Little-known and under-researched aspects of Queensland's history are the focus of the second issue of the twentieth anniversary volume of Queensland Review.

During the year 1888 — the centenary of white settlement — Australia celebrated the jubilee of Queen Victoria together with the advent of electricity to light Tamworth, the first town in the Southern Hemisphere to receive that boon. In the north-eastern colony of Queensland, serious debates involving local administrators included membership of the Federal Council, the annexation of British New Guinea and the merits of a separation movement in the north. In this distant colony, events in Ireland — such as Belfast attaining city status or Oscar Wilde publishing The happy prince and other tales — had little immediate global impact. Nevertheless, minds were focused on Irish matters in October, when the scion of a well-established west Ireland family — a select member of the traditional Tribes of Galway, no less — was named as the new governor of Queensland. The administrators of the developing colony roundly challenged the imperial nominators, invoking a storm that incited strong opinions from responsible governments throughout Australia and around the world.

Aboriginal peoples have been ‘doing business’ with foreigners for centuries (McCarthy 1939; Langton, Mazel and Palmer 2006), yet research to date has focused either on traditional exchange networks (Donovan and Wall 2004) or the impact of Western goods. Thus Harrison (2002) and Jones (2007) plotted Aboriginal exchange values and redistribution systems for iron and cloth. The general impression from such works is that, following European contact, Aboriginal society was radically transformed, while Europeans received curios. For example, Western goods stimulated a ‘glass artefact industry’ (Harrison 2003) and Aboriginal ‘doggers’ controlled dingos (Young 2010), but only officials or anthropologists had use for the resultant spearheads and scalps. At best, Aboriginal–European trade is considered inconsequential — ‘trinkets for trash’ — while Noel Butlin's (1994) analysis of the colonial economy entirely ignores it. Discussion of profitable exchange seems limited to the post-1950s arts trade (Kleinert 2010: 175). The notion that Aboriginal people might ‘flourish’ in trade or labour with Europeans (e.g. Anderson 1983) is discarded as absurd (White 2011: 81). This is perplexing, because colonial expansion saw commercial exchanges with Indigenous peoples all over the globe. Trade between Europeans and native people forms the opening chapter of national histories — for example, those of Canada and New Zealand (Innis 1999; Salmond 1997; McLusker 2006).

In late 1907, Charles Fraser, the Victorian government entomologist, travelled to North Queensland. His observations of the flora and fauna in this part of Australia were later published in the Victorian Naturalist. However, this journey was not motivated entirely by his desire to study natural history. As a sufferer of ‘rhematic [sic] troubles’, he spent a few days soaking in the mineral-impregnated waters at Innot Hot Springs, a small inland village approximately 150 kilometres south-east of Cairns. First established in the late 1880s, the tiny settlement is still visited during the winter months by many ‘grey nomads’ en route to Karumba, where the fishing is promoted as being excellent. They break their journey at Innot Hot Springs to soak in the indoor or outdoor swimming pools filled with mineralised water of varying temperatures sourced from the nearby Nettle Creek. Some view it simply as a place to relax after the long journey from southern Australia, having perhaps already tried the artesian bore water baths at Moree and Mitchell en route. Others may consider the mineral waters to have healing qualities; like Charles Fraser, they are literally ‘taking the waters’.

Variously described as ‘the outstanding feature of the show’, the ‘finest . . . in Australia’ and ‘a breath-taking experience’, the district exhibits competition is a central and much-loved feature of the annual Brisbane Exhibition, Queensland's premier agricultural show. Although the contest has attracted enthusiastic crowds and substantial media attention across more than a century, scholarly analysis has been limited. Yet, as other studies have demonstrated, exploring key aspects of the histories of agricultural shows not only provides insights into some of post-contact Australia's oldest and most popular events, but also enriches our understanding of the ideas that have sustained and shaped our communities. This article contributes to that historiography through an analysis of the origins and subsequent meanings of the Brisbane district exhibits competition.

American Librarian Ralph Munn's historic tour of Australian libraries in 1934 is well documented. Along with Ernest Pitt, Chief Librarian of the State Library of Victoria, he spent nearly ten weeks travelling from Sydney and back again, visiting libraries in all the state capitals and many regional towns throughout the country. Munn's trip was funded by the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which was then, through its Dominions fund, turning attention to philanthropic opportunities in the Antipodes. The resulting report, Australian Libraries: A Survey of Conditions and Suggestions for their Improvement (commonly referred to as the Munn–Pitt Report) is often credited with initiating the public library movement in Australia.

Dr Gertrude Langer arrived quite by chance in Brisbane in 1939 as a refugee from Hitler's Europe. She was a young, elegant Austrian refugee with a PhD in art history from the University of Vienna. After arriving in Australia, Gertrude and her husband, Dr Karl Langer, had hoped to settle in Sydney, but Karl's work as an architect moved them on to Brisbane. Gertrude Langer would become an important figure in Brisbane's post-war art scene through her salon-style lectures, art criticism and work with the Australia Council. She strongly believed that the arts were an important part of a community, and for this reason became a champion for the cause of contemporary art in Brisbane.

When analysed in context, prison graffiti can provide valuable insight into the lived experiences of incarcerated individuals. This study uses Brisbane's Boggo Road Gaol as a case study site to evaluate the importance of historical, social and political context in the interpretation of prison graffiti. Visual ethnographic methodology was employed to allow the triangulation of various contextualising resources: newspaper articles, government reports, biographies and institutional records, and the graffiti. We discuss the theme of resistance as an example to demonstrate the value of the contextual analysis of images. By locating the graffiti within the historical, social and political context that it was produced, the significance of the graffiti is identified, and the ambiguity associated with the interpretation of images potentially is reduced. A contextualised analysis of prison graffiti provides a narrative of prison life, allowing the independent expression of prisoners to be ‘heard’.