Public History Review Vol. 28, 2021 © 2021 by the author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/), allowing third parties to copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and to remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially, provided the original work is properly cited and states its license. Citation: Lindsey, K. 2021. ‘Remembering Aesi’: Women’s History, Dialogical Memorials and Sydney’s Statuary. Public History Review, 28, 1–16. http:// dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj. v28i0.7760 ISSN 1833- 4989 | Published by UTS ePRESS | https://epress. lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index. php/phrj ‘Remembering Aesi’: Women’s History, Dialogical Memorials and Sydney’s Statuary Kiera Lindsey DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7760 When Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside (1831-1867) became the first native-born artist to leave Australia to train as an artist in mid 1855, she did so with the explicit intention of returning home to fresco the public buildings of Sydney with the ‘future history’ of her country.1 Her vision was not only explicitly republican and public but also extended to statues. Writing to her ’sincere friend’, the controversial pastor and politician, Dr John Dunmore Lang (1799- 1878), while living in Rome a few years later, Ironside expressed her desire to one day see him in ‘statued marble somewhere on the coasts of the city’. For there, she enthused, her ‘Patriot Father’ would be ‘hailed’ as he so ‘fully and richly deserved’.2 Although Aesi, as she preferred to be known, left no directions about how she wished to be memorialised, there is much to suggest that the woman Sir Charles Nicholson (1808-1903) once described as ‘the founder and acknowledged mistress of Art in the Southern hemisphere’, was also keen to occupy her own ‘conspicuous niche in the colonial Valhalla’.3 There were certainly many others who deemed her worthy of such memorialisation. In addition to winning colonial and international awards for her art, Queen Victoria’s favourite sculptor, John Gibson, was convinced that the three paintings she displayed at the 1862 London International Exhibition would ‘smash’ the works of the famous Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood member, William Holman Hunt, ‘out of the park’.4 Others were so taken by Aesi’s ‘genius’, that they composed poetry and hosted London soirees in her honour.5 For several decades after her death in 1867, newspaper articles episodically asserted that something should be done to acknowledge the status of ‘Sydney’s fairest daughter’ as a courageous female pioneer and patriot, whose republican poetry had been frequently published in the People’s Advocate, and whose ‘exquisitely executed’ art had been purchased by many Eminent Victorians, including the Prince of Wales.6 In addition to Stephen Brunton’s poem which declared her the ‘new born delight of the Ransomed and Free’, several articles to this effect were published during the late Victorian era, at a time, which Jess Moody associates with the development of a particular type of memory culture that was to inspire many of the now contentious statues in Sydney’s public sphere.7 And yet, while Aesi’s male contemporaries and fellow republicans, Dr Lang, Daniel Deniehy (1828-1865) and William Bede Dalley (1831-1888), were each commemorated in DECLARATION OF CONFLICTING INTEREST The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. FUNDING The author(s) received no  financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. 1 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7760 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7760 http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7760 https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj https://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/journals/index.php/phrj http://dx.doi.org/10.5130/phrj.v28i0.7760 stone at this time, nothing was done to acknowledge the fact that Aesi devoted her life, as she once declared, to not only ‘elevating her sex’ but also ‘hoisting the colours of her country’ abroad.8 Having now spent more than six years working with her artwork, poetry, letters and realia I have had plenty of time to consider how we might address the gender bias of colonial statuary by remembering Aesi.9 And yet, as a group of British historians recently observed in their discussion about the intersections between public history and women’s history, there are now numerous challenges associated with putting anyone upon a public pedestal. 10 This is particularly so for a nineteenth-century colonial woman who not only shared many of the social privileges and ideological limitations of her age, but, as a passionate patriot, was also an enthusiastic participant in Australia’s colonial project. Such contexts mean that in contrast to the sort of celebratory statuary that was produced by and for her nineteenth-century contemporaries, any monument dedicated to remembering Aesi must now grapple with her ambivalent status as someone who was not only a nineteenth-century woman and artist but also a colonial subject. Her position as a member of the ‘Rising Generation’, ‘native-born’ or ‘Currency’ (people of European ancestry born in the colony), also requires careful consideration, for, as historians John Molony and Ben Jones and myself have elsewhere noted, this demographic of colonial society wrestled with the ‘double bind’ of being both ‘the coloniser and the colonised’ in ways that were often expressed in a strident forms of colonial patriotism, the strains of which can still be detected in the more parochial expressions of contemporary Australian nationalism.11 ‘Addie Ironsides [sic] taken a short time before her death, 1867’ (SLNSW Mitchell Ironside Family Papers, MSS 272/1/357, 15-19) Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20212 But should a woman who negotiated the gender limitations of her age in such idiosyncratic and intriguing ways be denied all public recognition because she was also a product of her time? Such neglect risks perpetuating not only the gender biases of her age but also a distorted perspective of the past that also Dr Lang’s statue is located at Wynyard Square, where he delivered many public orations (photograph by Peter F Williams). Daniel Deniehy’s statue is located within a niche of the Department of Lands building in recognition of his legislative contribution to the 1860 Land Act (photograph by Peter Murphy). Both were erected in the final decades of the nineteenth century. William Bede Dally’s memorial, installed in Hyde Park North in 1898 (State Library of NSW) Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20213 https://monumentaustralia.org.au/themes/people/religion/display/23214-reverend-john-dunmore-lang- https://archives.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/nodes/view/573810?keywords= deny the public an opportunity to not only celebrate new heroes but also wrestle with complex questions associated with who, how and why we remember and forget. In this article I therefore want to consider how a contemporary monument dedicated to Aesi might be designed to not only ‘talk back’ to the triumphalist individualism, male heroism and scientific reason which infuses the nineteenth-century statues of her hometown, but also ‘converse’ with more recent acts of history making in that public sphere. To do so I engage with a definition of ‘dialogical memorial’ offered by Brad West in his analysis of the World War One monuments on the Turkish peninsula of Gallipoli.12 West’s definition provides a useful way of exploring monuments exist in dialogue with one another when they are in their geographical proximity and as such invites consideration about how Aesi’s monument might dialogue with not only the Sydney statues of her contemporaries but also more recent works such as the Pioneer Women’s Memorial, which is situated in the Jessie Street Gardens in Sydney, and the ‘Four Season’ statues, three of which adorn the Palace Gardens Steps of Sydney’s Botanic Gardens, and were shipped from Rome in 1883 after the Australian-born sculptor, Charles Francis Summers, followed Aesi’s footsteps there. There is also that statue of Henry Lawson on the Art Gallery Road not far from where I recommend situating her monument.13 While she was an early and less celebrated native-born republican poet than Lawson, he has since been criticised for the strains of overt racism and misogyny which permeated both his radical nationalism and writing.14 Could a monument to Aesi help to destabilise some of the impulses celebrated in Lawson’s statue, perhaps by placing such celebrated colonial patriotism in the broader context of the imperial project? Are there ways to also gesture to other more recent and abstract works such as ‘Bara’, the monument by Judy Watson on the Precinct Law of the Botanic Gardens which reimagines the ancient gathering spaces of the Eora by referencing the fishhooks crafted and used by Gadigal women for thousands of generations? Here I offer something of an experimental artist brief for a twenty-first century memorial that strives to represent this nineteenth-century woman in more complex and nuanced ways which self-consciously situate it in dialogue with other acts of history-making in Sydney’s public places. Combining Mikhail Bakhtin’s theories of the dialogical with Jürgen Habermas’s understanding of the public sphere as a zone where the central value system of a society is always being ‘emotionally debated and ritually contested’, Brad West argues that dialogical memorials provide a potent way of ‘anchoring new historical understandings to a physical environment’.15 Recalling and reimagining different histories, these works have the potential, West argues, to fundamentally ‘alter the stage on which history is narrated and performed’, and in so doing, allow for a new and ‘greater sharing of a sacred space’.16 Most importantly, by providing opportunities for what he calls ‘doublevoicedness’, dialogical memorials also, he concludes, remind us that history-making is an ongoing practice that always involves debate and contestation and that public memory is therefore an ‘unfinished business’.17 Here I focus upon elements of Aesi’s character and context that might prompt such possibilities. In contrast to the familiar figure of the individual hero, which we associate with the statuary of Aesi’s age, I suggest a group monument that acknowledges the intimate intergenerational female network which shaped her life and in so doing also ‘re-presents’ – a term coined by the historian Greg Dening – a number of other native born and convict women from the Georgian, Regency and Victorian eras where were particularly influential to her.18 Instead of elevating Aesi upon a plinth, I recommend grounding this monument on Gadigal country and surrounding it with the Australian Wildflowers she painted this the intention of drawing to the millennia-old First Nation uses of these same plants and the extent that her response of belonging to her native land was predicated upon an act of dispossession. By using water to acknowledge both ancient Indigenous cultural practices as well as Aesi’s deep interest in ‘scrying’ crystal balls, I also suggest that this monument might be able to challenge the hyper-masculine rational ideologies that are infuse most of Sydney’s nineteenth-century statues and which represent a set of ideologies that were so integral in the denigration of ancient forms of knowing associated with both the so-called native Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20214 and primitive, and the feminine and irrational. And finally, by situating Aesi’s monument in the Outer Domain (behind the New South Wales Art Gallery in Sydney’s Botanic Gardens and to the east of the Yurong Pennisula, near Woolloomooloo Bay), in an area where she boldly dared to defy gender conventions and assume centre stage before a large male audience in a flamboyant moment of her own assertive and theatrical history-making, this memorial might also assume the power to not only speak to these other works, but also for itself and in ways, as West suggests, that can ‘alter the stage on which history is narrated and performed’. Infusing the Feminine While such a monument can help to address the ongoing gender imbalance of public statuary in Aesi’s hometown in ways that shed fresh light upon the lives of other colonial women, it must now do more than celebrate individual achievements in the ways that Aesi probably envisioned for Dr Lang and herself. Fortunately, her life presents us with multiple opportunities to do so. But first, a caveat. While Aesi’s artwork was admired by many contemporaries when it was exhibited at international exhibitions in Paris, London and Dublin, it is unlikely to easily appeal to contemporary tastes.19 Nor are her artistic achievements what I consider most interesting about her life. Instead, while some attention has been given to her best-known works, I have been drawn to the incomplete sketches she produced of dreams, angels and visions which she probably composed in an exalted even trance-like state while consulting a crystal ball. Both her diary and poetry is punctuated with references to ecstatic moments which she experienced while learning to see through ‘closed lid spirit-eyes’ until the ‘soul words of song’ ‘gushed forth’ with ‘wild impassioned zeal’. 20 Together such fragments offer tantalising glimpses into Aesi’s spiritual experiences as a mystic and medium and also offer a new insight into colonial republicanism which suggests these ideas were not only stimulated by the revolutionary events of the age, but also ‘strong, passionate and deep’ spiritual visions which came, as she said, ‘wildly from the heart’.21 While these elements of her character and archive have been previously ignored because of what one group of historians have recently described as the ongoing ‘dogmatic secularism’ of historical practice, I recommend resurfacing these ancient forms of mystical knowing so that her monument can ‘talk back’ to the hyper rationalism of Sydney’s nineteenth-century statuary. 22 For example, by depicting Aesi as an explorer, albeit of ancient forms of knowing associated with the interior world of intuition and imagination rather the naval navigation or geographical interiors of the continent, this public work might stimulate some reflection about different modalities of discovery. In contrast to that now highly contested statue of James Cook in Hyde Park, which shows him with one arm raised aloft, and the other holding a telescope, Aesi could be depicted in deep in communion with ‘the celestial spheres’ or scrying a crystal ball.23 Depicting Aesi thus could draw attention to the way men of scientific reason from this period were prone to impose false binaries – rational/irrational, male/female – upon the world in ways that allowed several male colleagues to dismiss Aesi for being a ‘wild, impulsive and (often) irrational creature’.24 Thus her monument could insist that such mystical interests represent an equally valid, though repeatedly denigrated form of thinking and being that was to become of increasing significance to many colonists in the latter portion of the nineteenth-century. As themes of failure and disappointment marked Aesi professional life her memorial could also be designed to stimulate reflection about artistic struggle in ways that could counter the tropes of heroic triumph which suffuse these same nineteenth-century statues.25 While Aesi was known for putting ‘her hand to the plough’ and working up to ‘fourteen hours a day’ in her studio, she never become ‘the founder and acknowledged mistress of Art in the Southern hemisphere’, as she hoped.26 She was also, the records suggest, particularly disappointed that she never secured official colonial patronage.27 Nor did she ever live to see the people of her ‘wondrous continent’ shirk off ‘the monarchies of old’ to become ‘a republic of Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20215 true nobles’, as she envisioned in her poems.28 Instead, her life and convictions are indicative of what one biographer described as a particularly ‘luminous moment’ in the early 1850s; when a set of political, social and artistic ideals she and other male contemporaries espoused, ignited great, but short-lived excitement. As such, the act of Remembering Aesi provides us with an opportunity to contemplate ‘the still fluid context’ in which all historical actors live as well as the themes of failure that are often suppressed in such statuary.29 Who? Aesi’s archival remains include more than a hundred letters, artwork of diverse mediums and subjects as well as an array of realia which offer unique insight into both her life and that of a demographic of Sydney- based native-born women to which she belonged, and who have received little historical attention.30 In contrast to the dearth of historical sources associated with many nineteenth-century women, Aesi’s archive also contains letters and portraits of previously little-known colonial women and as such allow us to see and hear those who were often rendered invisible by the gender bias of that age. There is, for example, a portrait which was executed in the late 1830s of Adelaide’s grandmother, Mary Redman (nee George) who was transported for forgery and most likely, the first person to teach Aesi to paint.31 This portrait is of a convict woman who, like many others, recovered from her infamy to become a respected wife, mother and property owner. Incorporating Mary Redman into Aesi’s monument helps to acknowledge the contributions such women made both to their families and colonial society.32 Aesi also produced two works of her mother, Martha Rebecca Ironside (1814-1869) who separated from her husband in 1834, when Aesi was three years old. Martha had the temerity to raise her daughter as a single parent in the fraught social and economic climate of colonial Sydney. She also secured the resources that allowed the two women to travel to Europe unchaperoned, so that Aesi could undertake her training. Ever the idealistic romantic, Aesi conceived of their ten-year artistic exile as a pilgrimage of art and produced a work entitled ‘The Pilgrim of Art’, which celebrated mother and daughter accordingly. Sadly, soon after that much-admired work was returned to Sydney, it was stored in ‘a sort of three-sided shed’ where it eventually deteriorated beyond repair. 33 As all that now remains of that work is a black and white photograph (below), referencing this in the design of the figures could also draw attention to how previous prejudices have deprived us of women’s stories and left us with a distorted perspective of the past. Aesi’s archive also includes a portrait of Louisa Australia Blaxland, another native-born woman who supported Aesi and shared her younger friend’s passion for Australian wildflowers.34 Including Blaxland in this work reminds us that intergenerational friendships often flourished across both class and religion divisions within colonial society. Aesi’s most intimate friendship was however with another native-born woman named Caroline Clark, with whom she exchanged three now almost illegible cross-hatched letters.35 Writing from Rome in 1862, Aesi described how she was depicting her friend’s ‘sweet face’ in her oil painting, The Marriage of Cana, to which Clark responded enthusiastically, declaring that she was ‘wonderfully ambitious’ to support her friend ‘hoist the colours of our dear old country abroad’.36 Five years before Aesi and her mother left for Europe, both women put their names to a petition that was signed by more than nine thousand ‘female inhabitants of Sydney’ in 1850.37 Like many colonists, these women were incensed by Earl Grey’s repeated attempts to reinstate convict transportation in New South Wales and they addressed their concerns directly to Queen Victoria, requesting that she legally ratify New South Wales as a free society so that it could never again be downgraded to a penal colony. This bold declaration now represents the first female-only petition in Australia and proves that the colony’s ‘Sister Politicians’ were not only actively engaged in local politics but willing and able to speak for themselves.38 Incorporating some element of this document into Aesi’s monument would complicate assumptions that Victorian women were happily confined to the private sphere as domestic angels and also confirm that Aesi’s political passions were representative rather than exceptional. Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20216 By incorporating the particularities of these five colonial women into the monument, this work would offer a stark contrast to the ‘great man of history’ theory which was espoused by nineteenth-century historian, Thomas Carlyle (who Aesi may have met when she was training with Ruskin in 1865) and which infuses many of the statues in her hometown.39 We might imagine these five women sitting together on the Yurong peninsula of their much loved ‘free sea city of Sydney’ as Aesi regales them with the speech she gave before a large public gathering just weeks before she and Martha left the colony forever. Where and Why? On a late winter afternoon in mid-June 1855, twenty-three-year-old Aesi took to a wind blasted rise of the Outer Domain to present an ‘elegant and elaborate specimen of needlework’ to the colony’s first Volunteer Corps.40 Although the weather was apparently unfavourable, the one hundred members of ‘the Artillery, Cavalry and Rifles’, which had been recently formed in response to the Crimea War, assembled on the sodden parade grounds. Soon after the official signal was given, Aesi stepped forward to address the troops. ‘Soldiers and countrymen!’ she called. ‘On the eve of leaving my native land for a season to study the great models of European art in the cities of the Old World, I, a devoted daughter of Australia, place into your hands a memorial of my devoted attachment to the land of my nativity.’41 According to the colonial newspapers, this ‘very interesting and novel ceremony’, concluded with ‘three hearty cheers’ from the troops.42 Days later a poem in honour of her presentation was published in the Sydney Morning Herald and for years afterwards, Aesi’s ‘tasteful and elegant piece of workmanship’ was proudly flown by the troops and her gesture imitated by other women elsewhere in the colonies.43 And yet some time during the end of Above: Likely a portrait of Mary Redman, Adelaide Ironside’s grandmother by Richard Reed Jnr (1765– 1829) Below: Adelaide Ironside, ‘MRI From Life’ (both Private Collection) Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20217 the nineteenth century, Aesi’s banner disappeared and, despite the efforts of several descendants, remains missing.44 Indeed, like The Pilgrim of Art, this work is probably long-since destroyed. Thankfully there are a few contemporary sketches of the Volunteer Troops in review that now evoke something of that occasion. Both images indicate that ‘reviewing of the troops’ typically attracted considerable crowds, including, as we see in the first image, Aboriginal people, who are sitting in the front row beside two boys wearing Cabbage-tree hats, the well-recognised emblem of native-born men.45 By incorporating elements of this image into Aesi’s monument it might be possible to not only dramatize this important moment of her life but also stimulate reflection about relations between the traditional owners of the land and the native-born who adopted the term ‘native’ to assert their primacy over both the original Clockwise: Adelaide Ironside, The Pilgrim of Art, (1859), now destroyed; Adelaide Ironside, ‘Louisa Australia Blaxland’ Benalla Art Gallery, nd; Adelaide Ironside, a small detail depicting Caroline Clark from The Marriage of Cana, 1861 (reworked 1863) Art Gallery of NSW. Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20218 inhabitants and immigrants? In so doing consideration would also be prompted about Aesi’s complex status as agent of the colonial project in ways that might also stimulate reflection about the racial assumptions inherent in both native-born patriotism and contemporary Australian nationalism. Review of the NSW Volunteer Corp in front of Government House, rather than the Outer Domaine (Daniel Solander Library database) Edmund Thomas’s image of the Volunteer Corp amassing in the Outer Domain earlier that year provides a sense of the drama of the occasion. ‘The Grand Review and Inspection of the Regular and Volunteer Troops in the Outer Domain’ (Illustrated Sydney News, 10 Mar 1855, 10) Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 20219 Although reports differ about whether this banner was made of blue or white silk, all concur that it included the initials – AESI – and a centrepiece comprising four ‘exquisitely embroidered representations of the most beautiful Indigenous Australian wildflowers’.46 While we will probably never know which flowers Aesi chose to depict on her banner, it is likely these were inspired by the forty-three Australian wildflower watercolour illustrations she exhibited at the Australian Museum in December 1854.47 In addition to being the only woman to receive a Silver Medal for her artwork on this occasion, Aesi’s wildflowers were so admired for their ‘vivid Titian-like colouring’ and ‘delicacy of feeling’ that they were selected to form part of the first colonial display at an International Exhibition, the 1856 Paris Universal Exhibition (1855).48 When she and Martha followed her collection to France and her wildflowers received further accolades, Aesi took to styling herself as ‘Il Fiore d’Australia’ – from the Italian, ‘the Australian Flower’ or ‘Flower from Australia’.49 While such elements immediately invite a romantic rendering of Aesi in keeping with familiar tropes of nineteenth-century femininity which valorise female beauty and motherhood, it is worth remembering that Aesi never married, nor had children and was apparently little interested in her own appearance. Instead of including flowers that reinforce such well-known stereotypes, it might be provocative to chose specimens from her collection such as the bristly native heath and grey spider grevillea which are not only plain and prickly, but even peculiar. Throughout the eleven years Aesi lived in Rome, she trained with acclaimed artists and associated with other ‘jolly female bachelors’ who were likewise keen to escape the strictures of their societies and enjoy greater artistic and personal liberty on the continent.50 During that time she secured permission from Pope Pius IX to learn the difficult art of fresco from a community of reclusive monks and also made a strong impression upon her contemporaries.51 While the poet, Robert Browning, was suspicious of what he referred to as ‘Miss Iremonger’s wild and enthusiastic ways’, others were deeply struck by her ‘heightened sensibility’.52 Browning’s antagonism was probably provoked by Aesi’s celebrated ‘faculty with crystal balls’.53 Indeed, one of Browning’s expatriate friends even compared the ‘paintings of the imagination’ which she produced for him while staring into one of his crystals, with the works of his old friend, William Blake.54 Her reputation as a medium may have also helped Aesi to lubricate her connections with the President of the Royal Academy, Sir Charles Eastlake, and his adversary, the celebrated art critic John Ruskin.55 Throughout this period Aesi also became a close acquaintance of Sir James Clark, who was then best known as Queen Victoria’s physician but also remembered as the doctor who tended to the poet John Keats during his final days in Rome in 1821.56 Sir James was generous with medical advice when Aesi began to show symptoms of ‘rapid consumption’ and then became too ill to hold a paint brush.57 Heeding his warning, she and Martha left London for Rome in late 1866, intending to prepare for their long-awaited return to ‘the beautiful shores’ of their ‘native land’.58 As Aesi told Dr Lang in what was to be her last surviving letter, she and Martha were desperate to return home, hoping that there ‘among the mimosa’ she might ‘regain a portion of her health and power’ and finally fulfil her ambitions.59 Before the Ironsides left London for Rome, Louisa Blaxland helped Aesi secure a publisher for her forty- three Australian Wildflowers.60 An agreement was reached for the production of a ‘gilt trimmed folio’ which required a number of subscriptions at £3 3s each. Friends rallied to the cause, but, before these terms were met, Aesi, then aged thirty-six, died of tuberculosis. Deeply grieving Martha decided to have her daughter’s remains embalmed so that she could return to London, secure the outstanding subscriptions and have her daughter’s wildflowers published before sailing home to bury her ‘adored child’ in Sydney.61 However, after ‘traipsing the streets’ for more than a year as she tried to drum up the outstanding commitments, Martha also became ill.62 And when the publisher declared bankruptcy she too succumbed to tuberculosis.63 The two women were then buried together in London’s West Norwood Cemetery and while the majority of Aesi’s artworks were eventually returned to Sydney, her wildflower watercolours were scattered to the winds.64 Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202110 Indeed, having scouring of international and national sources I have found only a handful of newspaper descriptions, one or two possible copies and the original subscription pamphlet, which fortunately lists each specimens she painted. This document confirms that with one exception, these flowers were from New South Wales and mostly local to Sydney.65 Australian Wild Flowers Painted by the Late Miss Adelaide E. Ironside, 1866 (Courtesy State Library of New South Wales) What? As Christine Yeats suggests in her contribution in this collection, one way to counter the imperiousness of nineteenth-century statues is to quite literally remove them from their pedestals.66 It would suit Aesi’s republican and democratic politics if, instead of towering above us on a plinth like the statues of her republican colleagues, her monument was set at ground level. I imagine Mary and Martha, Louisa and Caroline, picnicking with Aesi on a portion of the Yurong peninsula where she presented her banner to the Voluntary Corps in 1855, perhaps as Aesi regales them with her poetry or rehearses for the speech she is planning to give when she presents her banner. Consciously grounding this monument on Gadigal country will also help, as Tony Ballantyne notes in his discussion of the Puhi Kai Iti/Cook Landing Site, to acknowledge the ‘deeper indigenous perspectives’ and connections with that particular geography.67 Surrounding the monuemnt with Aesi’s wildflowers, could help to acknowledge the ancient knowledges of the Eora people who used these plants for numerous functions. Thus far, for example, my consultation with elders has revealed that the bloom of Warra Garria, Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202111 grey spider grevillea, indicated when it was time to hunt for shellfish, while the purple flowers of the Warraburra, false sarsaparilla, signalled when it was time to fish for fat bream in the saltwater streams.68 The thorny mountain devil, lambertia formosa, which Aesi also painted, was one of many that provided sustenance for it released a sweet honey nectar that made for a refreshing energy drink when it was swished in water. 69 In contrast, the Nirra Nirra or Pokulbi, also known as Flax Lily or Dianella, produced a purple berry that was eaten and used for dying baskets. Aesi also painted the Warada (waratah) which is sacred to numerous Aboriginal groups, and only ever used for special ceremonies.70 By collaborating with Indigenous experts some off these previously denigrated ancient cultural practices could be restored to Country in ways that simultaneously raise awareness about ancient custodianship of the land and highlight Aesi’s problematic status in the colonial project. Such gestures might also place her monument in dialogue with other Indigenous sculptures such as Bara, by First Nation’s artist Judy Watson which stands near Bennelong Point to remind us of the fishhooks that Gadigal women made and used for thousands of generations.71 Selected lines from Aesi’s poems could also be incorporated into her monument in graphic and audio mediums to capture something of her voice and reminds us that there were female republican poets well before Henry Lawson. 72 The monument might also include a ‘scrying pool’ that uses the reflective and refracting effects of water to invite others to explore Aesi’s esoteric interests in ways that put her monument in conversation with other water-based sculptures throughout Sydney such as Swellstone, which was designed by Lucy Bleach in Ultimo and acknowledges this area as one where the Gadigal and local settlers contested the local water supplies.73 And finally, as both Aesi and Martha were buried together in a distant grave in London, this monument could serve to symbolically return both women to Sydney, so they can finally rest, surrounded by the wildflowers that first compelled them upon their pilgrimage.74 Conclusion While a monument depicting a party of colonial women picnicking on the Yurong peninsula, is a far cry from the furious urgency of the Black Lives Matter protests and statue wars of 2020, I wanted to develop this explorative artist’s brief to experiment with some of the ideas proposed by other contributors regarding the way we might design contemporary monuments to counter acts of memorialisation that have become distressing. To do so, I identified several elements of Aesi’s character and context that might ‘talk back’ to the dogmatic secularism of that problematic statuary and converse with more recent form of history-making within Sydney’s public sphere. I also suggested that situating Aesi’s monument at a location where she once performed her own highly theatrical history-making in ways that challenged many of the gender stereotypes of her age might ensure that her monument speaks on its own terms and in ways that address the ongoing under representation of colonial women in Sydney’s statuary. There are certainly many challenges associated with putting anyone on a public pedestal, let alone a nineteenth-century woman who was an energetic participant in Australia’s colonial project. Nonetheless, by engaging with contemporary ideas of memorialisation outlined in this special issue it may be possible to counter the triumphalist individualism and male heroism of Sydney’s statuary in ways that further trouble celebratory narratives regarding the colonial project and its dispossession of Australia’s First Nation people. In so doing, a public memorial dedicated to Remembering Aesi can help to ‘alter the stage’ upon which colonial history is ‘narrated and performed’ within the city of Sydney. Indeed, by grounding the figures of those five women on Gadigal country, and surrounding them with Indigenous wildflowers as well as a water features that gesture to multiple forms of ancient knowledge, this work is likely to encourage public engagement. Thus, ‘the wild and enthusiastic’ Aesi might even enjoy the last laugh, for while the remote statues of her republican contemporaries now tower above us in ways that render them increasingly ‘on-the- nose’, her monument would be tactile and playful and therefore probably also much more memorable. Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202112 Acknowledgements This research has been funded by the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Research Award, DE180100379, ‘Historical craft, speculative biography and the case of Adelaide Ironside’, 2018–2021. Special thanks to Miguel Garcia, Librarian at the Daniel Solander Library, Sydney Botanic Gardens for his assistance and encouragement. Endnotes 1. Adelaide Ironside to Dr John Dunmore Lang, 24 October (due to illegibility the date is ambiguous and could be Decem- ber) 1859, Rome, SL NSW Mitchell John Dunmore Lang Papers vol 9 ML A2229/203. ‘Native-born’ was the term then used to describe Europeans born in the colony. The political implications of this are discussed throughout. See also footnote 11. 2. ibid. 3. The phrase about ‘a niche in the colonial Valhalla’ is used in ‘Dr Lang’, Colonial Times, Friday 31 May 1850, p2; Charles Nicholson to Adelaide Ironside, 10 January 1860, ‘Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside, Correspondence mainly letters received’. ML MS 272/188 CY Reel 1036. When Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside was fourteen years old, she added ‘Scott’ to her middle name and coined the nickname ‘AESI’. Thereafter she signed much of her artwork accordingly and many letters refer to her as ‘Miss I’, ‘Aei’ and ‘Aezi’ as well as Aesi. See, for example, Wilhelmina Lang, 9 February 1853, SL NSW ML Lang Papers vol 9 ML A2229/203. 4. Adelaide Ironside to Caroline Clark, 7 February 1862, Adelaide Eliza Scott Ironside, Correspondence, ML MS 272/188/97. 5. Robert Browning to Wiliam Wetmor Story and his wife Emelyn Edlredge, 19 March 1862, in Gertrude Reese Hudson, Browning to his American Friends: Letters between the Brownings, the Storys and James Russell Lowe 1841-1900, Bowes and Bowes, London, 1965, p104. See also ‘The Pilgrim of Art’, a poem composed by Francesco Giocchieri in 1863 in honour of her inclusion within the Roman Academy of Quirites. 6. J. Brunton Stephens, ‘Adelaide Ironside’, Marlborough Chronicle, 20 May 1873, p4; Alciphron Jones, ‘Artidotes: Adelaide Ironside’, Sydney Mail, Saturday 26 March 1881, p488; ‘The Fairest Daughter of Sydney: Adelaide Ironside, Catholic Press, 3 February 1900, p4. 7. Jess Moody, ‘Part 1: Statue Wars: Vandalism or Vindication and what to do with the empty plinth?’, History Council of NSW Webinar History Effect Series, 20 July 2020. 8. Both terms were used by Ironside in her letters to Caroline Clark. See Ironside to Clark, 7 February 1862. In an early letter Clark refers to Ironside’s banner presentation, 30 January 1862 Society of Genealogists 4/12973; Although Ironside’s art is held by several state and regional galleries there is no publication monument dedicated to her. There is a plaque dedicated to ‘pioneering female artist’, Adelaide Ironside on the corner of Miller and McLaren Street in North Sydney, where she lived from 1848 to 1853 at Burton’s Lodge, which her father rented for his estranged wife and child from Sir Wil- liam Westbrooke Burton. See ‘North Sydney, Historical Plaques Walk 2, Cammeray to Lavender Bay’, published by North Sydney Heritage Centre, Miller Street, nd. 9. Archives associated with Adelaide Ironside are in State Library of New South Wales’s Mitchell Library: ML A1826, PXA1759, MSS 272/1 & PA1759 CY2620 and the Society of Australian Genealogists (4/12973). Other relevant records are located in the New South Wales’ State Records. In Australia, Ironside’s artwork is held in the National Gallery of Australia, Museum of Tasmania, Newcastle Regional Art Gallery and Benalla Regional Art Gallery. Her descendants have corresp., art and realia. 10. ‘The Big Questions of Women’s History, History Extra Podcast, 8 March 2021. Participants Maggie Andrews, chair of the Women’s History Network; Stella Dadzie, author of A Kick in the Belly: Women, Slavery and Resistance, Helen McCarthy, author of Double Lives: A History of Working Motherhood and Nicola Phillips, director of the Bedford Centre for the History of Women and Gender. https://www.historyextra.com/period/21st-century/big-questions-womens-history-panel-2021- podcast/. 11. Benjamin T. Jones, ‘Currency Culture: Australian Identity and Nationalism in New South Wales before the Gold Rushes’, Australian Historical Studies, vol 48, no 1, 2017, pp68-85 https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2016.1250789; Kiera Lindsey, ‘Sydney 1844: Lanty O’Liffey and the Currency Lass’, Visual Material and Print Culture in nineteenth century Ireland. Editors Ciara Breathnach and Catherine Lawless, Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2010); John Molony, The Native Born: The First White Australians, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2000, pp1-38. 12. Brad West, ‘Dialogical Memorialization, International Travel and the Public Sphere: A Cultural Sociology of Com- memoration and Tourism at the First World War Gallipoli Battlefields’, Tourist Studies, vol 10, no 3, 2010, pp209-225; 210. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797611407756 13. Henry Lawson’s statue is located on Mrs Macquarie’s Road in the Sydney Botanic Gardens and was commissioned in 1927, five years after his death and officially dedicated in 1931. 14. Although at times seen as contentious, readings emphasising Lawson’s bigotry emerged across the 1970s and 1980s, with notable examples including Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia: An Argument Concerning The Social Origins of Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202113 https://www.historyextra.com/period/21st-century/big-questions-womens-history-panel-2021-podcast/ https://www.historyextra.com/period/21st-century/big-questions-womens-history-panel-2021-podcast/ https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2016.1250789 https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797611407756 Australian Radicalism and Nationalism, rev ed. Penguin, Ringwood, 1976, pp104-16 and Xavier Pons, ‘Henry Lawson and the Australian Racism’, Anglistik & Englischunterricht 16, 1982, pp73-83. Feminist scholarship of the period placed new emphasis upon the masculinist nature of ‘the bush’, with Miriam Dixon describing Lawson as representative of a largely misogynist tradition. See Miriam Dixon, The Real Matilda: Woman and Identity in Australia, 1788 to the Present, rev ed, Penguin, Sydney, 1984, pp11-12. For a contemporary reading of Lawson’s racism and xenophobia, see Manu Samriti Chander, Brown Romantics: Poetry and Nationalism in the Global Nineteenth Century, Bucknell University Press, Lewisburg, PA, 2017, pp83-85; 109-110. For recent critical commentary on Lawson’s abusive marriage, and its implications for viewing his statue, see Kerrie Davies, A Wife’s Heart: The untold story of Bertha and Henry Lawson, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 2017, pp2-5. 15. West, Dialogical Memorialization, p214. 16. ibid, p216. 17. ibid, Dialogical Memorialization, p221. 18. Greg Dening, Performances, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, p37. 19. Ironside mentions positive reviews received from Sir William Stirling, ‘a classical critic and judge of the highest art’, Adelaide Ironside to Dr John Dunmore Lang, 17 September 1862, London, SL NSW Mitchell John Dunmore Lang Papers vol 9 ML A2229/203. 20. Adelaide Ironside, ‘To One of the Haters of the People’, The People’s Advocate, 4 March 1854, p4; Adelaide Ironside, ‘The Eternity of Hell, The People’s Advocate, 2 April 1853, p8; Adelaide Ironside, ‘Dirge on the Duke of Wellington, The Peo- ple’s Advocate, 26 March 1853, p8; Adelaide Ironside, ‘To Thomas O’Meagher’, The People’s Advocate, 12 March 1853, p8. 21. Adelaide Ironside, ‘Dirge on Leichhardt’, The People’s Advocate, 19 March 1853, p4. 22. Luke Clossey, Kyle Jackson, Brandon Marriott, Andrew Redden, and Karin Velez, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part I: A Challenge’, History Compass, vol 14, no 12, 2016, pp594-602. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12360; Luke Clossey, Kyle Jackson, Brandon Marriott, Andrew Redden. and Karin Velez, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part II: Proposals and Solu- tions’, History Compass, vol 15, no 1, 2017, pp1-9. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12370; Roland Clark, Luke Clossey, Simon Ditchfield, David M Gordon, Arlen Wisenthal and Taymiya R. Zaman, ‘The Unbelieved and Historians, Part III: Responses and Elaborations’, History Compass, vol 15, no 12, 2017, pp1-10. https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12430 23. Elizabeth Barrett Browning to Isa Blagden, 17 September 1857, The Brownings’ Correspondence, 24, pp140-142. 24. Charles Nicholson to Adelaide Ironside, 10 January 1860, ML MSS 272, 188. 25. Martha Ironside to Dr John Lang, 18 June 1867, SL NSW Mitchell Lang Papers vol 9, ML A2229/251. See for example, Alciphron Jones, ‘Artidotes: Adelaide Ironside, Artist, Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 26 March 1881, pp488- 489. 26. Nicholson, op cit. 27. Adelaide Ironside to Dr Lang 17 September 1862, SL NSW Mitchell John Dunmore Lang Papers vol 9, ML A2229/224; Adelaide Ironside to Dr Lang, 25 September 1862, SL NSW Mitchell John Dunmore Lang Papers vol 9, ML A2229/224/232. 28. These phrases are from Ironside’s poem ‘Australia’ which was published over several months in The People’s Advocate, commencing 18 June 1853. 29. Peter Cochrane, ‘Exploring the historical imagination: narrating the shape of things Unknown’, Griffith Review, vol 31, 2011, pp83-97 is quoting Hugh Trevor-Roper, History & imagination, Gerald Duckworth, London, 1981. 30. Kiera Lindsey, The Convict’s Daughter, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2016; Kiera Lindsey, ‘The Convict’s Daughter: Spec- ulations on Biography’, Australian Women’s History Network Blog. Accessed October 10, 2016. http://www.auswhn.org.au/ blog/speculations-on-biography. 31. Slade Private collection. Unknown (possibly Richard Reed Jnr (1796-1862) Thought to be a portrait of Mary Redman, Adelaide Ironside’s grandmother Watercolour on paper 17.3x12.5cm original frame. Reed was a portrait painter based on Pitt Street. No conclusive connect exists between him and Richard Reed the elder. 32. Much has been written about the reputation of convict women as polluted whores. Most notably and in chronological order) Ann Summers, Damned Whores and God’s Police, New South Publishing, Sydney, 1975; Deborah Oxley, Convict maids: the forced migration of women to Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996; Joy Damousi, Depraved and dis- orderly: female convicts, sexuality and gender in colonial Australia, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996 https://doi. org/10.1017/CBO9780511470172; Sian Rees, The floating brothel, Hodder, Sydney, 2001; Babette Smith, A Cargo of women: Susannah Watson and the convicts of the Princess Royal, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 2008. 33. Re Pilgrim of Art, The Art Gallery of New South Wales holds a letter from Martha Ironside’s brother, 21 July 1871, asking them to ‘find room for Miss Ironside’s principal pictures in a suitable position upon the walls’; see also Poulton, pp86-87 citing Margaret Preston, ‘Pioneer Women Artists, in Flora Eldershaw, The Peaceful Army, Arthur McQuilty & Co, Sydney, 1938, p126. 34. There are two letters between the women, the first of which has been overlooked because it was cited as being from ‘Mr Ironside’, Adelaide Ironside to Louise Blaxland, London, 23 August 1866, SL NSW Mitchell-Blaxland Family Papers, MLMSS 9704; Blaxland to Ironside, 26 February 1867, SL NSW Mitchell ML MS 272/1-4. Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202114 https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12360 https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12370 https://doi.org/10.1111/hic3.12430 http://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/speculations-on-biography http://www.auswhn.org.au/blog/speculations-on-biography https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511470172 https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511470172 35. Ironside to Clark, February 7 1862, op cit 36. Clark to Ironside, 30 January 1862, op cit. 37. Parliament of NSW First Legislative Council Petition from Citizens of Sydney on the renewal of transportation. Tabled Wednesday 25 September 1850. (Hyperlink Petition from Citizens of Sydney on the renewal of transportation. 38. Kiera Lindsey, ‘Sydney’s 9189 “sister politicians” who petitioned Queen Victoria’, The Conversation, 18 October 2019. 39. Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History, James Fraser, London, 1841. 40. The Volunteer Corps were first formed in response to colonial fears of a Russian invasion during the Crimean War 1853-1856. ’The Volunteers’, Tasmanian Daily News, 8 August 1855, 1; Sydney Morning Herald, 19 June 1855, p1; ‘Presenta- tion of Colours to the Volunteer Corps’, Sydney Morning Herald, 21 June 1855, p5. 41. ‘New South Wales’, Colonial Times, 3 July 1855, p2. 42. ‘Presentation of Colours to the Volunteer Corps’, People’s Advocate, 23 June 1855, p2; 43. Of the poem see Henry Halloran, ‘On the Presentation of the Banner by Miss Ironside to the United Volunteers’, Sydney Morning Herald, 13 July 1855, p2; On the imitation of this event see ‘Presentation of Camp Colours’, Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 1861, p4; ‘Volunteer Flag’, Illawarra Mercury, 22 November 1870, p3. This article ‘directs attention to the ladies of Wollongong’ regarding the ‘want of company colours’ for their Volunteer Corps. While ‘every company… in the colony have their particular flag or colours… invariably performed by the ladies of different localities where each corps is estab- lished… the first ceremony of that kind’ to take place, the paper notes, was by ‘the late lamented Miss Adelaide E Scott Ironside’. 44. SL NSW ML A1826 Ironside paper and sketches 1863-1921, includes a lengthy exchange between two descendants which are dated from the 1890s. A December 1900 letter to the Sydney Morning Herald presents the reminiscences of George R. Dibbs, a former member of the Volunteer Corps who describes a beautiful blue silk banner created by ‘one of Australia’s most gifted and brilliant daughters’. Despite his belief that Ironside was a great ‘patriot’, Dibbs curiously claims that the banner was motivated by romantic sentiment rather than political Ideals. ‘Early Colonial Volunteers’, Sydney Morn- ing Herald, 20 December 1900, p4. 45. Kiera Lindsey, ‘A Mistress of her Own Consent: The Abduction of Mary Ann Gill, Sydney 1848’, Melbourne Historical Journal, University of Melbourne, December 2009, pp47-70. Kiera Lindsey, ‘Sydney 1844: Lanty O’Liffey & the Currency Lass’, in Ciara Breathnach and Catherine Lawless (eds), Visual Material and Print Culture in nineteenth century Ireland, Four Courts Press, Dublin, 2010. 46. People’s Advocate, 23 June 1855, p2. 47. ‘New South Wales Brach of the Paris Exhibition’, People’s Advocate, Saturday 20 December 1854, p4. 48. Catalogue of the Natural and Industrial Products of New South Wales Exhibited in the Australian Museum by the Paris Exhi- bition Commissioners, Sydney, November 1854. 49. Adelaide Ironside, Commonday Book, Private Collection. 50. The most famous of these was the American sculptress Harriet G. Hosmer who was extremely successful in her pro- fession and notorious for flouting social conventions and conducting her relationships with other women in public. Hosmer was a colleague of Ironside, and perhaps a rival for the attention of the Welsh sculptor, John Gibson, who was the doyen of the expatriate artworld in Rome. See also see Barbara Caine, ‘Introduction La Bella liberta’, Women’s Writing, vol 10, no 2, 2003, pp237-240; Deb Cherry, Beyond the Frame: Feminism and visual culture 1850-1900, Routledge, London, 2000; Ros Pesman, ‘The Italian Renaissance in Australia’, Parergon 14, no 1, 1996, pp223-239. https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.1996.0088; Ros Pesman, ‘In search of professional identity: Adelaide Ironside and Italy’, Women’s Writing, vol 10, no 2, 2003, pp307- 328. 51. While neither the famous poetess, Elizabeth Browning, nor Harriet Hosmer were granted access to see the celebrated frescos of Fra Angelo in St Marco in Florence, Ironside received the Pope’s permission and several letters from the monks of Chapel San Savero in Perugia, indicate she earned their admiration. See for example Bonsiglio, Giovannigualtberto to Adelaide Ironside, 29 October 1858, SL NSW Mitchell Ironside Family Papers, ML A2229/305; Adelaide Ironside to John Dunmore Lang, Rome, August 1861, SL NSW Mitchell Lang Papers vol 9 ML A2229/203; Ironside to Lang, October 1859, op cit. 52. Pesman, ‘Professional Identity’, pp314–315, describes Browning’s attitude to Ironside, citing his letters to Ameri- can sculptor William Wetmore Story, March 19, 1862 (see Hudson, Browning, p104), and Isa Blagden, June 19, 1867 (see McAleer, Dearest Isa, 269); ‘Obituary: Adelaide Ironside’, The Athenaeum, 11 May 1867, pp624-625. 53. Full further discussion about Ironside’s mediumship see Kiera Lindsey, ‘Scrying the Lost Wildflowers of Wee Witchee Wee’, Donna Brien and Kiera Lindsey (eds), Speculative Biography: Experiments, Opportunities & Provocations, Routledge, London, 2021, in press. 54. Seymour Kirkup to Joseph Severn, June 23, 1864, Life and Letters, pp260-261. 55. There are fourteen letters from Sir James Clark to Adelaide Ironside, SL NSW Mitchell Ironside Paper and Sketches A1826. Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202115 https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/RDguCWLV8zfzWEOYhmh5JK?domain=parliament.nsw.gov.au https://doi.org/10.1353/pgn.1996.0088 56. George Whitfield, Beloved Sir James: The life of Sir James Clark, Bart, Physician to Queen Victoria, 1788-1870, unpub- lished gift to Birmingham University YA 2001.A.8333, 2001. 57. Martha Ironside to Lang, London, 18 June 1867, op cit. 58. Adelaide Ironside to Dr Lang, Rome, 10 January 1867, Lang Papers vol 9 ML A2229/203. 59. ibid. 60. Blaxland letters op cit; John D Day to Adelaide Ironside, 18 August 1866, Society of Genealogists, 4/12973. 61. Martha Ironside to Lang, op cit. 62. Laura Wentworth to Thomasina Fisher, 29 January 1869 and 25 March 1869, SL NSW Mitchell-Wentworth Family Papers, ML A868-74. 63. Wentworth to Fisher, 25 March 1869, Wentworth Family Papers, ML A868-74. 64. ‘Fine Art Exhibition: Paintings and Studies of the Late A E Ironside 235 Pitt Street, Sydney Morning Herald, 29 De- cember 1870, p8; ‘Fine Arts Exhibition: Miss Ironside’s Paintings’, Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday 29 March 1871, p5; ‘Removal of Miss Ironside’s Paintings and Work of Art (valued at £5000) to 300 George Street’, Sydney Morning Herald, 1 April 1871, p9. 65. In addition to the consulting the following texts and databases I also interviewed the following re: the Indigenous significance of Ironside’s wildflowers. Texts and Databases: Fran Bodkin, D’harawal: Dreaming Stories, Envirobook, Sussex Inlet, 2013. Originally accessed December 10, 2020. https://dharawalstories.com/stories-about-animals; Alan Fairley and Phillip Moore, Native Plants of the Sydney Region: From Newcastle to Nowra and West to the Dividing Range, Jacana Books, Crows Nest, 2010; Beth Gott and Rod Mason. ‘Ethnobotany of South East Australia’, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, MS 4449; Les Robinson, Field Guide to the Native Plants of Sydney, Kangaroo Press, East Ros- eville, 2003. Interviews: Fran Bodkin (Dharawal Elder), the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mt Annan, 12 March 2020; Peter Cuneo (Manager of the Seedbank), the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mt Annan, 11 March 2020; Lesley Elkan and Catherine Wardrop (botanic illustrators), Sydney Botanic Gardens, 9 December 2019; Lesley Neuhold (horticulturalist), the Australian Botanic Gardens, Mt Annan, 13 March 2020. 66. Christine Yates, ‘Should They Stay or Should they Go?’, in Kiera Lindsey and Mariko Smith (eds), ‘‘The Statue Wars’, Public History Review, June 2021. 67. Ballantyne, ‘Toppling the Past?’. 68. Kiera Lindsey, ‘Indigenous approaches to the past: “Creative histories” at the Hyde Park Barracks, Sydney’, Austral- asian Journal of Popular Culture, vol 9, no 1, March 2020, pp83-102; 94-95. https://doi.org/10.1386/ajpc_00017_1 69. ibid. 70. Bodkin, D’harawal: Dreaming Stories includes one dedicated to the waratah which differs from another told by Aunty Julie Freeman who is a Gorawarl/Jerrawongarla senior cultural knowledge holder. See Youtube, Julie Freeman, 2013, Waratah Creation Story (Online) available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFlNo3Fz_a8 (Accessed 3 May 2021). See also Stories with Aunty Julie Freeman (Online) 2016 available: http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/event/stories-with-aunty- julie-freeman (accessed 3 May 2021).Wiradjuri Kamilaroi artist, Jonathan Jones discusses Freeman’s story of the Waratah in his interview with the author, 23 August 2020. See Kiera Lindsey, Anna Clark, Mariko Smith, Craig Batty, Donna Brien and Rachel Launders, ‘Creative Histories and the Australian Context’, History Australia, forthcoming 2021. 71. Re ‘Bara’ see: https://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/bara/, accessed 12 December 2020. 72. Henry Lawson, ‘Song of the Republic’, The Bulletin, vol 8, no 400, 1 October 1887, p4. Although scholars such as Mark McKenna have attempted to highlight the importance of women to early Australian republicanism, others have elided their contributions to simply present Lawson’s poem as a foundational text. Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788-1996, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, p154; George Williams and David Hume, People Power: The History and Future of the Referendum in Australia, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2010, p181. Some scholars have also articulated the need for Ironside to be placed in republican tradition, with David Headon and Elizabeth Perkins declaring in 1998 that ‘this forgotten republican has to be re-claimed’. David Headon and Elizabeth Perkins (eds), Our First Republicans: John Dunmore Lang, Charles Harpur, Daniel Henry Deniehy: Selected Writings 1840-1860, The Federa- tion Press, Annandale, 1998, p133. 73. Re ‘Swellstone’ see, https://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/swellstone/, accessed 12 December 2020. 74. Adelaide Ironside quoting Martha to Dr Lang, 24 October 1859, op cit. Lindsey Public History Review, Vol. 28, 202116 https://dharawalstories.com/stories-about-animals https://doi.org/10.1386/ajpc_00017_1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFlNo3Fz_a8 http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/event/stories-with-aunty-julie-freeman http://kaldorartprojects.org.au/event/stories-with-aunty-julie-freeman https://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/bara/ https://www.cityartsydney.com.au/artwork/swellstone/