This edition of the Queensland Review focuses on issues in the wake of the Wayne Goss Ministry, particularly as it pertains to heritage protection policies. Good intentions to initialise heritage protection led to confusion in implementation. This not only affects Queensland's older historical buildings, but the natural environment we inherit and monetise through the tourism industry.
This issue also includes reviews of the heritage of Queensland literature, and of the art of Vida Lahey, as well as commentaries on the Criminal Justice Commission. The overarching theme is that Queensland must not only protect its history, but learn from it, in order to preserve its future.
'A Migrant's Story by Osvaldo Bonutto is a thin volume. Even with the addition of forewords and commentaries it only runs to little more than 100 pages, but it is a story that carries a significance far weightier than its slender text.
It is first and foremost a personal story, but the details are the flesh and blood of much more than Osvaldo Bonutto's life. Reading his story we are offered insights into at least four themes of importance. These include insights into the migration process, into aspects of Australian history, into the management and mismanagement of intercultural community relations, and into the development of an Italo-Australian cultural identity.' (Introduction)
'In 1991, Michael Aird curated an exhibition of photographs taken in studios between the 1860s and 1925 of Aboriginal people living in Queensland and northern New South Wales regions. Fortunately, rather than limit the public exposure of such a unique set of images to a relatively brief display at the Queensland Museum, he later combined those photographs with others from personal collections to create this special, intimate publication Portraits of our Elders. While a selective rather than comprehensive view of photographs of the period, this collection presents a series of compelling portraits of individuals who indeed 'look beyond the situation they are in' (vii) and encourage us to do the same.' (Introduction)
