History on Wednesday | August 20
Napoleon in Australia: Collections, Memory, and Living Monuments
Dr Ekaterina Heath | University of Sydney
12.10pm - 1.30pm | Vere Gordon Childe Centre (F09) and Zoom
Napoleon never set foot in Australia, yet his presence lingers here in surprising ways. This talk shares findings from a joint research project on Napoleonic memory in Australia, part of a forthcoming book with Dr Emma Gleadhill (RMIT). The first part examines the long‑neglected Napoleonic collection assembled by Dame Mabel Brookes on the Mornington Peninsula. Containing more than 300 objects, from locks of Napoleon’s hair to his death mask, the collection was once central to Dame Mabel’s public life and political self‑fashioning, but has languished in storage since the 1970s. We consider why such a rich collection, once a vehicle for international diplomacy and local heritage‑making, has been largely forgotten, and what its afterlife reveals about the shifting politics of historical memory in Australia. We also explore how women of the Balcombe family, who befriended Napoleon on St Helena, used Napoleonic relics to influence politics and craft public narratives.
The second part turns to a very different medium of Napoleonic remembrance: the so‑called “Napoleon’s willows” growing across Australia. Often claimed to descend from trees near his grave on St Helena, these willows travelled here as living souvenirs, carried by nineteenth‑century travellers who took cuttings from the site. Once in Australia, they were planted in places of civic pride, political symbolism, and private commemoration. Today, however, willows are widely classified as invasive weeds, their romantic associations overshadowed by environmental concerns. We trace their journeys from St Helena to Australian gardens and back, revealing how these ‘Napoleonic willows’ served as living instruments for shaping imperial memory, national identity, and even post‑WWII diplomacy.
About the speaker:
Dr Ekaterina Heath is a sessional staff member in the Department of History at the University of Sydney. Her research explores eighteenth‑century gardens, plants, and material culture, with a particular focus on how landscapes and objects were used to convey political ideas. Her forthcoming book, Women, Green Spaces and the Politics of Empowerment in Imperial Russia: Empress Maria Feodorovna’s Pavlovsk Park (Bloomsbury Academic, 2026), examines how women harnessed gardens as spaces of political expression and influence.
