Brian Dalton's Guide to Sources for North Queensland History

This project is very much a labour of affection and admiration for Brian J. Dalton, the Foundation professor of History at James Cook University. In the 1980s, Brian and Henry Reynolds, then Associate Professor of History and Politics at James Cook, received funding from the Australian research Council to research and publish a guide to sources in North Queensland’s history in Australian libraries and archives.

Brian’s saw his mission to be supporting and encouraging the writing of North Queensland’s History. He was remarkably successful in this, as the remarkable research of students and staff of the department published between 1974 and the mid-1990s attests.

Brian never completed his guide. At the time of his death, the guide comprised several sections in typescript, and several thousand handwritten index cards, compiled by Dr. Anne Allingham and other students employed as research assistants on the project.

Soon after I returned to James Cook University, after several years on a research fellowship, I came across the typescripts and index cards

in a store room of the building in which the department was located, along with copies of various old departmental records. It was just as well I did as the typescripts and index cards were destined for the rubbish skip.

Since then, as time has permitted, I have transcribed the material on the index cards and typescripts with a view to creating a web edition of the Guide. Clearly, a published would be far too expensive a proposition for any scholarly publisher to take on. But digital tools and technologies allow the Guide to appear in a freely accessible form.

Sadly, attempts to secure funding to put more hands to the task have been unsuccessful. But I press on when time allows. You can see a test version of the Guide at paul.turnbull.org/dalton