Peter Woodley
Peter Woodley was born in Dubbo and studied economics and history at The Australian National University (ANU) before a career in government, mainly working in health care policy. He returned to the ANU to complete his PhD in the School of History. He has taught there and at the University of New England, and now works in the ANU National Centre of Biography.
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8519-1285
‘We are a farming class’ »
Dubbo’s hinterland, 1870–1950
Authored by: Peter Woodley
Publication date: April 2025
Notions of an arcadian farming life permeate settler-Australian understandings of themselves and their nation. Qualities of hard work, perseverance, resourcefulness, and a steady devotion to family and community—the historian John Hirst’s Pioneer Legend—are idealised in this nation. But the people from whom the legend is derived have rarely been studied in depth. They are more the stuff of myth and fond imagining than of concerted examination. To what…