This set of essays is concerned to open up questions about the interplay between a particular small group of people and the specific places they inhabit, mentally and emotionally as well as physically. It is also concerned to show, however sketchily, that social, political, economic and cultural concepts in the region are always in a degree of flux, changing as individuals and communities change. ... It is always the case that each generation writes its own version of the past and so it is important that several of our contributors are from families long resident here and so have done their own quiet oral history collecting and field research over several decades. While this book does not seek to modify this careful earlier regional historiography, its inclusion of natural setting and cultural materials may make it more of a meaningful social history in the context of so much destabilising change in Australian society. |
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