2025 E.M. Fletcher Writing Competition

Dr Rachael Weaver 

Rachael is an ARC Future Fellow in the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. She was previously at the University of Melbourne, as Senior/Research Associate on four ARC Discovery Projects with long-term collaborator Ken Gelder.

She has held several competitive fellowships and is a 2024-25 Visiting Scholar at the State Library of New South Wales. Rachael has edited and authored several books, most recently Colonial Adventure (Miegunyah/MUP, 2024). Her future Fellowship research is titled ‘The Economics of Birds: Colonial Australia's Relationships to Native Species’, and examines how Australia has understood, and valued, its extraordinary native birds.

Susan O'Leary

Following a career in research, Susan has developed her passion for family history research in retirement.  This has inspired her to set up her blog www.historysnoop.com to publish family stories and share information that might be useful to other family history researchers.

Through her involvement with the Canberra and Region Heritage Researchers (CRHR), Susan enjoys bringing to light untold or little-known stories like the Old Pensioners’ Camp on Mount Pleasant which she has recently had provisionally heritage listed with the help of other CRHR members.

Susan is a member of Family History ACT, the Canberra and District Historical Society and several other historical societies.  She has had articles published in The Ancestral Searcher and the Canberra Historic Journal.

Chris Oyston 

Chris says he is the most unlikely person to be judging a writing competition. He ran away from home and school at 15 to join the Navy, and as a consequence of this teenage decision, became a ship's engineer. His formal education included an apprenticeship with the RAN, Naval Architecture at RMIT, Warship Construction and Naval Architecture at the Royal Naval Engineering College in the UK and the ADF Joint Services Staff College in Canberra.

Chris’ 25 years in Naval engineering led to roles involving research into ADF related environmental issues. This gave Chris a taste for the kind of research from which he now derives great joy and a sense of adventure as he turns family history research into interesting stories that captivate and entertain his readers.