interned, and women sexually exploited. There are stories of the blinkered and insensitive administration of discriminatory legislation and of equally blinkered and insensitive attitudes and behaviors. And there is an emphasis on the continuity of these from the early days of the European presence through to 2006.

The New South Wales Migration Heritage Centre (MHC) was established in 1998. Since 2003 its physical presence has been located within Sydney's Powerhouse Museum and it has had the strategic brief to record the memories of ageing migrants before their stories are lost. The Centre is, however, a museum without a collection; a heritage authority without heritage sites; a cultural institution whose main presence is in cyberspace. Among its high profile projects is one entitled Objects through time and another Belongings. Both focus on the ways in which objects can convey aspects of the migration experience. Belongings, the focus of this article, presents the remembered experiences of people who migrated to Australia after World War II and seeks to highlight significant features of their experiences through asking them to share their memories and to nominate and talk about significant objects. As a project it grew out of movable heritage policy work within state government agencies, and its initiators – John Petersen, Kylie Winkworth and Meredith Walker – were central players in this development. It was also inspired by the National Quilt Register of the Pioneer Women's Hut at Tumbarumba.