dedicated to the study of
the peoples and lands of
Australia, initially focusing
on early 19th century
Queensland.
The Centre aims to facilitate access to published and unpublished information for early colonial Queensland, which represents an era of intercultural encounters.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
Digital dialogues on diet: harvesting the archive for alternative patterns in Queensland food culture
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In support of the Commandants: subaltern officers of the Moreton Bay settlement, 1824 – 1850
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Offenders, paupers and pioneers
View ProjectLife stories of early 19th century Queenslanders
The core work of the centre is the collating of life stories of residents of early colonial Queensland.
Latest BIOGRAPHIES
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LAtest news and events
Funding for Trove to Continue
April 20th, 2023
Following a groundswell of support from cultural institutions, historians, researchers and the general public lobbying the federal government to continue its funding of Trove, the government has pledged $33 million to save this valuable institution. Read more here.
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Dr Ray Kerkhove launches new publication
March 20th, 2023
Dr Ray Kerkhove, a HGRC past Visiting Fellow, has a new publication titled How They Fought: Indigenous Tactics and Weaponry of Australia’s Frontier Wars. As he states ‘The history of Australia’s Frontier Wars is becoming a hot topic for debate and research. It is now part of our national educational syllabus. However, there are very few […]
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Female ex-convicts in Queensland’s benevolent asylums
February 18th, 2023
Jan Richardson’s research on female ex-convicts admitted to Queensland’s benevolent asylums at Dunwich and Rockhampton has been published in the Journal of Australian Colonial History and is now available for download from the UNE Convict History Research Collective website. Jan’s article — ‘Out of sight, out of mind: Ex-convict female paupers incarcerated in Queensland’s benevolent […]
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Dr Henry Reece – HGRC Visiting Fellow
February 16th, 2023
The HGRC welcomes Dr Henry Reese. Henry’s project is titled ‘The trial of Joseph Vos: A blackbirding scandal in 1890s Queensland’. Henry proposes to research and produce a scholarly article and short podcast series based on the life and 1895 trial of Joseph Vos. In the mid-1890s, Captain Vos claimed to have used recorded sound […]
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Please sign petition to save Trove
February 14th, 2023
Trove, Australia’s expansive digital repository of published work, may shut down after Federal Government funding runs out in July 2023. Historical researchers from Australia and internationally access Trove daily via its online access to digitised sources. The digitalisation and searchability of historical newspapers, books, images, maps, music, and more, held by over 900 cultural institutions across Australia have […]
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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 early 19th century Australia. We are honoured to fulfil his wishes.
Harry Gentle’s Biography