AFTER spending thousands of hours producing Early Albany in time for the coastal city’s bicentenary, historian and author John Dowson says Western Australia risks squandering its own 200th birthday unless governments and communities start considering legacy projects now.

The Fremantle Society president’s concerns are set to be part of the conversation at the book’s Fremantle launch at the Fremantle Town Hall on September 3, where the society will also seek ideas from the community about meaningful ways to commemorate the 2029 bicentenary beyond one-off celebrations.

• Author John Dowson has just published his latest book Early Albany in time for the southern city’s bicentenary, but wonders if Perth and Fremantle are leaving it too late for a lasting legacy. Photo by Steve Grant

Mr Dowson said he originally expected to simply update his 2008 book Old Albany before the project evolved into an entirely new work exploring the region’s earliest European visitors, scientists, artists and explorers.

“I was expecting just to hand over Old Albany and do a bit at the front,” he said.

“Then when I got into it, I thought, well, Albany has so much early history that hasn’t been brought together. 

‘All those great artists and scientists and captains who came in.

“I don’t recollect a book that had really gone through them all and brought them together.”

Mr Dawson said the late nights tracking down a mountain of material, pouring over it and staring into a computer screen for days on end had played havoc with his health, but he’s pleased with the result and says he learned a lot even he didn’t know.

Among the themes he believes have received insufficient attention is the violent and often lawless sealing industry that predated permanent European settlement.

“We’re starting to see the picture that the whole south coast, basically all the way from Sydney around to Perth, was occupied first by the sealers and then the whalers, and the depravity and lawlessness of it.

“It was horrendous in many cases.”

At the same time, Mr Dowson said he deliberately sought to present a more nuanced account of the earliest interactions between Europeans and Aboriginal people.

“I’m trying to show those interactions,” he said.

“The good thing is that, generally speaking, those interactions were amicable.”

He believes recent scholarship has also transformed understanding of the period by focusing more on ordinary people rather than simply political leaders.

“We’ve certainly moved on to social history,” he said.

“Now I think we’re also moving into Aboriginal history — but not in isolation.

“We’re starting to look at the interactions between Aboriginal people and Europeans.

“That’s really the crux of what I’m trying to do in this book.”

Mr Dowson says his experience researching Early Albany has left him worried that Western Australia is failing to adequately prepare for the state’s bicentenary in 2029.

“If you look at what happened during the sesquicentenary, so many historians, economists and other experts were brought in,” he said, adding that they produced a landmark 14-volume history of the state.

“Now, though, I get the sense … that it’s almost deliberately being hidden.”

Mr Dowson said many cultural institutions had not embraced the opportunity to make historically significant material more accessible.

“When we had the centenary of World War I, the government basically said to the institutions, ‘There’s money available. Dig out your treasures, put them online’.

“But it’s not happening this time.”

Mr Dowson believes there is still time for local governments and cultural organisations to create projects that will leave a lasting record of the bicentenary.

“I’d like to see every council and every city in Western Australia thinking about what legacy project they could create that lasts beyond the bicentenary itself.

“It’s one thing to spend money on fireworks, but what are you actually leaving behind to show that this was an important moment in time?

“Whether it’s a book or something else, it should have a bit of longevity.”

For Mr Dowson, the bicentenary also presents an opportunity to broaden understanding of the state’s earliest history by bringing together the stories of explorers, scientists, Aboriginal people and settlers.

“There certainly are great stories about the interactions between people, and they’re not all negative,” he said.

“There’s still a great deal we can learn from these stories and from the observations people recorded.”

by STEVE GRANT