Submitted by Paul Daley on
The Covid-19 crisis has impelled me to record my impressions of this altered world. The joy of the archive is that one person’s dross is another’s gold
A decade ago when researching a book about Canberra the first thing I did was trawl the archives for narrative voices.
As I scoured the stacks of the National Library of Australia and the National Archives I was pleasantly surprised at how many people had penned their contemporaneous impressions of the city at various stages of its development, from the time of its inception as a concept in a vast sheep paddock.
Those who survive this will carry it as scar tissue of personal experience the rest of their lives
Related: 'This is a season': four things that helped me cope during my son's illness | Janet Gibson
Paul Daley is a Guardian Australia columnist
- Log in to post comments