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Archives! The word conjures up images of gloomy corridors, of musty stacks of paper, unwanted and unused. In this account, Hilary Golder shows a very different picture of Australia's efforts to capture its history through keeping archives. There's no must and gloom here. It's a modern history of bureaucratic battles, Prime Ministerial interventions and conflict between some old-world thinking on history and records and some more enlightened views about just how this young country should preserve the government records of its life and times.

This book weaves together history and the holdings of the Australian Archives. Documents held by the Archives tell of an outdoor trombone recital on Christmas Day in Antarctica in 1955.

The history of the Archives tells of another Christmas Day, in Darwin in 1974, when priceless archival records survived Cyclone Tracy inside specially designed cardboard boxes.

Most of all, Hilary Golder shows clearly the importance of the Archives in providing Australians with ordered access to their past.