09/06/2026
AGITATING FOR CHANGE: THE ACHIEVEMENTS OF OUR FIRST STATE ARCHIVIST
This is Part 2 of Mollie Lukis’ story. Find Part 1 on our page.
I had reached the stage when I felt I didn't want to continue teaching for the rest of my career. I saw the advertisement for this job in the archives, because I was reading the job advertisements all the time, just wondering what might turn up. I didn't really know what it would involve or what it would be [laughs].
I think it said in the advertisement to call the library for details of the job. So I went in to ask for details and whoever was on the readers' desk said, "Oh I think you'd better see Dr Battye."
Dr Battye had a bit of a chat and gave me the form and whether it was because I knew his niece, Margaret Battye, who had been at the university with me, I don't know, but to my great astonishment I was offered the job.
Of course, no one had archives qualifications because such things didn't exist then, but I didn't feel I was particularly well-qualified because I didn't do history at the University.
There was an awareness of the need to preserve the State’s history. They did have a body called the State Archives Board, of which Dr Battye was the chairman.
In my first years in the archives, there had been no money available during the war years. Some of the staff had been away at the war. There were only three 'professional' (I suppose you might say) librarians, who worked upstairs in the old Hackett Hall which still exists and is now used by the museum. The staff, when you think what it's like now, was incredibly small.
The portion of the building that ran through to Francis Street, the ground floor of that was the Battye residence, and there was a sort of no-man's land where a lot of material was stored in between on the ground floor. The upper floors were used as stack for the library itself.
But one of the extraordinary inconveniences, and I suppose ways of economising, was that there was only one telephone in the building. When Dr Battye went downstairs to lunch, the telephone was switched down to the house, and at times during the day when Mrs Battye wanted to make personal calls, the phone was no longer coming into the library. It went into the Battye residence, and, for people who had queries or information for the library, it was not accessible at the time.
When I was appointed, I was given a separate telephone which was a great boon I can assure you.
I don't think very many people outside professional people were very much aware of the archives in the library for quite a while. When I say professional people, I mean people who were engaged in some sort of historical project.
I was responsible for the transfer of records from the government, and one of the first things that I knew that was important and that I must do (as a result of my reading) was to make contact with government departments, and I concentrated on that rather than on private material because I thought it was best.
I spent quite a lot of time in the old – they call them the 'dungeons' – the old storerooms in the basement of the Treasury building. However, the archives function, although we were in the library, it functioned under the direction of the Premier's Department.
So I went to see the undersecretary of the Premier's Department and explained the position, and he wrote a suitable letter, and the problems were solved. It was a useful association with the Premier's Department. I did at that stage institute a regular circular letter to departments to say that no records were to be destroyed without reference to us, and requesting that material be transferred as soon as possible. There was quite a lot more material that came in.
The next addition to the staff occurred because I became very much aware of the necessity to preserve material that so far had been rather badly treated. There had been very little thought given to the preservation of material.
Newspapers for instance, the very first West Australian newspapers which began in 1833, were stored down in the newspaper room and they were hauled out by these old gentlemen who used to run it, and anybody could have them.
When I'd been there for a little while, I was able to wake up to the situation. There was no restriction on how they were handled. Bits were sometimes cut out over the years when people couldn't be bothered writing down what they wanted to read. There was a great deal of carelessness with regard to materials generally, and this also was true of the rare books in the stack.
A very few of the rare books were kept in a cupboard in Dr Battye's room, but there were a great many extremely valuable rare books in the stack. One of these was brought to my attention one time by Mr Charles Gardner who was the Government Botanist and whose name is very well known for his writings on botany. He came in with a copy of Lindley’s Botany which had been in the stack and which he had kept home for several years because he felt it wasn't safe. Now if I would keep it in my office he would bring it back.
So in 1950, I started agitating, putting forward proposals to the trustees and so on, for a program to microfilm the newspapers, and to ensure that then the microfilms would be used and the originals would be preserved.
In 1956, there was a formal opening to the new Battye Library to make the public aware of the new facilities that were available.
When I retired, I was given the usual farewell parties and some very pleasant celebrations of my retirement at that time. There was quite a bit of press publicity at the time too.
SOURCE – [Interview with Mollie Lukis] / [interviewed by Erica Harvey)
Lukis, Mollie, 1911-2009.
Oral History | 1992.
Available online (Call number: OH2527)
