Reanimating Lost Landscapes: Bringing Visualisation to Aboriginal History

In Public History Review volume 11, Peter Osborne called for the methodologies of environmental history to be brought more securely and more imaginatively into public history. Environmental history by its own definition, he argued, encompassed Indigenous, ethnic and Anglo-Celtic histories, and heritages natural and built, material and intangible. I believe too that we public historians need to Incorporate changing landscapes and topographies as a vital element in understanding why communities and their built heritages constantly transfigure. Sometimes a single geographic factor such as the northern Gulf Stream can go far to explain the spectacular rise of a small island like Great Britain to world power. Equally we can help to explain the precipitous decline of towns like Bourke by degradation and siltation in the Darling River. This paper uses the case study of the Narrabeen town camp to explore the potential of digital visual technologies in Aboriginal History.