KAREN DONNELLY
Historian & Photographer

A STREET LIKE TOBRUK - a project about people, place, the present and the past

Curated & devised by Karen Donnelly with David Atkinson, Jane Atkinson, Chontelle Bourne, Susan Collins, Facing Australia, Richard Janson, Rob Lacey, Carla Lidbury, Dale McKissack, Megan Morgan, Tim Rowston & Mark Slater

This project examined a ribbon of road called Tobruk Street. The project connected past and present street residents with photographers, researchers, film-makers and historians in conjunction with personal and civic archives and photographic collections. This creative collaboration created a social and visual document that captured life in 2008. It enriched our understanding of both contemporary and historical regional-urban living and generated a rich archive for the future.

Any street, any collective of residents is worthy of investigation, possessing the capacity to offer an insight into how we lived. Tobruk Street was named after the 1941 Siege of Tobruk and in special honor of Albury’s Own - the 2/23rd Infantry Battalion. The immediate area surrounding Tobruk Street represented Albury’s expansion and development and shift from town to city status in 1948. Tobruk Street was part of the regional post-war boom and was located in a 1947 subdivision called ‘New City Estate’.

A Street like Tobruk was exhibited at the Albury Library Museum with the street panoramas acquired into the museum's permanent collection.