About Us: Manager's Message

John Petersen, Manager, Migration Heritage Centre

Migrants have journeyed to Australia and settled in the State of New South Wales both willingly and unwillingly, legally and illegally, as convicts, prisoners of war, as free or assisted immigrants or as refugees. Migrants have also been refused entry, deported and detained. Australia's history of migration can be understood in the context of world history and British colonial and Australian Federal Government policies.

All people in Australia share the legacy of migration. Unless we are Aboriginal people, we are all migrants or descendants of migrants. Today, four out of ten people in New South Wales are either migrants or their children. As former migrants age, it is vital their stories and cultures are recorded.

2008 marks the tenth anniversary of the NSW Migration Heritage Centre, a New South Wales Government initiative supported by the Community Relations Commission for a Multicultural NSW.

We are an innovative virtual heritage centre similar to an online museum. This model makes us readily accessible and helps us deliver services locally. Our website is the primary means by which we present our heritage research - through exhibitions featuring community collections, family belongings and people's memories, viewed on personal computers in homes, schools and libraries.

Since moving to the Powerhouse Museum in 2003, over 40 NSW Migration Heritage Centre heritage research partnership projects have culminated in 14 community history books and 16 exhibitions, both online and displayed near where people live, in community museums and galleries across metropolitan Sydney and rural and regional New South Wales.

By sharing our memories, belongings and places, we are helping students of history understand their place in the world, and advancing the New South Wales Government's State Plan in 'Building Harmonious Communities'.

We are proud to help all communities participate in local heritage studies, bringing together people from diverse backgrounds who share generational experiences across chapters of migration history.

John Petersen
Manager
NSW Migration Heritage Centre