What do they actually mean?

I try and keep it simple.

I can give you some examples as well, because I think sometimes examples bring it to life.

But there are some attributes which I think are worth talking about, right? And I sort of break into two basic groups.

You've got your defensive assets and And you've got sort of your growing assets.

And typically, the growing assets are a bit more volatile.

Volatile is what we call risk.

Let's go through that and the differences between, say, conservative, balanced and

... reliable about the time.

And that, to me, is the most magical experiences I get to have in the library, when you can talk to just, I won't say just some random woman, but some woman that you'll probably never see again, and she's coming in, and she's gonna donate her grandma's journals.

And her grandma wasn't the first Aboriginal this or that.

She was just a woman that lived out near Bellingen in the '30s and just kept a diary, and wasn't even a particular ...

She wasn't a civil rights activist.

She was just-

What, what do you use as a, as a measure of importance when you think about the collection?

I tend to judge the valueBased on what people can do with it, what it brings to people who come in to read and to look and to listen.

This is Damian Webb, manager of the Indigenous Engagement Branch.

Absolutely.

Like, we used to have special warnings around it.

The shame people felt if they found out that they were not actually-

Really?

... old money in Australia and were actually descended from convicts, it was an absolute source of shame.

The library openly discussed whether to even just destroy them all.

But Ifould could not be moved.

I think he wanted to think that this was something good for Aboriginal people.

And you see, um, him and I believe it was one of the curators from the Australian Museum at the time, um, they have these lines in their letters like, "We cannot forget what our so-called civilization did to these people." So there's this genuinely like palpable sense of grief, if not moral outrage.

in terms of being a more accurate reflection, I suppose.

And I actually find it really hopeful to think about what started as essentially a rich book club for men, and men with wealth, is kicked and pulled and stretched into this thing that is for everyone.

Like, yeah, okay, we're not getting everything right, and we're actively course-correcting with every generation and, and, you know, shifting with Australia's culture as it does, but that's cool.

So Bungaree was a, a famous Aboriginal explorer, navigator, and kind of a diplomat who was close to Macquarie, who gave him a fancy breastplate that denoted him as Black royalty.

The Black royalty is a bit of a furphy 'cause that's not how he did it, but this is this, the, the guy who took over and wore the breastplate after Bungaree.

This was an interlocutor.

This was someone operating in two worlds.

This would explain why Macquarie had a portrait of him.

He was pretty close to Bungaree in a lot of complicated ways.

We would absolutely not have acquired that on its own merit necessarily, and then to find out 100 years later that what we've accidentally collected is actually potentially one of the most beautiful, humanized, wonderful images of Bungaree's sons, uh, is incredible.

They're people who are optimistic about some extra puzzle piece turning up behind a couch that suddenly clicks everything into place.