dedicated to the study of
the peoples and lands of
Australia, initially focusing
on the area that became
Queensland in 1859.
The Centre aims to facilitate access to published and unpublished information for the period up to the 1850s, which represents an era of intercultural encounters. It seeks to document particularly the lives and experiences of those persons, groups and organisations that have not been the subject of historical investigation by collating an inventory of the diversity and claims on country that made up the early colonial period. This includes Indigenous diplomats and resisters, interpreters and guides, convicts and free-born, shipwrecks and settlers, religious and military – the whole range of contributors to a new era.
Latest Projects
Collective Memory and Memorial in an Urban Public Space: Queens Park and Cunningham’s Knoll, Ipswich. A Field Report.
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Drawing the Downs: Thomas Domville Taylor
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Peopling Early Queensland: the Archive of Brisbane’s Zion Hill Missionaries, 1838-1848
View ProjectQueensland resident biographies pre-1859
The core work of the centre is the collating of biographies of residents of Queensland before 1859 for public access.
Latest BIOGRAPHIES
LAtest news and events
HGRC QSA Seminar
October 6th, 2021
Join Assoc Professor Lynley Wallis at the Queensland State Archives on Thursday 21 October at 12.30pm for a presentation titled ‘Understanding Queensland’s Native Mounted Police: A free online database to help communities research and understand the lives and work of an infamous police force’. You can register for this free event here.
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PHA Online Conference 18-19 September
September 15th, 2021
History Transmitted: Connect – Consider – Challenge Registrations are still open for an online conference for professional historians, to be held Saturday 18 September – Sunday 19 September 2021. The key note speaker is Professor Melanie Nolan, Director of the National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University, and General Editor of the Australiian […]
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HGRC Visiting Fellow Janis Hanley
August 21st, 2021
Ipswich was once the heart of Queensland’s thriving woollen manufacturing industry, from 1875 to 1983. The mills were the largest employers of women in Ipswich. The industry’s demise was a shock to Ipswich and signalled the devastating the loss of industry for this manufacturing city. This project traces the origins of the mills in pre-1860s […]
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Subaltern Officers of Moreton Bay
June 23rd, 2021
The Queensland State Archives in conjunction with Griffith University’s Harry Gentle Resource Centre presented a seminar on 10 June 2021, with Visiting Fellow, Rod Pratt, discussing his research on the junior officers who served at Moreton Bay, and whose roles have been mostly eclipsed by their better known commanding officers. Listen here.
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Domestic ‘forts’ in frontier wars
May 31st, 2021
Heather Burke, Ray Kerkhove, Lynley Wallis, Bryce Barker & Cathy Keys, ‘Nervous Nation: fear, conflict and narratives of fortified domestic architecture on the Queensland frontier,’ Aboriginal History Vol. 40 (2020), pp.22-52. Colonists’ fear of retaliation by the Aboriginal peoples whose traditional lands they had forcibly dispossessed manifested itself in domestic defensive strategies across Queensland. This […]
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Harry Gentle Fellowships
We offer generous programs for innovative scholars in any discipline relevant to digital history, to aid the research of our centre.
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Robert Henry (Harry) Gentle
The Harry Gentle Resource Centre was created from a generous bequest of Griffith University alumnus Harry Gentle, who sadly passed away, aged 95, in 2015. His wish was for Griffith University to form a digital resource centre dedicated to the study of the lands and people of Australia, prior to 1859. We are honoured to fulfil his wishes.
Harry Gentle’s Biography