Keeping our heritage for the future

Our heritage is our past and our future. It contains the promises of the past to their future – our present – for everything that we build is for today and tomorrow.
As we look forward to an uncertain future – with climate change looming, a growing ozone hole, and increasing rates of extinction – the past seems to hold great appeal. It is safe, not just because it is over and we have survived, but also because we think we know what happened then.

As historians, we are the map-makers to the past. Our job is to help others find their way, feel comfortable and go exploring into the unknown. Our exploration of the past may appear a little more certain than our imaginings of the future, but both are really exploratory journeys of discovery – journeys that are made and remade, each time with something new learned or experienced.

Our journey to the future is also adventure travel. There are no maps, only a few signposts. It is not a guided tour where the brochure announces: on this trip you will journey to see the splendour of Point Nepean, watch the dolphins play off the end of Sorrento Pier, lunch well at the Continental and from Lawson’s Hollywood setting at Arthurs Seat, watch the sun set over Port Phillip Bay. Well, what if it rained!

The future is where we are going. What we take with us is our choice. And in our journey to the future, what baggage will we pack, and what will we discard? By analogy then – what parts of our history, our past, our heritage will we take with us to the future, and what will we discard? And who will decide?