Undocumented: Queensland’s domestic service stories as traces in pastoral station records

Archives make historical presence and absence concrete.When tangible evidence is required to prove historical injustices and facilitate reparations, an ethnographic approach for reading archival records can uncover stories and traces of people and situations that, at a glance, seem hidden beneath the ink.This is the case for the many First Nations Australian women and girls who worked as domestic servants on Queensland pastoral stations; the documentation of their work is hindered by the absence of work records, even their names, in archival collections.In this article, the authors argue that the lack of evidence of First Nations domestic workers on pastoral stations is a result of their triple exploitation: their identity as Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander; second, their identity as women; and third, their location in the private sphere -a space traditionally less valued and invisible to the public eye and documentation.Following Ann Laura Stoler's ethnographic approach to archives, the authors propose a reading of pastoral station archives 'along the grain', using John Oxley Library archival material from Lammermoor, Rosella Plains and Glengallan pastoral stations as case studies.While voices are occasionally documented in the three Queensland station archives, questions, gaps and silences are numerous.Incomplete and challenging, the archive and its complexities must be studied and used to tell stories.The silence of domestic servant voices is deafening; however, the absence must also be valued as a lens for reading archival records, developing questions, and considering further research and storytelling.