The Australian Register

“The Australian Register includes some of Australia’s most significant, confronting and fascinating archival content. To read the inscriptions is to be reminded of the diverse and complex experience of the peoples of this land, including the Indigenous and colonised, explorers and settlers, convicts transported across vast oceans and Pacific Islanders trafficked across the seas to labour in Queensland. We also learn about different groups of workers, who mobilised to win recognition of their rights to better wages and working conditions and of women of different backgrounds, who campaigned to win basic political rights, to vote and stand for election to the national parliament.” Professor Marilyn Lake, Patron of the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Committee


In 2015 the UNESCO Memory of the World Australian Register achieved the milestone of 50 inscriptions since its inception in 2001. This book celebrates this milestone, describes the inscriptions already on the Register, and encourages further inscriptions, especially from hitherto unrepresented areas of Australian documentary heritage.