A story that began 233 years ago.

We offer So That We Remember as a verbal and visual guide to a particularly focused journey into the history of this country.

The pages are multi-faceted. Where possible, an entry matches the date to remind us of what occurred on that day in Australian history. The excerpts are intended to show the wide range of ramifications of dispossession, both in the past and reaching into the present.

About Us.

Ray Barraclough grew up on a farm outside Clermont in Central Queensland. Though he had Indigenous school friends at Clermont State School, he knew nothing of their history. In boarding school, and while later studying history at both the University of Queensland and Macquarie University, he encountered no Indigenous students. 

It was when he returned to Queensland in the mid-1970s that his awareness of Indigenous history, and this colonised people’s ongoing experience, was awakened. As well, in supporting the struggle of Indigenous people who fared worst of all Australians under the heavy-handed rule of both the conservative state government and the Department of Aboriginal and Islander Affairs (DAIA), his informal but real education progressed.

What is presented here is a word-album, and artist Glenn Loughrey’s strong artwork, as a contribution to the remembrance of the terrible cost that the imperial colonisation of this land and its islands wrought upon the Indigenous original occupants and owners of this land. It draws upon both primary and secondary historical sources. In particular, it is indebted to the extensive contribution that contemporary historians, charting Australia’s past, have unearthed in their efforts to educate their fellow Australians. [Listen to Glenn on ABC Radio, 12 July 2022]

Ray has spent most of his academic life lecturing at the tertiary level. He majored in history in his undergraduate studies. His postgraduate studies were focussed on history and attitudes to imperial political power.

Lastly, we also wish to acknowledge Kat Loughrey who assisted in the creation of this website, its planning, development, and related digital assets and marketing strategy. She is based in Germany, a country who has itself dealt with a troubled past in a very different manner to Australia.

“Creation in a Big Bang Sort of Way” - Acrylic on canvas, 2015 by Glenn Loughrey