As much as I hate Americanisms, it’s a lot harder to shout “excursion” with enthusiasm. What I’m trying to say is that we went on one and this idiotic video captures some of it:

As part of our research, we went down as a group to investigate the JMC artefacts down at the Immigration Museum. The notorious sword/cane combo is the starring attraction, as well as some of the contraband (opium paraphernalia, scandalous books, non-European people, etc) that Christie worked tirelessly to excise from Australia.

The Immigration Museum strikes me as working very hard to be very apologetic about the thorough, legally mandated racism we continue to see to this day have thankfully gotten past (…). It was really important to see JMC in this context because it serves as a reminder of the kind of values he was upholding. One of the tests to determine if a person deserved to be granted Australian citizenship was proficiency in any European language — not English, but as long as it was European they were good to go. JMC was directly involved with this kind of testing, and I imagine he brought the same gusto to it that he did any of his other endeavours. As much fun as he seems on paper — as swashbuckling, rambunctious, all those wonderful words — he is not a hero. Australia in general wasn’t a very nice place to be at Federation. Even if you were rich and white and male, ticked every box, you still didn’t have goddamn air con.