Archive Fever

Every family has its secrets—but what happens when a writer dives into the family archive to uncover and share those stories with the world? In this very special final episode of Season 7 (yes, already!) - recorded live on Gadigal land at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — Yves and Clare probe Australian-born Maori poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Mettle) and Queensland-born author and journalist Lech Blaine (Australian Gospel) about the promises and pitfalls of working with stories close to home. Why rattle the bones of family skeletons? How important it is to have one member of the family who is a hoarder of seemingly minor items or insignificant facts that can, to a writer, be like shards of gold? How to navigate the ethical and emotional minefield of finding uncomfortable truths about loved ones and forebears? And what does excavating the roots of the family tree do to the writer themselves?

As you tend your garden this summer, spare a thought for Alison Vaughan, responsible for no less than 1.5 million precious botanical specimens. As collections manager at the National Herbarium of Victoria, which dates back to 1853, Alison stewards a vast archive of past and present biodiversity that illuminates our social and ecological history and provides tools to build a better future. Why did a 500-year-old aquatic moss from Switzerland end up in drawer in Naarm/Melbourne? How is the Herbarium at once a colonial institution and a resource to remedy environmental ills of colonisation? What does repatriation mean in the context of botanical archives? And whose are the hidden hands that built this continent’s oldest settler scientific institution?

How did hearing Samuel Becket say ‘fuck it’ on a scratchy tape kickstart a multi-doctoral author’s archive addiction? In this episode, Yves and Clare talk to Dr (Dr) Matthew Lamb about his colossal biography of colossus intellect, activist, journalist, novelist, publisher and archivist, Frank Moorhouse. How does a biographer navigate a living subject, especially when that person is a self-proclaimed chameleon? Do the personal archives of such a protean figure help or hinder truth-telling about a man who urged: ‘when the facts conflict with the legend, print the legend’. And where does responsibility lie when your subject commands ‘make it salacious’—but also requires discretion about his sexuality and gender?

In this raw and intimate episode, historian Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson spills the tea on the psychological rollercoaster of archival research: it offered the ‘biggest high’ and also ‘fucked [her] up’. From her formative childhood experiences in Beijing, to stumbling upon a human tooth in a Queensland court file, to reckoning with the human face of anti-Chinese racism, Sophie walks us through the time capsules of human drama she uses to tell the stories of Chinese Australia. What does a former market garden reveal about Chinese and First Nations cooperation? How could language be a technology of resistance for racialised migrants? And why did her ex’s probate records provide a lightbulb moment about migration?

An archival decolonist walks into a colonial institution, and dreams up a whole new paradigm for cultural heritage. Today on Archive Fever, Wiradjuri librarian and museum educator Nathan Sentance illuminates the challenges and possibilities of bringing Indigenous epistemologies and voices into the GLAM sector. Why is it vital to close the gap between First Nations lived experience and the white-dominated written record? How can institutions move away from old models of colonial extraction, and instead build up First Nations collections via authentic collaboration and consent? And why are art and creativity key to making this thing we call ‘decolonisation’ actually happen?

What does it feel like to be a young, urban, Jewish post-war migrant woman who grabs a camera and walks into the Australian desert, only to emerge 50 years later with an intimate archive of a civil rights movement? In this very special episode, Yves and Clare are joined by legendary octogenarian photographer Juno Gemes to discuss her lifelong pursuit of creativity, community, independence and social justice. hy did Juno follow in the footsteps of Richard Avendon and not James Baldwin? What role does photography play in the political and artistic pursuit of truth-telling? Can landscape be a portrait? And why is living in an archive both a privilege and a responsibility?

Loot: to plunder or steal—an English word itself looted from the Hindi word lūṭ. To celebrate the launch of season 7, the inimitable Scottish-born historian William Dalrymple spills on the beans on the colonial loot that made modern Britain—and which today forms an archive of violence and extraction. Never one to shy away from the underside of history, William takes us into murky terrain: from the dust and sweat of archaeological digs, to his own family’s imperial villainy, to the deep antiquity and current genocide of the Palestinian people. Why did an underground tunnel turn teenage William into an archive addict? How did a tiny jade bead from India end up in a Viking charnel house in Scotland—and what does that tell us about histories of trade and colonisation? And why have we forgotten that ancient Gaza was once famous for sweet wine and erotic poetry?

Clare and Matt speak to historian, author and fellow podcaster Yves Rees, author of the new book ‘Travelling to Tomorrow The modern women who sparked Australia’s romance with America’ (UNSW Press).

Don your rainbows (and beards) and get ready for the lavender haze of Australian history: Danielle Scrimshaw, author of She and Her Pretty Friend: The Hidden History of Australian Women Who Love Women (Ultimo, 2023), is in the studio to offer a queer eye for the straight historian. Why is queer history so important for the LGBTQIA+ community in the present? Can archive fever spark the fires of romance? And how can we uncover queer lives in heteronormative archives—is the answer ‘speculation as method’?

It’s complete carnage as Clare and Yves attempt to wrangle the phenomenon that is journalist, editor, historian, screenwriter, novelist and award-winning author Mark Dapin into the Archive Fever hot seat to discuss his latest venture in investigative crime writing, Carnage. We talk about growing up Jewish and working-class in a British army town, the stratified landscape of male violence, The Troubles, Chinese restaurants, what happens when your archives can shoot you in the knees and why researching true crime is the archival equivalent of crack cocaine. A wild and hilarious ride.