Friends of Stanley Athenaeum - Indigenous Culture Finalist - 2026 Tidy Towns
Local Aboriginal history rarely makes it into an accessible, public format, let alone into a packed hall in a town of a few hundred people. The Friends of Stanley Athenaeum's biennial Geoff Craig Memorial Lecture set out to change that.
The 7th lecture, delivered on 28 September 2025 at Stanley Memorial Hall, brought Waywurru researcher, historian and storyteller Megan Carter to speak on "Spaces of Survival: Aboriginal Reserves and Ration Depots in North East Victoria." Carter has spent more than a decade collecting stories, images, places and biographies of Indigenous people from the region. Her lecture traced how reserves and ration depots, created through policies of control, disrupted lives and families, while Aboriginal people found ways to hold onto culture and identity within them.
Twenty-five people attended, followed by what the Society describes as a large number of questions and lively conversation once the formal presentation ended.
The lesson for the Athenaeum: there's real, sustained demand in a small community for this kind of story-telling, and with more forward planning, it's a demand they could meet more often than every two years.
The X-factor is access. With almost no accessible published record of this history, Carter's lecture is now a resource available to future students and researchers who ask the Stanley Athenaeum for it.
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