Moving to Canberra in 1991, Frank Bongiorno AM is a massive fan of history.

He received the Member of the Order of Australia in the 2019 Australia Day Honours List for significant service to tertiary education in the field of history.

Bongiorno will take part in the Canberra Writers Festival’s Young Hawke event on Friday 25 October at the Museum of Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House at 10am.

He will be back at MOAD on Sunday 27 October at 3:30pm, to talk to former Labor Senator and minister Kim Carr about the former politician’s memoir A Long March.

What is your favourite historical moment and why?

It might make sense to choose a moment in my lifetime from the vast number I could consider.

The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 was such an extraordinary moment for anyone of my age, 55, or older.

It had been there all our lives, both as a means of oppressing real people and as a symbol of a world divided into two economic and political systems.

One did not have to buy into the propaganda of either the west or the communist world to understand how important it was at that moment when it was breached late in 1989.

I was doing my third-year exams at the University of Melbourne on a subject called International Relations. But there were other students who had a rather harder job – they were being examined on Politics in the Communist World!

What’s the most important historical moment in Canberra and why?

I’m not sure whether it was the most important but the dismissal of the Whitlam Government on 11 November (1975) is one of those events that reminded everyone in Australia that Canberra was not some kind of sleepy, overgrown country town trying its best to be a national capital.

It could be a place of high drama, on the streets as well as in the parliamentary chambers and over in Yarralumla.

The event was traumatic for so many who had placed so much faith in the Whitlam government, and who had looked to Gough Whitlam himself as someone who could articulate and even embody their hopes for the country.

Next year is the 50^th so we’ll hear a lot more about it.

Why should people be interested in history?

History provides a way of looking at the world. It helps us to understand ourselves as well as others.

It is really about the only guide we have for acting in the present and future – however rough that guide might be! 

People also engage with history because most of us enjoy stories, and the best historians are also skilled storytellers.

Those stories can contribute to our sense of identity and belonging. But understanding history is also about unravelling meaning, a way of understanding how the world works, and of why people behave the way they do.

In Australia, one of the great changes of the last half-century has been wider awareness that First Nations peoples’ understanding of time can be very different from conventional western understandings. That has allowed many of us to reflect more carefully on what is at stake in the way we ‘do history’.

When you think about history as a sequence of events with a forward momentum, that might well embody a particular way of understanding the world that works out better for some – a coloniser, for instance – than for others, the colonised.

But, historical knowledge has also acted as a political resource for oppressed peoples, a source of lessons, inspiration and identity.

What piqued your interest in history?

I think the first thing that grabbed my attention was a publication (a magazine) you could buy from newsagents in the 1970s called Australia’s Heritage.

You were supposed to collect each part and then put them in bindings to make a kind of encyclopedia.

I don’t think I ever got that far but I recall reading some of the ones that my mother bought for me and looking at the illustrations – most of them on colonial Australian history.

I recently had a look at the 30 or so copies that I had and it’s a rather old-fashioned look at Australian history but it was fascinating then and even now as a snapshot on a way of understanding the past.

When did you move to Canberra and what do you love the most about living here?

I moved here for the first time early in 1991 to study for my PhD in history at the ANU.
It was a smaller, less busy city, and Civic was full of open car parks.

I had come from years in Melbourne, and it was obviously a very different kind of place. It took me about a year to begin loving Canberra and I have now clocked up about 20 years, although not in one go, and very much live here by choice.

As the national capital, it has so much to offer culturally and intellectually, and especially in the kinds of things that interest me most – galleries, libraries, archives and museums, or GLAM, as they now call it.

The restaurants and bars are great, too, but my life here has always revolved around the university – and books!

How does it feel to be part of an event at Canberra Writers Festival?

It’s such a privilege to be involved, as a board member as well as conversationalist. 
In my own case, I’m speaking with historian and biographer David Day on the Friday 25 October at 10am at MoAD on his book Young Hawke, about Bob’s first 50 years, before he entered parliament (no publisher or author would call a boom(er) Young and Middle-Aged Hawke!)

And then, on Sunday, 27 October, at 3.30pm, it back to MoAD to talk to former Labor Senator and Minister Kim Carr on his memoir, A Long March.

Two stories about Australian politics, about two very different kinds of Labor politicians. I’m very much looking forward to it and have a bunch of other great sessions I’m looking forward to attending: Beejay Silcox as artistic director, and Travis Green as CEO have brought together a splendid program.

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