Research for this paper was prompted by the appearance of a group of nine small landscape paintings of the Darling Downs area of Queensland, displayed in the Seeing the Collection exhibition at the University Art Museum (UAM), University of Queensland from 10 July 2004 until 23 January 2005. Relatively new to the collection (they were purchased in 2002), they are charming, small works, and are of interest principally because they are late-colonial depictions of an area that was of great significance in the history of Queensland.

Documenting and debating the contribution made by the Scots in nineteenth century Queensland has proved a fertile field of inquiry that continues to attract local historians. The vivid colonial portraits we now possess of pastoralists and politicians like Evan Mackenzie and Thomas McIlwraith confirm that the substantial power base of the colonial Scots transcended politics and commerce. Ambitious and hard working, Queensland Scots acquired rather than inherited pastoral holdings, often turning to politics or returning subsequently to Scotland. Nor should the contribution to exploration of the likes of Andrew Petrie, Henry Stuart Russell or the Archers be discounted in opening the way for rapid occupation. In this respect, the Queensland story of intrepid Scottishness appears to conform to a classic imperial narrative — that of the entrepreneur, possessed of a streak of ruthlessness, even recklessness, and committed to achieving a measure of commercial and political independence from distant bureaucracies and colonies. Mackenzie's commercial ambitions for early Brisbane, ably documented by John Mackenzie-Smith, anticipate the full-blown brand of Queensland nationalism championed by Premier Thomas McIlwraith at the end of the nineteenth century. The price of such independence could nevertheless be considerable: a series of colonial depressions — of which the 1840s, 1860s and 1890s adversely affected Queensland — invariably cast a shadow over this saga of individual achievement, in the process challenging the collective narrative of Scottish commercial supremacy. This article, while confirming the energy and individualism of local Scots, proposes to document and interweave two somewhat different case studies and in the process articulates a counter-narrative to the prevailing historical wisdom concerning Scottish colonial achievement.

Brisbane was wiped off the face of the Earth and Queensland ceased to exist as a political entity under the combined military forces of Victoria and New South Wales during violent conflict at the end of the twentieth century. Brisbane was annihilated because of the un-Christian sins of its people, and the moral corruption of its leaders. The Queensland Defence Force was incapable of defending even itself, let alone defeating the invading troops. The pivotal event in this collapse concerned the alluring performances by a group of ‘lady parachutists’ who entertained the Queensland military forces, thereby distracting them and allowing the opposing forces to easily defeat them at the Battle of Fort Lytton.

That, at least, is the key to the plot of Dr Thomas Pennington Lucas's 1894 dystopian novel The Ruins of Brisbane in the Year 2000. The origin of this ‘lady parachutists’ myth, and the connections between this myth and the end of Queensland civilisation, led me to research a fascinating episode in Queensland's cultural history, and in particular Victorian notions of sexual propriety, ‘true manhood’ and the combined — albeit veiled — threats posed by unfettered female sexuality and male masturbation.

Reflecting on the process of writing history, Tom Griffiths argues that it is ‘the product of a fascinating struggle between imagination and evidence’. He adds that ‘it is our job to release reality, enable it to be seen, enable voices and silences to be heard’. Many Australian historians have expended considerable effort in seeking to understand the reality of the Great Depression of the 1930s, analysing its political, economic, social and cultural dimensions. There are still, however, ‘voices and silences to be heard’, including those of Brisbane women who suffered financial hardships in this period and who actively responded to those hardships by accessing government relief, generating income and reducing their and their families' expenditure. Attempting to retrieve and evaluate those responses suggests that the ‘voices’ are inevitably accompanied by ‘silences’ — that the pictorial, documentary and oral sources which offer valuable insights into Brisbane women's lives also prompt questions that cannot be answered from those sources. In addition to providing an overview of how Brisbane women ‘made ends meet’ during the Depression, this article emphasises the limits of historical knowledge. Those limits are especially apparent in my attempt to reconstruct — or imagine — the experiences of one of the hundreds of unemployed women who visited the Female Labour Exchange during the 1930s.

A few years ago, on a research trip to East Africa, I met a young man from my home town of Brisbane. Slightly sheepish at the implausible coincidence of our meeting, I struggled to say something that would be of relevance to both of us. ‘Nice place,’ I hesitantly opined of Brisbane. ‘Nah, shithole,’ he tersely said and, sensing that the conversation was at an end, I turned back to my Kenyan delicacy, spaghetti. The interchange reminded me of two things: first, it is always more difficult to leave home behind you than you think; and second, your home is not the same home as anybody else's.

The Brisbane of my childhood was monocultural and ethnocentric, a very white affair. Like most Queenslanders of my generation, I had virtually nothing to do with Aborigines and was given little reason to understand their culture or to see the history of the European conquest of this country from their point of view. I certainly had no knowledge of the relationship between Aborigines and police, poisoned as it was by decades of policing which intimidated, imprisoned and eliminated Aboriginal ‘troublemakers’. Nor did I know of the confiscation of children of mixed descent from their Aboriginal mothers. Similarly, I was ignorant of how Queensland's paternalistic protectionist policies had compulsorily detained tens of thousands of Aborigines on ‘missions’ scattered throughout Queensland, an injustice compounded by the practice of quarantining their miserable wages into a ‘welfare fund’ which was used in ways that suited the government bureaucrats of the day.