It’s finally here! My old friend Jinghua Qian and I have been working hard on Underfoot, an underground history of Footscray, for the past couple months. Footscray is the place both of us have lived for many years, a traditionally working-class and migrant suburb in Melbourne’s West. We delved into the archives to find some stories that haven’t been told for a hundred years, or ever; stories about gender transgression, fascists, anti-fascists, workers, radicals, teetotalers, firefighters, vice holes, boycotts, Chinese gardeners, zealots, and a surprisingly large amount of rotting meat. It’s a local history, but we think you’ll find it interesting if you’re interested in history from below, wherever you’re from.
Jinghua and I designed Underfoot to be accessible to as many people as possible, including our friends who are on the other side of the world, or unable to leave their house because of COVID-19 isolation. The format is multimedia: a series of four audio tracks, each with a matching walking track. The tracks are somewhere between essay, radio play, and portable history tour guide. There are full transcripts with each track, illustrated and with a list of references and further reading. You can listen to just the audio, or just read the transcript, or do both; each is a complete and slightly different experience. You don’t have to walk the track, but it’s fun! You can also walk the track virtually. Each track has an associated map with extensive notes and photographs, which can be imported into Google Street View. The parts of the tracks directly on the banks of the Maribyrnong River are sadly not seamlessly mapped by Street View, but you can get get pretty close.
We had a lot of fun making Underfoot, and we hope to make similar projects together in the future.
If you can’t access Underfoot via the links above, it’s also hosted on Jinghua’s website here.