Robyn Ballinger has been writing and researching histories on regional Victoria for the past ten years. She is currently building on her interest in how the dynamic forces of culture and nature inform attitudes toward water use as a PhD candidate in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne.

Brienne Callahan holds an MA in Global Media Communication from the University of Melbourne. Whilst her research generally focuses on gender, politics and elections, she retains a soft spot in her heart for history and North Carlton.

Jenny Carter is a genealogist, family historian and teacher who visits PROV's reading rooms once a week, sometimes more often when working on a research project. The idea for the present article came about during a visit in early 2007 when she was looking through the Chief Secretary's Department files for information on which to base a talk on researching family history. Fascinated by a group of letters that caught her eye, Jenny soon found herself discovering what credentials were needed when applying for a government position in mid-nineteenth-century Victoria.

Peter Davies has had a research interest in the archaeology of Australia and the ancient Near East for more than fifteen years. He is the author of Henry's mill: the historical archaeology of a forest community (Archaeopress, 2006). He currently teaches archaeology at La Trobe University in Melbourne.

Annamaria Davine is an honorary research fellow in the School of Historical Studies at the University of Melbourne, and a member of the Professional Historians' Association. Her main area of interest is Italian migration, particularly that of small groups. In 2006, her book 'Vegnimo da Conco ma simo Veneti': a study of the immigration and settlement of the Veneti in Central and West Gippsland 1925-1970 was published by the Italian Australian Institute at La Trobe University, Bundoora. The same year, she completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne and a book, 'Neither here nor there': Italians and Swiss-Italians on the Walhalla goldfield 1865-1915, based on her thesis is due to be published in late 2008. Anna has just finished writing the history of the Pastorelle Sisters, an Italian Congregation of religious women who arrived in Australia after the Second World War.

Karin Derkley is completing a Masters Preliminary at La Trobe University where she intends writing her thesis on the migration of the artist John Glover to Van Diemen's Land in 1831. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Communications from RMIT University and has worked for many years as a journalist.

Ruth Dwyer is a freelance researcher and occasional author with a previous involvement in education. As a researcher her main interests are in the Australian decorative arts, the non-British population in nineteenth-century Victoria, and the history of Hawthorn, the suburb in which she lives. Papers concerning the arts have appeared in The World of Antiques & Art, and especially in Australiana, a journal published quarterly in New South Wales. She has contributed to catalogues published by the National Gallery of Victoria, and has regularly undertaken research concerning Australian antiques including the documentation of furniture and objects made of precious metals, including cups, presentation pieces and jewellery.

Victoria Haskins is a lecturer in Australian history at the University of Newcastle. A former curator at the National Museum of Australia, she is a cultural historian utilising a range of sources including material culture and visual representations as well as the traditional archive. Victoria has researched and published widely on the history of gender and race relations in Australia, work that includes a number of articles in historical journals, an edited collection with Fiona Paisley and Anna Cole, Uncommon ground: white women in Aboriginal history, and her 2005 book, One bright spot, on Joan Kingsley-Strack, a white feminist activist for Aboriginal rights. She is particularly interested in the historical roles and representations of white and Indigenous women in settler colonial histories, and her studies of Indigenous domestic service have broadened her research outlook to encompass South-East Asia under British colonial rule, and the United States of America. Victoria is currently writing a book about white and Aboriginal women's relationships in domestic service throughout Australian history.

Lyn Payne has a Bachelor of Arts (Hons), Diploma in Education, Master of Educational Studies and Master of Arts (Public History). She has been a teacher of history in secondary schools and was an educator in schools programs and public education at Museum Victoria for over ten years. She has an ongoing interest in the history of education in Victoria, in local and community histories and in cultural heritage.

Dawn Peel lives and works in Colac. She has had articles published on the history of old age, housing and the elderly, Federation, soldier settlement, the home front during the Second World War and the role of death in community formation. While Colac's history is drawn on in all of these, it is always used to illuminate wider historical themes and to demonstrate the potential and broad relevance of local history in this regard. Her books include Quality community care (2003) - a history of the Colac District Hospital, and Year of hope: 1857 in the Colac district (2006), which received a commendation in the Victorian Community History Awards. Her current project is a biography of Anna Bage. Called 'Anna's journey: a British lady in West Africa and colonial Australia', and hopefully to be published during 2008, it outlines the adventurous life of a woman who had, amongst her experiences, spent time in the Colac of the 1850s.

Belinda Robson is the author of Recovering art: a history of the Cunningham Dax Collection (2006) and holds a PhD in History from the University of Melbourne. Her doctoral thesis was a biography of Eric Cunningham Dax and she has published several articles on the Cunningham Dax Collection and on the role of Dax in reforming mental health services in Victoria. She has also worked in social research and policy in government and non-government sectors. In the 1990s she worked at VICSERV, the peak body for the psychiatric disability sector, and later worked in state government in the areas of family violence, elder abuse and victims of crime. Her current role is Research Fellow at the McCaughey Centre: VicHealth Centre for the Promotion of Mental Health and Community Wellbeing at the University of Melbourne.