Historical papers unearthed in shed

MISSING historical documents containing evidence of the influential campaigning done by local governments in the post-war era have been preserved for future generations to read.

The documents feature similar campaigns to those by current councils across the North that are now lobbying State and Federal governments for funds to help finance COVID-19 recovery projects.

James Cook University PHD student Patrick White stumbled across the documents, which were housed in Charters Towers, in 2017 while researching the North Queensland Local Authorities Association and their contribution to developing northern Australia.

“I heard a rumour about some old boxes of government documents in a council storage shed in Charters Towers,” Mr White said.

“Over the years, the boxes and contents aged considerably, but the exterior of the boxes suggested the contents were some of the missing documents I’d been searching for.”

Mr White rushed to Charters Towers to find out for himself, and found the boxes in poor condition.

“The documents had been bound in deteriorating cardboard for nearly 70 years and in sheds and trucks,” Mr White said.

“They had already defied the odds of survival.

“The best I could tell, Charters Towers council wasn’t an original member, they came into the organisation a bit later and as the secretariat would rotate, the responsibility for managing the records would also rotate.

“These documents, along with other documents, have been moved a lot.”

The records contain evidence of a very influential campaign to develop northern Australia in the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s.

Mr White said they were particularly important because histories of northern Australia are usually written from a southern perspective.

“These historical records provide an opportunity for us to locate a northern voice,” he said.

“They particularly highlight the role local governments played to develop their own region, rather than the role of the state and federal governments, which is what we usually hear.

“There are similarities about the local governments in the ’ 40s and ’ 50s and post-war reconstruction to COVID-19 recovery and today’s local governments.”

The Charters Towers Regional Council, on behalf of the Northern Alliance of Councils, has gifted the records to the JCU Eddie Koiki Mabo Library Special Collections.

Charters Towers Mayor Frank Beveridge said it was good to see the documents in safe hands.

“These records are an important part of our region’s history and our contribution to the wider region,” he said.

“I’m glad to see them preserved properly and where current and future historians can take a look at them.”