Animating the archive though creative non-fiction: Locating and reimagining the lives of nineteenth-century rural working-class people in colonial documents

This thesis, Animating the archive though creative non-fiction: locating and reimagining the lives of nineteenth-century rural working-class people in colonial documents, is comprised of the creative work The stone cairn: a tale of nineteenth-century rural crime and punishment, and an exegesis. In the creative work, imaginative reconstructions inform historical facts to piece together a story involving events connected to the 1854 murder of shepherd Thomas Brookhouse by another shepherd, Patrick Geary in western Victoria. Recreating the narrative communicates the experience of Brookhouse and Geary, as well as other rural working-class people of the time, highlighting stories that defy common tropes and themes in Australian literature about this group of people who left few documentary traces of their lives. In the exegesis I examine two interconnected theoretical modes on which creative non-fiction writing is used: research-led practice and practice-led research. I discuss my own intellectual journey as one formed within a research-led practice approach. My discovery of practice-led research as a method of sparking imagination and enhancing creativity is explored. The creation of new knowledge and the value of this new approach for its communication to a broad audience that emerges from this thesis are also discussed.