Archive Fever is a new Australian history podcast featuring intimate conversations with writers, artists, curators, fellow historians and other victims of the research bug. Each episode, co-hosts Clare Wright and Yves Rees talk to archive addicts about what kind of archives they use, how often they use them, when they got their first hit. Join us as we ask: what madness is this?
58 | My Grandfather's Key (Live at Footscray West Writers Fest)
Every family has its secrets—but what happens when a writer dives into the family archive to uncover and share those stories with the world?
In this very special final episode of Season 7 (yes, already!) - recorded live on Gadigal land at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — Yves and Clare probe Australian-born Maori poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Mettle) and Queensland-born author and journalist Lech Blaine (Australian Gospel) about the promises and pitfalls of working with stories close to home.
Why rattle the bones of family skeletons? How important it is to have one member of the family who is a hoarder of seemingly minor items or insignificant facts that can, to a writer, be like shards of gold? How to navigate the ethical and emotional minefield of finding uncomfortable truths about loved ones and forebears? And what does excavating the roots of the family tree do to the writer themselves?
25 Dec 2025
57 | All in the Family (Live at the 2025 Sydney Writers' Festival)
Every family has its secrets—but what happens when a writer dives into the family archive to uncover and share those stories with the world?
In this very special final episode of Season 7 (yes, already!) - recorded live on Gadigal land at the 2025 Sydney Writers Festival — Yves and Clare probe Australian-born Maori poet Anne-Marie Te Whiu (Mettle) and Queensland-born author and journalist Lech Blaine (Australian Gospel) about the promises and pitfalls of working with stories close to home.
Why rattle the bones of family skeletons? How important it is to have one member of the family who is a hoarder of seemingly minor items or insignificant facts that can, to a writer, be like shards of gold? How to navigate the ethical and emotional minefield of finding uncomfortable truths about loved ones and forebears? And what does excavating the roots of the family tree do to the writer themselves?
19 Dec 2025
56 | How Does Your Garden Grow?
As you tend your garden this summer, spare a thought for Alison Vaughan, responsible for no less than 1.5 million precious botanical specimens.
As collections manager at the National Herbarium of Victoria, which dates back to 1853, Alison stewards a vast archive of past and present biodiversity that illuminates our social and ecological history and provides tools to build a better future.
Why did a 500-year-old aquatic moss from Switzerland end up in drawer in Naarm/Melbourne? How is the Herbarium at once a colonial institution and a resource to remedy environmental ills of colonisation? What does repatriation mean in the context of botanical archives? And whose are the hidden hands that built this continent’s oldest settler scientific institution?
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