Vision Splendid
Japanese Newspaper Representations of Australia 1970-1996
Masayo Tada
In the past three decades a closer relationship between Australia and Japan has officially been pursued, with both governments referring positively to closeness in recent years. This essay discusses Australia-Japan relations in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, decades which have witnessed significant political changes in both societies relating to national identity. Analysis of Japanese newspaper representations of Australia offers not only a different perspective on the relationship between the two countries but also an insight into its key characteristics. The specific foci of representations of Australia are, in the 1970s, abundant national resources, in the1980s tourism, and in the 1990s an atmosphere of freedom, each of which has a link to Australia’s natural environment. At the same time, these foci reflect Japan’s specific national interest in Australia, with the target shifting from economic objects in the 1970s and 1980s to so-called Western characteristics like individualism in the 1990s. Understanding people’s perceptions of other cultures is increasingly complex. Notwithstanding the long-established discourse of power relations based on racism operative in the world, tolerance of other cultures has ostensibly become more socially accepted in both Japan and Australia. But while explicit racism has become something negative, it tends to exist implicitly in many aspects of a society. Racism has been a considerable obstacle to good relations between Australia and Japan since the late nineteenth century. However, in the post-war era, when economy is replacing race as a new way of estimating a country’s power, economic relations between the two countries have become dramatically more significant. The old opposition — Australia as the West versus Japan as the East — is now being actively broken down. This process has been reflected in new policies in both countries, such as multiculturalism in Australia in the 1970s, and internationalisation in Japan in the 1980s. Since these changes, the barrier of racism is less visible, but nevertheless seems to remain. Economic relations between the two countries have developed since the 1950s, and were given further assurance through the Commerce Agreement of 1957. Japan became the most important market for Australian goods in the late 1960s, exceeding Britain. Interdependent trade-based relations were challenged by a series of conflicts in the 1970s, resulting from differences in interpretation of contracts between the two countries. It was felt, particularly in Australia, that to consolidate the relationship, mutual understanding should be discussed; several agreements and treaties have subsequently been signed. In the 1980s a stronger yen rapidly increased Japanese tourism and investment in Australia. Although this boom has since slowed, following the collapse of Japan’s overheated stock and real estate markets in the early 1990s, relations between the two countries remain economically and politically significant. The Australia-Japan partnership was described by the respective prime ministers as ‘a relationship of unprecedented quality’ in May 1995.1 Notwithstanding positive official comments on relations, the depth of the relationship still seems to be in question. McCormack puts it this way: ‘despite its apparent
170 Masayo Tada warmth, the relationship remains very pragmatically based, and liable to change’.2 While Japanese images of Australia are overtly favourable, they tend to be based on quite limited information about certain aspects of the country. Studies of Japanese images of Australia between the 1970s and 1990s suggest that the Japanese do not have distinctive images of the national character of Australians, except for the White Australia policy. When Japanese describe Australia, they tend to nominate words relating to the natural environment, such as ‘vast land’, ‘koala’ and ‘kangaroo’3 without employing words representing human beings. Japanese images of Australians are, therefore, a ‘heterostereotype of white-Western nations’.4 While survey results identify perceptions which people express overtly, textual analyses show more detailed and more subtle aspects of perceptions. Analysis of representations of Australia in a Japanese national newspaper therefore offer a more nuanced and often more negative picture of the relationship between the two countries. The media play a significant role in circulating information, and previous studies have shown that Japanese newspapers and television as a major source of information in general. There is no doubt that newspapers are influential in the construction of perceptions, particularly in Japan, a nation which has the highest per-capita circulation of newspapers in the world5 and where newspapers are regarded as the most credible source of information.6 The Asahi Shimbun is one of three major national newspapers, and has a large readership and a wide circulation to business and government leaders. While each newspaper in Japan tends to sponsor particular kinds of events, and the nature of these events is related to the nature of the paper’s readership, the Asahi Shimbun has shaped and reinforced its public image through sponsoring cultural activities.7 It has been supporting Australia symposia in Tokyo since 1988. The Asahi Shimbun’s Sydney bureau was established in June 19728 when economic conflicts began to smoulder between the two countries. Analysis of representations of Australia in the Asahi Shimbun offers but one measure of Japanese views of the country, but it is nevertheless a significant one. To an extent, the quantity of newspaper coverage can indicate the national importance one country places on another,9 and the Asahi Shimbun coverage of Australia has been modest over time. In the 1970s Australia tended to receive particular attention in certain months or years, in accordance with the seriousness of economic conflicts. Those months which had more than 15 items on Australia correspond to the times when significant political and economic events occurred in Australia-Japan relations, or in Australia. The nature and placement of the Asahi Shimbun coverage of Australia reflects Japan’s concern with economic benefits. While Japan’s cutbacks to iron ore importation from Australia in 1972 and the first beef conflicts in 1974-75 were paid relatively little attention, the second beef conflict and sugar conflict in 1976-77 received considerable coverage. Items about Australia particularly increased in 1976 and 1977, when beef and sugar conflicts were serious. Even editorials, which rarely covered Australia in the 1970s, dealt with Australia during these years. But only when Japan had to confront the negative effects of the dispute for itself, in terms of the reduction of benefits, were these issues discussed in the Asahi Shimbun. Changes to the Australian government were covered for similar reasons, because changes in government can result in changes in economic policies and relationships. Australia is overwhelmingly represented as a vast land with rich natural resources in the 1970s: ‘what kinds of treasures are still hidden in this vast land?’10 and ‘it is
171 Vision Splendid vast, anyway’.11 This representation is also evident in items relating to the Japanese Crown Prince and Princess’ visit to Australia in May 1973. The headline of the item that reports on an interview with the royal couple is ‘I Want to Go and See the Vastness of Australia’.12 Reminders about the levels of Australia’s natural resources are reflected in items. One item about Australia’s desire to develop industries which use its natural resources suggests that ‘the whole land of Australia is mineral resource itself’.13 An editorial also employs terms such as ‘natural resource superpower’ to describe Australia.14 This representation often indicates an implicit or explicit comparison with Japan, which does not have extensive mineral resources: ‘Australia is a country rich not only in sugar, but also in things that Japan wants, such as iron ore, coal, uranium, wool and beef’.15 The abundance of the natural resources of Australia is an important component of representations of Australia as a wealthy and peaceful country. The Sydney bombing of the Hilton Hotel at the Commonwealth Heads of Government conference is headed ‘A Big Shock in “Paradise”’.16 An adjective meaning ‘rich’, yutakana, is a frequently employed term: ‘a peaceful, cheerful and rich country to envy’; and a country that enjoys ‘rich nature and a high standard of living’.17 In the 1980s at least one cultural story was presented each month in addition to the focus on economic and political issues. This had not been the case until the late 1970s, and it corresponds with the time when mutual understanding of cultures was being fostered as an ‘antidote’ to serious trade conflicts. The two major topics of the 1980s were koalas and tourism. After approval for the importation of koalas was given, the number of items about koalas dramatically increased. In 1984, the year when koalas were first imported, items about the acceptance of koalas appeared frequently in the cultural section, and the koalas’ arrival in Japan in October 1984 saw the peak in the Asahi Shimbun’s treatment. Half of all items about Australia in this month were related to koalas, and eight out of 12 items about Australia in the following month dealt with koalas in the zoo. As a result of koalas, and prime minister Hawke’s arrival in Japan, there were more items about Australia in 1984 than any other year from 1970 to 1996. Other popular topics in the 1980s were Australia as tourist destination, the second most frequently discussed topic; Australia’s bicentenary, where coverage focused on special events planned for 1988; and the Brisbane Expo, particularly the Japanese pavilion there. The number and size of advertisements relating to Australia, mainly for tourism, increased dramatically in the 1980s. These advertisements took up a large portion of the page, or even a whole page, which is quite disproportionate to the size of news items about Australia in the Asahi Shimbun. In the 1980s, positive representations of Australia relating to its natural environment were more conspicuous than in the 1970s, as a result of the promotion of tourism. Australia is represented as a young country that has koalas, beautiful nature, and leisure time. The following description, in an item remarking on the factors which have resulted in an increase in the number of Japanese tourists to Australia, can be seen as a typical representation of Australia in this period, describing ‘the beautiful beach, kind and friendly Australians, and most of all, safety with good security conditions’.18 Australia’s nature and relaxed atmosphere are the main emphasis of advertisements, particularly by using the following phrases: ‘relaxed time,’ ‘vast land,’ and ‘generous nature’. These representations are also evident in newspaper items, which describe ‘peaceful sights’, and ‘the typical peaceful atmosphere of Australia’ regarding harvested wheat being left unguarded.19
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The koala is the principal focus of representation of Australian natural features in the 1980s relating to tourism. Australia is represented as the hometown of koalas, and koalas are likely to be humanised in the items. An Australia Tourist Commission advertisement of 1984, the year when koalas were imported to Japan, announces the establishment of a ‘Koala Fan Club’ with the slogan ‘Please Be a Friend of Koalas’. It describes the club’s mission in the following terms:
The ‘Koala Fan Club’ is established to let people know more about Australia, which is the koala’s home, by being a good friend of koalas who are to enter a new life in a totally unfamiliar country.20
The special treatment for koalas is highlighted in the items such as ‘VIP Koalas’ and ‘Mr Koala’s New House, Luxurious Accommodation Constructed: the total cost of construction, ¥550,000,000 with comfortable air conditioner’.21 The front page of the evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun dated 25 October 1984, the day koalas arrived in Tokyo, juxtaposes an item headed ‘Welcome, Mr Koala’22 with a large picture attached to an item about an election for the president of the Liberal Democratic Party, which also has a small picture of prime minister Nakasone. In addition to news stories which humanise koalas, cartoons of anthropomorphised koalas are apparent in the Asahi Shimbun in the 1980s. In the 1990s coverage of Australia slightly decreased. The most conspicuous difference from coverage in the previous decades was that prime minister’s visits received less attention. It is ironic that the visits of prime minister Paul Keating, who urged closer relationships with Japan, were given much less coverage in the Asahi Shimbun compared to those of previous prime ministers. Similarly, coverage of the federal elections in 1990 and 1993 was modest, although the 1996 election and inauguration of the Howard government were reported to the same extent as the federal elections of the 1980s had been. This apparent paradox is explained by the fact that while the Labor government’s commitment to Asia was clear, there was concern about the foreign policy of a government led by John Howard, because he had expressed views against Asian immigration in 1988. The 1988 controversy was often attached to items relating to John Howard throughout 1996. In the 1990s mineral resources and koalas in Australia are no longer emphasised, and one item claims that Australia has been attempting to transform itself from being merely a country that is rich in natural resources to being a country of high technology. 23 However, it would be misleading to argue that this is a new pattern, because this is of a minor item written by a journalist invited to the country by the Australian government, following its campaign in Japan in November 1993 to introduce Australian manufactured goods and high technology to Japan. In fact, it would be more accurate to say that some of the previous representations have just stopped, without being substituted by others. The heading of the item ‘From “Koala” to “High Technology”’ indicates that, although representations of Australia as a country of koalas are not as powerful as in the 1980s in the Asahi Shimbun, the image of the koala remains significant in Japanese perceptions of Australia. As a result, most Japanese understand what this simply- phrased heading means, and immediately realise which country it is referring to. Australia has been represented as not only a favourable place to visit, but also as a place to live to enjoy ‘freedom’ in the 1990s. Three stories about Japanese emigrants in Australia were presented in January 1991. Those Japanese who emigrated to
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Australia are described as ‘refugees’ or ‘fugitives’, and they are critical of what they see as the control-oriented structure of Japanese society. 24 Australia is represented as a place of freedom for the Japanese, who escape from a society which has many restrictions and pressures. An item in October 1991 also reports on Japanese who live permanently and work in Australia.25 By giving the examples of these who have developed their individuality, the item represents Australia as a place in which individuality is more respected than Japan. While representations of Australia have particular foci in each decade according to Japan’s interests, Australian people are represented in mostly the same manner throughout the three decades. The key representation is of Australians as relaxed people who enjoy rich lives. The most frequently used words are those which connote a relaxed atmosphere.26 Envious attitudes, particularly towards material wealth of Australians, are more apparent in the 1970s than other decades. Australians are described as wealthy, being ‘Wealthy People’ in a headline, ‘Australians whose life is rich’, and ‘Australians whose living standard is one of the highest in the world’.27 In the 1980s and the 1990s the richness represented is material more social. ‘Leisure’, which indicates affluence, is attended to in the 1980s: ‘Australians who are ‘leisure lovers’28 or Australians ‘love leisure and have optimistic characteristics’.29 Similarly, the theme of the third Australia symposium in 1990, of which discussions were reproduced in two full pages of the Asahi Shimbun, was ‘Leisure Superpower, Australia’. The panellists tended to use such terms as ‘yutori’ which indicates abundant time and wealth, and ‘richness of life’ to depict Australians,30 characteristics which are seen as lacking in the Japanese. Strikes are often given coverage in the 1970s and the early 1980s. This Australian behaviour is associated with the wealth of the country and the nature of its people. Two points are focused on. The first is that strikes occur in Australia very frequently, as in the comment ‘Australia, where strikes became routine events throughout a year’.31 This kind of representation reflects the view that Australians go on strike without good reason, as comments from Japanese working in the Australian branch of a Japanese trading company indicate: ‘(Australians) go on strike for trivial reasons from a Japanese point of view’.32 In another item, a strike is reported as follows: ‘a small matter resulted in strike of one thousand two hundred people’.33 In an item about a strike in 1980 Australians are described as being relaxed, implying that the ‘people of a resource superpower’ do not have to work as hard as the Japanese.34 The second point is that the general public in Australia is not disturbed by the strike, although an item in 1979 questions whether Australians are ‘relaxed’, or simply ‘disorderly’.35 In a column in 1980 it is reported that the Japanese, who are not free of pressure, are impressed by Australians’ relaxed way of spending time during a strike.36 The representation of ‘White Australia’ shifted from being a part of Australia’s present, in the 1970s, to being a part of its past in the 1980s. The most pervasive message in the 1970s is that although the Australian government claims that the White Australia policy has ended, in fact it has not. Australia is depicted in 1973 as ‘a country that fails to remove “a wall” against Asian countries’.37 In an item about possible changes in the diplomatic policies of the new Fraser government in 1975, it is said that Fraser has indicated the desirability of the continuation of White Australia.38 The existence of a long history of racism, expressed as the ‘White Australia Policy,’ is also indicated by phrases such as ‘a tradition of White Australia’
174 Masayo Tada in 1977,39 the headline ‘A Test Case of “White Australia”’ in 1979,40 and ‘a kind of economic White Australia’ in 197841 used in items about policies regarding overseas investment in Australia’s mineral resources. Some headings for items from the mid to late 1970s indicate that although the White Australia Policy persists unofficially, it has finally begun to change: ‘A Sign of a Change in White Australia’;42 ‘Decline in Birth Rate Resulted in “Giving up” White Australia’; 43 ‘New Immigration Policy Abandoned “White Australia”’44 and ‘Diminishing White Australia’.45 As a result of Australia’s acceptance of a large number of Indochinese refugees, ‘White Australia’ is likely to be represented as being in Australia’s past. However, the 1988 dispute over the restriction of immigration sparked by John Howard, opposition leader at the time, results in the reappearance of the phrase ‘White Australia’ as a lingering Australian tradition. In the 1990s Australia has been represented as a multicultural society, and positive comments on multiculturalism in the Australia Symposia are treated conspicuously in the Asahi Shimbun. However, it is claimed in the opinion section that while people welcome multiculturalism and the move towards Asia, many have complex feelings about this, and in fact do not want Australia to be seen as being identical to Asia. Suzuki observes that ‘White Australia’ still remains part of the power structure in Australia.46 An item in the economic section in 1992 also states that, in terms of the Australian economy, which is fundamentally controlled by Anglo-Saxons, the necessity for unity and fusion with Asia does not seem to be appreciated sufficiently. 47 Pauline Hanson’s anti-Asian statements in September 1996 are first reported in Asahi Shimbun the following month. The item attempts to represent Australia as a multicultural society by saying in the first sentence that ‘in Australia, a country of immigration and multiculturalism’, Hanson’s racist comments have caused dispute. Notwithstanding this opening sentence, the story has a sensational headline, and uses subheadings such as ‘We will be swamped by “Asians”’ and ‘In Australia, a series of racist statements by a parliamentarian: “Public support” in the background’. The item is closed with the remark that ‘some people point out that the White Australia of the past still lingers’.48 While the item visually encourages an impression that there is racism in Australia, the text ostensibly represents contemporary Australia as being multicultural, and describes the ‘White Australia’ ideology as being in Australia’s past. In this item, Australian racism seems to be implied, without being clearly remarked on. Another item by the same journalist reveals this view more overtly:
It has been twenty years since ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘liberal immigration’ have been accepted as national policies after the White Australia policy was abolished in the 1970s; nevertheless, racial issues seem to remain Australia’s Achilles’ heel.49
Discussions of Australia’s relations with other countries reflect the underlying view that racism in Australia persists. In the 1970s when ‘White Australia’ was represented as Australia’s unofficial present, the country’s strong connection with Britain and the United States is emphasised, and tends to be represented in a slightly disparaging way. Several items deal with Australia’s separation from the two major powers of the West, however, the discussions are based on the assumption that Australia in fact has been dependent on these countries. An item in 1973 reporting the Australian government’s commitment to Asia says that ‘Australia is becoming neither a “branch”
175 Vision Splendid of Britain nor a satellite state of the United States’.50 With regard to Whitlam’s diplomacy, it is reported that he is attempting to show that his government is different from ‘the (previous) ministries which were unable to undertake diplomacy without consulting Washington every time’.51 In a similar way, Australians’ strong sentiments towards Britain are often presented negatively:
It has been more than seventy years since this country declared its independence; nevertheless, those who have achieved success or fame want recognition from Britain. Tracing their origin, they are nothing but British.52
This item is from 1974, and is at odds with the Labor government’s promotion of Australia as an independent country. An item about the national anthem under the Fraser government also mentions sentiment toward Britain being entrenched in Australians.53 But the Asahi Shimbun also reports changing Australian attitudes toward Britain in 1977: ‘Australia, having accepted itself as a part of Britain for a long time’ is gradually changing.54 As ‘White Australia’ is regarded as Australia’s past, and the Australian government’s commitment to Asia becomes apparent in the mid 1980s, Australia’s attempt to become an independent country tends to be reported. Hawke is represented as a prime minister who is directing Australia’s metamorphosis, from independence from the United States and Britain towards committed relationships with Asia. In the 1990s, Australia is overtly represented as moving towards incorporation into Asia, to the detriment of links with Britain and the United States. However, suspicion about Australia’s engagement with Asia oozes from the Asahi Shimbun. The frequent coverage of the conflict between prime minister Keating and president Mahathir from November to December in 1993 indicates Asahi Shimbun’s concerns with the gap between Australia and Asian countries. An item in 1996 says that ‘while prime minister Keating faced Asia, his [political] style was Western’.55 The suspicion became apparent again during the 1996 federal election, and Australia’s closer links with the United States have been noted in discussions of Australia since then. The possibility of changes in Australia’s foreign relations, which were until early 1996 based on strong engagement with Asia, is indicated in an item about the coalition’s landslide win in the election on 3 March.56 An item introducing Howard implies a certain distancing from Asia in his attitudes, mentioning that his anti-Asian immigration statement was criticised in 1988, and by stating that Howard, who has few connections with Asian countries, maintains the significance of relations not only with Asia but also with the West.57 Another item reports that while the new government is committed to continuous engagement with Asia, stress is placed on the fact that relations with the West will be taken more seriously than they were by the previous government. Closer links with the United States are anticipated, given attitudes towards foreign relationship in the Liberal Party. The Liberal Party’s tradition is described as having the ‘principle of Anglo-Saxon first’, which is to say, ‘a principle of dependence on great powers’. It is also assumed that Howard’s views on Asia are fundamentally unchanged, repeating information about the 1988 issue.58 In July of the same year, it is reported that Australia’s shift in orientation of diplomacy, from Asia to the United States, has caused conflicts with Asian countries such as Indonesia and China.59
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In the 1970s and 1980s Australia is represented as being dependent on Japan, with apparent confidence in Japanese superiority. The term ‘unreciprocated love’ is preferred by some journalists to represent Australia-Japan relations. An item refers to ‘the Australia-Japan relations of “unreciprocated love”’.60 The term is also used in headlines: ‘Remaining Fear against Japan: Extreme of Unreciprocated Love May Cause an Eruption’;61 and ‘Growing Australian Unreciprocated Love’.62 A 1982 item describing relations between Japan and Queensland comments that ‘if Japan sneezes, Queensland will catch a cold’,63 an expression often used to describe US-Japan relations, connoting Japan’s dependence on the United States. Self- representations of the Japanese in representations of Australia tend to exude a sense of superiority based on economic power: ‘the success of Japanese cars has made Australians recognise the superiority of “made in Japan”’.64 The phrase ‘Japan as economic power’ tends to appear in the 1970s items, indicating Japan’s significant economic influence on Australia.65 Similarly, in the 1980s, an item reports that the ‘superpower Japan’66 causes both expectations and anxiety among Australians. An item from the Australian dated 11 February 1989 is introduced in the Asahi Shimbun with the heading, ‘Australian Economy Cannot Be Sustained without Japanese Capital’.67 This Japanese confidence underlies its attitude towards Australia. In a 1975 item the perceived inability of Australians to have pride in goods they produce seems to be condescended to: ‘it does not seem to be likely, at least for Australians, to feel a kind of pride in the products of their country’.68 Another item from 1972 even says that ‘because Japan buys a lot from Australia, Australia can buy the goods it needs from the United States and Britain’.69 It is evident that Australia is represented as a low-technology country which needs to learn from ‘Japan as a “model”’.70 An item about prime minister Takeshita’s plan to offer to develop technical expertise in Australia in 1988 contrasts ‘rich Australia’ to Japan, which is represented as ‘a developed nation of science and technology’.71 Implicitly, unlike Japan, Australian wealth is attributed not to hard work but to affluent natural resources. In the 1990s, Japanese confidence about their superiority is not apparent in items; nevertheless, by emphasising revulsion for Japan arising in other countries, the difference or power of Japan seems to be indicated. ‘Japan bashing’ is a phrase that is frequently used, particularly when US-Japan relations are reported. According to the Mansfield Centre study, this phrase was found much more in the Japanese press than in items about Japan in the US press,72 which implies that the use of this phrase indicates Japanese concern with its power relations, particularly with the West. The phrase is also employed in items about Australia, but because of its frequent use in items about the US-Japan relations, the expression of anti-Japanese sentiment seem to be not so much specifically Australian, but simply a part of Japanese views of the West’s perceptions of Japan. Notwithstanding this Japanese sense of superiority or confidence, the Asahi Shimbun shows its concern with images of Japan held in Australia, particularly negative ones, throughout the three decades. In the 1970s the results of surveys tend to be presented.73 These items appeared when the two countries were experiencing serious trade conflicts. An editorial which focuses on the ending of the trade conflict over sugar reveals an underlying Japanese concern with Australian images of Japan. It is implied that Japan is sensitive to images of itself held by Westerners, rather than specifically to those held by Australians: ‘how does the
177 Vision Splendid world see this big embarrassment, the so-called economic animal, Japan?’.74 What should be noted here is that ‘the world’ indicates ‘the West’ by using the phrase ‘economic animal’ which is regarded as an American term. The reporting of negative Australian views on Japanese investment in Australia is more evident in the latter part of the 1980s and the early 1990s.75 The Asahi Shimbun continued to play up hostile Australian attitudes towards Japanese behaviour during the second world war,76 which coincides with the time in which the level of Japanese investment produced a minor crisis in Australia. Initial analysis of Japanese representations of Australia in the Asahi Shimbun suggests that there is no major shift between 1970 and 1996 in terms of quantity. Coverage of Australia has continuously been minimal, which supports the argument that Japanese newspapers rarely report on events in Australia. More precisely, while contacts between the two countries are increasing, the quantity of items about Australia is even less in the 1990s than in the previous decades. In terms of quality, Australia’s natural features remain at the centre of representations. However, the ways in which such representations occur are slightly changed, shifting from being simple to complex, and reflecting Japan’s national interests in Australia. Images of Australia as a country rich in resources had already been well established by the end of the 1970s, and the new focus is more on the impact of such an environment, resulting in the representation of Australia as a favourite tourist destination in the 1980s and a desirable place to live in the 1990s. On the other hand, the representations of people in Australia have been consistent. Australians are represented as rich, relaxed people. These representations are closely parallel to Japanese perceptions of Australia which are characterised by strong Japanese interest in Australian nature, and favourable but superficial views of people in Australia. In the 1970s ‘White Australia’, and Australia’s relationship with the authority of the West, Britain and the United States tend to be reported, but as a result of rapid changes in the political orientation of Australia ‘multicultural Australia’ became the phrase used to describe the society in the 1990s. However, references to ‘White Australia’ are likely to crop up, and the lingering influence of this image is pointed out in discussions of the distance between Australia and Asia. The self-perception of the Japanese as a ‘unique race’ that is different from any other is pervasive. As a consequence, Australia tends to be represented as a rich Western society, characterised by the natural environment in opposition to Japanese society in both negative and positive aspects. The specification of its own power occurs explicitly in the use of the terms like ‘superpower Japan’, and is indicated more implicitly by the uproar against ‘Japan bashing’ which followed. This implication may be seen as an outcome of Japan’s official shift to internationalisation. While Japanese perceptions of Australia are overwhelmingly positive, particularly after the tourism boom in the 1980s, Japanese representations of Australia show a certain distance between the two countries, in that they tend to focus on the differences between the two societies. The Asahi Shimbun representations of Australia indicate a lack of information about Australia, and Japan’s indifference towards the country. The lack results in Japanese recognition of Australia as merely a part of the West. While lingering long-established racism underpins Japan’s ambivalence to the West, it should be underlined that Australia-Japan relations cannot be fitted into the pervasive discourse of power and race relations: the white race is superior and powerful, and other
178 Masayo Tada races are inferior and powerless. The discourse inevitably involves contradictions in the Australia-Japan context, where Australians are seen as being racially superior, but Japan is economically more powerful than Australia. Sugimoto describes this pattern in sociological terms as ‘status-inconsistency’,77 and claims that the contrasting patterns are reflected in various bilateral issues between the two countries. Newspaper representations are no exception, and are affected by the same patterns. During the last century Japan has attempted to obtain equal status with the West through economic growth or in other words, has tried to overcome racial inferiority with economic power. Consequently, strong self-confidence, and simultaneous concern about Australian views of Japan, continuously overlap in Japanese representations of Australia. The tone of representations is sometimes even disparaging about Australia. The correspondent Aoki, who often used the phrase ‘unreciprocated love’, observed that ‘one might almost say that the Japanese inferiority complex towards whites is suspended in its relations with Australians’.78 The analysis of Japanese newspaper representations of Australia suggests the nature of Australia-Japan relations: Japanese regard Australia as a white Western society in terms of cultural values, despite reporting on Australia as a multicultural society, which reflects not only Japanese ambivalence towards the West, but also the contradictory power relations between the two countries.
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‘Unpublishable Scoops’: Australian Journalists as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-451
Prue Torney-Parlicki
When Australian prisoners of the Japanese were released at the end of the Pacific War, the news media played a central role in alerting the public to the conditions they had endured in the camps and the brutal conduct of their Japanese captors. Correspondents’ interviews with newly-liberated POWs provided ample insight into their sufferings, but the accounts produced by journalists who had themselves been incarcerated were invested with a particular authority. Already in February 1945, the Sydney Morning Herald had devoted extensive coverage to its former correspondent, Jack Percival, who had been imprisoned with his wife and baby son in the Santa Tomas camp in the Philippines. In a surge of articles published just after his release, Percival provided inside information about camp conditions and the maltreatment of prisoners, the full extent of which would not be revealed for another six months.2 Then in September and October, stories appeared by Maurice Ferry, a former reporter with the Sydney Sun, Lionel Hudson — also formerly of the Sun, Graeme McCabe, formerly of the Hobart Mercury, and Melbourne journalist Rohan Rivett, whose series of articles for the Argus were to form the basis of his classic Behind Bamboo, first published in 1946.3 Amid the outpouring of public outrage, this material satisfied a hunger for confirmation of the shocking reports appearing in the press, and the personal details of individual journalists were seized upon by editors seeking a home-town angle. From a news perspective, journalists who had been imprisoned were ideal subjects and authors: the authenticity of their stories could not be surpassed, and their media knowledge and contacts facilitated the speedy transformation of their experiences into print. Not all journalists taken captive by the Japanese published accounts of their experiences, but here I wish to consider only those who did publicly record their impressions — whether in journalism shortly after their release, or in books at a later date. Of chief concern in this article is the manner in which imprisoned Australian journalists accumulated records about their captivity, and then converted them into published accounts. This will be explored by examining the journalists’ experiences in comparison with those of other POWs, paying particular attention to the impact of their occupational background on the way the journalists coped with incarceration, and then considering their published impressions. The article will not, however, attempt a detailed analysis of such texts; the content of POW narratives has been discussed comprehensively by Joan Beaumont, Humphrey McQueen and others.4 Rather, I am concerned primarily with the extent to which journalists themselves explained or rationalised their decision to publish, and the broad influence of their reportorial background on their writings. Of the few Australian journalists taken captive while working as media representatives, Rohan Rivett and Jack Percival are arguably the best known. Melbourne-born Rivett had studied at Oxford and travelled in Europe before working as a news writer for the Department of Information’s short wave service in 1940-41.
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In December 1941, he was asked by British authorities if he would go to Singapore to assist in reporting the war for the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation. It was in this capacity that he was captured when Singapore fell in February 1942. After attempting to escape by ship down the straits of Malacca to Java, Rivett was eventually captured and incarcerated in a camp in Batavia where he spent the next six months. He was then taken to work on the Burma-Thailand railway, where he stayed until his release in 1945.5 Before the war, Percival had been a noted aviation correspondent and had participated in many flights, including the Tasman crossings with Kingsford Smith in 1933-34, and P G Taylor’s 1939 Indian Ocean flight which surveyed islands for defence purposes. In February 1941, he was seconded to the Australian Associated Press as its Batavian correspondent, and in September he was appointed the Herald’s Manila representative. A plan by Herald management to supply Asian news gathered by its correspondents to American papers — relayed to Percival by chief executive Rupert Henderson during Henderson’s visit to Manila just before the city fell — was a big enticement for the correspondent to stay: the Pacific War story was just ‘hotting up’. However, the gamble was too great, and Percival spent the next three years in captivity. His wife Joyce, pregnant at the time of capture, gave birth to a son in a Manila convent; she and the baby were subsequently housed in the women’s quarters of the Santa Tomas camp.6 Percival’s writings about captivity were limited to newspaper articles, most notably a long personal account published in the Sydney Morning Herald on 24 February 1945;7 he did not produce any books about his experiences. A little known group of Australian journalists employed by the Hong Kong- based South China Morning Post also became internees. On the day after Hong Kong’s official surrender, R J Cloake of Toowoomba, and B Wylie and N Jannet, both of Sydney, were working with their British colleagues on the final edition of the paper when the Japanese entered their building, sealed off all its records, and interned its occupants.8 The only member of the group to have published his impressions, however, seems to be Cloake, whose account of life in Hong Kong’s Stanley camp appeared in the Sydney Sun shortly after his release in September 1945.9 The other journalists under consideration had enlisted in the armed forces and were taken prisoner as regular servicemen. Private Maurice Ferry spent the first part of his captivity, along with the rest of the Eighth Division, in Changi prison camp in Singapore, and from 1943 as a labourer on the Burma-Thailand Railway. At the end of the war, Ferry published newspaper reports and articles drawing on his experiences, including a digest of a 50,000 word memoir entitled Lost Division; the latter was never published in book form.10 Warrant Officer Graeme McCabe, who flew with the RAF in the early stages of the war, was shot down over Northern Johore, Malaya, in February 1942. McCabe hid in the jungle for seven weeks, assisted by local Chinese, before he was captured. He was taken first to Changi, where he was hospitalised with beri beri, and, in January 1943, to Kobe, Japan, where he worked on the docks until his release in September 1945. His story of captivity was also published initially as a series of newspaper articles, and then in 1946 as a book entitled Pacific Sunset.11 Wing Commander Lionel Hudson joined the RAAF in 1940, and became a prisoner when his plane crashed in Burma in 1944. Though Hudson’s comparatively short incarceration in Rangoon — five months — may have exempted him from some of the cumulative effects of captivity felt by those imprisoned for longer periods, his contribution to the literature of POWs —
181 Vision Splendid newspaper articles produced at the end of the war, and a memoir, The Rats of Rangoon,12 written forty years later — was substantial. For the most part, journalists experienced captivity on equal terms with other POWs. While a detailed comparison of occupational groups is beyond the scope of this article, in general journalists undertook the same work, received the same rations, and endured the same physical aggression as their fellow prisoners. Yet there is little doubt that in instances where Japanese prison authorities were aware of their background, the journalists were seen in a different light from other POWs. The professional habits and associations of former newsworkers exposed some of them to a high level of brutality. Jack Percival was interrogated several times about the Tasman and Indian Ocean flights and other aspects of his work before the war. His captors had acquired dossiers on his activities from various Japanese consulates that were so complete that they even included photos and clippings from Percival’s articles published in the Sydney Morning Herald as its aviation correspondent. During one of these interrogations he was suspended by his thumbs, with his feet barely touching the ground, and flogged with an army belt. On another occasion, he was tied to a slab of wood and dropped repeatedly on his back on concrete.13 Graeme McCabe felt that the disclosure of his prewar occupation earned him some respect from his Japanese interrogators in Malaya, and that the questions they put to him ‘as a pressman’, after discovering his background, reflected the ‘exalted’ status of journalists in Japanese society. 14 But more commonly, journalists’ awareness that the Japanese would regard them as potential propagandists for Japan led them to exercise extreme caution. Rohan Rivett knew he was constantly in danger because of his connections to the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation and Singapore Radio. On one occasion in the Batavia camp he was asked to write the introductions to a series of Japanese programs planned for broadcast to Australia — a request he flatly refused. Rivett discerned that the authorities knew only that he was a journalist, but the experience increased his sense of danger.15 A fellow prisoner and former colleague of Rivett’s at Singapore Radio, broadcaster and script writer Norman Carter, was warned explicitly by an Australian officer in the camp not to reveal his association, and to think up some ‘innocuous’ occupation.16 Earlier, the two men had resolved to stick rigidly to the story that Rivett was simply a journalist and Carter a war historian and dramatic producer.17 The habit of keeping notes — though certainly not confined to journalists — further increased the likelihood of suffering physical aggression. No other prisoners in Maurice Ferry’s division received more bashings than Ferry himself, according to one of his colleagues quoted in the November 1945 issue of The Journalist. The Japanese had been suspicious of him because he was always taking notes.18 Yet the captors’ maltreatment of former journalists could also be prompted by military factors. Lionel Hudson’s repeated beatings in Rangoon Gaol were motivated by a desire to punish Allied airmen for their bombing of Burma — ostensibly for ‘murdering Burmese women and children’, but clearly because their actions had resulted in Japan’s loss of air supremacy over Burma. Such reprisals were the consequence of a Japanese policy formulated in late 1943 under which all captured Allied airmen were to be treated as ‘criminal prisoners’ rather than POWs.19 Yet Hudson himself stressed that his sufferings had been mild when compared with the privations and brutality endured by many other prisoners.20 The propaganda and information potential of
182 Prue Torney-Parlicki journalists might have predisposed them to increased danger, but the causes of physical violence were varied and largely unpredictable. The emotional and psychological impact of incarceration on journalists was comparable to that felt by other prisoners. All groups suffered acute feelings of impotence: soldiers were robbed of their weapons and ability to fight, nurses prevented from practising their professional skills, and journalists deprived of their ability to gather and transmit news. This sense of disempowerment and associated feelings of worthlessness and failure were the emotions around which many POWs defined their wartime role. Some men of the Eighth Division, which formed the bulk of the Australian forces taken prisoner, felt cheated of the opportunity to continue the tradition established at Gallipoli and reinforced at Tobruk, and believed that they would be perceived as failures by the Australian public. Returning POWs admitted to feeling like ‘a pack of convicts and cowards’, and recalled that mates who had perished in the camps had died believing that ‘they were hated and despised by their country and their people’.21 This sentiment was not unique to prisoners of the Japanese. One Australian prisoner of the Germans recalled a common feeling of having ‘let the side down’. ‘It was years after the war’, he remembered, ‘before some of us would willingly admit to having been POWs’.22 Nor did journalists see their inability to disseminate information as a lesser form of failure. On his release from Santa Tomas, Percival wrote to Rupert Henderson, telling him that the worst aspect of his internment was the feeling that he had let Henderson down by being captured. To compensate for the loss of time, he would redouble his efforts to gather and transmit material.23 Percival’s compulsion to work again as a war correspondent, to pick up where he had left off, was intense. He pleaded with a Sydney Morning Herald correspondent, Harry Summers, who entered the camp soon after it was liberated, to cable the Fairfax group of newspapers, telling them all was well. On the same page of the Herald containing his first despatch after his release, another small item containing his message duly appeared. It read in part: ‘I hold card no. 11, issued Sydney, authorising me send ordinary rate and urgent rate messages to ‘Herald’. Have been interned. Again in business. Appreciate renewal of business relations.’24 He’d had three years ‘to sit and think about it’, he told Summers, and now his primary concern was to obtain a renewal of his accreditation to General MacArthur’s headquarters and to resume work.25 The perception of time wasted — captured in the title of interned nurse Jessie Simons’ memoir, While History Passed26 — was at least as strong amongst journalists as their fellow internees. Journalists were also typical in their determination to keep diaries, and to use them as a basis for writing sustained accounts for public or private circulation. A large number of POWs and civilian internees displayed great ingenuity and resourcefulness in their efforts to maintain a record and conceal it from their captors. The perseverence and resolve exhibited by prisoners with no media background such as Wilfred Kent Hughes and Stan Arneil demonstrated that such qualities were not unique to journalists: Kent Hughes stored the minutely written notes on which he based his epic poem, Slaves of the Samurai, in the false inner wall of an anti-tinea powder tin, while Arneil’s fear of losing his diary, which formed the basis of his acclaimed One Man’s War, was such that he copied it out onto the back of letters received from his sister.27 But while clandestine record-keeping was widespread, the tendency to see the POW experience as essential copy destined
183 Vision Splendid for an audience was especially prevalent amongst journalists who had, after all, been robbed of their function as news reporters. This sense of deprivation was profound. As one commentator has observed of Rohan Rivett: ‘While other journalists established reputations as frontline correspondents, he had unpublishable scoops about the fall of Singapore, a 700-kilometre escape attempt by boat, the terrors of imprisonment in Java and Malaya, and more than a year on the Thai- Burma railway’.28 Rivett went to extreme lengths to maintain a record of captivity, hiding his detailed notes in prisoners’ leg bandages, in the false bottom of their medical chest, and against his stomach and other body parts when the Japanese were not conducting personal searches. A severe beating or even death could have been the consequences of discovery. 29 Jack Percival was also obsessively determined to keep writing. Afraid of losing his copy during the regular searches by prison guards, he resorted to burying it in an Arnott’s biscuit tin in the camp’s latrines, adding more copy to the tin whenever he considered it safe.30 Lionel Hudson crammed his notes into an empty chutney bottle which was then buried in the wall of a foxhole in the prison compound. His initial fear of being discovered soon abated as he began to derive satisfaction from his act of defiance.31 However, only Graeme McCabe seems to have been successful in continuing to function as a reporter, albeit within the constraints of captivity. During his imprisonment in Kobe, as well as maintaining a personal record, he conducted a news service for his fellow prisoners, using as his contact a Japanese boy who would slip an English language newspaper through the wire on the docks where the prisoners laboured, for a bag of stolen sugar. McCabe then smuggled the newspaper into Kobe hidden under the soles of his feet between the two pairs of socks he wore. ‘It was a “lollypop” (beheading) offence if you were caught with the paper’, he recalled.32 The dogged determination on the part of journalists to keep writing and to perform journalistic tasks under extreme duress was hailed in media circles as the epitome of newsworkers’ dedication to their craft. The Journalist extolled the single- mindedness of the Australian employees of the South China Morning Post who had continued working by candlelight after Hong Kong’s official surrender, using foot pedals to operate the linotypes, until the moment the Japanese entered their building.33 But special praise was reserved for ‘staunch AJA member’ Maurice Ferry, whose commitment to maintaining a record throughout his years in captivity was constantly put ahead of his personal safety. ‘So strong are the instincts of a newspaperman’, declared The Journalist, ‘that Ferry risked his life and suffered thrashing after thrashing in order to keep an accurate and complete account of the ordeal of his division. Ferry’s activities were seen not only as courageous, but also invaluable in terms of increasing his journalistic status. A former staff reporter on the Sun who ‘turned war correspondent overnight’, Ferry’s latest despatches, according to The Journalist, showed that his years in captivity had ‘matured him and given his writing a new quality’.34 Journalists’ obsession to keep writing was fuelled by other prisoners’ perceptions of them as the natural chroniclers of the POW experience. Throughout his incarceration, Rivett was repeatedly approached by other prisoners, especially Australians, who told him they hoped he was keeping a record and that they were relying on him to tell their story. Rivett met this expectation easily, but his leadership extended beyond gathering and recording information; in the Batavia camp he also
184 Prue Torney-Parlicki delivered lectures and conducted classes in French. He later recalled the sense of power and responsibility that this leadership role bestowed on him:
Being the only war correspondent in the camp, I was repeatedly asked how long it would be before we were free. I had no powers of divination and said so. But I came to realise that, owing to a series of lectures I was giving throughout the camp, considerable and unmerited weight was attached to my opinions. I was not prepared to lie, but at the same time I did not see that a blunt statement that I felt things would move very slowly, would be very helpful to morale.35
Rivett’s intellectual ability might have been unusual, but his assumption of responsibility was replicated by other journalists in different camps. For at least part of his internment, Percival was secretary of the British section of the Santa Tomas camp — a position second only to the secretary of the larger American section.36 Lionel Hudson’s senior rank meant that he also took charge of other prisoners, both during his incarceration and in the four day period between the evacuation of the Japanese from Rangoon and the arrival of the British. After the Japanese fled, he virtually took over command of the city and became, according to the Melbourne Herald, the ‘uncrowned king of Rangoon’.37 Hudson’s leadership — like that of Rivett, McCabe and Percival — was seemingly unrelated to his journalistic background, but that did not prevent one overseas paper from drawing a connection. ‘There is no direct evidence that [Hudson’s] civilian professional training equipped him for his remarkable enterprise’, remarked an editorial in The Statesman, ‘… But it may be thought at least that the painting of the words ‘Japs Gone’ [on the gaol roof] was the outcome of Hudson’s training on the Sydney Sun which had taught him the importance of big headlines on big occasions’.38 In linking Hudson’s initiative in alerting the Allies to the absence of the Japanese with his former occupation, this commentary appeared to be drawing a long bow. Nevertheless, the experiences of the journalists considered here suggests that the assertive, forthright qualities required of the reporter in peacetime might have translated into a need to assume responsibility in captivity. The idea of journalists as leaders persisted beyond the period of imprisonment. In the weeks following their release, Rivett and Percival, in particular, were portrayed by the media not only as the perfect ‘eyewitnesses’, but also as unofficial representatives and spokespersons for the POW community. On 12 September, the Sydney Sun reported that Rivett had been specially flown from Thailand to Australia where he was to present to Allied authorities ‘fairly complete records of major events affecting 60,000 Allied prisoners’. Rivett’s ‘authority’ was underscored by mention of his family connections (he was the son of Sir David Rivett, head of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research) and former associations with the Department of Information and the Malayan Broadcasting Corporation.39 The same tendency to ascribe leadership roles was evident in the importance given by newspaper editors to the indictments of Japanese camp authorities by Percival and Rivett, which were published in the Sydney Morning Herald and Argus respectively, shortly after the journalists’ release in February and September. In the vacuum between the end of the war and the formal trials of Japanese war criminals, these accusations would have been influential, if only by enumerating and clarifying the nature of the crimes for the Australian public. Percival’s indictment, published on 7 February, named thirteen Japanese individuals whom he accused of a comprehensive list of
185 Vision Splendid crimes perpetrated against Santa Tomas prisoners, including failing to supply food as specified, failing to take sanitary measures to assure cleanliness and prevent epidemics, failing to provide facilities to treat contagious diseases, aggravating labour conditions and discipline, holding up correspondence and parcels, and failing to permit decent burials of internees who died.40 Rivett’s indictment, which appeared on 15 September, contained twenty accusations and named fifteen Japanese considered to be the main perpetrators. It also advised that a full list of more than 100 officers, NCOs and privates, indictable under the listed offences, would be made available to the military authorities in Thailand within a few weeks.41 Published in the vengeful climate at the end of the war, amid a constant stream of atrocity stories and haunting images of emaciated ex-prisoners, such indictments would have carried considerable weight. But it was not only the journalists’ formally worded accusations that earned a prominent place in the press; as mentioned earlier, journalist POWs were very prolific in the immediate aftermath of war. Rivett’s articles for the Argus were concerned not only with the ordeal of POWs but also with other aspects of the Pacific War such as the massacre of nurses on Banka Island.42 In addition to his regular Sydney Morning Herald reports on current developments in the Philippines, Percival also provided personal insights into internment at Santa Tomas. Ferry’s articles appeared in a number of dailies, including the Hobart Mercury, which immediately followed up the twelfth and final extract of his memoir with ten episodes of Tasmanian Graeme McCabe’s account of captivity. 43 In all of these cases, the journalists remained in the media spotlight for a number of weeks. The disempowerment that they had felt in captivity as a consequence of their inability to gather and transmit news was at least partly ameliorated by the elevation of their status after release. If incarceration had been generally an indiscriminate and levelling experience for all prisoners, journalists who published their impressions in the immediate aftermath of war found a ready outlet for their emotions denied to most other POWs. Of course a large number of ex-prisoners would later produce books about their time in captivity; but the speed with which journalists such as Percival, Rivett, McCabe, Hudson and Ferry saw the features of their captivity turned into newsprint distinguished them from other ex-prisoners whose memories initially remained private or were shared only among family and friends. The journalists’ ordinariness and representativeness as POWs that made them so attractive to the media were partly undermined by the journalists’ subsequent ‘celebrity’ status created by such media attention. But what impact did the journalists’ occupational background have on their narratives? How did the journalists themselves explain or rationalise the publication of their impressions? Rohan Rivett was unusual in reflecting upon the factors that impelled him to publish, although certainly writing in book form provided him with greater scope to do so. He revealed in Behind Bamboo that his postwar writings were, above all, the inevitable product of the journalist’s preoccupation with the scoop. At war’s end, he believed that he had been been ‘sitting’ on a sensational story for three years and was most anxious to avoid being tied up in military red tape while ‘scores of Allied correspondents poured in and picked up the story of the 60,000 Allied prisoners who had worked along the railway’. His priorities were clear: ‘Having been “in the bag” while dozens of other war correspondents were winning fame and fortune in many theatres, I had the journalist’s craving to get my story out before it was scooped.’44 The effects of his journalism background were
186 Prue Torney-Parlicki also evident in the book’s reflections on his reasons for maintaining a record, particularly other prisoners’ expectations that he would write their story. Much later in life, Rivett reflected on the specific qualities of Behind Bamboo and the circumstances in which the book was written. He felt that he had written much better things since, but that it:
had immediacy, it was written from the heart, it was a pouring out of frustrations bottled up within one for three and a half years, and it finally was to tell one’s own countrymen and people elsewhere what the boys had gone through and what had been suffered by those who hadn’t come back … [It] was written at a frightful speed … but it did have, I think, a certain immediacy and authenticity …45
Undoubtedly Rivett’s motives for publishing were shared by other journalists, but they were seldom made explicit. In most cases the journalists made little or no attempt at explanation, electing instead to relate their experiences in routine pieces of reportage. The accounts by Jack Percival and Maurice Ferry exemplified this approach. Written in the first person, but in an economic and restrained style, Percival’s article simply documented the features of his imprisonment with no reflection or analysis. Its adherence to journalistic convention — despite the intensely personal nature of the material — was reinforced by the editor’s comment at the outset that for the first time Australians could ‘read the facts of an ordeal on which they have anxiously speculated for so long …’(my emphasis).46 The unreflective nature of Percival’s story, coupled with his failure to produce any further works about his wartime experiences, were no doubt inspired by his determination to put his internment behind him and resume his career; in this sense they stemmed from personal imperatives. But his preoccupation with documenting the facts was also manifestly related to his journalism background. Maurice Ferry’s account displayed a similar lack of self-consciousness. Though much longer than Percival’s, it related the POW story from capture to release in a straight chronological narrative, its very title — Lost Division — reinforcing the impression of impartiality by purporting to tell the story of the Eighth Division in captivity, and not merely Ferry’s personal story. 47 Like Percival, Ferry worked within established journalistic parameters rather than venturing beyond them, like Rivett, into broader literary and analytical endeavours. Although written over forty years later, Lionel Hudson’s memoir exhibits the same determination to tell a story from an ‘eyewitness’ perspective, to bring to light facts never before revealed. Sub-titled ‘The inside story of the “Fiasco” that took place at the end of the war in Burma’, the book inevitably demonstrates a greater degree of reflection than Hudson’s immediate postwar journalism which focused on his personal experience of Japanese brutality. 48 The newspaper articles went straight to the heart of issues that were uppermost in the public mind at the end of the war, and catered to the journalistic demand for immediacy. Hudson’s journalism background, however, was no less evident in his full-length memoir. Presented in the form of a diary, interspersed with comment and details of the author’s travels to London, Rangoon and Tokyo to uncover the full story, it displays all the hallmarks of a piece of investigative journalism, concerned to ‘tell all sides of [an] intriguing, if inconsequential, capsule of military history’. If Hudson’s delay in publishing a sustained account was unusual (he explained that he was inspired to write the book after reading his prison diary for the first time in forty
187 Vision Splendid years), its content betrayed the journalist’s obsession with revealing the truth — a need that no doubt intensified as the author aged.49 In contrast, Graeme McCabe conceived his writings as an attempt to go beyond the physical and emotional dimensions of the POW experience itself, to an interpretation of Japan’s wartime behaviour. His newspaper articles, he explained, endeavoured ‘to portray the lives of prisoners of war, silhouetted against the ever- changing background of Japan and her people, from 1943 to 1945’. He had tried to show ‘the steady decline and fall of the Rising Sun, from the bold, arrogant bully of the morning, until he faded away, dying, in the evening Pacific sunset’.50 However, this agenda remained faithful to the pattern of representing Japan that had dominated media discourse throughout the war. In the last two newspaper extracts and his memoir, McCabe summarised his perceptions of the Japanese people and assessed their prospects for peace in language that conformed unflinchingly to the stereotyped images of earlier war journalism. Japanese men, McCabe reflected bitterly, were ‘physically unattractive, mentally undeveloped, immoral, and grossly sensual, indiscreet, and prurient … two timers and treacherous’; the Japanese woman was ‘a child-bearing vehicle with no rights or privileges’; and Japan itself was a place where ‘hygiene is primitive and everywhere are squalor and dross’. The Occupation authorities, he concluded, would find it difficult to guide Japan — a ‘misfit in a modern world’ — to the way of peace.51 McCabe’s attempts at explaining rather than merely describing Japanese actions were comparable to Rivett’s similar efforts at understanding the enemy in Behind Bamboo, if not as probing or incisive. As Humphrey McQueen observes, Rivett’s book, which devoted a chapter to ‘The unknown Japanese’, was distinguished by its preparedness to examine the ‘why’ as well as the ‘how’ of Japan’s behaviour. Indeed, in McQueen’s view, it was ‘too reasoned a book to appeal when hatred of Japan was at its peak’.52 Both writers to some extent transcended journalistic boundaries at a time when a preoccupation with facts about the sufferings of POWs, rather than intellectual analysis of their captors’ motives, was paramount. Yet equally, the lack of distance between the event and the representations (both books were published in 1946) was evident in the authors’ reliance on traditional assumptions about ‘the Japanese mind’. In Rivett’s case, such attributes were summed up in ‘the truest and ablest analysis of the Japanese’ he had seen — Taid O’Conroy’s The Menace of Japan — which stressed the need to ‘grasp to its uttermost significance’ the fact that ‘the Japanese are convinced … that they are descended from the gods’.53 Less questioning than Rivett, McCabe could find no better summary of ‘this strange race’ than an ancient Chinese proverb which describes the Japanese in verse:
Men without honour, Women without virtue, Flowers without smell, And birds without song.54
Journalists’ published accounts of captivity betrayed a need to compensate for time perceived as wasted and an acute awareness of the newsworthiness of the POW story. No doubt the journalists considered here were also motivated by a desire to record their personal stories for posterity — a motivation shared by scores of ex- prisoners whose collective writings now comprise a vast literature on the Australian
188 Prue Torney-Parlicki
POW experience. But in the case of at least some journalists, this personal sense of urgency seems to have been compounded by feelings of professional inadequacy, and certainly by the conviction that they had lived through and were therefore best placed to document one of the biggest news stories of the war period. In most respects, interned or imprisoned former newsworkers dealt with captivity in similar ways to prisoners from other occupational backgrounds. Indeed, the universality of such responses perhaps goes some way towards explaining why journalist POWs as a group have not hitherto attracted independent study. What distinguished their experience, however, was their ready access — irrespective of whether they took advantage of it — to the means of publicising their ordeal quickly and effectively. The Australian media’s insatiable appetite for news of POWs after years of strict censorship ensured that journalists who had themselves been actors in the POW drama found a welcoming niche for their reportorial skills. Such was the climate in Australia at war’s end that these skills were used to reinforce, rather than question, wartime patterns of representing the enemy.
189 Vision Splendid
Australia: A Philippine Gaze
Raul Pertierra
A bourgeois mode of being-in-the-world is a concern with the gaze. In a public world of strangers, one is how one appears. Moreover, the mark of a true bourgeois is to conform one’s private behaviour according to public norms. The gaze penetrates and moulds the self. While the self is always oriented to an other, it is the other-as- stranger, which distinguishes bourgeois socialisation from the familiarities encountered in locally-based communities. Weber argued that the origins of a bourgeois sensibility lay in an intense religiosity oriented towards an all-seeing God.1 The conditions of modernity have replaced God by a less total but equally effective public gaze. An expanding market and its accompanying state institutions resulted in synchronic relations allowing for ever-expanding structures of trust. A trust in strangers is a requirement of the modern condition and the basis of this trust is modernity’s major problematic.2 The study of these new conditions of sociality resulted in the discipline of sociology. 3 While one cannot directly substitute nations or societies for individuals, globality increasingly requires collective adjustments to an external gaze. One of the tasks of contemporary anthropology, besides revealing the other, is to show us how we appear to them.4 Basing himself on the work of Dumont,5 Kapferer,6 in a generally neglected study, shows how we may better understand our egalitarian self-image by seeing it through an hierarchal Singhalese gaze. In this paper, I present Australia through a Philippine lens. The Philippines is sufficiently similar for us not to appear exotic, but it is different enough to ensure an external gaze. In the 1950s, as a young adolescent in the Philippines, I attended an international scout jamboree, where I met my first Australians. As I recall, they were truly impressive. The group I met were young women, who proceeded to show me their knives, deftly hidden on their backs, strapped to the shin and on the waist. When asked why they needed so many knifes, they explained that this was necessary in the Australian bush. Mentioning this to my family, my older sisters informed me that the Australian soldiers they had met during the war were also especially skilled with knifes. In 1995, while conducting research in the Philippines, I was repeatedly embarrassed to have to admit that I had not heard of a famous Australian named Michelle van Eimeren. My Filipino friends informed me that Michelle was an amazon beauty, capturing every Filipino’s heart and soon to become a leading film star. The problem was that she was too tall and her mermaid costume had to be extensively lengthened to fit her particularly large feet. It seems that the present generation of Filipinos still imagine Australians, at least women, as big and self-reliant. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, was popular and controversial in Manila, especially with women and the large gay population. The controversy involved the role of the Filipino woman in the film, portrayed as a scheming virago. What puzzled my gay friends, however, was why Australian transvestites presented themselves as parodies of female beauty. Moreover, they argued that the transvestites should not have allowed themselves to be upstaged by the Filipino striptease and triumphantly pointed out that in the end, a man still gets his man. When I, in turn, expressed my
190 Raul Pertierra bewilderment to an academic colleague, he pointed out that many Filipino gays take the attitude of a famous Kabuki actor who proclaimed that as long as he performed female roles, there would be no need for women to do so. I should point out that, however paradoxical, many Filipino gays strongly object to having sex with homosexual men, insisting on only having straight men as lovers. It is clear from these examples that whatever strong similarities the Philippines and Australia share, there are equally striking dissimilarities. Let me begin with the former. The Philippines proudly announces itself as the only Christian nation in Asia. With this image, most Filipinos include the practice of democracy, a general western orientation, including the widespread use of English and to a much lesser extent Spanish, and high levels of education. When queried, Filipinos can point to the country’s long history of legitimate governance, a familiarity with European art and music dating back to the seventeenth century, and the establishment of a pontifical university in 1649. Contrary to a common perception, there were strong links between the Philippines and Australia throughout the nineteenth century. A small community of Manila men, as Filipinos were than known, lived in Sydney and others played an important role as pearl divers and seamen in northern Australia. A Filipino, Zarcal, established a thriving pearling business in the Torres Straits during the 1890s. He was officially named as Filipino consul representing the newly founded revolutionary government of Aguinaldo, who had defeated the Spanish colonial army but who, a few years late was overwhelmed by superior American forces.7 When American ships were loading coal in Newcastle on their way to the Philippines, local wharfies went on strike in protest against American imperialism.8 Zarcal was part of an overseas network attempting to obtain support for struggling Filipino revolution, and while some sympathy was expressed in London, Australian officials decided to support the Americans. Throughout the second part of the nineteenth century, Manila was a common stop for ships going to Australia, particularly for artists and entertainers who were likely to find larger audiences in the Philippines than in Australia. Not only Manila but cities like Iloilo and Cebu had regular performances of opera and concerts, including visiting overseas companies. Both countries were also interested in establishing a tropical export industry. Using British and American capital, they supplied the growing world demand for sugar. While the Philippines resorted to peonage, Australia used indentured labour. These ties were severed in the succeeding decades, when Australia imposed its isolationist White Australia policy and turned its attention almost exclusively to the West. I need not point out that one of the strongest impulses for Federation was the growing perception among the states that their interests, such as the exclusion of Asians, were not being sufficiently appreciated by London. The then imperial perspectives of Britain often overruled the locally perceived needs of Australia. Instead, an Australian identity was forged by defining itself as fundamentally different to its neighbours. A common claim of Filipino veterans of the second world war was that their heroic defence of Bataan against superior Japanese forces, allowed the Americans, and later the Australians, enough time to organise their forces against further Japanese expansion. For this reason, Filipinos were outraged when Gamboa was refused entry after the war because of the White Australia policy. He was a Filipino
191 Vision Splendid serviceman in the US army who spent two years in Melbourne, during which time he had married an Australian woman with whom he had a child. Demonstrations were held in Manila, a protest delegation was sent to the UN by the Philippine government and eventually, due to local Australian support, the Gamboas were re- united in Melbourne. Filipino outrage was fuelled as much by popular notions of romance — young good looking Filipino man falling in love with a sturdy white woman — as by strong objections against racist policies. Filipinos in California were among the most vocal opponents of that state’s anti-miscegenation laws during the 1930s. When we compare the Philippines and Australia during the period 1898-1998, differences and similarities are startling. In 1898, the Philippines declared itself independent from Spain, while the majority of Australians voted for Federation. After a bitter war of resistance, American forces defeated the Filipinos in 1901, the year Federal parliament first convened in Melbourne. The following decades saw a steady if slow transfer of government functions by Americans to Filipinos, ensuring that an entrenched, landed elite, rather than the rabble of the revolution, would inherit political power. In Australia, the basis for a prosperous, but racially exclusive nation was being laid. While Australians were heavily involved in the first world war, the Philippines only sent a small expeditionary force. In 1935, local affairs were formally transferred to Filipinos, the Americans retaining control over external affairs and foreign trade. In Australia, increasing concern was being expressed about the possibilities of war in Europe and in the Pacific. The Japanese entered Manila in January 1942, where they stayed for three years, until the American reoccupation in February 1945. While this was a period of great suffering for many Filipinos, the worst time was just prior to the American liberation, especially the destruction of Manila by American bombing. By comparison, Australia had an easy time during the war. While the great majority of Filipinos favoured the return of the Americans, a substantial minority had cooperated with the Japanese. My only awareness of Japanese sympathy in Australia is among Aborigines. In 1972, while exploring the possibilities of doing fieldwork in Port Keats and Melville Island, I was surprised to hear songs referring favourably to the Japanese of this period. Australia is recently examined the possibility of amending elements of its 1900 constitution. During the same period, the Philippines has had seven different constitutions (Declaration of Independence in 1898, American dependency until the proclamation of the Commonwealth in 1935, a Japanese inspired constitution from 1942-45, the formal declaration of Independence in 1946, a new constitution during the Marcos period in 1972, and finally Cory Aquino’s constitution in 1986). In 1997, supporters of President Ramos tried to enact substantial changes to the present constitution but many Filipinos, weary of change, demanded a period of consolidation. Most Filipinos would be at a loss regarding the fuss Australians make about constitutional changes. Filipinos see change as part of the democratic and political process. The Australian resistance to change would appear to many Filipinos as a form of political fatalism. I was doing fieldwork in the Philippines in 1975 when Whitlam was dismissed by the Governor General. Filipinos found it extremely difficult to understand how Australia could possibly consider itself independent while accepting the advice of an English monarch. My radical friends, who were than engaged in underground resistance against President Marcos, were even more astonished that the Australian
192 Raul Pertierra masses, supposedly proletarian, accepted the defeat of a Labour government so meekly. When I pointed out that the rule of law is severely imposed in Australia, they argued that Australia was a bourgeois dictatorship and not, as it fancied itself, a working class democracy. How do Filipinos presently perceive Australia? Generally, Australia has a very low profile in the Philippines. Filipinos are aware of Australia’s agricultural exports, particular its cattle, which villagers jokingly refer to as their local Australians. Australian sporting prowess is widely admired and its big, beautiful women praised. And yet there is very little political understanding between the two countries. In 1995 Ramos was the first Philippine President to visit Australia and Howard reciprocated in 1996. There are nearly 100,000 Filipinos residing in Australia, many of whom have married Australians. One of President Ramos’ daughters has an Australian husband and the President often refers to his Australian grandson. Despite these affinities, while all the major Asian languages are taught in many Australian universities, none teach Filipino. Philippine Studies, a growing field in Australia, is under resourced and overlooked. This neglect is partly due to the successful assimilation of Filipinos in Australia but also to the inability of Australians to recognise difference in similitude. Asia is by definition Europe’s, and by extension Australia’s, other. In this simple classification of the world, the Philippines is, from an Australian perspective, anomalous. The best way to deal with anomaly is either to overlook it or to assimilate it unproblematically. Filipino brides are an example of this anomaly. They are simultaneously over-sexualised and disempowered. The Filipino in Priscilla conforms to this image and when she finally leaves her husband, she triumphantly mocks his small penis. While the Australian media barely acknowledges the Philippines, the latter’s is more useful to its readers in informing them about us. A quick survey of Manila’s newspapers, indicates how we appear to them. There are eight major morning papers in English, several evening papers and a host of tabloids in the vernacular. In addition, Manila has 80 cable, until recently including an Australian one, and seven free-to-air channels. Media diversity, like other aspects of Philippine democracy, is practiced in excess and would benefit from an Australian dose of moderation. During the months of October-November 1997, I found 37 references to Australia in 8 English newspapers. Ten articles dealt with economic issues ranging from reports of Western Mining Corporation investments in the Philippines, the sale of Telstra shares and the predicted fall in demand for Australian university places by Asians. There are five references to population and the environment — predictably to El Nino and its effect in Australia and the region, pictures of stranded whales and a long article from the Natural Family Planning Council of Victoria explaining the Catholic view on contraception. Under politics and crime, eleven references dealing with Australia’s position regarding landmines, changes in the coalition cabinet, blood money accepted by Mr Gilford, navy rife with sexual harassment, a predicted increase in the Asian crime connection and an intriguing reference to two Australian women deported for entering the Philippines as prostitutes. There is a letter from Victoria warning Asians about the dangers of visiting Australia. It describes the experiences of the writer’s Filipino wife and son being racially abused by police. There are eleven entries under arts, culture and entertainment. A long article describes David Campbell’s New York success, several references to Michael
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Hutchence’s death and to Paula Yates, and the announced return of Ogie Alcasid from Brisbane with his beautiful Australian wife Michelle van Eimeren, the mermaid star of Philippine cinema. The controversy over Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ and the Sydney exhibition of Virgin in a Condom receive substantial coverage. The beheading of the Yagan statue in Perth appears a few days after a long report about Myer’s petition to the Anti-Discrimination Board to allow them to only employ white males for Santa Claus. There is a long reference to the important role of the Australian Centre in Manila in encouraging exchanges between local performing artists and their Australian counterparts. Finally, Johnny Litton, a society columnist, describes his visit to the Melbourne Cup, including the locals’ exotic headgear, with a passing reference to Sydney, portraying it as culturally inferior to Melbourne. It would take too long for me to unpack the possible interpretations of these articles for a Philippine readership but certain points can be made. In respect of business, there is considerable ambivalence regarding foreign investment, particularly in mining. Protectionists and Leftists often oppose these investments, on nationalist or anti-capitalist grounds. The latter can be persuaded by joint ventures, the former only by real gains on the part of the poor. Unlike Australia, economic rationalists are not yet in control of the nation’s agenda. To put it in another way, the nation is not seen primarily as an economy but as a, however attenuated, moral community. The environment and population are growing concerns but economic development and Catholic opposition prevent effective policies in these areas. The Philippines paid blood money in 1995 to rescue a domestic worker convicted in the Middle East. Local feelings are generally in favour of such arrangements. The reported Asian crime connection is seen in reverse. It is commonly believed that Australian criminals operate in the Philippines, in prostitution and drugs, using the country as a transit point and for laundering profits. Australian paedophiles have received considerable media exposure, repeating an earlier Australian obsession with mail-order brides. I had hoped that the incident of racial abuse by police in Victoria was atypical but a report in The Australian9 claims that harassment and intimidation are commonly experienced by Asian youth. As we saw in the Gamboa incident, there is a deep hostility and resentment about Australia’s racist past. The response in the Asian and Philippine press about Pauline Hanson indicates that this resentment continues in the present. Arts and entertainment are superficially what Australians and Filipinos have most in common, since both countries are equally under American tutelage. In these areas, Filipinos consider themselves to be as knowledgeable and competent as Australians. Recent touring musical productions (eg, Miss Saigon, The King and I) in Australia have included Filipino performers. Old timers recall how Pilita Corrales and her Latin band livened up Melbourne in the late fifties. While Hollywood is as pervasive in Manila as it is in Sydney, the former supports a local film industry producing over a hundred full-length features annually. Western popular culture is extensive in both countries and as in Aboriginal Australia, there are interesting fusions of native Filipino and modern styled in music, art and dance. This syncretism with Western forms has been practiced in the Philippines for several centuries. It is a mistake to think that Australia, despite its general acceptance, occupies the moral high ground in Asia. Asians know that Australia considers the region primarily as a valuable and exploitable market, and not one where it recognises basic affinities. They are well aware that Australia’s human rights stance is largely
194 Raul Pertierra a political position, used for diplomatic advantage or to placate domestic demands. In the last instance, it is Australia’s perceived national interest which determines its pursuit of the human rights and other agenda. In this context, the choice between accommodation and reconciliation in relation to Aborigines is crucial. This choice will express the nation’s capacity to deal with issues of primordiality and to acknowledge, like a rich guest, the appropriate deference to the host. Compared to Australia, the Philippines is generally uninterested in embarking on foreign military adventures. Its territorial dispute with Malaysia over Sabah, and more recently with its other neighbours over islands in the South China sea, rarely approaches a sense of belligerency. Even the menacing ascendancy of China seldom worries Filipinos. In this context, reports of a shift in Australia’s defence orientation to include overseas interests could remind Asians about our imperial past. Australia’s keenness to intervene in regional conflicts should not be seen simply as defending Euro-American interests. Instead, it should be seen as evidence of Australia’s deep involvement in the region, which may, at times, involve strong opposition to the West. The Philippines’ present invisibility in Australia exemplifies our difficulty in recognising affinity in a region which we define as characterising difference. This selective perception of Asia is a consequence of the way we perceive ourselves — as displaced Europeans surrounded by Oriental hordes. In addition, our passion for egalitarianism, often just an excuse for conformity, prevents us from recognising legitimate differences such as the insistence of Aborigines to be accepted as much on their terms as on ours. While we, reasonably, expect migrants to adjust to us, we unreasonably demand the same from Aborigines. Again a Philippine comparison is instructive. The Philippine legal system has provisions for recognising different practices such as Muslim marriage and property relations, various forms of ancestral domain and customary jurisprudence. These accommodations to existing realities force us to rethink our notions of the public sphere with its conventional assumption of simple homogeneity. One nation, one people, one spirit was a common slogan during the Marcos period but, as in Australia, it remains unfulfilled and possibly unfulfillable. While such a project may have its uses, the cost and inevitable human suffering involved are seldom acknowledged. We are still captive to theories of society and culture which have long outlived their usefulness.10 These have stressed conformity instead of spontaneity, commonalities above differences, representation rather than participation, and vicarious over direct experience. I am not arguing for a reversed dualism as much as questioning the existing balance. The sense of a national identity formed through the entitlements of citizenship have been more successful in Australia than in the Philippines. Compared to the Philippines, the Australian state has more successfully moulded the character of the nation. The various transformations of the Philippine state during the last century, expressed in its constitutional changes, have prevented as effective a delivery of citizenship entitlements as Australia. What characterises the Philippine case, is a sense of nationhood persisting through the changes in the structure of the state. For this reason, civil society and the private sphere are much stronger in the Philippines than in Australia. For the latter, the state is almost indistinguishable from the nation. Hence, minor changes in the Australian state’s constitution are perceived as major threats to the nation’s integrity. While fundamental changes have occurred in the composition of the Australian nation in the second half of this century, including a
195 Vision Splendid recognition of its indigenous inhabitants, they have not been adequately reflected in the state. This is more than a failure of political will or the lack of a democratic process. It indicates an imbalance in the relationship of the state and the nation. It assumes that the former always serves as the steering mechanism, if not the dominant partner, for the latter. Under these conditions, only a representative, rather than a participatory democracy are possible. In a postmodern condition, an awareness of our differences is increasingly a major thing we hold in common. The role of strangers, with their differences, generate problems for expanding the basis of trust. How we negotiate these differences practically and to everyone’s satisfaction, remains to be resolved. Useful models may be found among our neighbours in Asia, since they also, not always satisfactorily, have had to deal with difference. The successful, if illegal, but peaceful overthrow of the Marcos regime in 1986 served as a model for the world. All nation-states are currently grappling with the proper balance between the demands of their varied and incommensurable members, and on the other side, the practical capacities of the state to meet these demands on the basis of equity and justice. While we may not agree with the ways in which other societies have attempted to maintain such a balance, we also have not been totally successful in dealing with difference. Our strong insistence on egalitarianism has been only partly successful, as it has also often resulted in a stifling conformity or in the forced erasure of difference. The larrikin streak in the Australian character has often cloaked the reality of a heavily conventional society. A similar contrast is found in the Philippine komedya, a traditional form of village theatre. In it, a clown or jokester draws attention to himself by prancing around the stage mimicking both actors and members of the audience. In the context of a heavily ritualised performance, the formality of the actors contrasts vividly with the spontaneous and sometimes obscene gestures of the jokester. He often has to be restrained by the komedya director lest he draw too much attention to himself or give excessive offence to the village audience. The antics of Ned Kelly, Breaker Morant and other Australian anti-heroes have much in common with the komedya jokester. They show how societies use exemplars as counterfactual instances of rebellion through constraint.
196 n o r t h b y n o r t h – w e s t Vision Splendid
Mythologising a Natural Disaster in Post- Industrial Australia: the Incorporation of Cyclone Tracy within Australian National Identity
Brad West
Everywhere Australians — individuals, companies, and agencies, private or governmental — are responding spontaneously and generously to the call for help. They have recognised one essential fact about the Darwin disaster: that it is an Australian tragedy which transcends politics, State boundaries and personal differences.1
For perhaps the first time in 30 years, people are bonding together like a family. It makes me proud to have an Australian passport.2
In the early hours of Christmas Day 1974, Cyclone Tracy ripped through the city of Darwin. Fifty lives were lost in Darwin and sixteen at sea. It is popularly understood to be one of the most significant events in Australia’s history and is referred to as Australia’s most devastating natural disaster.3 This paper analyses the collective interpretation of the Tracy catastrophe, comparing it with the discourse surrounding previous cyclonic destruction and other natural disasters. Cyclone Tracy was unique in that it was the first Australian cyclone to be interpreted as a national event. For that to occur in post-industrial society, the disaster had to be ‘imagined’ through a national mythology that was distinct from the type that has traditionally been linked to the natural environment. Natural disasters were core elements shaping Australia’s national identity. While the nation economically rode on the sheep’s back, we paradoxically loved a ‘sunburnt country’, a land of ‘droughts and flooding rains’.4 Natural disasters became rituals that facilitated the bonding of the national character with a natural environment far different from Britain's. They provided an outside enemy, acting as a surrogate for a nation that had not experienced warfare on its soil. In 1907, Charles Bean wrote of Australia’s fighting spirit, not in combat, but with ‘drought, fires ... and with nature, fierce as any warfare, has made of the Australian as fine a fighting man as exists’.5 What are the contemporary interpretations of Australian natural disasters? Structural changes within Australian society would suggest that natural disasters should be of less cultural importance. Facilitated by later writing of Charles Bean, the battle at Gallipoli has been institutionalised as the national myth. Australia has become an urbanised and multicultural nation, increasingly severing ties with Britain. The dialectic interchange between culture and the natural environment has become disturbed with ‘natural’ disasters being associated with human agency: either poor construction quality, governmental incompetence, or lack of adequate precautions.6 Despite such changes, in Australian natural disasters other than cyclones, we find a congruent discourse, due to their symbolic connection to national identity.
198 Brad West
Brad West and Philip Smith for example have recently shown that despite decline in the economic importance of the agricultural sector over the last 100 years, symbolic process has driven a consistent societal discourse on Australian drought.7 In the case of cyclones, however, we find little previous connection with Australian national identity. Australia’s traditional celebration of nature in bush poetry often talked of droughts, bushfires and flash flooding, but next to nothing is written of cyclones. This absence is hardly due to any shortage of occurrence or destruction in the early years of non-indigenous Australia. For example, in 1867, Townsville, founded less than three years earlier, and Bowen, less than two, were wrecked by a cyclone; in 1879 trees were levelled for 160km south-west and 80km south of Darwin with many lives lost at sea; in 1899 Cyclone Mahina played havoc with a pearling fleet in Bathurst Bay, Queensland, sinking 55 vessels and killing 300 people; in 1916 Clermont in Queensland was washed away with at least 62 people drowning; and in March 1934 a cyclone struck the Queensland coast near Cape Tribulation, killing 76 people. Up to the time of Cyclone Tracy there was a steady stream of cyclones causing havoc in northern parts of Australia, not to mention a countless number that hovered out to sea causing concern, but which never crossed the coast. Despite death and destruction, these disasters were characterised by the conspicuous absence of nationalist discourse. Rather than being symbolically representative of Australia’s supposed general connection with the natural environment, when cyclones did evoke some sentiments of communal identity, they were mostly restricted to a state or territory. For example, The Brisbane Courier wrote of Cyclone Leonta:
The response made yesterday afternoon at the Town Hall to the Mayor’s call for help for Townsville was in every way satisfactory. Those who gathered were representa- tives of the State in the fullest sense of the term.8
How can we understand this transition from a strictly regional interpretation of cyclonic disaster in Australia, to one that venerates the nation? Neither of the two dominant understandings of nationalism is entirely appropriate. The invention of tradition perspective argues that national symbols are less primordial than we might think, and that entrepeneurs and political interests are central to their creation. Certainly this is an essential element to explaining the national mythologising of nature in Australia following European invasion. It is less applicable, however, to explaining why cyclones before 1974 were the exception to this narrative. Primordialist theories highlighting the historical roots of contemporary nationalist sentiment, also fail to explain the time gap between the national narrating of other natural disasters and that of cyclones. Any adequate explanation of this specific national transformation must be grounded in the medly of pre and post-industrial discourse surrounding Cyclone Tracy. To do this I utilise Benedict Anderson’s theoretical framework of ‘imagined communities’.9 The term ‘imagined’ will be familiar to most readers, as it is highly cited across disciplines in the study of nationalism.10 It usage in the study of Australia is also extensive.11 Despite this popularity, ‘imagined’ is frequently more cited than given indepth discussion. Therefore it is necessary here to give some background to Anderson’s thesis. The term ‘community’ is one of the most overused words in the social sciences and humanities. It has a variety of meanings, though the one consistency is that it traditionally never seems to be used in a negative manner.12 It
199 Vision Splendid essentially refers to a particular type of relationship that is more immediate and significant than those used to describe ‘society’. When prefaced by ‘imagined’, however, community takes on a hybrid meaning, somewhere between the ideal types of instrumentalism and primordialism.13 For the instrumentalists, the stretching away of time and space is associated with the displacement of social relations and a genuine sense of community. In contrast, the primordialist position highlights the universal nature of cultural identities, underplaying conflict and social change. The process of imagining provides a conjunction through which we can understand how technology and human agency can produce new forms of group solidarity that are deeply rooted in religious beliefs and folkways. Anderson argues that:
the nation is ‘imagined’ because its members never know or even hear of most other members, and yet they conceive of themselves as co-members of the same over- riding important unit ... regardless of the actual inequality and exploitation that may prevail in each, the nation is always conceived as a deep, horizontal comradeship...that makes it possible, over the past two centuries, for so many millions of people, not so much to kill, as to be willing to die for such limited imaginings.14
Anderson acknowledges the seeming instrumental qualities of his argument in noting the similarity of ‘imagining’ with Gellner’s belief that nationalism invents nations. The two terms, however, have different templates for conceiving the authenticity of culture in modern society. Anderson differentiates invention from imagined, linking the later with ‘creation’, while proposing that Gellner assimilates invention with ‘falsity’ and ‘fabrication’.15 Anderson differs from the neo-Marxist paradigm by conceding that there are certain primordial characteristics inherent within modern society. Anderson only makes one exception to the imaginary origins of communities, and instantly qualifies the exception: ‘All communities larger than primordial villages of face-to-face contact (and perhaps even these) are imagined’.16 He goes on to argue that we shouldn’t classify communities by their falsity or genuineness, but by the style in which they are imagined. Anderson’s account of nationalism is closely tied to the development of print capitalism. Here we have the Marxist emphasis on industrial capitalism, in addition to a more culturally sensitive concern with literature. According to Anderson, the rise in technological communication laid the basis for national consciousness by reducing the number of languages, and thus creating larger fields of fixity and belonging. Following Hegel, Anderson observed that newspapers serve as a substitute for morning prayer, creating an extraordinary mass ceremony through the process of simultaneous consumption.17 The agency shifts to individual readers ‘imagining’ themselves part of a larger community. Anderson’s process of ‘imagining’ fits the Cyclone Tracy case well. In contrast to the regional and relatively mundane interpretations of previous cyclonic destruction, Cyclone Tracy was to develop into a ritual celebration of national identity. Without the symbolic resonance of other natural disasters such as drought, ritualisation of Tracy occurred through the social construction of space that allowed it to be imagined as a quasi-military event, thus making an association with the now core element in Australia’s national identity.
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‘It does you good to feel people are transmitting this feeling of caring and sharing, and fellow feeling, ‘ said Brigadier Geddes. ‘Australia isn’t only meat pies, football, kangaroos ... This is real Digger spirit we had in the war. The Tobruk spirit. And I was in Tobruk as a chaplain. I know’.18
Cyclone Tracy became generalised beyond a Northern Territory regional narrative, through the space created by the Australia-wide mobilisation of the armed forces which enacted a mass evacuation of Darwin residents. With Darwin’s telephone and communications cut or being used for official purposes, the national narrative first started to emerge in the mass media of other states and territory with numerous articles on the injured who were immediately taken to other capital cities. The Australian wrote:
Forty victims of Cyclone Tracy will this morning owe their lives to a sandy-haired young RAAF doctor who had worked non-stop since 3.30pm on Christmas Day. Squadron-Leader Philip Brownlie has been taking critically injured victims to Sydney and returning to Darwin for more.19
The break with the media coverage of past Australian cyclones was evident in reportage of the intensity of the disaster. Cyclone Tracy was not only portrayed as the worst cyclone, but the worst natural disaster the country had ever known. Note for example the passages below.
The sympathy of all Australians will go to the people of Darwin, whose day of peace and goodwill was transformed by cyclone Tracy into a nightmare of death and devastation unparalleled in Australian history.20
Dr Cairns: ‘What happened in Darwin on Christmas morning has never happened in Australia before’. 21
The worst natural disaster ever to hit Australia has devastated Darwin.22
It is hard to conceive that this mythological discourse has a clear objective relation to the physical extent of disaster. The death count for Cyclone Tracy was 65, however, this is neither the highest death toll in cyclones nor is it unprecedented. For example, as mentioned previously, in 1899, 300 people drowned, and in 1934 at least 76 people died. Rather than simply reflecting rational facts, this discourse tends to be consistent with the Durkheimian tradition of social thought that predicts that collective representations will sometimes outstrip reality in the interests of social solidarity. 23 It was the character of these descriptions, emerging from the technological understanding of nature that linked it to Australia’s war past. In contrast to drought and bushfires which are typically portrayed as essentially or uniquely Australian, the disaster agent of Cyclone Tracy was constructed as a profane alien force that had emerged from outside the social and geographical boundaries of Australia.24 As such, it was possible to draw comparisons with the bombing of Darwin during the second world war and the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. Consider the following newspaper captions:
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Cyclone Tracy brings back memories of a humiliating Japanese air raid.25 The only city on Australian soil to suffer extensive damage from enemy action in war is now the scene of one of our worst natural disasters.26 ‘Darwin looks like a battlefield or a Hiroshima’.27 ‘People outside can imagine it only if they think of the devastation after the atomic bombs in Japan in 1945’ ... Dr Cairns said.28 From the air Darwin looks like Hiroshima after it was razed by an atomic bomb in 1945.29
Such a portrayal was facilitated by the diaspora created by the mass evacuation process, the most extensive ever carried out in Australia. Beginning with the spontaneous departure of families in private vehicles, it ended as a gigantic airlift that lasted from dawn on Boxing Day until New Year’s Eve. During this period the population of Darwin plummeted approximately 80 per cent. About 23,000 people were flown to the various Australian capital cities, where they received a mix of government and civil charity. 30 The largest migration was to New South Wales, followed by South Australia, then Queensland (Table 1). In later assessment of the disaster, the need for and advantages of mass evacuation would be questioned, though at the time it seemed the only option considering the perceived magnitude and extent of disaster.31
Table 1. DARWIN EVACUEES BY FIRST DESTINATION, DECEMBER 1974 (a)
(Australian Bureau of Statistics no 4.28)
First Destination Males Females Persons
Elsewhere in the Northern Territory 418 498 916 New South Wales 4,226 5,042 9,268 Victoria 1,242 1,482 2,724 Queensland 2,744 3,275 6,019 South Australia 3,678 4,389 8,067 West Australia 1,237 1,476 2,713 Tasmania 51 61 112 Australian Capital Territory 208 248 456 Overseas 39 46 85 Not Stated 601 717 1,318
(a) Estimates based upon records of persons leaving by air and road after the cyclone. The numbers are possibly understated because of the difficulty of enumerating all people who left by car.
While there still were 11,000 ‘stayers’ who were present during the cyclone and remained during the emergency period, there is a noticeable lack of media attention paid to them. Instead of a regional narrative drawing on local images of ‘victim’ and ‘helper’,32 due to an absence of residents, the physical and moral rebuilding of Darwin became embraced as a national event. Within the representation of the national helper came the return of the egalitarian and practical characteristic of the heroic digger. This was apparent in the description of General Alan Stretton, the supreme commander in charge of the Darwin relief mission.
DARWIN’s wasteland is full of heroes none more unlikely looking than General Alan Stretton supreme commander ... And yet the man who has more power than General Blamey ever had in wartime is remarkably humble.33
202 Brad West
Striding across Darwin’s devastated landscape in hounds-tooth check shorts, floral shirt and kneesocks, the man with the absolute power of a dictator resembles a kindly, bulky grandfather — stern yet inspiring, loyal and yet affectionate.34
In his first auto-bibliography, Stretton writes of this championing process:
[...] present me in the light as some sort of saviour. This was quite wrong — what had been done in Darwin had been done by the people themselves ... I was already hearing about ‘The Churchill of Darwin’ which was being published down south.35
As during a war effort, the various acts of charity from around Australia lead to the emergence of a national healing narrative. Major newspapers started Darwin appeals, people gave food and money to the evacuees for the rebuilding of Darwin, and celebrities such as Rolf Harris and Johnny O’Keefe starred in fundraising concerts. The gifts and donations not only served as a means of redistributing wealth but created an emotional relationship between giver and recipient. As Marcel Mauss outlined, such gift-giving has a particular moral character.36 While Mauss’ analysis concentrates on archaic societies he also believed that in modern societies much ‘of our everyday morality is concerned with the question of obligation and spontaneity in the gift’.37 Following Anderson’s concept of ‘imagined community’ it is possible to conceive the time/space compression of contemporary society as a constructive mechanism for recreating identities. In the case of Cyclone Tracy, modern forms of transportation and rationality allowed it to be interpreted as a sacred event, evoking the national mythology of warfare.38 Utilising an interpretation of Anderson which highlights the primordial qualities of his argument, this paper has shown that to some extent it is possible to appreciate both the rise in formal and technical systems while acknowledging that these networks are not somehow separate from meaningful forms of group solidarities. But what is the likely future of natural disasters as national events? In a recent edition of this journal, a number of articles reiterated that war is a traumatic event that acts as a defining moment for the nation.39 It has been the theoretical assumption of this paper that natural disasters work in a similar way. As we saw with the quote from Charles Bean, natural disasters predate and perhaps pre-empt Australia’s later obsession with war. But despite many parallels that can be drawn between these catastrophe types, they diverge in important ways. While other countries based on civic nationalism have experienced revolutionary and civil wars, Australia’s experience is on the ‘international stage’ in the Boer war, the great war, the second world war, Vietnam, Korea or the Gulf war. As K S Inglis wrote thirty-five years ago ‘Australia and New Zealand are, I think, the only countries in the world whose most popular national day commemorates the death of citizens in a war fought abroad’.40 As has been established in different contexts, commemoration of such events becomes problematic as globalisation develops.41 In the Australian context, the nation’s autonomy for narrating collective memory is coming under threat by the growing numbers of Australians who visit the Gallipoli battlefields, receiving the local perspectives of the Turkish tour guides.42
203 Vision Splendid
In contrast, natural disasters are typically bounded within the nation-state.43 Withstanding small portions of international charity, we find a monological discursive field. However, there is also one other major difference. Natural disasters tend to periodically occur through meteorological inevitability and, as I have argued, through the social construction of nature. As such, they are an available resource for reinvigorating national identity. In contrast, some significant social theorists have argued that in the late twentieth century we have entered a new age of global pacifist capitalism.44 In such a ‘civilised’ world, natural disasters are likely to again play an important role as the ‘other’ in national identity.
204 The Americanisation of the Outback: Cowboys and Stockmen
Jim Hoy
In 1906 Michael Patrick Durack, son of pioneer Australian cattleman Patsy Durack and father of famed Outback author Dame Mary Durack Miller, visited a ranch in the vast range country of Alberta, where he was greatly taken with the wild and woolly cowboys of North America:
This ‘outfit’, as they call it, consists of 15 men, 2 wagonettes and 50 horses. They have here 3,000 bullocks of all ages from 18 months upward which they hold day and night, putting them together about 9 pm wherever they happen to meet up. Two men watch until 4 am when they are relieved.
There are some great names amongst these fellows and it’s interesting to hear their tales. ‘Slippery Bill’, the head serang, got his name from his ability with the bow knife when living down in Mexico. Then there is ‘Ba Ba Jimmy’, ‘Mopoke Tom’, ‘Deadly Dick’ from Wyoming, ‘Slim’ from ‘way down Montana’, ‘Sloppy’ the cook from East Ontario and ‘Barb Wire Johnnie’ who is credited with being the best Broncho buster on the Prairies of Western Canada.
I slept with them in their tent under six blankets, a huge beaver coat and canvas covering similar to what our chaps use for their swags. They were keen to hear about Australia but I kept them going with questions about their lives out here in the west.
As I turned in, one of the boys slipped me a six chambered Colt’s revolver, telling me that I may not need it but it’s a useful toy to have in case of some reprisal on the camp. They are mostly wild, reckless young chaps scarcely recognising the existence of God, Heaven or Hell and their language scarcely fit for publication in a lady’s journal. They hail from many countries — a number originally from England.
Their horses are herded night and day by men called ‘Wranglers’. Every man carries a rope on his saddle and lassoes his horses each morning — this process being a popular pastime. They are all out by 4 in the morning, the cook, who carries coal and wood having the stove alight in his tent.1
My reaction on first reading this passage was to wonder why M P Durack was so impressed by the numbers of cattle and horses? Why was he so avid to hear the tales of the colourfully nicknamed cowboys? Why was he so thrilled by a supposed danger that necessitated sleeping with a six-gun by his side? As Dame Mary points out, her father had always kept a gun with him when he camped in the Outback, while the nicknames of Australian stockmen were no less colourful, nor their deeds less daring, than those of their American cousins. Perhaps the unaccustomed cold Canadian air had affected his fancy, or perhaps he was made dizzy by the tossing of so many lariat ropes, a tool as ubiquitous in America as the stockwhip Downunder, each equally rare in the opposite locale. Whatever the cause, the response of this Vision Splendid seasoned stock raiser, this accomplished rider, this daring bushman foreshadowed the deferential, almost envious, attitude that many of his countrymen have subsequently displayed toward the American cowboy. That, at least, is my opinion, based not upon any sort of scientific study but upon my impressionistic responses to conversations and observations deriving from a lecture and research tour to Australia in March and April of 1990. The topic of my lecture, delivered at four universities, from Townsville to Perth, was the American cowboy, a topic that seemed to elicit substantial curiosity and interest among audiences, while my research centred on Australian rodeo and other aspects of station and stockman folklife. Yet in almost all respects I found Australian ranching customs and traditions far more intriguing, more dangerous, more ‘western’ than those of North America. The heyday of the open-range, trail-driving cowboy in America, for instance, lasted barely a generation, from the opening of the Old Chisholm Trail in 1867, to the wholesale fencing that began on the XIT Ranch in the Texas Panhandle in the early 1880s and was virtually complete within a decade. A few sporadic encounters between cowboys and Indians occurred during the 1880s, but Indian resistance to the encroachment of ranching was essentially over by the time of the Cheyenne Outbreak in 1878. Not only was the open range a thing of the past by the turn of the century, but the tendency, still continuing as we near the end of the twentieth century, has been to cut large ranches into smaller ones. Big roundups with branding fires were soon replaced by cattle yards and squeeze chutes on the new, smaller ranches, and by the time of the second world war horses were being hauled to the pastures in trailers instead of being ridden there. But in Australia long cattle drives continued well into the latter half of the twentieth century. In fact, they continue today. While I was interviewing R M Williams at his Arabian horse stud near Toowoomba, Queensland, he received a phone call from one of his sons, who manages one of the family’s cattle stations. Because of prolonged drought, the son was planning to move over a thousand head of cattle a distance of some 600 miles to another station. He was conferring with his father on how to deliver the mob. Toward the end of the conversation I heard Mr Williams, then in his early 80s, tell his son that if he intended to truck the cattle, he would ride along, but if they were to be driven overland then he would stay home. I’m not sure how the cattle were ultimately transported, but trailing them horseback was clearly considered a viable option. Although some drives from Texas to Montana would have covered nearly twice the distance, still a drive of a thousand miles would have been a relatively long one in the American West. And where an American drover might spend several weeks on the trail, his Australian counterpart often measured his trips in months, even years. Patsy Durack, for instance, left Queensland for the Kimberleys in Western Australia in 1885 with 8,000 cattle, arriving with only half that number some two years and two months later, completing a drive of some 3,000 miles. Even so, their drive was some 500 miles, and a year and a month, shorter that that of the MacDonald brothers, who started from New South Wales on their way to the Kimberleys in 1883. Hostile Aborigines were not only as much a threat Downunder as Indians on the Great Plains, but that threat continued well over half a century longer, with a recorded killing of drovers by natives occurring as late as the early 1940s.
206 Jim Hoy
Ranch size and working methods also favour the notion that Australian stockmen are more rugged than American cowboys. A bucking horse will always attract the eye of one’s fellow riders, no matter how desperate the circumstances (as Furphy well illustrates in Such Is Life), but staying aboard a pitching outlaw in an Australian stock saddle would be, it seems to me, a much greater test of horsemanship than managing the same feat in an American saddle. Moreover, while roping a wild cow can provide all sorts of tests for bravery (as even a brief look at some of Charles M Russell’s paintings makes clear), still the Australian practice of tailing down wild bullocks seems much the more dangerous practice. Again, to cite an example from R M Williams, he told me of taking an extended horseback trip into the bush with another of his sons, newly arrived back in Australia from several years abroad working as a civil engineer. His son tailed down a young bull, but was unable to hold him to the ground. As the bull whipped around, trying to gore his annoyer, the younger Williams managed to hang onto the tail until his father could shoot the animal and thus very likely save his son’s life. As to ranch size, I defer to two Texans. One is cowboy poet and story teller Paul Patterson from the Pecos country, who humorously recounts (in ‘A Texan Who Thunk Small’) a trip to Australia and how his Texas-size bragging was soon reduced to speechlessness by the vastness of Australian distances and the size of the cattle and sheep stations Downunder. Patterson’s humorous rendition mirrors a serious story I heard from a Panhandle Texan who had gone to Australia in the later 1980s and stayed there (with semi-annual trips out to renew his tourist visa) some three years, attempting to break into big-time ranching in Western Australia. He told me how he and his cohorts had earned their living by custom mustering for some of the huge stations in the area, receiving as pay half of the wild cattle that they could find and bring into the station yards. You could tell how mean a particular station’s cattle were, he told me, by checking out the yards: if they had left some trees standing in them, or a few of the giant termite mounds, or if they had set several posts in the middle so you could duck around them when you were chased, then you knew the cattle were wild. When on foot in the pens, he always wore tennis shoes, he said, and stayed within running distance of the fence, because the cattle they mustered were invariably mean and fighty. Why didn’t you raise your own cattle instead of doing the custom mustering, I asked him. Because, he said, they didn’t have enough land to handle a herd of twenty thousand head, which is what it would have taken to have been profitable. How much land did you have, I asked. Only 368 sections was his response; you needed at least a million acres to have a viable operation. Australian rodeo, in its original version, seems to me also to have provided a greater test of equestrian skills. Buckjumping, for instance, the Downunder version of saddle bronc riding, was, until the introduction of the ‘international’ (ie, American) contest saddle into Australia by Robin Yates in 1965, a much more difficult event than the American version. American rodeo cowboy George Williams certainly discovered that buckjumping required far different riding skills when he attempted to rodeo in Australia in the 1960s. Riding in a stock saddle, with no horn and no swells and almost no cantle, requires a rider to spur in the shoulders on a horse that often bucks by rearing into the air with his front feet, whereas the American saddle, cinched onto a horse that has been flanked so that he will buck by kicking high with his hind feet, lends itself to spurring in a semi-circular motion from shoulder to
207 Vision Splendid cantle. Campdrafting, a uniquely Australian event requiring a rider to cut a steer from a herd then manoeuvre it through a series of posts in a set pattern, calls for skills in both horse and rider that go well beyond those of the American cutting horse contest. Since the second world war, when R M Williams and others organised the Australian Rough Riders Association along the lines of the Rodeo Cowboys Association in America, primarily to accommodate American servicemen stationed in Australia, Australian rodeo has evolved into a nearly exact copy of the North American version, with such introduced events as bulldogging, calf roping, and team roping that were not found in earlier versions of the sport ‘downunder’. Nowadays, some Australian stock saddles have even been outfitted with saddle horns, while Australian rodeo cowboys wear Wrangler jeans, not moleskins; American-style boots, not the ankle-high Williams-style; and American-style hats, not Akubras. So why, in light of what seems to me convincing evidence that Australian stockman are faced by challenges in horsemanship and cattle working that at least equal and in many cases surpass those of the American cowboy, why should the stockman look to the cowboy as his superior? Let me say that I am sure that not all Australian stockman feel this way, that I am sure that there are many who feel just the opposite. But I could not help noticing as I talked to both R M Williams, bushman nonpareil, and Peter Poole (like Williams a former secretary of the ARRA, as well as a historian of Australian rodeo) that both men, quite successful and quite knowledgeable about Australian pastoral customs, seemed to consider the American cowboy as the very model of horsemanship and stock work. Both displayed far greater knowledge of things American than I could of things Australian. When I mentioned to Poole, for instance, that I was from Kansas, he immediately commented on the Roberts family of Strong City, two of whom were world champion rodeo cowboys back in the 1940s. Not only that, but he was aware of the collapse of bleachers at a rodeo produced by Ken Roberts that had led to his financial ruin in the early 1960s. All I knew of Australian rodeo was that Dave Appleton of Queensland had come to America and won the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association world champion All Around Cowboy title in 1986, the first Australian to accomplish such a feat. In a way the attitudes of Poole and Williams reflected a more general love-hate relationship I detected between the Australian and the American cultures. Much of night time Australian television in 1990, for instance, consisted of American shows, while of those shows I saw that were produced in Australia, one, a television movie called Come in Spinner, had as its premise the proclivity of Australian girls to marry U.S soldiers during the second world war, while the other, a night time soap called Neighbours, had as one of its subplots a nefarious scheme by the North Dakota Mining Company, a fictitious US firm, to despoil the habitat of koala bears in its search for quick profits. In many ways Australians seemed to be attracted to things American, yet at the same time felt some resentment toward our obvious ethnocentrism. In terms of the stockman how did the cowboy become the benchmark for equestrian success? The answer, I believe, is multi-faceted, with a major factor coming from our popular culture. I am not sure to what extent the Australian movie industry focused on the ‘western’, but there is no doubt that this genre is one of the most important ever to come from Hollywood in terms of its effect in both romanticising and mythologising the cowboy into a cultural icon. Not only that, but American Wild West shows played in Australia, thereby giving rise to local versions.
208 Jim Hoy
Along these same lines, it seems to me that there is no real equivalent in Australian art to Frederic Remington and Charles M Russell. While on our visit Downunder, I made a special point of visiting the ‘local’ room in art galleries, trying to discern how the Outback, particularly the grazing industry, had been portrayed. To use the state gallery of New South Wales as an example, I found that nearly all the paintings dealing with the bush tended toward landscape or the pastoral; only a few portrayed action or character in the Remington-Russell mode. Grandeur and stately peacefulness predominated, much like a Bierstadt or a Moran in the art of the American West. ‘Spring Frost’ by Elioth Gruner, for example, is primarily a static farmscape with cows, as are the works of John Glover. J H Scheltema’s ‘The Crossing Place’ portends some action as a horseman with a stockwhip drives eleven bullocks over a ford, but the cattle are plodding, not running. Perhaps the most egregious example of rural stasis is J H Carre’s ‘Burragorang Valley Near Picton’, which shows two dozen cows curving down a horseshoe bend on a mountain road. One horseman has dismounted to let them pass, while the farmer and his dog follow the herd. But nothing seems to be moving. Even the drover’s horse has all four feet planted solidly on the ground. Two famous paintings by Tom Roberts are on display in the New South Wales gallery: ‘The Golden Fleece: Shearing at Newstead’, which does provide an excellent picture of the activity in a shearing shed (action that is, of course, much less exciting that a Russell cowboy roping a bear or a Remington Indian killing a buffalo), and ‘Bailed Up’, which shows a stagecoach robbery. But the bushrangers here are much more civilised — they seem almost idly to chat with their victims while calmly smoking their pipes — than a comparable Russell scene with a bandit much more dark and menacing. Without doubt Frank Mahony’s ‘Rounding Up a Straggler’ and ‘As in the Days of Old’, the first depicting a drover with a stockwhip driving a bullock back into the herd, the second a running gunfight between two horsemen, are the most evocative of Remington and Russell. Both have good action, the former giving the viewer the actual feeling of droving work while the latter projects a narrative of adventure and romance. But from what I can tell, Mahony has nowhere near the critical or popular reputation in Australia that the two masters of the West have attained in America. In short, neither Australian film nor Australian art seems to have capitalised on the Outback experience in the same way that American art or popular culture has our West, making it both accessible to an international audience and creating a sense of poignancy and nostalgia, turning it into a kind of golden age with noble knights roaming an awe-inspiring landscape. Perhaps the reason they haven’t is also one of the reasons that the stockman looks toward the cowboy for validation: the Outback has not been deified in the way the West has because it is still a threat. It is hard, it seems to me, to be nostalgic for the good old days of rugged individualism when the cowboy (and before him the mountain man and after him the pioneer) tamed the wild frontier if that frontier is still wild. It is not easy to romanticise Outback like if that life is still remote, dangerous, and without creature comforts. Old methods seem backward and shameful, not colourful, if they are all you have. It is one thing to forgo electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing on a weekend wagon train trip into the Flint Hills or for a week-long hiking trek into the Rocky Mountains, but it is quite another to have to live your life under those isolated and primitive conditions.
209 Vision Splendid
The stockman, it seems to me, is in many ways living the life that the open-range cowboy used to live, a rugged, straightened life that is only a nostalgic dream to American cowboys. Perhaps that is why Drizabone is selling so many caped dusters in America these days, that and the theatrical success of ‘The Man from Snowy River’. But very few American cowboys would actually trade their four-wheel- drive pickups for the good old days of the open range and trail drives. Nostalgia, and play acting, is a lot more fun than genuine privation.
210 Robert Lawlor Tells a ‘White’ Lie
Mitchell Rolls
Over the last decade a considerable and growing body of literature has appeared in which Aborigines are proffered as the bearers of the primal knowledge and long- lost cultural mechanisms that are required for the successful reintegration of an ailing West and its constituency of alienated selves. The literature urging the appropriation of Aboriginal cultural property for these purposes is filtered through a range of ideologies, theories and faiths. Most of the authors write from the perspective of personal experience, using either their work with Aborigines, or more commonly, a journey to where they believe the last vestiges of ‘true’ Aboriginality can still be found, as the basis of their accounts in which Aborigines appear as the restorative agents needed by the West or themselves.1 Their harnessing of Aborigines to their private agendas is done without calling on extensive anthropological or historical support. However, their constructions of Aborigines — as an ancient people inhabiting changeless cultures that harbour sacred knowledge and sociocultural practices once shared by all humankind in the dawn of consciousness or some other imagined early phase — rely very much on notions developed under anthropological models that no longer enjoy currency. Robert Lawlor’s Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime is one such study. 2 Not only does Lawlor typically construct Aborigines and their cultures in ways that serve his own interests and purpose, he attempts to authenticate his constructions through citing references. The respected and reputable work of others is used to render his fictions as fact. As this is one of the few books advocating the appropriation of Aboriginal cultural property that relies extensively on anthropological and historical sources as opposed to the claim of personal experience, a close examination of how some of the sources are used is warranted. The fact that the scholarly pretence of this book — that promises accessible rather than recondite anthropology — appears to have conferred upon Lawlor the status of an authority on Aborigines, is another reason it warrants discussion. For instance, Lawlor has been called in as an ‘expert’ by those seeking to debunk Marlo Morgan’s controversial Mutant Message Down Under.3 In an otherwise reasonably thorough exposé of Morgan’s account of her travels across Australia with an Aboriginal ‘tribe’, Elaine Adams in the Kansas City Star quotes Lawlor as one of the ‘experts’ doubting the veracity of Morgan’s claims, and she describes him as the ‘author of a highly acclaimed book on Aborigines’.4 Susan Wyndham, in a well- researched article for the Australian Magazine, raises no questions about Lawlor being consulted as an informed source by the sceptical publisher who first held the rights to Mutant Message.5 Even more surprising is Gareth Griffiths’ acceptance of Lawlor as a credible commentator on Morgan’s book. In an article concerned with the issue of nonsense pertaining to Aborigines and their cultures and how this seems to effortlessly cross the boundaries of a marginal New Age subset and gain credibility in reputable and influential arenas, Griffiths approvingly cites Lawlor’s contribution to the article in the Kansas City Star.6 But as Barry Hill notes, Lawlor’s Voices ‘takes all strands of New Age religion and weaves them into a notion of Vision Splendid
Aboriginal culture’.7 As I will now discuss, if the New Age is the warp in this weaving then misrepresentations of Aboriginality are the weft. For Lawlor, the West is a monolithic, homogenous culture ‘engrossed in its own destruction’.8 Aborigines, however, representatives in this text of all that is good, have in the Dreaming the knowledge needed to not only secure the West’s survival, but that of the Earth itself. To this end Lawlor positions Aboriginal culture as the antithesis of all he finds wanting in his own:
Everything in Aboriginal life — childrearing; food gathering, sharing, and cooking; marriage, infidelity, taboos, and the structure of family, clan, and tribe; burial practices; methods for dealing with crime — defines a world view utterly different from ours, yet urgently relevant to our need to transform the way we exist in the world.9
The reason for this polarised difference between Western and Aboriginal cultures is that Aborigines have retained in the Dreaming the ‘lost memory’ ‘of the origin of life’.10 In this way Lawlor counters Western modernity with primal primitivism, and just as the attributes of the mythical Wild Man, when invoked as a form of sociocultural critique, were changed according to the needs of successive generations, Lawlor invents Aborigines that best suit his purpose.11 As this purpose needs Aborigines to be humankind’s sociocultural primogenitors, Lawlor proposes that Australia, and specifically Tasmania is humanity’s cradle.12 The physical and cultural differences between the Tasmanians and the mainlanders suggests to Lawlor that the former ‘are an older, earlier people, perhaps as old as the speculated 400,000 year origin of Homo sapiens in Australia’.13 Exemplifying Memmi’s observation that colonisers champion ‘the least progressive features’ of the colonised,14 Lawlor finds ‘purity’ in the technological simplicity of the Tasmanian tools,15 and submits that this reflects ‘more orthodox adherence to the ideal of the sacred value of the earth’,16 and the desire to live life according to ‘original law’.17 As Bernheimer states of the wild and natural man, Lawlor believes that the ‘abstention from all that enriches life materially shields primitive man from the vices of avarice and trickery and bellicosity’.18 The Tasmanians are exemplars for they alone have retained the ‘simplest, purest’ pre-stone age wood-based culture.19 Because Lawlor’s construction of the Tasmanian Aborigines is essential to his thesis of origins, I will first use his arguments concerning them to provide examples of his misleading and careless use of sources. For instance, he cites Bernard Smith’s chapter in Seeing the First Australians as the source for a paragraph describing how in 1772 French explorers sighted the Tasmanian Aborigines and found them ‘an exceptionally peaceful, joyous, and open people’.20 He goes on to say that these accounts of the happy primitives contributed to Rousseau developing his ideas on the noble savage. But Smith’s chapter actually focuses on Cook’s first voyage, one that did not visit Tasmania, and hence is totally irrelevant to Lawlor’s discussion. Additionally, Lawlor is wrong in fact. Marion du Fresne was the Frenchman that encountered the Tasmanian Aborigines in 1772. Whilst he was anticipating meeting Lawlor’s ‘exceptionally peaceful, joyous, and open people’, misunderstandings on first contact led to immediate hostilities resulting in several Aborigines being killed and others wounded. Fresne himself was wounded in the skirmish.21 This encounter could hardly have contributed to the image of the noble savage. Nor could any account in 1772 feed into Rousseau’s development of the concept. His Discourse
212 Mitchell Rolls on the Origin and Foundation of Inequality Among Mankind was published in 1755. Instead of contributing to the fruition of an imagined ideal as Lawlor claims, Fresne’s experiences hastened its destruction. The attribution of fabricated evidence to respected historical and anthropological sources as documentation substantiating the existence of his mythologised people is found throughout. Lawlor’s references for a paragraph arguing that the first Europeans to see Tasmanian Aborigines reported that they ‘were a well-nourished, physically strong, radiant, and energetic people … [who] spent more time in song, dance, and ceremony than did mainland Aboriginal tribes’, are pages in Seeing the First Australians that correspond with James Urry’s chapter on ‘Savage Sportsmen’.22 Once again the pages referred to, indeed the entire essay, have nothing to do with the point Lawlor is attempting to substantiate. Much attracted to the Tasmanians’ nudity — on the grounds that it showed freedom from inhibition (it did not), and greater empathy with the environment — Lawlor includes observations made by both Cook and Joseph Banks on the state of Aboriginal undress and attests they refer to Tasmanian Aborigines. Cook’s comments are attributed to ‘[Cook’s] first Tasmanian journals’.23 Yet the cited observations of both men were made during the Endeavour’s first voyage — which, as noted, did not visit Tasmania. Glyndwr Williams, Lawlor’s source, does not erroneously displace these journal references. The fabrication is Lawlor’s. As his theories rely on such misleading attributions for substantiating evidence, one must suspect their deliberateness. And given that Lawlor’s book poses as a well researched work supported by the authority of his references — a reviewer for Booklist declared his research to be ‘impeccable’ — these deceptions are serious.24 One of the many problems facing the world that Lawlor argues Aborigines consciously avoided is that of environmental degradation. Ignoring considerable evidence to the contrary, he presents Aborigines as knowing and deliberate conservationists who live at one with the natural world. He argues that ‘in 100,000 to 150,000 years the Aborigines’ impact on the fragile environment of Australia has been minimal’, and that ‘no other culture has had such a gentle effect on the natural environment as that of the Aborigines’.25 To support these claims he imagines the traits of a people he requires, and then again imposes these upon Tasmanian Aborigines. Seeking to discount the environmental impact of ‘fire-stick’ farming, his argument is that the Tasmanians, who did not make fire, may have restricted its use to sacred purposes only due to foresight as to its ecological consequences.26 He asserts that although ‘fire-stick farming’ was once practised it had ceased, and the inference is that the cessation occurred thousands of years before the present.27 The factors indicating that Tasmanian Aborigines were still regularly firing tracts of country at the time of colonisation are many, and all of the sources that Lawlor has used as reference material document these. For instance, Lesueur, the artist aboard Baudin’s expedition of 1803, sketched a family setting coastal grasses alight.28 I refer to this particular example because Lawlor cites from the volume in which it appears a number of times, therefore he is almost certainly aware of it. Furthermore, Lyndall Ryan makes no less than five references to the practice in her opening chapter,29 a chapter we know Lawlor has read for elsewhere it is cited as a source for other information; and Josephine Flood, another of Lawlor’s key references, summarises other research in detailing not only that Aborigines continued to burn country at the time of colonisation, but that their employment of fire brought
213 Vision Splendid fundamental changes to Tasmania’s vegetation in a number of areas.30 Hence from his own sources Lawlor must be aware that Tasmanian Aborigines had not ceased ‘fire-stick farming’ as he claims. As he provides no data from any source that suggests otherwise, nor has he made any attempt to explain how he has reached a conclusion that differs so dramatically from the information contained in his references, one has little choice but to read this as a deliberate attempt to mislead. Whilst in the introduction Lawlor admits that in his ‘attempt to show the meaning [that the ‘eternal’ Aboriginal] tradition holds for our times, [he] may have made errors of interpretation’,31 this is but one of many examples that cannot be glibly swept into the exculpatory embrace of interpretative error. In parts Two, Three and Four of Voices of the First Day, Lawlor declares he intends to ‘examine the mysteries, rituals, and symbolism of the Australian Aborigines, as well as the details of their traditional daily life’.32 Such a statement implies that what is to follow will be factual, or at least based on evidence. This is not the case, however. Rather, Lawlor uses it as a further opportunity to continue to construct, supposedly from anthropological sources, his mythologised people. The focus remains one of presenting Aborigines as enjoying a utopian existence, their imagined culture devoid of all problems besetting Western cultures. As apparent from Lawlor’s subscription to the now frequently propounded notion that Aborigines are the bearers of archaic but essential forms of knowledge that have been lost by the West, he conceives of Aboriginal cultural practices as being ahistorical and therefore ancient, stable and unchanging. To this end he asserts that birthing rituals ‘have, with only slight variation, been rigorously observed for more than 100,000 years’.33 What evidence can he possibly provide to support such a claim? Nevertheless, the concept of a society unchanged for over 100,000 years due to rigorous adherence to the Dreaming laws is stressed repeatedly, including the statement that Aborigines have been repainting their cave art over the same stretch of time, another claim which cannot be substantiated.34 Thus Lawlor’s text is another recent example propounding the familiar but dated notion that only the West is ‘in time’ so to speak; Aborigines exist outside of it, locked into a perpetuating past. His Aborigines continue to inhabit the long-rejected anthropological myth of indigenous cultures being ‘always identical to themselves in the homogenous space of an eternal present’.35 But as Kim Akerman notes, the archaeological record demonstrates that pre-colonial Aboriginal cultures were the product of 50,000 or more years of change, much of which was produced by internal dynamism.36 Although this reference post-dates publication of Lawlor’s text, the point is not new. Bain Attwood reminds us that John Mulvaney has since 1969 been vigorous in contesting the notion of a static, unchanging Aboriginal society. 37 In the 1988 Annual Review of Anthropology, Fred Myers points out that the contemporary critiques of studies that lock observations of hunter-gatherers into a permanent record of their past, thus failing to take into account their complex histories, tapped into an already existing body of scholarship that challenged the same portrayal of Native Americans.38 Thus Lawlor has much more in common with the progressive Darwinist ideology he spurns,39 and in fact is keeping current many of its superseded constructions, than with scholarship and research conducted over the last two or three decades. Even if familiar with this latter work, however, Lawlor would necessarily have to ignore it for it does not offer him the ‘traditional’ foundations he requires upon which to build his idealised culture.
214 Mitchell Rolls
Keeping to his agenda of locating Aborigines in the past and denying them a history, Lawlor both writes contemporary Aboriginalities out of his book and prescribes what it is to be a real Aborigine. As Nicholas Thomas argues, Lawlor ‘marginalises not only urban Aboriginal cultures, but any forms not closely associated with traditional bush gathering’.40 For example, one area in which Lawlor totally ignores a vital component of Aboriginal cultures for well over a hundred years is that of competitive sport. He asserts that ‘The competitive spirit and the attitudes and drives associated with it have no place in the life of tribal Aborigines. None of their games and activities involve competition’.41 In support of this he paints an Edenic childhood where children, instead of competing, run ‘wild, shouting, and dancing’, or play peacefully and contentedly amongst themselves or alone.42 Stretching this point further and subscribing to a theory that if it was not Western toilet training that has psychologically scarred and socially damaged western children then it is sexual repression,43 Lawlor holds that the battlefield of sport is a manifestation of ‘our’ unliberated energies. Therefore sport is advanced as a sign of non-Aboriginal psychosis arising from the failings of Western culture. This is contrasted with an idealised Aboriginal society that promoted such a balanced, healthy and fulfilled life that Aborigines had no requirement for nor interest in competition:
Aboriginal tribal people do not derive enjoyment or excitement from competition — it is antithetical to their sense of kinship and reciprocity with all … When Aboriginal boys were introduced to competitive football, the results were often bedlam and injury because, in their traditional society, aggression and confrontation were sanctioned only for the purpose of punishing those who transgressed Dreamtime Laws.44
The inference is that the many thousands of Aborigines who today and in the past have participated in sport and/or enjoy it have somehow shed their heritage. Yet in the acknowledgments Lawlor thanks the Tiwi Land Council for allowing him ‘to experience firsthand some of the culture and the depth and warmth of the Aboriginal people’.45 Sport, and Australian Rules football in particular, has for many decades been an integral part of Tiwi life.46 It would be all but impossible to visit Bathurst Island and not be aware of the Tiwi’s consuming interest and participation in football. How then, according to Lawlor’s thesis, have they maintained cultural ‘depth and warmth’ under the onslaught of the competitive spirit? It is also very doubtful that Lawlor’s thesis that pre-contact Aboriginal cultures eschewed competitive games is correct. To take but one example, there are numerous reports from disparate regions of boomerangs being used in differing forms of spirited competition by adults and children.47 However, not finding in contemporary Aboriginal cultures the opposing attributes to the West that he seeks, Lawlor adorns ‘Aboriginal tribal’ people with the particularities he wants them to display. It needs to be noted that Lawlor believes he is describing those practices which comprise part of an ‘eternal tradition’, and that the Aboriginal people he consults are those allegedly working towards ‘a renaissance of the universal aspects of their culture’.48 As just noted, this presumably involves a turning away from those activities, such as sport, that are anathema to these postulated ‘eternal’ traits. According to Lawlor, housing, clothes, reading, writing, agriculture and trade for any reason other than the sharing of gifts for spiritual enrichment, also involve ways of living that remove Aborigines from the ‘traditions’ that need to be ‘preserved’ if humankind is to survive.49
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As a key point in his concerns over the rents he perceives in the social fabric of Western culture, Lawlor provides a highly idealised account of Aboriginal gender relations as a model of genuine equality and mutual respect. This he contrasts with what is experienced in the West and East, where Christianity and Islam have suppressed the ‘fertility rites’ based on ‘metaphysical erotic sources’.50 Thus the Aboriginal custom of bestowing women in marriage ‘reflects the metaphysical sense of woman as the gift of life, to be bestowed and received, rather than a prize to be won or a possession to be acquired’.51 He then attempts to demonstrate over several pages how much more successfully than in Western cultures the nature of Aboriginal sexuality and love function to fulfil ‘powerful psychological needs’, engender social stability, and intimately affiliate one with nature.52 Yet, as Nicholas Thomas states, Aboriginal ‘gender relations [are] generally thought to entail domination and a variety of social and ritual asymmetries across most of the continent’.53 This is certainly supported by research amongst the Yolgnu. Here there is evidence suggesting women’s considerable emotional and sexual unhappiness in the marriage system, and that sexual relations are subject to stringent taboos and repressions that equal if not exceed those imposed by non-Aboriginal beliefs and cultures.54 Extending the notion of Aboriginal naturalness and ease with their bodies, Lawlor asserts that ‘Aborigines are extremely uninhibited about body functions’.55 Where, however, is the evidence to support this? Responding to the counter-culture’s naïve idealisation of tribal life, Janice Newton points out that:
Field work in a so-called tribal society soon acquaints the ethnographer with the importance of ascriptive roles, the existence of inequality in male and female statuses and roles, the presence of inequality between families, and the existence of taboos and fears surrounding the natural functions of the body.56
As Lawlor has done no actual fieldwork he has not been confronted with the daily functioning of a ‘traditional tribe’ and hence his idealised fantasy built from embellishing basic anthropological texts remains unchallenged by the flesh of the living. Nevertheless, he goes to considerable effort to explain the ‘true’ nature of any taboos associated with bodily functions, reasons which are inevitably more wholesome than the basis for their management in the West and other cultures. Thus when considering the customary prohibitions and restrictive practices relating to menstruation, Lawlor finds that they did not arise from fear, disgust or notions of uncleanliness as in Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions, but from the fact that menstrual blood and menstruating women ‘are considered extremely sacred’.57 As Lawlor believes magnetism to be a ‘sacred science’ and blood a ‘sensitive magnetic conductor’ that enables Aborigines ‘to communicate with the memory and mind of Earth’,58 this ‘sacredness’ is given an empirical and rational as opposed to superstitious foundation. The fashionable propensity to describe peoples such as Aborigines as living an idealistic existence untroubled by many of the problems confronting the West, not only hinders our understanding of these peoples and cultures, but also has the potential to work against their interests. As Fred Myers asserts:
When we seek to show that [hunter-gatherers] are freer, less violent, more egalitarian, or less territorial than ourselves, we distort their reality, defining it largely in terms immediately meaningful to our own debates.59
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He goes on to say that ‘such constructions may also affect them politically’. Voices of the First Day reads like a script written for the very purpose of illustrating the veracity of this argument. Lawlor first establishes the present as a condition where the Western world, perceived as monolithic and homogenised, is engendering the conditions — social, psychological, sexual and ecological — that will inevitably lead to its own destruction. This theme, in one form or another, is the premise for his entire project.60 The various proposals to deal with some of these issues, as put forward by scientists, academics and the green movement, among others, are summarily dismissed as perpetuating the current crises. They are incapable of introducing the necessary structural changes for their solutions are offered within the rationalist framework that is responsible for the problems identified.61 What is needed instead is ‘a deep concurrent linguistic, neural, psychophysical, and spiritual transformation at the very core of our being’.62 Through Voices Lawlor wants to ‘open our minds’ to the concepts that he believes can bring about this transformation, and which allegedly offer humankind the greatest prospect of survival, together with emotional, spiritual, social and sexual security and fulfilment. Aboriginal religions, spiritual beliefs, and assorted cultural practices are literally bent to this cause. He presents a utopian society in which the constituents live a ceaselessly exuberant and joyous life in a paradisaical garden, where song and dance spontaneously erupt. Even the wildlife is drawn into this fairy-tale vision. ‘Unlike the aggressive predatorial placenta mammals that emerged in other parts of the world, marsupials are peaceful, nocturnal creatures, which do not prey on humans or any other species’.63 This is the ‘world of the picnic’, that lost but reclaimable imagined world that so beckons the primitivists.64 It is in this Arcadian fantasy that Lawlor wants to imprison Aborigines:
It is important to recognise that the Aboriginal way of life retains the seed of human culture. It is of great importance to humanity to retain and protect this seed. The thwarted attempts by Aboriginal leaders and communities to obtain land rights over some of the uninhabited regions of Australia so that they can practice their traditional way of life is a significant issue for our entire civilisation.65
Besides the fact that no Aborigines are calling for land so that they can resume a ‘traditional’ life as envisaged by Lawlor — remembering that this would be a life without such things as sports, housing, clothes, reading or writing — this passage demonstrates how Lawlor is not according respect to Aboriginal cultures because of their significance unto themselves, but because of their utility in supposedly meeting the needs of a ‘deteriorated and purulent’ West.66 In order to save the planet and therefore themselves, Aborigines, who now experience a lifestyle that differs to the one they could have expected to lead prior to colonisation, must return to the illusory state that Lawlor has decreed represents their traditional existence. So the West can sup from the supposed origins of human culture as the need dictates, Aborigines are to be denied any opportunities other than ceaselessly replicating a fantasised rendering of their past in reserves set aside for them.67 It is not necessary to list the many factors that render Lawlor’s proposal impossible. In addition to the racist primitivism in which he seeks to permanently imprison Aborigines, is the problem that the people whom he wants to staff his remote centres of ‘seed culture’ do not exist, nor have they ever. As indicated by
217 Vision Splendid the few examples discussed, it is possible to demonstrate on an almost page by page basis that the culture Lawlor describes is nothing more than a phantasm. In the 391 pages of narrative in which he claims that respect for Aborigines guided his hand, this is all that is ever encountered. Lawlor may ‘shudder to think how this compassionate, humane, and dignified culture was ripped apart by the blind greed and punishing desperation of a colonialist convict mentality’,68 but in reality, as the fabrication of data indicates, it is his own culture that he is shuddering for. The peoples and the culture that he conjures in Voices of the First Day are the products of his disillusionment, fleshed out upon distorted skeletons arbitrarily wrenched from anthropological publications. The Aborigines in Lawlor’s text, and the culture they bear, have no actuality beyond the shaping force of his disillusionment. This in itself raises issues of concern — so do his attempts to substantiate his fictional people through the misuse of anthropological and historical sources. The uninformed reader could feel reassured that Lawlor’s portrayal of Aboriginal peoples and their cultures is supported by the authority of anthropologists. That Lawlor, on the strength of his book, is quoted as a reputable commentator on Aborigines in articles exposing Marlo Morgan’s Mutant Message Down Under as a work of fantasy, serves to confirm the book’s inferred anthropological veracity. And to take what for me is a local example, the fact that Monash University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Library has catalogued Voices of the First Day as a book belonging to the ‘religion of other origin’ category — on the same shelf as Charlesworth et al’s Religion in Aboriginal Australia69 — can only serve to broaden the assumed sense of authority from which Lawlor speaks. For these reasons, Lawlor’s fabrications cannot be simply dismissed as being of little or no consequence.
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‘The Colonel’s Daughter’, demonstrates a Reviews sophisticated approach to the position of its writer within Australian (even, global) Paula Abood, Barry Gamba and Michelle culture, much of the anthology is composed Kotevski (eds), Waiting in Space: An of naive, unsophisticated poetry, Anthology of Australian Writing, Sydney, awkwardly written memoirs or simplistic Pluto Press, 1999, pp 133, pb $20.00. political manifestos directed against both Australian society and the oppressors in Simultaneously slight and overstuffed, their home culture. The weakness in the Waiting in Space is a frustrating and ultimately writing of many of the authors may be a unsuccessful anthology of new Australian result of the fact that many of them are writing initiated by the journal Xtext, the writing in what is at least a second language mandate of which, according to the book’s for them, but unfortunately few of the editors, is to ‘consolidate and develop crucial writers in this book are yet sophisticated links and points of interchange between enough to make productive use of the different communities of artists, activists and linguistic tensions between English and workers’. Waiting in Space contributes to their mother tongue. that project, the editors write, by addressing A second problem relates to the fact that issues of ‘difference, writing and literary in only 133 pages the book presents its segregation’. The goal of this anthology, readers with twenty-nine writers, most of featuring twenty-nine writers from a variety whom have been restricted to one, usually of backgrounds and heritages, is to respond quite short, piece. The result, for this reader to what the editors describe as the virtual anyway, is that there was little opportunity absence of ‘the voices of diversity in the to get a real sense of what each writer was public space’ by providing an opportunity capable of, and that after a while they tended ‘for emerging writers to reflect the textual to blur into each other. While the editors’ realities that live in and out of the margins’. desire to provide their readers with ‘an Waiting in Space, the editors tell us, ‘is an act imaginative and real engagement with more of resistance against the monolingual nation’ than one or two names appearing on the that articulates ‘the ideas and languages of contents page’ and thus avoid the the many geographies of identities’. tendency toward celebrating a token Unfortunately, Waiting in Space cannot ‘flavour of the month ... exotic author’, is fulfil the weighty agenda of its editors. The laudable, their decision to present us with first and most serious problem, is that many the work of twenty-nine authors veers too of the writers are simply not up to the task far in the other direction. In fact, despite demanded of them. As the editors tell us, the varied genres and topics, my inability the varied pieces of writing published in to get a real sense of any of the writers in Waiting in Space (fiction, memoirs, poetry, Waiting in Space as a result of the brevity political manifestos and rants) were written of each contribution and the resultant by relatively inexperienced writers and then blurring of voices, led to the creation of a workshopped and read in a variety of homogenised ‘other’ voice rather than of a forums before being collected in this vibrant, exciting heterogeneity of voices. anthology. In other words, these stories The widely disparate quality of the writing were not selected for their intrinsic quality also has the effect of weakening the impact but as the end product of a ‘community of those writers — such as the cultural’ project. As such, many of the aforementioned Andrew Ma, Nushet Yilmaz pieces are similar in quality to those found Comert, Clara Liosatos and others — who in undergraduate literary journals. While are writing at a more sophisticated level. the occasional piece, such as Andrew Ma’s Fewer, more selectively chosen writers with
220 Reviews more space in which to display their talent ‘new social order in a new country’. To this and articulate their voice would have made end Pfisterer’s and Pickett’s book is not this a much more interesting collection. primarily a historical discourse on long forgotten plays and playwrights but a ‘cultural Douglas Ivison reappraisal’. For as they point out ‘to be University of Western Ontario outside history is to be outside discourse’ and both women playwrights and their plays, Susan Pfisterer and Carolyn Pickett, from the decades under discussion, have for Playing With Ideas: Australian Women too long been excluded from theatrical history. Playwrights from the Suffragettes to the The first chapter, ‘Suffrage theatre and Sixties, Sydney, Currency Press, 1999, pb feminist desire’, discusses the plays from $27.45; Susan Pfisterer (ed.), Tremendous early this century and places the ‘new Worlds: Australian Women’s Drama 1890- women’ firmly within Australian history and 1960, Sydney, Currency Press, 1999, pb also within the history of the international $27.45. women’s movement to which these playwrights actively belonged. This is the It is almost twenty years since Drusilla most illuminating and compelling section of Modjeska, at the end of her book Exiles At the book as the writers bring to light the Home: Australian Women Writers 1925- multi-faceted nature of the women’s 1945, identified women’s drama as being an movement and the beginning of feminist area of study in which work needed to be discourse in drama. This is clearly where the undertaken. Modjeska felt that such a study main focus of the book lies. would result in a more ‘comprehensive The book continues to trace the ways in understanding’ of Australian culture. which women have used the theatre. There Pfisterer’s and Pickett’s book Playing With are the overtly political plays of the ‘new Ideas, goes some way to answering this call. theatre playwrights’: here issues such as What is surprising is that it has taken so the rights of indigenous Australians and the long for a work on Australian women recognition of Australia’s convict origins, playwrights from the first half of the amongst others, were discussed — long twentieth century to emerge, especially before it was trendy or politic to do so. Then considering the abundance and theatrical there are the pageant plays and the plays attributes of the plays they left behind. These written for and produced by the Women’s plays offer the cultural historian an insight Christian’s Temperance Union which were a into aspects of Australian culture which celebration of women’s lives. In this the have, with the exception of books such as authors are all-embracing and do not Modjeska’s, rarely been examined. discriminate in their interpretation of what Playing With Ideas is a deconstruction constitutes ‘theatre’. of Australian theatre history and, moreover, Because Pfisterer and Pickett draw upon of Australian cultural history. The new such a large canvas it is disappointing to woman who rode into the new century on a find them dismissive of plays that do not fit bicycle demanded not only the vote but also neatly into their particular agenda, namely that she be given the right to determine the articulating an ‘understanding of the course of her own life. In this text she is complexities of women’s quests for political juxtaposed against the prevailing ethos of the and personal power’. For instance they legend of the 1890s and the iconic bushman discard several plays written about the who is so often heralded as being the struggle of miners for a decent wage and archetype of Australia’s national decent working conditions simply because consciousness and identity. Playwrights such the women depicted in them did not ‘act as as Inez Bensusan, Miles Franklin and honourable and independent agents’. This Katharine Prichard, amongst others, is surely a class issue, and though Oriel Gray dramatised the new woman’s struggle for and Mona Brand were no doubt writing to a equality and the vision she had of creating a communist agenda, the livelihoods of the
221 Reviews women about whom they wrote were at that accounts of Australian colonial life time inextricably tied to that of the miners. generated much interest. However, she was These daughters, wives and mothers were less popular in Australia, where her work isolated in insular and remote communities provoked criticism, being considered and had neither the education nor the contentious and amoral, ‘hardly fit to be economic resources necessary to break introduced into the domestic circle’. The away and forge an independent future. If Australian reading public preferred a more women’s history is to be understood in its sanitised depiction of colonial life in literature entirety then the stories of women who were and deplored Praed’s treatment of subjects not pursuing a feminist agenda should not they considered better left unsaid, such as be ignored. abhorrent behaviours of public figures or The accompanying book of plays politicians with convict backgrounds. Tremendous Worlds, is not only an appendix Considering her prolific writing and well- to Playing With Ideas but an integral part of received body of work, it is significant that the work, for without it the plays would Rosa Praed is not a household name as an continue to remain obscure. It is perhaps Australian literary figure. disappointing that Pfisterer chose to use There is much to commend this biography, plays which have already been published which has been carefully and exhaustively (and are therefore available in most university researched and succeeds in giving a clear and libraries) while other suitable plays continue readable account of Rosa Praed’s fascinating to languish unpublished in various archives life and literary development. Though Rosa! around the country. Having said this the Rosa! focuses on Rosa Praed’s unique plays chosen do illuminate and augment the experience, literary achievement and quest for historical narratives uncovered in Playing spirituality, the text inevitably critiques With Ideas. women’s lives generally over the period Pfisterer and Pickett have presented a examined. Praed experienced many of the well researched work drawing on both features that dominated women’s lives in the contemporaneous reviews of the plays and latter part of the nineteenth and early part of on the comments and opinions of the the twentieth centuries, when women’s playwrights and their peers. The strength of options were severely limited by social Playing With Ideas lies in the authors’ textual constraints. Their behaviours were dictated analyses which they in turn use to by rigid guidelines that determined they contextualise and transpose both the function as dutiful daughters, wives and playwrights and their plays out of the cultural mothers or as supporters of an extended family. wilderness and into historical discourse. Feminine accomplishments allowed them to indulge in certain activities such as art, music, Barbara Harding literature, gardening and needlework, for Flinders University domestic rather than professional purposes. Educational opportunities were limited, Patricia Clarke, Rosa! Rosa! A life of Rosa dependent on social class and parental Praed, novelist and spiritualist, Melbourne attitude and it was assumed that male University Press, 1999, pp 274, hb $43.95. children would be educated, but that it was unnecessary to educate females beyond the The introduction to Rosa! Rosa! is apt. necessities of domestic life. This was Patricia Clarke reveals the traditional particularly significant in colonial Australia, marginalisation or negation of women’s where isolation affected formal schooling writing (in particular, an Australian female and the availability of educational literary heritage) by demonstrating the extent resources was inconsistent. of Rosa Praed’s popularity and literary Rosa Praed received much of her credibility in Victorian England. Praed (1851- education from her Irish mother, with a brief 1935) achieved public recognition as a period of tutoring by a governess in novelist in England where her graphic Brisbane whilst her father was employed in
222 Reviews the public service. As a child, she read what Women have been present in the landscape was available to her in her father’s library, and of Australian music since the nation was was privy to more public life than most girls born, yet their representation in the annals of her time as she accompanied her father on of history and musical discourse in this formal occasions following the death of her country has been negligible. I once mother from advanced consumption in 1868, mentioned to a male musician that I was aged 41 years. enthralled by a radio program devoted to Of topical interest is Clarke’s account of Australian women composers. ‘It must Rosa Praed’s childhood in rural Queensland have been over in five minutes’, he replied. where her father was a squatter in the contact Female musicians have often been treated zone of the mid-nineteenth century, at the as scornfully. In Sweethearts of Rhythm, headwaters of the Logan River. The family Kay Dreyfus has brought to light and life was actively involved in conflict between the some of Australia’s most talented European settlers and local indigenous people, musicians — women who formed and in particular the Yiman tribe. Rosa’s interaction performed in all-girl bands and orchestras with the Aboriginal people provided material in the three decades to the end of the for her writing and was to have significant second world war. In this long overdue impact on her emerging interest in spirituality. documentation, these women, hitherto It was from the distant vantage point of unsung, are revealed as dedicated and England (where she moved with her husband versatile, skilled in the music business and at the age of 24) that Rosa began to write in thoroughly schooled musicians. earnest, drawing her material from her family’s When Dreyfus first began her search in experience of the Australian colonial situation. honour of her musical mother, she Her success as a writer allowed her to encountered a wall of silence. ‘Women’s socialise across the literary, political and dance bands? Now listen, dear, I’ll tell you: artistic social circles of London and rural there weren’t any’, offered the proprietor England, where she gleaned further material of one large ballroom. Dreyfus persisted, for her novels. Patricia Clarke points out that and has succeeded in changing the status Rosa Praed had a penchant for capturing ‘the of Australia’s all-women bands and mood of the moment’ in England, by writing orchestras from ephemeral to significant. novels exploring theosophy and questioning From the slim pickings of a few faded the legal institution of marriage prior to extreme photographs, she pursued a research trail public interest in these issues. that took her to personal collections of Clarke’s skilful biography of Rosa Praed memorabilia, museums, libraries and finally illuminates her movement across the to the golden opportunity of interviewing landscape of Australia and Europe, her some of the remarkable women who made experience during periods of immense social such sweet music, or their survivors. The change, her prodigious literary output (forty- keyword for all these women was six books) and her relationships with family musicianship, and Dreyfus reveals in and friends. fascinating detail the travails and triumphs of their musical lives. Many of them Brenda Glover combined marriage and motherhood with Flinders University their first love, music. The author places her story in the Kay Dreyfus, Sweethearts of Rhythm: The contexts of the Damenorchester tradition story of Australia’s all-girl bands and inherited from Europe, the musical family orchestras to the end of the second world environment as a training ground, the war, Sydney, Currency Press, 1999, pp 128, transition of the turbulent twenties, the pb $32.84; Bruce Johnson, The Inaudible dancing frenzy of the depression era, the Music, Jazz, Gender and Australian pre-war period and the war years. While Modernity, Sydney, Currency Press, 2000, following this chronological progression, pp 244, pb $43.81. she investigates issues surrounding the
223 Reviews social conditions, economic climate, cultural showmanship and excellent performance, fads and musical fashions which fostered they attracted crowds in clubs, theatres, and all-girl bands and orchestras, or worked in venues on the touring circuit. against them. There is yet another book to The sad overtone for members of these be written about the history of musical ensembles was that, even during the heyday women in Queensland, missing in action in for dance bands, no all-girl band could this book. However, Dreyfus defines her capture an audience in a prestigious large framework clearly, portraying evocatively ballroom in the capital cities. In 1938, when the tenacity and resourcefulness of women advertisements were placed to form an who chose music as a vocation in and orchestra of ‘lady musicians’ at the famous around Sydney and Melbourne during the Trocadero ballroom in Sydney, it had a decades under study. brilliant burst of fame before being The story begins with the poignant ultimately regarded as a ‘novelty stunt’ by declaration that in 1942 it was the tragedy the male bandleader. It took a war to of war which swept a ‘ladies orchestra’ out showcase women, yet when the men of the parlours and palm courts on to the returned, all-girl bands were doomed and grand stage of Melbourne’s Palais Picture the death knell sounded for dance halls. Theatre. This orchestra showcased Forced to disband, many women musicians, womanly talent, knowledge, experience and accustomed to the barriers of financial expertise on stage, and Dreyfus traces the exploitation and sexual discrimination, beginnings and career paths of several moved chameleon-like into other musical outstanding women in a series of vignettes endeavours. Collectively, they had always of musical history, each carefully sketched been subject to levels of prejudice which and rounded. These women mirrored the existed between amateur and professional spirit of each decade in adapting to changes players, classical and jazz music, brass and in the fickle entertainment industry. When dance bands, male and female musicians. the sophisticated technologies of the 1920s, Dreyfus writes lucidly; some crisp, the flapper era, and the sounds of jazz punchy sentences are like musical phrases. signalled new freedoms for women A description such as ‘ephemeral as musicians, they seized performance thistledown’, for example, is eloquent and opportunities with both hands. trenchant. The design layout is intriguing, As every kind of entertainment was interweaving a treasure trove of accompanied by live music, all-girl photographs, programs, reviews, tickets, ensembles flourished in the pit orchestras, advertisements, sheet music covers and picture theatres, on the vaudeville and jazz other memorabilia with the text. Chapter stages, and eventually in large dance bands. notes add scholarly weight to the unfolding As a woman involved in jazz music, I stories. Dreyfus was not seeking celebrities, empathised with the struggle of female jazz but has unearthed rank and file musicians to musicians in the 1920s to maintain their tell their stories powerfully in this timely ‘respectability’ against the moral code of study. Today’s feminist scholar would have what was appropriate behaviour for ‘nice searched in vain to find historical accounts girls’. During the 1930s, even though the of these women. Likewise, today’s music depression reduced the ranks of musicians student would have discovered no archival by seventy-five per cent, combined with the recordings of their glorious notes in flight, advent of sound films cutting short the except for one or two who pursued their careers of cinema musicians, the dance craze musical careers and happened to record later continued. Dreyfus surveys several of the with male bands. organised formations of all-women bands In Sweethearts of Rhythm, all-girl bands which played to sensational acclaim while and orchestras move from obscurity to maintaining a high standard of professional recognition, becoming audible and visible in entertainment. With their varied repertoire, the narrative of Australian musical history. tight arrangements, snappy costumes, Kay Dreyfus, with the assistance of
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Australian Council funding and Currency ‘breaks’ and a ‘turnaround’ in the voice of Press, has produced an accessible, the jazzman are interwoven among the meticulously crafted, elaborately designed thematic chapters. The transition from one book. Insist (nay, demand!) that it find a to the other is seamless, giving an intriguing place in a bookshop near you, and then sing tonal texture. The writing throughout is taut its praises. and dense with layers of argument, all carefully crafted. As a collection of prismatic Bruce Johnson wears two hats. As a jazz essays, the book illuminates the place trumpeter, he is a highly respected member occupied by jazz in a country, unlike America, of the jazz fraternity. In the academic world, where the music began as a combination of he holds the position of associate professor live performance and modern technology. of English at the University of New South The crux of Johnson’s argument is that Wales. His publications in the spheres of jazz in Australia was the pre-eminent music of cultural politics, jazz and popular music, his modernity, and yet as the musical embodiment establishment of the Australian Jazz Archive, of the ‘modern’ it failed to register on the and his authorship of the Oxford Companion cultural scale. The dynamics of mass to Australian Jazz (1987) lend weight to his mediation reflected in jazz are at the very core most recent publication. Very few writers of modern existence, and cross the terrain from have the gift of translating jazz into language, the street to the concert hall, from the popular and Johnson is an exception in that he has to the profound. Jazz, as a metaphor for urban the vocabulary to orchestrate themes he has living, has contributed significantly to been rehearsing for thirty years. The Australia’s cultural and musical identity, yet rehearsal is over. The Inaudible Music it has been omitted from the discourse on represents Johnson, in the full flight of modernity. Johnson argues that behind the performance as an author and a musician with façade of fashionable modernism jazz intellectual rigour and the jazz vernacular, occupied a space made available by mass takes a fresh perspective on Australian culture, as power over such spaces shifted society in the first half of the twentieth away from the controlling elites. The rise of century, and situates jazz, gender and mass culture, technological advances, the modernity within that context. emancipation of women and a new sense of Jazz is a genre determined, like other identity were essential elements of modernity. musics, by history and place. In Australian Musical dialogues, of which jazz was one, cultural studies there is a lacuna where jazz were shaped by the spirit of the Jazz Age as scholarship should be. As well, women’s reflected in the Australian marketplace. contributions to jazz have long been Post first world war, jazz became the ideal regarded as ephemeral and peripheral. As expression of woman’s emancipation, and an insider, Johnson delves deeply into this many professional musicians central to the music to explore the gap between the word music-making of the era were women. Jazz in ‘jazz’ and the music to which it refers. This the 1920s became feminised, and Johnson requires several voices and resonances, all focuses on a silent film, Greenhide, to of which Johnson handles deftly. By taking illuminate the pull of the forces of gender, the reader to the intersection between jazz, mass culture, technology and modernisation. gender and modernity in Australia during the Continuing the focus on women as active first half of the twentieth century, he focuses agents of Australian modernity through on the pivotal role of jazz in the transition to music, Johnson examines the convergence modernity of Australian society, while also of the female, jazz, the microphone and seeking explanations for the inaudibility of musical performance. Just as the microphone the music within existing studies of picked up sounds previously inaudible, and Australian culture and musical discourse. brought to the spotlight artists previously In tracing the development of jazz in unheard, women began to explore the Australia to the 1950s, Johnson draws on expressive capabilities of the modernist musical conventions. An introduction, six technology. Such an artist was singer Barbara
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James in the 1930s, and her contribution Ross Laird, Sound Beginnings: The Early typifies the unique sound of Australian Record Industry in Australia, Sydney, modernity through the marriage of the jazz Currency Press, 1999, pp 368, pb $54.77. and Swing genres, gender and technology. In the late 1940s, a phenomenon occurred For many, it is common to accept that the in the relationship between jazz and Australian recording industry began with Australian modernity. Pianist Graeme Bell Col Joye, Johnny O’Keefe and Festival and his Australian Jazz Band toured Europe Records back in the dim dark recesses of and the United Kingdom in 1947-48, and their the 1950s. Yet, as Ross Laird shows, there distinctively Australian style inscribed itself was (at a conservative estimate) some 5,000 on a blank page of musical history, putting commercially issued recordings in Australia this country on the international jazz map as before 1950 and frequent, if generally part of a traditional jazz revival. At the same unsuccessful, attempts at a recording time, because of geographical distance and industry in Australia dating from the 1870s recording bans, classic 1920s American jazz and the earliest commercially available recordings entered Australia, coinciding with Edison cylinder machines. the evolution of a form of modern or Laird’s book takes the decade 1924-34 as progressive jazz called ‘bop’. The arrival of its main subject, exploring the Australian bop created a dichotomy in the jazz world, record industry as one aspect of the and Johnson gives a fascinating account of extemporaneous eruption of syncopated the innovative pianistic experimentation of ‘jazz’ and dance music worldwide after the Don Banks and his impact on modernity. first world war. Although he provides a Despite the co-existence of both traditional useful introductory overview on 1920s and modern jazz in the Australian musical attitudes regarding both ‘syncopation’ and landscape, jazz was barely a ripple on the ‘mechanical music’, Laird creates less of a reservoir of modernist debate mid-century. social history and more of an institutional Through interrogating elements of one. By using press reports and articles, Australian modernity, Johnson has, with this company documents, letters, and transcripts benchmark study, identified the need for jazz of Tariff Board proceedings, the book to have a voice and a niche in cultural examines in turn the brief fortunes, and commentary. Whilst I acknowledge that inevitable failures, of local recording Johnson is an erudite scholar as well as an companies during the twenties. adept practitioner in the field, I am less As one might expect, the book explores sanguine about the issue of audience. issues peculiar to the period that have long Johnson defends his use of various since been resolved and seem almost discursive strategies, but the average jazz quaint now, like the World Record fan may not engage with the density of Company’s forebear of the LP, the short elevated language. A more accessible read lived ‘long duration records’ which, with may have reached a larger audience. the aid of a regulating ‘controller’, enabled Currency Press has published an appealing the ‘needle’ to travel at a constant speed, book with quality design, while chapter notes irrespective of the length of the groove at and the bibliography highlight Johnson’s any given point, or the deathly battle thorough research and his concerns about between ‘ephemeral’ radio, initially at least the lack of scholarly overviews of Australian reliant on live music, versus the jazz. If improvisation is the essence of jazz, ‘permanency’ of the phonograph record for amplification of its role in Australian music the public’s ear. and society during the first half of the Yet, while Laird shows us how far the twentieth century is the essence of The industry has travelled — it is happily no longer Inaudible Music. the case, for instance, that few Australian artists manage to record in amongst a tide of Clare Hansson overseas visitors and local pressings of Queensland University of Technology overseas releases — there are, however,
226 Reviews important issues covered in this work that still Tsaloumas’s social and intellectual have currency today. histories. He came to Australia, a refugee There is of course a strong sense of déjà from Greek militarism, in 1952 and worked vu in the description of the struggle of local as a teacher in Melbourne, after studying producers against the ‘dumping’ of cheap at Melbourne University. Since his imported recordings which resulted in a Tariff retirement in the 1980s he has divided his Board inquiry in 1927 (and the importation life and writing between Australia and his of the protectionist tariff which stood until birthplace, the island of Leros. Without its repeal in 1998) but there are also the recording angel of poetry, in recognisable parallels in the crushing death- Tsaloumas’s case, his history in Greece and blow of economic recession, exemplified then Australia (and in Greek and English) would in the great depression; and the inevitable be lost. He would be simply another tendency away from small independent demographic speck in the sociological outfits towards the monopolisation of the account of Australian multiculturalism. recording industry (by the juggernaut of EMI In his four early books of poetry in Greek, during the early 1930s and mirrored today, in in two bilingual collections (The many eyes, by Sony Corporation). Observatory, 1983 and The Book of Studies of the Australian recording Epigrams, 1985), in his bilingual anthology industry, and studies in the history of of Australian poetry in English and Greek Australian jazz have, in the main, tended so (Contemporary Australian Poetry, 1986) and far to focus on the post-second world war in the (now) four books of poetry he has period. Laird’s book is an important published in English alone, including this exploration for anyone interested in the initial latest one, Tsaloumas has created a rich and jazz period. His research is commendable, moving language of personal and linguistic and his desire to ‘let the sources speak for encounter. His writing has created a kind of themselves’ is admirable. While one might hemispherical band, still taut with insight and wonder whether a little more analysis of the growth, linking Australia to the sources might have made more of what is Mediterranean. The Harbour is his latest presented as a fairly undemanding collection of poems, written between 1993 chronological history, it is, however, this and 1996, the latest instalment in very readability, as much as the voluminous Tsaloumas’s poetic ethnography of statistical appendices (including a Australian/Greek exile and dwelling. comprehensive listing of record labels Perhaps this relation between available in Australia before 1934) that hemispheres is represented in the Klee-like ensures the work is destined to be used in cover illustration to this volume, of a boat future research and analysis. upside down in the water, an antipodean reflection. Certainly, Tsaloumas’s Derek Nuss characteristic metaphors and thematics are University of Queensland represented: pilgrimage, exile, quest, journeys, singular travellers, maritime cities Dimitris Tsaloumas , The Harbour, and their harbours, the scenes and occasions University of Queensland Press, pb $27.45. of setting out and arrival. In his statement that ‘My poetry, my language belongs to a We speak in general about the changes far world’ Tsaloumas is making the that have taken place in Australian society connection between the outer experience of and culture since the second world war, exile and nostalgia for the homeland and the but the lifework of an individual like inner worlds of poetic effects. But he is also Dimitris Tsaloumas is one place we can signalling something fundamental about the begin to understand the startling and mode of his writing, about its distance from irreducible reality of those changes. literal reference. From the beginning, critics Generalisations about ‘post-war migration’ and reviewers have noticed the uncanny dissolve in the face of the specificities of authority and distinctiveness of Tsaloumas’s
227 Reviews voice as well as the family of metaphors and realise that this is a phantom or allegorical themes he works with. What they haven’t house — its meaning is otherwise than in been so attentive to, I think, is the allegorical the nostalgic evocation of place: nature of Tsaloumas’s poetic imagination. The reader of The Harbour can quickly tell It has no doors, it wraps you like a that, apart from one or two seagulls on the thought beach at Elwood and the occasional haiku- Intent on its object, the shell of a peek into Acland Street, these poems are not psalm about representing seemingly real places, events and states of mind. That is the source That guards the kernel of divinity. No of their strength and freedom. candle Tsaloumas’s poetry constructs a wholly Burns there, nor urge for words: I furnished allegorical world where the nurse landscapes — sometimes sharply beautiful, sometimes desolate — as well as the houses, No loneliness of place. cities, people — are all part of an outward projection, into carefully structured In other words this is not about human language, of complex inner states. habitation and flux, as it might appear to Tsaloumas doesn’t use poetry to sublimate be; the point of the poem is not the heimlich the contradictions and antagonisms of feeling it skirts. It’s about the multiple everyday existence, but to represent those meanings that the mini-narrative of this complexly balanced, often unhappy facts. He house can generate, a (seductively) goes against the basic drive of the lyric in structured space of ambiguous this sense, which is to sublimate significance. The stillness of the poem’s contradiction and resolve antimonies. The movement and language is the price it pays deepest aim of the lyric is always to make the for holding its tensions together at the level reader and the world feel ‘whole’, at one. of the surface. The title poem, ‘The Tsaloumas’s allegories, a mode of writing Harbour’, like many in this collection is akin with many filiations to European traditions to ‘A Summer House,’ although here the of poetic speech under repressive regimes, narrative element, which is strong in this are a way of speaking indirectly about that collection, is given more prominence: which can’t be represented as a unified whole. And how, Tsaloumas’s poetry asks, I arrived late one summer evening. could the diasporic experience of a twentieth From a far parapet of hills century Greek Australian be represented I’d seen the harbour and the ship ‘wholly’? And window-panes ablaze Thus, in the opening poem of this With the setting sun. collection, ‘A Summer House,’ we start out I was glad, for it had been with what appears to be one of those muted A long, lonely tramp. projections of intimations of mortality onto an exotic scene: It turns out to be an allegorical journey and city, rather like some of those in Calvino’s Between the stone-pine and the Invisible Cities. This is Charon’s deserted cypress city, ‘of no substance to the living’. The house stands, pensive under the Tsaloumas’s poetry would repay extended moon, critical exegesis, especially in response to its fusion of the symbolic and the imaginary. Shuttered against the fierce glare of What is also remarkable about this the sun. collection is the quantum leap in confidence with English that it represents. With the A familiar evocation, apart from the weird earlier volumes there was always a sense of simultaneity of the moon and sun. Soon we a holding back with English, a formality that
228 Reviews was perhaps an symptom of a slight My interest in traveller education led hesitancy in the face of the suggestiveness me to focus first on the opening article by and slipperiness of idiom, this has almost Reg Bolton, entitled ‘Circus as education’. entirely disappeared. Another aspect of the Bolton has considerable experience in success of these poems is that they combine youth circuses in England and Western the complex structuration of allegorical Australia, and I had encountered his narrative with a newly relaxed and unself- strongly expressed views about the consciously everyday vocabulary and untapped educational potential of circus syntax. It’s a very plain style, a language in other fora. Here he has the space to that doesn’t pretend to be anything more elaborate these ideas at greater length, and than it is. It can produce, all the same, some to draw on his lengthy experiential unforgettable lines, for example: knowledge to justify his claims that circus uniquely promotes children’s physical, Trespass is in the loom of peace. social and emotional development. A major interest of St Leon’s is the Philip Mead history of Australian circuses, an interest University of Tasmania that is well represented in nearly half the papers in this collection. The second article, Mark St Leon (ed.), Circus in Australia: A by Richard Waterhouse, deals with Special Issue of Australasian Drama travelling shows in rural Australia in the Studies, 1999, St Lucia, University of second half of the nineteenth century and Queensland English Department, pp 216, the first decade of the twentieth. pb $20.00. Waterhouse skilfully traces the links between developments in those shows and Australian circus studies constitute a small but broader changes in technology and social growing specialisation with some fascinating life. In the third article, Mimi Colligan and significant links with other fields of focuses on circus in theatre in her detailed Australian scholarship. This is reflected in the analysis of a circus amphitheatre in fact that my interest in reviewing this Melbourne in the mid 1850s, modelled on publication was sparked by its evident Phillip Astley’s famous original in London connections with my own specialisation in and the inspiration of circus impresario G B researching the education of Australian W Lewis. In the sixth article, jazz historian occupational travellers such as circus and John Whiteoak sketches the development show people. This publication encapsulates of Australian circus music, which included the location of circus studies at the intersection separate bands accompanying circuses to of a wide array of professional interests. different parts of rural Australia. Circus in Australia is number 35 of the Continuing the historical theme, David Australasian Drama Studies journal, although C S Sissons examines the Japanese the scope of many of the thirteen articles acrobatic troupes that toured Australia and extends well beyond conventional New Zealand between 1867 and 1900, a little understandings of drama. The editor, Mark St known episode in Australia’s cultural Leon, is a well-known descendant of one of history prior to the establishment of the Australia’s oldest circus families, as well as ‘White Australia Policy’. Cathy J Barrett being a respected circus scholar in his own and Heather Vallance follow the career of right. His lively introduction to the collection Texas Jack, who toured the United States, recounts personal anecdotes of how he first England, Australia and South Africa and encountered the work of the respective was a contemporary and sometime rival of contributors, a timely reminder in these days Buffalo Bill. Nicola Brackertz provides a of university cost cutting of the enormous lively account of the intense rivalry between value of unplanned meetings with scholars Burton’s National Circus and Bird and working in the same or related fields at academic Taylor’s Great American Circus, conferences and the like. representing the ‘John Bull’ and ‘Uncle
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Sam’ of her article’s subtitle (Burton’s Stephen Hamnett and Robert Freestone National Circus won with the Great (eds), The Australian Metropolis: A American Circus, the contest that took place Planning History, St Leonards, Allen and in Adelaide in 1873). The editor’s Unwin, 2000, pp ix and 229 indexed, contribution concludes the historical illustrated, pb 38.43. articles, with St Leon elaborating many of the factors in circus performers choosing Planning is an admirable profession. Planners their noms d’arena and using his own family retain, in the face of an unprecedented assault name as a striking example. on the very idea of systematic and equitable Another major theme in the collection is management, a faith in fairness achieved the wider lessons to be learned from detailed through predictive rationality. So a history case studies of individual circuses and which takes the possibility of planning entrepreneurs. Gavin Robbins has edited his seriously is most welcome. For somewhere, revealing interview with Nigel Jamieson, deep within the Australian metropolis (if five director of International Workshop Festivals or six relatively small urban centres can be in London and Melbourne and involved in a called metropolitan) there exists a planning host of successful circus productions. history. During this history, as the ‘Thrills and spills’ is an apt title for Lynn contributors to this collection make plain, Everett’s ‘insider’ reflection on touring with planners, architects and more commonly Circus Monoxide, including difficulties in surveyors and engineers, have drawn clever attracting female performers. The final piece diagrams and sometimes seen these realised in the collection is Sue Broadway’s engaging on the ground. memoir as a performer with Circus Oz for its The editors claim that this is the first first seven years (it celebrated its twenty- such history and the more we consider the first birthday in 1999). Australian metropolis the more we can see Finally, two articles deal with particular why such a thing has not been previously aspects of circus as drama and spectacle. attempted. Even if we allow that a few places Yoram S Carmeli, an Israeli sociologist whose in Australia can be labelled metropolitan, work on circus as presocial communication they do not have much of a planning history. is stimulating, uses the interactions between For the most part, as the authors are on circus trainers and lions and tigers to reflect occasions forced to admit, planners have on more fundamental links and tensions struggled to make any impact on the course between nature and culture. Peta Tait of either Australian urban growth or exploits constructions of circus bodies to suburban life. Nevertheless, when read as ponder the complex relationship between contributions to the broadest possible such circus and theatre. survey, individual chapters of The Considered as an ensemble, the Australian Metropolis, chronologically disparate contributions in this collection arranged and canvassing planning efforts bring into sharp focus an enormously varied in capital cities and provincial villages, mélange of ideas and images associated comprise a useful compendium. They ought with circus in Australia. These range from to find a place on reading lists at the cinema and music to oral history and rural surviving schools of planning and urban communities to discursive practices and studies in Australian universities, even if spatial constructions. Certainly my initial the ideology of many such institutions has interest in traveller education has found become fundamentally inimical to the much in this publication that is confirmatory, historical values of planners themselves. stimulating, intriguing, puzzling and well In chapters by Robert Freestone and worth returning to again and again — much Christine Garnaut, those familiar concepts of like a really effective circus performance. city beautiful and garden city are neatly reviewed. It comes as a surprise to learn that P A Danaher Johnstone Park, Geelong, pretty as it is, could Central Queensland University be regarded as a noteworthy example of the
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‘city beautiful’. There is a good contribution greed of the majority of these actors, the from Alan Hutchings on the less familiar history of planning becomes both dry and transitions in the planning of inter-war cities; aloof. It can easily be made subject to those Renate Howe’s comprehensive survey of attacks which, over the last decade, have post-war planning draws together issues driven the public-sector planning profession canvassed separately in the past. further to the margins of urban decision- Interestingly the collection is largely making. For, despite its many useful and weighted to the post-war era, perhaps original contributions, this compendium can indicating that planning is really an aspect never be a metropolitan story. The vitality of the suburban expansion of the 1950s and of the metropolis springs from the essentially beyond. Ian Alexander considers the post- unplanned life of a densely-populated place, war city and Ian Morison examines the from its politics and its contradictions. These 1960s, with an emphasis on the idea of the remain qualities of which planners, as corridor. Margo Huxley’s chapter on the demonstrated in this collection, have always 1970s provides a detailed assessment of a appeared fearful. If it is possible, as Helen decade which seems, in restrospect, crucial Proudfoot demonstrates in this collection, to contemporary urban character. Michael for places like Goulburn or Port Macquarie Lennon analyses the revival of metropolitan to have been progenitors of metropolitan planning in the 1980s, and Stephen planning, then the Australia metropolis has Hamnett’s study of the late 1990s isolates yet to be invented and can probably never two key trends of the contemporary city: a be planned. Of course this does not prevent declining faith in public-sector planning as the collection from being a handy reference seen in the transfer of decision-making and and an innovative collegial effort, at a ownership of major projects to private moment when planning is in danger of consortia and a growing concern for natural becoming periphal to Australian urban life. environments and the environmental consequences of energy-intensive Chris McConville urbanism which provides new opportunities University of the Sunshine Coast for the planning profession. The book has an occasional photograph Lynette Finch and Chris McConville (eds), and many clear and useful maps. And yet Gritty Cities: Images of the Urban, Sydney, there is a problem here. What would student Pluto Press, 1999, pp 286. pb $27.45. planners, assuming such people survive the early twenty-first century, be able to A certain unevenness is to be expected of understand of urban life in this book? The collections based on conferences. Editors history is broken into obvious periodisations Lynette Finch and Chris McConville provide — the 1970s, the 1960s etc, — blocks which a convincing and challenging sum of the do not necessarily correspond to significant parts in their introduction, and I share their historical transitions in urbanism. The plans conviction that ‘broad church’ approaches are discussed from within the vision of the to urban themes are more likely to generate planning authority rather than the users of sparks and flashes than a timid reliance upon plans or other makers of the city. Herein lies one path into city landscapes. While the the difficulty of planning and the weakness collection opens with Marshall Berman of the book. This is a history apart from the performing Marshall Berman — interesting, complex and rich life of cities. For planning, but only to a point — Finch and McConville such as existed in Australian cities, was more tell us that the remaining papers show how often the work of private developers, local this conference ‘speedily turned to creative council officers, community groups, trade and thoughtful reflections on modernism ... unions, major motor car manufacturers and a modernism, however, stripped of its utopian the least admirable of politicians. Without confidence and faith in progress’. A more the idealism of some, the self-serving wary and more circumspect modernism? motivation of many and the unmitigated Well, at least on the evidence of some of the
231 Reviews papers included in this book, that seems to writing which records ‘the malaise of the mean a version of the urban environment suffering [middle class] soul’ — has a which, however much it can be enjoyed, marvellous conclusion which expresses no walked, unveiled, represented, or imagined naïve faith in progress and the future but inside out and upside down, cannot be nonetheless manages to demand something changed, shaped or even challenged. The more from urban writing than fetishistic fatalism, excitement and verve of these papers is something in the manner of emancipation and palpable and infectious. Their analyses of transgression, a way forward. Kathleen different imagining, their strategies, silences Ferguson’s paper is suffused with a concern and ruptures, are for the most part compelling. for social equity, a desire to use ‘difference’ to Yet some leave you grasping for an outcome, reinterpret contemporary urban space should a direction, some hint of what this means for be read by any planner, architect or ‘city cities then and especially for cities now. Brian space manager’ who is to be let loose on real Morris’ point about the film Falling Down, people. What strikes you about these which ‘seems unable to politically respond contributions is that their writers have read to its own exaggerated, but at times their Benjamin, their de Certeau, their Bakhtin, insightful, vision of the contemporary their Kristeva, and, yes, their Berman. But in urbanscape’ comes rather too close to home reading them, they have also read the more for a number of the papers in this book. difficult bits, those places where all of those That conclusion is reinforced because theorists strike out into the difficult territory some of these writers have made the transition of action and transformation. They are from imaginative analysis to outcomes, mobilised not only by a desire to deconstruct commentary, and even prescription. the city, but also by an insistence that if McConville’s own contribution on critique dismantles and disarrays, it also ‘vernacular Melbourne’, with its playful reconstructs. questions about the place of mass taste, spontaneity and real democracy in a revived John Peel urban planning agenda, is a case in point. Monash University So is Finch’s fascinating account of ‘the man in the street’ as a subject of manipulation in Douglas Booth and Colin Tatz, One-Eyed: wartime democracies, or Graeme Davison’s A View of Australian Sport, St Leonards, deceivingly jovial walk through Melbourne Allen and Unwin, 2000, pp 262, pb $27.40. in film and photography, where the deep contradictions of ‘optimistic modernism’ are In this volume Douglas Booth and Colin Tatz realised in a contest over urban images which have produced what they believe to be an actually shapes urban forms and the place antidote to sports history in Australia that is of different interests in the city. In similar ‘All too often ... about sport for the sake of vein, Sascha Jenkins shows how the cultural sport, about sports trivia, leaving a legacy that presentation of Sydney Harbour was concentrates on sport solely as sport, increasingly fulfilled in its planning and constituting a cocoon devoid of context’. reshaping: a wonderful example of the power Rather than seeing Australian sport as an of contested representations. Grahame institution of great social importance, the Griffin’s analysis of Robina on the Gold authors contend provocatively that it is ‘a Coast, with its ‘edge city planning mentality’ fiction, an illusion, and certainly not as real, let and its ‘retromodernist aesthetic’, focuses alone more real, than life itself’. For Booth and on the outcomes of ‘planning for Tatz, the fictive and illusory that comprise community’, and the manufacture of those Australian sport does not, however, render it safe, convenient, secure, unequal and crudely socially and politically innocent. Throughout exclusionist spaces which a new generation the volume they present cogent arguments of suburban youth will one day yearn to leave pointing to the role sport has played in reflecting and satirise. Vivienne Muller’s brilliant social difference and its function as a buttress dissection of urban grunge literature — a to broader patterns of social inequality.
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One-Eyed adopts a broad-brush the mission and reserves, have acted to approach in considering the role of sport in prohibit the development of indigenous Australian society from 1788 to the present. sporting potential. However, through Its ten chapters are organised effectively written cameos, Booth and Tatz chronologically and thematically, focussing reveal the tremendous efforts by a number on key developments in the realm of sport of indigenous sports men and women to within each chronological segment. This overcome the tangible obstacles placed in discussion of sport is placed within a their way by white sports administrators, relatively detailed framework encompassing spectators and the broader society. Similarly, the social, political and economic contexts albeit to a lesser extent, One-Eyed outlines of the period examined, which proves a the hurdles faced by Australian women on welcome addition to most treatments of their two hundred year journey to sporting Australian sports history. Within each respectability — a journey yet unfinished. chapter a number of themes are pursued that The authors’ discussion of the inextricable elucidate the book’s meta-narrative — that linkage of sport and masculinity and their Australian sport, far from being a unifying role in prescribing women’s involvement in agency, has preserved a ‘connectedness’ vigorous competitive physical activity until among groups already connected by social the 1970s is illuminating. bonds and has, importantly, historically Much evidence is placed before the served to bolster ideologies and practices of reader that challenges dominant myths about exclusion in society. Australian sport. The historiography of One-Eyed explores a number of themes historical overviews of Australian sport related to sport such as community, class, reveals an entrenched tendency towards commercialism, technology, muscular unbridled exaltation of sport’s putatively Christianity, amateurism and beneficent role in Australian society. If it professionalism, as well as sport’s role in has not acted as a signifier of egalitarianism fostering nationalistic jingoism. Much then it has been treated as its promoter. energy is also devoted to the topical subject Notable exceptions to this trend exist, namely of Australian involvement in the Olympic Richard Cashman’s Paradise of Sport and Games. The authors cover these different Brian Stoddart’s Saturday Afternoon Fever. yet interrelated terrains adequately, relying Douglas Booth’s and Colin Tatz’s latest primarily on published secondary sources volume joins such contributions in and augmenting their argument with illustrating that sport is far from the politically substantial endnotes. However, the most innocent and wholesome game that the interesting and arresting analyses in this image manufacturers, vested interests and book concern race and gender in the arena ‘sports patriots’ would have us believe. of Australian sport. Beginning with the onset of white Bryan Jamison settlement and ending in the contemporary University of Queensland period, Booth and Tatz narrate the barriers and prejudices that Aboriginal and female Richard Waterhouse, Private Pleasures, athletes have faced (and continue to face in Public Leisure: A History of Australian more muted form) in their struggles to attain Popular Culture Since 1788, Sydney, respect for their prowess from the dominant Longman, 1995, pp xiv + 266, pb $38.39. male Anglo-Australian culture. One-Eyed draws clearly a picture of the iniquities Richard Waterhouse’s encompassing suffered by indigenous Australians both on history of Australian popular culture seems and off the sports field from the nineteenth nothing if not thorough. As he notes in century to the present. The authors show his acknowledgements, it was his that shifting patterns in the governance of postgraduate supervisor at John Hopkins, Aboriginal people, from the callous racism Jack Greene who impressed upon him the of the frontier to the paternalistic racism of point that history is about generalisation
233 Reviews and whetted his appetite for the ambitious transgressive tensions which would overview. This one deserves to be widely dramatically fissure the social terrain once read for Waterhouse has brought his more in the decades ahead. Such fissures, organising insights to bear upon the little extending forward from convict times, were explored corpus of Australian popular undoubtedly even more profound than culture. He has also located this within Waterhouse allows, for although his study the purview of high culture and the pays considerable attention to class, gender influence of respectable, middle class and, to a lesser extent, generational cultures. He has further buttressed this differentiation, it has precious little to say Australian survey (which, by the way, is about racial, ethnic and regional discrepancies. constantly alert to the fact that there are This is clearly the book’s major limitation more Australian colonies and states than and one Waterhouse fleetingly New South Wales and Victoria) with a acknowledges in his introduction. sustained integration of local forms into Aborigines fail to appear until the story is wider western cultural traditions. Britain, almost over — and then only in two short America and Europe serve here as more unrelated paragraphs — even though than convenient backdrops. Their cultural Chauvel’s Jedda (1955) is referenced on four evolutions are deeply appreciated and separate pages. Asian and Pacific impacts usefully employed to contextualise are extruded in their entirety and non-English Australian developments throughout. speaking, European migrants suddenly Furthermore, in a move which is appear in the post-war era to organis e ‘a refreshingly novel for a long survey, culture of resistance’ at job-sites (as if there Waterhouse continually supports his wasn’t a robust one already! See Malcolm assertions with illuminating data drawn Waters’ Strikes in Australia, for instance) as from primary research. His footnotes well as to provide stereotypical copy for themselves are a professional historian’s They’re a Weird Mob (1966) and Strictly delight, skipping across some of the best Ballroom (1991). Of course Anglo-Celtic western research, lesser-known, specialist culture is the core consideration but even that secondary works from Australia and such heterogeneous culture can only be sufficiently enticing titles as Australian Etiquette, or understood amidst its racial and ethnic the Rules and Usages of the Best Society surrounds. It both suppressed and ... (1885), Half an Hour’s Reading from the interchanged with the cultures of others, NSW Temperance Society (1834), Helen particularly Aborigines. And it defined its Barton’s Laughs and Sighs from Sunny own cultural virtues according to its distastes Skies (1927) and The Australian Shooting for such disparate peoples. As well, a vast and Fishing Annual (1901-2). range of migrant cultures have subsisted What all this engrossing research along side that of Anglo-Celtic Australians uncovers would undoubtedly bring some and of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait intellectual disquiet to our present prime Islander hosts. Indeed, it is all so very diverse minister, for Waterhouse demonstrates again that it makes the head (and often the heart) and again what a ‘complex and ache. No wonder the myth of a homogeneous contradictory’ site Australian popular culture past to which Professor Blainey and Mr undoubtedly is. As he concludes, ‘cultural Howard so singlemindedly subscribe remains diversity rather than unity for the most part such a compelling popular anodyne. has characterised Australia’s history’. Up Waterhouse also overlooks much of until the post second world war era, Australian rural culture in focussing on the Australians were much less concerned about cities and their absorption of British, a defining nationalist identity than later American and European influences. historians and politicians have been. Even Although this provides a welcome departure the surface impression of cultural from the mesmerically gazing outback homogeneity in the 1950s and early 1960s emphases of the ‘Australian legend’ type, was subterraneously riddled with with which we were once so singularly
234 Reviews engaged, perhaps it is time now for an people defeated in combat’. attempt at re-integration. Any reading Furthermore, Evans considers the across, say, Bill Wannan’s fifty-five titles on uncontrolled epidemics of disease, most Australiana, Graham Seal’s The Hidden appallingly the untreated spread of syphilis, Culture or The Oxford Companion to as an ‘early, primitive example of germ Australian Folklore should reassure even warfare’. Such a position is more than the most pessimistic that the Australian provocative; it is systematically supported mystique has never been (and probably will by historical evidence which demonstrates never be) obliterated by the British and an attempted genocide of Aboriginal people American cultural tsunamis. in Australia. As in his earlier work, Evans Australian popular culture will always be traces, analyses and uncompromisingly too immense to enfold within the covers of a presents the multitude of acts and atrocities single book, but Waterhouse is to be applauded that led to virtual genocide affecting every for such an industrious and gutsy effort. existing Aboriginal clan. He has limited his work primarily to the Raymond Evans Murris, rather than extending his historical University of Queensland documentation to the Torres Strait Islander people. His thesis on Australian forms of Raymond Evans, Fighting Words: Writing slavery, however, includes Islanders from the About Race, St Lucia, University of Torres Strait and Pacific regions. What would Queensland Press, 1999, pb $32.79. make this work even more valuable is an investigation of the alliance between Murris Reading Raymond Evans’ latest publication, and early Chinese immigrants. The following a self-compiled tribute to his pioneering work quote is illustrative of the extreme brutality on race relations in Queensland, of the ‘eye witness’ reports from Evans’s characteristically invokes emotional as well front. Taken from a communication made in as intellectual responses: horror and shame 1898 to the North Queensland Protector of about the extremity of the violence Aborigines by an Atherton agricultural perpetrated against people of colour in this settler, a subversive allegiance to Chinese country; respect for the unrelenting analysis business owners is suggested in the context of archival material that condemns the of the routine murder of Aboriginal people: perpetrators in the tradition of war crimes ‘“I have shot 13 or 14 niggers in this district tribunals in Europe; surprise that historians and this is all the Government has done for such as Ray Evans are not more frequently me: I can’t get a bloody nigger when I want referred to in the print and broadcast media one. They all go to the Chinamen”’. whenever the subject of race arises. Commendably, Evans exposes the collusion Although the emergence of Aboriginal of the individual with governmental and activism has been a significant ‘social institutional bodies to maintain the regime movement’ in Australia, Evans does not of power based on destructive notions of fully examine the historical impact of racism racial superiority. on the contemporary political agenda. The chapters on the cruel imprisonment Nonetheless, he has developed a thesis of on Fraser Island and the horrendous non-victimisation and active resistance to treatment of Aboriginal women confined for ‘settlement’. His longstanding position on domestic and sexual exploitation, amass Aboriginal resistance and the ‘founding’ of archival material in a way that makes this the British colonies may be summarised distressing ‘side’ to Queensland history as thus: ‘To view Aborigines merely as victims vivid and undeniable as a documentary film. perishing or acquiescing before superior Jackie Huggins, in her legitimising foreword power [sic] absolves the historian from to the text, asserts that a ‘great psychological properly regarding the frontier as a kind of blockage’ exists for Aboriginal people when warfront and those Aborigines surviving attempting to analyse past and present the conflict as either prisoners of war or a violence — the next generation may feel freer
235 Reviews to document the massacres. Thus the work Epilogue he refers to himself as a of Ray Evans and his colleagues performs a ‘European race historian’ — which leads necessary service for future Aboriginal to some confusion for interdisciplinary scholars. I would consider Evans’ ‘Kings in readers in Australia and abroad. brass crescents: defining Aboriginal labour The introduction to part one, ‘Writing patterns in colonial Queensland’ to be racial conflict’ functions polemically. The exemplary of the ‘white’ effort to document section includes a series of case studies on the systematic violence which Huggins has ‘the significance of race in colonial begun to analyse from a Murri perspective Queensland’, specifically the Moreton Bay and paradigm. Penal Settlement, the 1888 Brisbane race riots Evans is secondarily concerned with against Chinese residents encouraged by the positioning himself and his colleagues at the press and the organised vilification of University of Queensland in the highly German Australians during the first world contentious field of ‘race historiography’. war. Possibly in order to draw a parallel This leads to a minor criticism — his cursory among the diverse forms of racism and ‘hate mention of his aboriginal successors who, speech’, to borrow a phrase from North unlike his ‘non-Aboriginal’ contemporaries, American discourse, Evans names himself a are listed without due comment on the subject ‘conflict historian’ along with Henry and direction of their research. Another flaw, Reynolds, Noel Loos, Deborah Bird Rose, which at times appears to be literary Jan Critchett, Roger Milliss, Andrew eloquence befitting the autobiographical Markus, Cassandra Pybus and Bill Thorpe. style of Raymond Williams whom he He repeatedly discounts the arguments of emulates at the beginning of the collection, the ‘historians of conciliation’: Bain is the florid prose used to summarise the Attwood, who has aligned this position with discourses and actuality of racial vilification. Diane Barwick, Bob Reece, Anne McGrath Evans leads into part two, ‘Writing racial and Marie Fels. Evans notes sarcastically: exclusion’, with the summary: ‘Almost a ‘If pushed to choose a rough percentage for century earlier at Bogimbah Creek, however, clear examples of conciliation in the overall the position had appeared entirely the pattern of colonial race relations, I would reverse, as white authority, awesome in its consider it a generous gesture to place this self-confidence, had marshalled on that far proportion at much above ten per cent’. He shore the remnants of a blasted race from has launched this offensive against their ransacked homelands across the ‘accommodationist critics’ before, notably colony’. Such verbosity suggests the with other ‘blood and thunder’ historians Kay adventure of a Star Wars frontier rather than Saunders and Kathryn Cronin. the dusty Queensland outback or scattered Fighting Words, a detailed documentation coastal settlements, even though Evans’ text of racist oppression and authoritarian regimes is generally sensitive to the polemical nature in Queensland, includes official government of language, to date most strikingly examined reports from the Chief Protector Meston, the by Eve Fesl. Aboriginal Protection Board, ‘concerned Similarly, his frequent use of the term citizens’, a few early Aboriginal activists, ‘the blacks’, does not simply equate with squatters, journalists, foreign visitors, as well the corollary ‘the whites’, given the general as extracts from the diaries and practice in the Australian colonies to refer correspondence of white ‘settlers’. Evans’ to Aborigines as sub-human or animal. In antidote to the near paralysis of imagination his argument that Queensland was clearly that his compiling of the innumerable settled on the basis of Aboriginal slavery, massacres, poisonings, acts of public Evans himself notes the degrading, generic degradation, humiliating sexual assault and terms used for Aboriginal labourers and unashamed abuse of women of colour causes, sex workers. Another linguistic anomaly is a polemical call for reconciliation. is his substitution of ‘non-Aboriginal’ or Australian people need to own all of this ‘Anglo-Saxon’ with European — in the past and, in the process, to own up to it all.
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The purpose is not to produce national guilt under that name. and self-loathing, but rather a sense of For Coombs in the late 1960s, Aboriginal communal responsibility and atonement — autonomy was an essential component of and by this I mean not the responsibility of assimilation. Through to his death in 1997, commission but rather the responsibility of he was preoccupied with the quest for unflinching awareness that a deep historical appropriate mechanisms by which wrong requires positive address. Aboriginal autonomy could be realised. Evans’ persistent rhetoric in this text Government policies changed, partly as a renders his presence in public debate even result of Coombs’s advocacy; assimilation more necessary. His historical essays and was abandoned in favour of self- research are overwhelmingly dense with determination. Rowse, however, draws factual material that collaborates the attention to the continuities, showing that apparently sensational, shocking revelations what Coombs advocated from the mid-1970s of eye witnesses on the frontier. In order to under the banner ‘self-determination’ was adequately comprehend and then effectively consistent with what he had earlier discuss the routine brutality of the sex crimes advocated under the rubric ‘assimilation’. committed against Aboriginal women, for This may seem surprising to some, in an example, the density of Evans’ historical age when ‘assimilation’ is demonised as research should be incorporated and distilled nothing but a full-frontal assault on in other fields of enquiry, such as literary Aboriginality. Yet as Rowse suggests (and criticism, cultural studies and particularly, the as he has explained elsewhere) feminist methods now aligned with gender ‘assimilation’ was a capacious term, whose studies. This invaluable culmination of one proponents disagreed deeply over, among historian’s work should, ideally, serve as a other things, the possibility and desirability model for a committed, polemical form of of Aboriginal distinctiveness persisting scholarship amenable to every discipline. beyond their incorporation into the Australian nation. Tania Peitzker Rowse argues convincingly that University of Lodz assimilation and self-determination are variations — significantly different, it could Tim Rowse, Obliged to be Difficult: Nugget be argued — on an inexorable governmental Coombs’ Legacy in Indigenous Affairs, imperative: the modernisation of Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, indigenous society. 2000, pp 254 + viii, pb $32.95. Certainly, the modernisation of indigenous societies was a key element of Biography has many uses. In this book, it Coombs’s policy advocacy, as much in the provides the setting for an exploration of era of assimilation as in the period when self- the evolution of Aboriginal policy since the determination held the imprimatur of 1967 referendum. H C ‘Nugget’ Coombs’ governments. But modernity, in his view, substantial engagement with Aboriginal did not come ready-made; indigenous affairs dates from this referendum, whose peoples should not simply slip overwhelming ‘yes’ vote prompted Prime inconspicuously into a white ‘Australian way Minister Holt to set up a Council for of life’ as many assimilationists presumed Aboriginal Affairs with Coombs as its chair. they must. Indigenous Australians were to If, as Coombs later recalled, this position undertake their own social renovations and ‘obliged [him] to be difficult’, it did not cultural innovations, preserving their own oblige him to repudiate established solidarities and distinctiveness, and Commonwealth policy toward Aborigines: exercising genuine choice in the pace and assimilation. Yet, as Rowse makes clear, his manner of their modernisation. Only thus, acceptance of ‘assimilation’ entailed according to Coombs, could Aboriginal concurrence with neither the means nor the people determine their own futures. ends of the government policy that went The continuities between assimilation
237 Reviews and self-determination notwithstanding, a as relations between indigenous and non- new discourse did become increasingly indigenous Australians became prominent from the early 1970s onward: a increasingly contentious and conflictual. discourse of distinctive indigenous rights. The difficulties were probably Coombs was supportive, particularly of compounded by Coombs’ strong views on indigenous rights to land. Yet he focussed localism. Rowse recounts his attempts at his efforts not on the creation of new legal mediation in detail — sometimes in too rights but on the development of much detail. Such a study of the administrative arrangements enabling vicissitudes of Aboriginal policy-making autonomy. Coombs was, as Rowse aptly puts necessarily entails close scrutiny of the it, ‘a public service mandarin, a technician of utterances of, and interactions between, government.’ He and his CAA colleagues politicians, senior public servants and were as little concerned with articulating indigenous leaders. Unfortunately, grand, long-term objectives as with deciding however, Rowse’s account sometimes gets on the correct name for policy. Quoting one mired in the minutiae of administrative of their statements from 1972, Rowse explains wrangling and personal disputation, which that in their view ‘Government policy should detracts from the acuteness of his analyses be about process, and good process required of policy formation. programs “to develop Aboriginal Obliged to be Difficult is not a independence.”’ conventional biography. It has little to say For Coombs, the ends of policy should about Coombs’ personality (though in be open; the terms of indigenous autonomy Coombs’ case, the public persona probably and modernity could not be dictated by was the personality). It provides scant detail government fiat, but must be negotiated by — scarcely more than a page — on Coombs’ indigenous people themselves. Yet on means early life, upbringing and education, his he was more prescriptive. Two elements were prominence in post-war reconstruction, his required. An indigenous intelligentsia centrality to Australian central banking and should be cultivated, to provide the his involvement in the arts. On these matters, leadership necessary if Aboriginal peoples Rowse promises a later volume. With this were to engage successfully and probing and provocative study, he has set productively with the political, economic and himself a hard act to follow. social apparatuses of settler Australia. Secondly, those leaders should be firmly Russell McGregor rooted in their local communities, indigenous James Cook University political processes proceeding from a local base upward rather than from a national Adi Wimmer (ed.), Australian Nationalism leadership downward. This advocacy of Reconsidered: Maintaining a Monocultural localism in indigenous politics attracted some Tradition in a Multicultural Society, indigenous supporters, such as Lois Tübingen, Stauffenburg Verlag, 1999, O’Donoghue, but also Aboriginal pp 244. antagonists, such as Charles Perkins. It also conflicted with the trend of Commonwealth This collection of scholarly essays is the policy from Whitlam onward, which was to production of the 4th EASA (European create a national indigenous leadership with Association for the Study of Australia) a national indigenous constituency. Conference held at Klagenfurt University, Coombs, according to Rowse, ‘was a Austria in 1997, and was published in the mediator between governments making Konzepte Orientierunger Abhandlungen policy and indigenous Australians Lektüren Australien Studien (KOALAS) choosing the manner and degree of their series. The list of contributors includes cooperation with (or rejection of) esteemed scholars from various prestigious government. Mediation posed exceptional European and Australian universities, which, challenges from the early 1970s onward, together with a superb editorial work,
238 Reviews guarantees the high standard and readability Australia’s nationalist histories and of the output. A special merit of the book is mythologies’, Kay Schaffer discusses the selection and arrangement of the papers, feminism and its media representations which makes it not only highly recommendable through analysing magazine surveys. She for students and researchers who want to pick sharply criticises Pauline Hanson’s media on just one topic, but also for those interested construction, pointing out that Hanson’s in the state of European scholarship in the images are contradictory and mutually nationalism-multiculturalism debate as a exclusive. She argues that feminism has been whole. In spite of the vain hopes of Europe to exploited so that it could be used as a weapon bury nationalism, which hope has long been in political decision-making and marketing. shared by advocates of multiculturalism all Though one may argue that there is no over the world, both the editor and the point in historical periodisations, Livio individual essays of the volume have to Dobrez’s five discursive phases in the conclude that ‘Anglo-nationalism’ in formation and subsequent decline of Australia is obviously not dead. Australian nationalism (discourse analysis Each of the five chapters contains four to predicated on hermeneutics) provide a very six contributions. With part one providing useful matrix especially for comparative theoretical perspectives, part two examining literary studies in postcolonial societies. popular culture, part three collecting personal His essay is entitled ‘“Late” and “post” responses by writers and poets, part four nationalisms: reappropriation and analysing fiction and autobiography, and part problematisation in recent Australian five criticising the rhetoric of nationalism, a cultural discourse’. holistic approach balances structure and John Barnes discusses ‘Questions of content in the volume. identity in contemporary Australia’ and As I have no space here to summarise all highlights the paradox that Aboriginal culture the essays of the volume, let my arbitrariness is becoming a marker of Australian identity, be excused for selecting the theoretical ones whereas Aboriginal people still suffer from (part one) for being illustrative of the content the disastrous effects of dispossession. He of the whole, and two favourites for being reads ‘the recent public voicing of resentment informative, challenging, thought-provoking, and hostility … as expressions of the anxiety or gutsy. of whites fearing displacement’. Graeme Turner’s stance in his ‘Making David Carter’s ‘Modest nationalism, it National reconsidered: the uses of mundane diversity and positive unoriginality’ nationalism in contemporary Australia’ outlines three stages in the development of epitomises the overall disappointment of cultural models for Australia, the latest of the authors of the book, when he argues which turns dichotomies of unoriginality vs that his faith in hybridity vanished, as it is originality, imported vs local, quality vs not a destination, but rather a progress, commerce into a creatively genuine and works little outside literary criticism. unoriginality. Film, television and popular He discusses the revival of Anglo- culture are the focus, as these are the media Australian nationalism and the political through which the current Australian identity interests it serves. Comparing Keating’s is largely constructed. and Howard’s nationalism, he takes sides Like several other authors in the volume, with the former’s ‘postmodern republic’, Xavier Pons’s ‘The exciting fifties’ also and rejects Hansonism without a hint of attempts to deconstruct binary oppositions, ambiguity. Finally he points out that the calling the preceding decade controversial, task for intellectuals is to further critique ambivalent, and transitional. Through the myths underpinning the revival of an analysing differences and similarities mainly exclusionary nationalism. in politics and sociology, he concludes that In an equally theoretical and practical ‘the seeds of developments in the 90s are analysis ‘Dances with Wolves or Strictly to be found in the 50s, because the Ballroom? How feminisms negotiate with contradictions inherent in the social projects
239 Reviews of [the 50s as supplements], have since For instance, Australians admired German blossomed into principal, fully articulated fighting prowess in North Africa, but were contradictory discourses which the nation unable to appreciate the bravery of their find hard to reconcile’. Japanese foes in the Pacific. While Johnston Adam Shoemaker’s ‘“Flying rock art”: conscientiously lists contributing factors, he The Balarinji Phenomenon’ is highly readable attributes this difference primarily to racism: and extremely well written. The author Australian as well as Japanese. ‘The analyses the Qantas-Balarinji Aboriginal murderous consequences of the mutual design on two Boeing 747-400 jets to suggest incomprehension and intolerance of what that Qantas’ dedication to the betterment of has rightly been called a ‘race war’ in the indigenous — non-indigenous relations is Pacific are a salutary lesson in the horrific as surfacing as the paint on the planes. potential of racism.’ Such a conclusion is Kerryn Goldworthy’s ‘“Ordinary unwarranted. Even if the 1940s were, in Australians”: discourses of race and nation Johnston’s terms, a ‘racist era’ (which begs in contemporary Australian political the obvious question: which era wasn’t?), rhetoric’ argues convincingly that the most of Asia was on our side during the usage of ‘multiculturalism’, ‘ordinary second world war. Indians, Chinese, Australians’, ‘black armband historian’, Indonesians, Filipinos, Koreans, Timorese ‘one nation’ in recent political rhetoric is and Pacific Islanders died fighting and empty and arbitrary. With gutsy and sharp resisting Japanese occupation. analysis, much of which is supported by While Australians might have seen their semantics and psychoanalysis, she Asian or Pacific islands allies as inferiors, at concludes that ‘a rhetorical landscape [has least in technology, they and the Americans been mapped] in which ordinary means harboured far more extreme antipathies ignorant, black armbands signify guilt, towards the Japanese. That kind of virulence correct means wrong, do-gooders are bad, is reserved for enemies in war, or more and metaphors of unity are used to produce precisely, enemies in dirty wars, and has little division’. Carl Bridge’s ‘Manning Clark and to do with racism per se. the ratbag tradition’ is a celebratory The conclusion I came to at the end of evaluation of Manning Clark, who strove reading Johnston’s book was that while most as a teacher and historian to highlight that of the assumptions Australians made about truth is relative and provisional. This witty the Japanese were expressed in language anecdotal piece may have been placed to considered offensive today (politeness is one the end of the volume to provide a frame to of war’s casualties), they were nonetheless a collection that makes readers ‘reconsider fair and accurate, so long as we keep in mind Australian nationalism’. the circumstances and environment in which these men were fighting. Gabriella T Espak Though mentioned in passing, Johnston Curtin University makes too little of these contextual factors, and too much of race. In desert warfare, for Mark Johnston, Fighting the Enemy, example, there is minimal ‘collateral damage’ Australian Soldiers and their Adversaries to civilians. What brings out disgust and in World War II, Cambridge, Cambridge anger towards an enemy is mistreatment not University Press, 2000, pp 206, hb $43.95. just of fellow soldiers, but of innocent civilians, which is why such atrocities are seized upon, Fighting the Enemy is best when or invented, by wartime propagandists. documenting the various opinions Australian A highly mechanised and therefore soldiers expressed, mainly in letters home, relatively impersonal desert war is more about themselves and their enemies during likely to be conducted according to the the second world war — Italians, Vichy Geneva Conventions than a war in a French, Germans and Japanese. It is less populated area. The Wehrmacht had a much impressive when interpreting those attitudes. less honourable record in Eastern Europe
240 Reviews than it had in North Africa. war following well-publicised massacres of Most of the Pacific war was fought in civilians. Relations became steadily worse populated regions. In mountainous and from then on. After the American Fifth Air densely rainforested parts of Timor, Borneo, Force had cut the invaders from their food Malaya, Indo-China and Melanesia, tanks, and medical supplies in 1943, the remaining trucks and even jeeps could not penetrate. Japanese became increasingly desperate and Fighting took place on foot at fairly close range fanatical in battle, and more exploiting of the under atrocious conditions both for troops populations they claimed to be liberating. and nearby civilians — Kokoda the best Both earned them Allied hatred and set off known, but by no means unique, example. cycles of increasing violence. If the same Because Johnston stuck rigorously to Japanese had confronted Australians in the interpreting second world war soldiers’ deserts of North Africa, with supplies letters, we have no way of knowing whether arriving by the truckload, they would have RAAF or RAN personnel harboured similar gone down in local folklore as worthy attitudes towards their adversaries in action, enemies: noble Samurai warriors. Johnny during the liberation of New Britain in 1944, Nip, even. for example. He similarly made no references Interpreting texts in isolation can lead to to other conflicts involving Australians and absurd conclusions. The US infantrymen Asians: Korea and Vietnam, or against Turks who liberated Auschwitz and other death during the first world war. If racism explains camps described Germans as ‘animals’, and the virulence of Australian attitudes towards worse. Was this racist? Of course not, unless the Japanese during the Pacific war, anti- we read it completely out of context. Similarly, Asian racism would surely have been more Australian soldiers’ metaphors of outrage prominent during world war one, when and disgust at Japanese troops’ behaviour bigotry was even more outspoken than a during the second world war: feelings they generation later. That didn’t happen. shared with millions of non-whites from Australians on the whole admired their Asian Bougainville to Manchuria. Turkish foes at Gallipoli. Turks born over a century ago were Leo Scheps radically different from the Anglo-Celts who University of New England faced them at Anzac Cove. Different in culture, physical appearance, religion, diet, Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss (eds), political background, language and military The Oxford Literary History of Australia, traditions. The ‘bloody and cruel Turk’ had Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1998, been part of British and European folklore 488pp, hb $54.95. since the fifteenth century, but Australians knew him as ‘Johnny Turk’, which was The editors of this Literary History make it human, almost affectionate. Why? Because clear that this volume is complementary to the fighting at Gallipoli was soldier to soldier, The Oxford Companion to Australian with few if any civilians killed in cross-fire, Literature. Accordingly, this is not a ‘a or under ‘military protection’. Had comprehensive coverage of individual Australians witnessed Turks ethnically writers and their works’, but rather a broad laundering defenceless Armenians, Kurds or overview which traces ‘a network of social Greeks from their collapsing empire, they and political conditions, local and would have sent home less matey international’. While any work of this type descriptions of their foes. must find a way of dividing a nation’s literary It was not just the leeches, snakes, malaria history into meaningful sections, the and absence of antibiotics to treat festering divisions employed in this work seem war wounds which made Asian and Pacific somewhat at odds with the political content jungles a living hell for those fighting in of many of its essays by contributing authors. them. Allied regard for Japanese troops in The editors locate various ‘turning points, New Guinea had been destroyed early in the or crises’ in Australia’s history, and while
241 Reviews there is a certain logic in viewing the liked to have seen a more complete treatment beginnings of the world wars and the Vietnam of fiction since 1965, as there has been such war as critical points in the twentieth century, a proliferation in this area in comparison with such a choice can be seen to reinforce myths other genres, and I found myself questioning of nationhood that a volume such as this strongly some of the assessments of writers might be seeking to modify, if not explode. and works given by Susan Lever. These are, There are further moments of political of course, some of the implicit difficulties of ambivalence, indicated by phrases such as evaluating contemporary writing; the long- ‘the settlement, or invasion, of this country’. term influence can only be surmised. Why not simply ‘the invasion and settlement Some of the most useful items are found of this country’? at the back of the volume. The ‘Guide to Despite the potential shortcomings of reference material’ has numerous these divisions, the contributing authors subheadings, with listings under categories negotiate them sufficiently well to be able to relating to genre and region. Many of these provide a broad coverage of significant literary entries are annotated. A thirty-seven page moments and movements. Though there is ‘chronology’ records events well beyond the little that is new here in terms of analysis and purely literary. Beginning in 1605 with the interpretation, this is to be expected in a explorer de Quiros’ assumption that he had volume such as this, where representing the discovered the Great South Land, the state of the country’s literary scholarship is ‘chronology’ provides a broad political and the primary task. The History begins with historical context for this Literary History, Adam Shoemaker’s discussion of early covering not only Australia but the world indigenous writing in English. He notes the on occasion. Significant Australian problems associated with beginning a volume publications are also recorded. While one such as this with indigenous work, because might question the priority given to this represents ‘Black Australian culture as individual entries, especially those being prior and otherworldly (rather than representing the last two decades, overall everpresent and relevant)’. Fortunately that the ‘chronology’ is a fascinating read, is not the only place where indigenous writing covering events ranging from the retirement is featured; Shoemaker’s other contribution of Don Bradman to a strong representation examines contemporary indigenous writing. of indigenous and multicultural issues. The In both essays he resists containing these volume is worth buying for this alone. There writings within western time systems by is also an extensive index. I was rarely linking them with timeless but living oral disappointed when seeking entries, though traditions, which ‘brought Australia into being strangely the ‘Chronology’ is not cross- for countless generations’. referenced in the same way as the essays, Other contributors trace current debates and some authors and titles only appear in regarding the significance of certain authors the former. and genres. Negotiating traditional myths Overall, this Literary History provides of national character is still a necessity in an excellent overview of the significant the eyes of many contributors. Susan K titles, authors and movements in Australian Martin’s ‘National Dress or National literary life. It successfully traces broad Trousers’ succinctly outlines the part given trends while providing enough specific to certain literatures of the 1890s in the information to be useful as a starting point construction of such myths and also for further research. examines the reassessments of other literatures from the period which have Mandy Treagus occurred through the 1980s and ’90s. There University of Adelaide are chapters on the earlier twentieth century, such as Jennifer Strauss’s ‘Battlers all’ and Adrian Caesar’s ‘National myths of manhood: Anzacs and others’. I would have
242 Reviews
The book is a useful guide to key figures in Thomas R Dunlap, Nature and the English the changing relationship of Anglo settlers Diaspora, Cambridge, Cambridge University with the land and it manages to cover a great Press, 1999, pp 350, pb $38.32. sweep of material without being too reductive. Australian readers will find lots Nature and the English Diaspora is about of useful facts and figures about Australian ‘the ways in which the Anglo settlers of natural and environmental history as it Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the relates to white settlement. American readers United States have in the past two centuries might like more on John Muir but there is sought to understand their lands and find information on many lesser known figures, their place in them’. To understand the role including John Wesley Powell. of predominantly Anglo settler cultures in But there is a ghost in this book. It is the former British colonies in the last two ghost of the indigenous inhabitants of the centuries, it helps, Dunlap argues, to get lands discussed. ‘Aboriginal peoples’ have over the US-British divide and to focus on three index entries, all to passing mentions. common ideas relating to ‘[this] culture’s Other references aren’t indexed — when, for organised nature knowledge — science’. example, settlers resort to Aboriginal names This is an exciting departure and an exciting for ‘something outside their experience’. The book — inviting Canada, Australia, New book repeats the gesture of the ‘conquerors’ Zealand and the United States onto the same (its own term) in its failure to listen to those playing field as settler cultures relating to voices — its failure to recognise that there invaded lands. Investigating this common were already sets of human relationships history, Dunlap argues, can help us to see with the land in place when the invaders the extent to which ‘decisions on arrived. True, this is a book about settler development’ are matters ‘not of fact but of cultures and it brillliantly chronicles the value and about what power people had or frames within which they saw and related should have over the world around them’. to the land. But its wistful last sentence The strength of the book is in what it shows about ‘listen[ing] to the land and exploring us of the marriage of popular (folk) and ‘what it means to be or become native to scientific ideas in the formation of those these lands’ betrays a conceptual values. Dunlap traces the evolution of a set hollowness in writing the Aboriginal, once of ideas about the land from ‘natural science’ again, out of the story. to ‘ecology’, showing how common ideas met sometimes similar, sometimes different Ruth Blair fates in different lands and how ecology University of Queensland grew out of the inadequacy of the approach of natural science with its idea of a set of A W Martin, Robert Menzies: A Life, common grids. Volume 2: 1944-1978, Melbourne, One of the most valuable aspects of the Melbourne University Press, 1999, pp xx + study is its presentation of institutional 596, hb $54.95. history. Dunlap shows how the institutions developed to further the methods of natural This second half of Alan Martin’s life of science ‘changed the public’s relation to the Menzies is a well-written, comprehensive and culture’s knowledge, and ... affected the reliable narrative of his public life. In it, ability of the smaller settler societies to Menzies is in his prime, dominant in Australia contribute to our understanding of nature’. and in the Commonwealth; the volume covers The domination of American science from the ascendancy of a public life only emergent the later nineteenth century on — and in the first volume. But it is also strangely ultimately the American domination of the disappointing, for Martin has consciously environment movement — come not from shied away from telling us much about some higher wisdom but from a larger Menzies’ character and inner life. It is very population and greater financial resources. much a conventional public biography and
243 Reviews this may contain a lesson in itself. character and motivation. The cover shows an arresting One aspect of this limitation is photograph of Menzies at his desk in late signalled in the introduction, where Martin 1951, taken by Max Dupain. This was a time writes that ‘the kind of speculative and of crises: inflation was rampant, the horror theoretical reasoning’ in Brett’s study of budget had been badly received, the attempt Menzies was ‘beyond the range of my to ban communism had been defeated at the taste and expertise’. Instead, he declares referendum, the party was increasingly his ambition to ‘seek to find “what actually restive, and the opinion polls were very bad. happened”’. The success of the biography How much of this does Dupain’s portrait need not be measured against Brett’s very reflect? Beneath a glare of light, Menzies different enterprise, and the alternatives looks luminously self-confident, but with are not as stark as psychoanalytic wary, slightly anxious eyes and a frozen, speculation about Menzies’ inner drives, whimsical smile. Despite the crises, and or a rather empiricist narrative of events. despite the eyes, he has a vital, almost There are enough examples in biography, mischievous look, but is this a mask as well as arguments in historiography, to presented for the public? suggest a middle ground which would Martin is often defensive, decrying the include Menzies’ inner meanings and rough handling of Menzies by his critics, but convictions as partly constituting ‘what he does not take us often enough behind actually happened’. this public mask to ignite our sympathy. A further explanation may lie with the Menzies believed in the middle-class virtues available sources. Menzies kept few diaries of restraint; self-exposure was unseemly and and none that matched the intimate account personal privacy sacrosanct, and this makes Martin drew on in the first volume, when he it more difficult to catch a view of his inner wrote a wonderful chapter on Menzies’ first life. We learn of illnesses, and cryptically of trip ‘home’ in 1935, called ‘the Discovery of depressions, but get only the most oblique England’. It portrayed the ambitious young references to family life. Even if we respected lawyer/politician, tremulously approaching Menzies’ personal privacy, we could expect the metropolis, hoping for approval, a major biography to sketch a character anxious that he would not earn it. It was a complete with his religious and political touching sketch of antipodean ambition, beliefs. Martin himself showed how this generating sympathy (we could share could be done in his portrait of Henry Parkes Menzies’ relief that he was well received) — admittedly a more flamboyant character. and insight (we could discern the threads But with Menzies we see little of the inner of deference, emotion and ideology that world of religious belief or political ideology, attached him to England). As Martin noted, let alone emotional intimacy; it is difficult to the diary allowed a view of ‘the Menzies see Menzies’ life through his own eyes. lurking behind the public mask, a mask A large part of Menzies’ political created by, among other things, his distaste success lay in his ability to embody the for the public display of emotion and his values, sentiments and limitations of his deep concern for the sanctity of privacy in middle-class constituency, and to project personal and family life’. In this second these into public space with great aplomb volume, there are few equivalent points and assurance. This makes it all the more when the mask slips. Perhaps the closest important to be able to see Menzies’ theme is Menzies’ gathering regret at the character in action, unless one were to way the Commonwealth was going, as argue that the public mask is really all there former colonies became more assertive, and was. But this is not Martin’s argument. the old gentlemen’s agreements frayed. It Instead, his subject seems to have evaded is a theme Martin handles with sensitivity, the more rounded treatment Parkes without obscuring how anachronistic received. The result is a comprehensive Menzies was becoming. public life, but without great depth of As much as a matter of sources, it is one
244 Reviews about the questions we choose to ask. In praise is so obviously deserved. defensive mode, Martin justifies leaving out Most biographers choose to focus on ‘the position of women, and that of individuals with whom they feel a particular Aborigines’ on the grounds that these were sympathy or respect. This has certainly been later concerns; that gender and race were the case with recent Australian literary not ‘on the political agenda’. But this biography: consider Cliff Hanna’s study of amounts to saying that they are not questions John Shaw Neilson, Paul Adams’ study of worth asking in a biography of Menzies, as Frank Hardy, Carole Ferrier’s of Jean Devanny though domesticity was not crucial to or Veronica Brady’s of Judith Wright. imagining citizenship in the post-war years, De Groen spent over ten years of her and race was not important to imagining the life researching a figure who emerges as, at nation. It is relatively futile and anachronistic best, a psychologically complex figure with to expect Menzies to be a feminist or an a capacity for sporadically great artistic advocate of reconciliation, and then achievement, and, at worst, in the words of condemn him when he is not, but it is Randolph Stow, ‘a monster’. Her impressive revealing to examine (and judge) his views research effort was made necessary by on dimensions of gender and race that were Herbert’s compulsive self-mythologising. clearly ‘on the agenda’, if in different guise He referred to himself as, above all, a from today. storyteller, and his fiction usually re-worked Martin’s thoroughly researched volumes aspects of his personal experience. But his will obviously weather well as monuments journal entries, letters and interview to Menzies’ public life. But the kind of responses similarly reveal a mixture of fact biography that will measure Menzies’ and fanciful fiction. He lacked a strong character and his towering place in our sense of self and was therefore both highly postwar history may not be the sort of self-absorbed and lacking any real biography Menzies himself would have liked. perspective on his own actions. De Groen’s even-handed dedication to her task John Murphy deserves special commendation in this RMIT University context. She has enriched our understanding of an important member of Frances De Groen, Xavier Herbert, the Australian literary canon without ever University of Queensland Press, 1998, pp lapsing into facile endorsements of the man 328 + bibliography and index, pb $21.95. or his society. Herbert was born Alfred Jackson on 15 Frances De Groen’s biography of the May 1901, less than four months after the enigmatic novelist Xavier Herbert created a formation of Australia as a nation-state. He minor controversy in Australian public was the illegitimate son of a working class debate and a less minor controversy within mother with aristocratic pretensions and a literary circles. Speaking at her launch at the railway worker father. The nature and 1999 Association for the Study of Australian circumstances of his birth had several Literature conference in Sydney, De Groen important effects. Like Bob Hawke, Herbert defended her portrayal of Herbert developed a megalomaniacal identification challenging other researchers to come up of himself with the ‘spirit’ of his land and with material that might position her subject its people. Herbert equated his own in a more positive light. The front cover of illegitimacy with the ‘illegitimacy’ of a this UQP publication contains a blurb taken colonialist nation and the ‘illegitimate’ from Laurie Clancy’s assessment in status of people born of mixed racial blood. Australian Book Review: ‘Beautifully Like Hawke also his politics were basically balanced, dispassionate and exhaustively pragmatic, expedient, though linked across researched ... a revelation ... an enthralling time and ideological contradictions by this read’. These words kept coming back to me nationalist ethos. Hawke had a strong as I read this biography because Clancy’s mother who believed in her son’s greatness,
245 Reviews but Herbert believed his own mother to be in this text and I would have liked to see De domineering and generalised this experience Groen given space to further extrapolate some as the basis for his belief that women were of the cultural and historical questions raised basically flawed and preoccupied with by Herbert’s life. ‘castrating’ men. In his later years Herbert did meet Hawke and liked him, at one stage Nathan Hollier advocating Hawke as leader of a new Victoria University ‘people’s’ political party, superseding Labor. Herbert would also have approved of Veronica Kelly, The Theatre of Louis our former Prime Minister’s oft-flaunted, Nowra, Sydney, Currency Press, 1998, pp virile masculine heterosexuality, seeing this xiv + 224, pb $27.45. as truly Australian. Herbert was deeply preoccupied with his own masculinity and Louis Nowra is Australia’s most interesting concerned that his identity as the archetypal and innovative dramatist. When Inner (male) Australian was compromised by the Voices was staged at the Nimrod in 1977, no- artistic vocation that enabled him to express one had encountered Australian writing quite that identity to the world. A practising like it. Unlike the Nimrod’s house style of chemist, he prescribed himself male steroids aggressive, jokey and demotic nationalism, over many years to bolster himself Inner Voices was serious, weirdly exotic and physically and perhaps to suppress stylistically as startling as its content was homosexual urges. Like novelist challenging. It was obviously and contemporaries such as George Johnston unashamedly high art. What it had to do in Clean Straw for Nothing (1969) and Frank with Australia was not at all obvious. Hardy in But the Dead are Many (1975), Subsequent works in a prolific career still Herbert expressed male fears of the only in its middle stage include intense and ‘inconstancy’ of women, fears that were the ambitious representations of Australia’s unrecognised flip-side of patriarchal post-colonial condition in Inside the Island domination. (1980) and The Golden Age (1985); the In his attitudes to race and foreigners, secrets and struggles attached to to women and homosexuality, Herbert Aboriginality in Radiance (1993) and Crow reflected dominant strains of Australian (1994); pacy and seering exposes of political culture. But he was also, as his proclivity and corporate corruption in The Temple for methyltestosterone suggests, a highly (1993) and The Incorruptible (1995); idiosyncratic person. He adhered to a strict autobiographical pieces such as Summer of and extreme fitness regimen, recorded his the Aliens (1992) and Cosi (1992) that are thoughts and feelings compulsively and at sometimes comically surreal. The scope of length, was incorrigibly truculent in personal the concerns and subjects in Nowra’s plays and professional relations but admired matches the range of tones, from the tragic Freud and speculated in his journals and to the rumbustious, and the mix of technical fiction on the basis of relationships between elements which includes abstruse allegory, men and women. His best fictional works vaudeville, Beckettian absurdity and filmic contained vivid recreations of outback epic. Esteem for at least two of the plays, landscape and life. Perhaps most Inner Voices and The Golden Age, has importantly, though not blameless in his elevated them to the emerging canon of own treatment of Aborigines, he was recent Australian theatre. nevertheless genuinely concerned with the Veronica Kelly is the foremost conditions of their existence and an early commentator on Nowra. In 1987, ten years white critic of Australian governments’ after the first performance of Inner Voices, treatment of them. During the Whitlam she edited a collection of scholarship on period especially, Herbert was an energetic Nowra for Rodopi’s ‘Australian voice for social justice. Playwrights’ series. It was published in There are some minor typographical errors Amsterdam. In that volume, Nowra
246 Reviews describes ‘how power is used ... in our illuminating explanation of Nowra’s private lives or in the political arena’ as one construction and use of hybridity. of his pre-eminent concerns and the theme The final chapter looks at how embedded is central to Kelly’s treatment of his work in performances in Nowra’s theatre reveal past, The Theatre of Louis Nowra. future or alternative histories. Performances The first of four chapters in the book take various forms, playlets, songs, mimicry, connects Nowra’s work with his life, with acting ‘up’ and ‘down’, cross-class and Australian theatre and with Australian cross-gender dressing. Whatever form they culture more generally. The useful take, the performances always reveal the connections Kelly makes between Nowra’s agency, or lack of it, of the performers. plays, Cosi and Sunrise, and his earlier Embedded performance has not seemed translation and direction of The Marriage of as obvious in the plays written since 1985, Figaro for Lighthouse is typical of Kelly’s but Kelly demonstrates its persistence in thoroughness throughout. The chapter is a Nowra’s work such as Capricornia (1988), very interesting companion to Nowra’s Radiance (1993) and Crow (1994). Though recently published and fascinating memoir, the surface naturalism of radiance seems to The Twelth of Never. have led commentators to ignore embedded Kelly begins the second chapter by performance in it, Kelly explains how the three identifying ‘a power struggle manifested Aboriginal sisters in the play perform, among through the process of teaching’ as ‘being at other things, ‘the dissociated fragments of the heart of Nowra’s theatre’. Whether this is [their] dead mother’s experience’ and, in so true or not, ‘teaching’ proves a malleable doing, the ... ‘“secret history” of Australian heading which well encapsulates the changing race relations’. patterns of compulsion and seduction in many The final treatment of the book shows of the scripts. Having described both how as ‘the Cosi cast make over the Mozart symbiosis and role reversal between ‘tutor’ to express their specific needs and visions, and ‘pupil’ in several plays, in the final part of aristocratic European art is carnivalised in the chapter Kelly comes to the fullest the post-colonial madhouse’. In a similar exploration of her theme, that the interaction way, The Theatre of Louis Nowra chiefly between many of Nowra’s characters may be treats the rich variety of its subject as a series seen as permutations of colonisation. of responses to and representations of power In this context she places motherhood, a relations for whose explication post-colonial metaphor she depicts as deriving its force theory provides the most appropriate tool. from a capacity to encode ‘origin, belonging While some will find its application too and authenticity’. ‘The mother’s authority insistent and pervasive, its use by Kelly has is a principal engine of dramatic action with produced a series of insights which is well the power to impose crippling historical organised, pertinent, sometimes startling and stasis or impel regeneration’. always informative. From tutor/pupil and parent/child Among the strengths of this book are relationships, it is only a short jump to the many photographs of performances of Frankenstein and his ‘monster’. ‘Nowra’s the plays. Scholars and others will find very historical agents — his Frankensteins — useful the list of works by Nowra in all media initiate processes which usually produce and the select bibliography with which the grotesquely defective results, at least by their book concludes. creator’s standards: creations infuriatingly mutinous and comically unreachable’. Donald Pulford, Chapter Three, ‘The Fall of Empire and its Latrobe University Survivors’, details the roles and effects of fakes, mongrels, hybrids, grotesques, disguises and masks. Kelly uses concepts of crisis and renewal in Bakhtin’s view of Ovidian metamorphosis to produce an
247 n o t e s Notes to pp 216–218
The Prosthetic Imagination: Frank Hurley and the Ross Smith Flight Robert Dixon
Acknowledgements: For information and advice during the preparation of this article I am grateful to Maurice French, Philip Kitley, Christopher Lee and Richard Nile; to members of the University of Queensland postcolonial discussion group; and to Graeme Powell and the staff of the manuscripts section, NLA.
1 Hudson Fysh, Qantas Rising: The Autobiography of the Flying Fysh, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1965. 2 Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception, Verso, 1988, p 1. 3 ibid., p 7. 4 Sigmund Freud, Civilisation and its Discontents [1929], London, Hogarth Press, 1972, pp 27-9. 5 Virilio, op. cit., p 17. 6 Bernd Huppauf, ‘Modernism and the photographic representation of war and destruction’ in Leslie Devereaux and Roger Hillman (eds), Fields of Vision: Essays in Film Studies, Visual Anthropology, and Photography, Berkeley, Los Angeles, London, University of California Press, 1995, p 106. 7 Huppauf, op. cit., pp 107-8. 8 F M Cutlack, ‘The Australian Flying Corps in the western and eastern theatres of war 1914- 1918’, Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-1918 [Canberra: Australian War Memorial, 1923], vol 8, St Lucia, University of Queensland Press in association with the Australian War Memorial, 1984. 9 ibid., p xxxii. 10 ibid., pp 205-7. 11 Virilio, op. cit., p 49. 12 Huppauf, op. cit., p 109. 13 Cutlack, op. cit., p xxxix. 14 Huppauf, op. cit., p 96. 15 Daniel O’Keefe (ed.), Hurley at War: The Photography and Diaries of Frank Hurley in Two World Wars, Sydney, Fairfax, 1986, p 5. 16 Huppauf, op. cit., p 102. 17 O’Keefe, op. cit., p 74. 18 Lennard Bickell, In Search of Frank Hurley, Melbourne, Macmillan, 1980, p 70. 19 O’Keefe, op. cit., p 104. 20 Bickell, op. cit., p 71. 21 O’Keefe, op. cit., p 88. 22 Huppauf, op. cit., p 109. 23 Virilio, op. cit., p 18. 24 ibid., p 19. 25 Stanley Brogden, The History of Australian Aviation, Melbourne, Hawthorn Press, 1960, pp 59-66. 26 Fysh, op. cit., p 69. 27 Brogden, op. cit., pp 66-7. 28 David P Millar, From Snowdrift to Shellfire: Capt. Hames Franics (Frank) Hurley 1885-1962, Sydney, David Ell Press, 1984, p 71. 29 Sir Ross Smith, The Sir Ross Smith Flight from England to Australia [Sydney, 15 June 1920], Mitchell Library Ms 629.1039/13A1. 30 Sir Ross Smith, 14,000 Miles Through the Air, London, Macmillan, 1922. 31 ibid., p v. 32 NLA Item 14. 33 press clippings, NLA Item 31. 34 Smith, 1922, op. cit., p 2. 35 ibid., p 4. 36 ibid., pp 17-18. 37 ibid., pp 18-20. 38 Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1996, p 31.
250 Notes to pp 14–26
39 Joanna Bourke, ‘The battle of the limbs: amputation, artificial limbs and the great war in Australia’, Australian Historical Studies, no 110, April 1998, p 50. 40 Bourke, 1996, op. cit., p 29. 41 Tim Armstrong, Modernism, Technology and The Body: A Cultural Study, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998, p 38. 42 Armstrong, op. cit., p 3; see also Wolfgang Schivelbusch, The Railway Journey: The Industrialisation of Time and Space in the Nineteenth Century, Hamburg, Berg, 1977, chapter 4. 43 Armstrong, op. cit., p 3. 44 Smith, 1920, op. cit., pp 22-6. 45 Capt. Frank Hurley, Pearls and Savages: Adventures In the Air, On Land and Sea — In New Guinea, New York and London, G P Putnam’s Sons, 1924. 46 Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities. London, Routledge, 1994, p 167. 47 ibid., p 168. 48 ibid., p 194. 49 Capt. Frank Hurley, ‘Photographer on the wing’, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 February 1920. 50 15 February 1920. 51 Robert Dixon, ‘Literature and melodrama 1851-1914’, in The New Oxford History of Australian Literature, Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss (eds), Melbourne, OUP, 1998, chapter 4, pp 66- 88. 52 Millar, op. cit., p 71. 53 Fysh, op. cit., pp 106-7. 54 ibid., p 108. 55 Brogden, op. cit., pp 61-4. 56 Capt. Frank Hurley, ‘Adventure films and the psychology of the audience’, National Library of Australia, Frank Hurley Ms 883 Item 14 (n.date; n.pag.). 57 Charles R Long, British Worthies and Other Men of Might: Myths and World Stories For Grade IV. Victoria — Children Aged 9 to 10, Melbourne, Robertson and Mullens, 1934. 58 ibid., p 162. 59 ibid., pp 173-5.
Not Just Another Multicultural Story Jon Stratton
I would like to thank Barrie Hunt, of the UKSA, and Steve Saunders, co-founder and co-organiser of the Sydney BritFest, and also Simon Mumby of Dirty Dick’s theatre restaurant, for the information, and written material, that they gave me during my research for this article. I would also like to thank Philip Moore, Tom Stannage and Felicity Newman for their comments on an earlier version of this article. 1 John Docker, ‘Postnationalism’, Arena Magazine, Feb-March, 1994, p 41. 2 On the ideology of assimilation see Zygmunt Bauman Modernity and Ambivalence Cambridge, Polity Press 1991. For the traditional, sociological account of assimilation see Milton Gordon, Assimilation in American Life, New York, Oxford University Press 1964. 3 In Reginald Appleyard with Alison Ray and Alan Segal, The Ten Pound Immigrants, London, Boxtree, 1988, Appleyard quotes Leslie Hayden, the Opposition immigration spokesman at the 1954 Citizenship Convention. Hayden ‘declared that British migrants were the ‘best migrants’, with no assimilation problems. [This was] [b]ecause a Briton merely ‘came to this part of the Commonwealth from another part’ (p 97). 4 See, for example, Sneja Gunew, Framing Marginality: Multicultural Literary Studies, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1994; Adam Jamrozick, Cathy Boland and Robert Urquhart, Social Change and Cultural Transformation in Australia, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 5 See Jon Stratton, Race Daze, Sydney, Pluto Australia, 1998, passim. 6 The pamphlet provides this definition: ‘English Speaking Born are those persons born overseas in countries where English is the main language spoken’. 7 Stratton, op. cit., pp 43-44. 8 A useful book on the cultural construction of a British identity is Mike Storry and Peter Childs (eds), British Cultural Identities, London, Routledge, 1997. The Introduction is particularly relevant
251 Notes to pp 216–218
to the argument that I am developing here. 9 Geoffrey Partington, The Australian Nation: Its British and Irish Roots, Melbourne, Australian Scholarly Publishing, 1994, p ix. 10 ibid. 11 The Australian film The Craic (1999), a vehicle for the Irish-Australian comedian Jimeoin, could be thought of in terms of the production of a (Northern) Irish ethnicity. The film chronicles the adventures of two Northern Irishmen who are hunted by the Immigration Department for working while having tourist visas. One of them wants to stay in Australia, the other wants to go back to Ireland. The film is set in 1988. 12 ‘BritFest 2000’ at (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1850/brit2000.html). 13 Quoted here from Peter Cochrane, ‘Anglo-Saxonness: ancestors and identity’, Communal/Plural, no 4, 1994, p 9. 14 Douglas Cole, ‘The crimson thread of kinship’: ethnic ideas in Australia, 1870-1914’, Historical Studies, vol 14, no 56, p 521. 15 In ‘Britishness in Australia’, Voices, 1996, vol 1, no 3, Peter Cochrane writes that ‘British sentiment enjoyed a formidable ascendancy in Australia for nearly two centuries’ (p 63). 16 Barry York, Studies in Australian Ethnic History: Racial characteristics of the Australian people: Commonwealth censuses 1911-1966, Canberra: Centre for Immigration and Multicultural Studies, Research School of Social Sciences 1996, p 7. 17 Christopher Hill, ‘The Norman Yoke’ in Puritanism and Revolution: Studies in Interpretation of the English Revolution of the 17th Century, London, Secker & Warburg, 1958, p 57. 18 Hill, ‘The Norman Yoke’, p 115. 19 J R Hall, ‘Mid-nineteenth-century American Anglo-Saxonism: the question of language’ in Allen J Frantzen and John D Niles Anglo-Saxonism and the Construction of Social Identity Gainsville, University Press of Florida, 1997, p 134. The best discussion of Anglo-Saxonism in the United States is Reginald Horsman, Race and Manifest Destiny: The Origins of American Racial Anglo- Saxonism Cambridge Mass., Harvard University Press, 1981. 20 Cochrane, op. cit., p 8. 21 ibid., p 10. 22 Perhaps the last mainstream use of the term was in William Bostock’s book Alternatives of Ethnicity: Immigrants and Aborigines in Anglo-Saxon Australia, Hobart, Cat and Fiddle Press, 1977. 23 Geoffrey Partington, ‘The English in Australia’, The Adelaide Review, April 1999, p 16. 24 Partington, ‘The English in Australia’, p 16. 25 (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1850/index.html). 26 Cole, op. cit., p 513. 27 (http://www.adelaide.net.au/~national/na02.html). 28 ibid. 29 Quoted in Michael Roe, Australia, Britain, and Migration 1915-1940: A Study of Desperate Hopes, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995, p 200. 30 John Douglas Pringle, Australian Accent, London, Chatto and Windus, 1959, p 11. 31 In The Ten Pound Immigrants, Appleyard wirtes that, ‘the Appleyard survey [reported in Reginald Appleyard British Emigration to Australia London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson 1964] confirmed that many British assisted migrants truly believed that they were going to a Britain of the South Seas, a land of perpetual sunshine where they would earn much higher wages than they could ever earn in Britain, where class would not be an impediment to achievement for either them or their children, where there would be no language problem and where the people were British in allegiance and friendly towards British migrants’ (p 80). 32 For an account of the Assisted Passage Scheme see Appleyard, The Ten Pound Immigrants. Appleyard writes that: ‘In 1981, following a major review of the Assisted Passage Scheme, the Liberal government decided that under the prevailing economic circumstances assisted passages were no longer needed to attract to Australia the ‘desired size and type of intake’ (p 43). In 1954 assisted passage schemes were also introduced for suitable migrants from the United States, Switzerland, Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland. 33 This figure comes from Appleyard The Ten Pound Immigrants, p 160. While Appleyard has the better discussion, further information on the scheme, and some oral history of migrants’ experiences of using it, can be found in Betka Zamoyska The Ten Pound Fare: Experiences of British People
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who emigrated to Australia in the 1950s, London, Viking, 1988. 34 Appleyard The Ten Pound Immigrants, p 160. 35 Zamoyska The Ten Pound Fare, p 64. 36 Zamoyska The Ten Pound Fare, p 66. 37 Quoted in Appleyard The Ten Pound Immigrants, p 28. 38 Partington The Australian Nation, p x. 39 Geoffrey Dutton, ‘British Subject’, Nation, 6 April, 1963, p 16. 40 Quoted in Malcolm Turnbull, The Reluctant Republic, Port Melbourne, William Heinemann, 1993, p 61. 41 Ghassan Hage, ‘Anglo-Celts today: cosmo-multiculturalism and the phase of the fading phallus’ in Communal/Plural 4, 1994, pp 54-55. 42 ibid., p 55. 43 Zamoyska, op. cit., p 15. 44 ibid. 45 For a discussion of the origins of ‘pommy’ see W S Ransom, Australian English: An Historical Study of the Vocabulary 1788-1898, Canberra, Australian National University Press, 1966, pp 62- 63. Ransom tells us that the word ‘is first recorded in Australian English during first world war, when it gives every appearance of being generally established’. While its origin is obscure, as Ransom goes on to write: ‘It is generally derogatory in its connotations’. By the 1950s it was being applied particularly to English migrants but more generally to all migrants from Britain except the Northern Irish. 46 Allan Aldous, The New Australians, London, The Bodley Head, 1956, p 70. On attitudes to English migrants in children’s literature see Sharyn Pearce, ‘When Australia calls: the English immigrants in Australian children’s literature’ in Papers: Explorations into Children’s Literature, vol 9, no 2, 1999, pp 3-12. 47 Some anti-English jokes can be found in Phillip Adams and Patrice Newell, The Penguin Book of Australian Jokes, Ringwood, Vic., Penguin, 1994 and Phillip Adams and Patrice Newell, The Penguin Book of More Australian Jokes, Ringwood, Vic., Penguin, 1996. 48 Pringle, op. cit., p 22. 49 According to the 1991 census, 81 per cent of the United Kingdom born population in Australia came from England, 14 per cent from Scotland, and 2.5 per cent from Wales. The States with the highest percentage of English born are Western Australia and South Australia, both with 83 per cent. Perth has the highest concentration of UK born in its population at 15.2 per cent of the total population followed by Adelaide with 11.6 per cent. British migrants tend to stick together rather than blend into the general population, possibly for the reasons that I have been outlining. Thus, there are twenty suburbs around Australia, all except three, which are in Victoria, in Western Australia and South Australia, which have populations of British born at, or exceeding ten per cent of the total population of the suburb. Four suburbs, Rockingham and Armadale in WA and Elizabeth and Munno Parra in SA, have populations of British born exceeding twenty per cent of the total population. These figures come from Community Profiles 1991 Census: United Kingdom Born: Bureau of Immigration and Population Research, Canberra: Australian Govt. Pub. Service, 1994. 50 Appleyard, op. cit., p 151. 51 ibid., p 39. 52 These figures come from Community Profiles, 1991 Census, United Kingdom Born. 53 Appleyard The Ten Pound Immigrants, p 39. Appleyard goes on to note that ‘Britons also received better assisted-passage conditions, were provided with hostel accommodation during initial resettlement, could move in and out of Australia on visits with no difficulty, received preferential treatment when seeking to enter the Australian military forces, and could vote in elections without becoming Australian citizens’. 54 ‘British Australians now (officially) second-class citizens’ at (http;//www.geocities.com/Athens/ Acropolis/1850/citizens.html). 55 ibid. 56 ibid. 57 ibid. 58 Quoted from Partington The Australian Nation, p xv. 59 Richard White in Inventing Australia Sydney, Allen & Unwin 1981, writes that: ‘The question of Australian identity has usually been seen as a tug-of-war between Australianness and Britishness,
253 Notes to pp 216–218
between the impulse to be distinctively Australian and the lingering sense of a British heritage. However this attitude to the development of an Australian identity only became common towards the end of the nineteenth century, when self-conscious nationalists began to exaggerate what was distinctive about Australia’ (p 47). 60 Partington, ‘The English in Australia’, op. cit. 61 ‘Threats to Brits’, (http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/1850/threats.html ). 62 Tara Brabazon, Tracking the Jack: A Retracing of the Antipodes, Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 2000, chap 1. I am grateful to Tara for allowing me to read a copy of this book while it was in press. This article would have been much enriched had I had the pleasure of reading Tracking the Jack before writing it. 63 In The Lads in Action: Social Process in an Urban Youth Subculture, Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing 1994, David Moore discusses how, in the 1990s, the English working class youth cultural style of ‘skinheads’ came to be utilised in Perth as a marker of English ethnicity: ‘Most Perth skinheads are English-born, having arrived in Perth in their early or pre-teenage years. Theirs is a youthful adaptation to the question of ethnic identity and there are other ways of expressing ethnicity which are more suitable to older British and Irish migrants such as membership of ethnic clubs (eg, the Irish Club) or sporting organizations (particularly those focused on football [soccer])’ (p 12). 64 Community Profiles, 1991 Census: United Kingdom Born, p 10. 65 Gunew, Framing Marginality, p ? 66 As Wray Vamplew in ‘“Wogball”: ethnicity and violence in Australian soccer’ in Richard Guilianotti and John Williams (eds), Game Without Frontiers: Football, Identity, Modernity Aldershot, Ashgate Publishing 1994, notes, ‘Although not an exclusive explanation, one reason is that both Australian rules and rugby union (from which rugby league emerged in 1908) established themselves before soccer’ (p 219, note 5). 67 Tara Brabazon, ‘What’s the story morning glory? Perth Glory and the imagining of Englishness’, Sporting Traditions, vol 14, no 2, 1998, p 53. An amplified version of this article forms Chapter 6 of Brabazon’s Tracking the Jack. 68 Wray Vamplew, op. cit., p 209. 69 Brabazon, 1998, op. cit., p 55. 70 Toby Miller, ‘The unmarking of soccer: making a brand new subject’ in Tony Bennett, Pat Buckridge, David Carter, Colin Mercer (eds), Celebrating the Nation: A Critical study of Australia’s Bicentenary, Sydney, Allen & Unwin, 1992. 71 Miller, op. cit., p 109. 72 Brabazon, 1998, op. cit., p 54. 73 Brabazon, op. cit., p 53. Brabazon’s italics. It should be added that the Glory have a very large number of fans who are not of English background — and that many of these also sing at Glory games. 74 Roy Jones and Philip Moore, ‘“He only has eyes for poms”: Soccer, Ethnicity and Locality in Perth, WA’ in Ethnicity and Soccer in Australia, Australian Society for Sports History Sydney, University of Western Sydney, 1994, p 23. 75 Brabazon, 1998, op. cit., p 55. 76 The commodification of Irish culture and its connection to the production of an Irish ethnicity is very much worthy of discussion and connects closely with the similar production of English ethnicity. In an article entitled ‘Con Eire’ in The Face (vol 3, no 37, 2000, pp 126-127), Kevin Maher argues that this commodification started with Michael Flatley and his spectacular step- dancing production, The Riverdance. Maher centres his discussion on the use of Flatley’s team at the 1994 Eurovision Song Contest which was held in Dublin. Maher describes how, six years later at the time that he was writing the article, ‘the label of simplistic, easy-access “Irishness” is ubiquitous. Like the best marketing scams, ‘Ireland’ is a name that sells a non-existent product. It’s an ambiguous concept that hints at misty-eyed nostalgia, wholesome traditional family values and charming feel-good sincerity’ (p 120). Importantly, from the point of view of the construction of a multicultural, commodified ethnicity, a letter (The Face, vol 3, no 39, 2000, p 32) commenting favourably on this piece notes that Flatley is from Chicago, not Ireland. Sarah Manvel notes that: ‘What [Flatley] has tapped into, and what the ‘Celtic Tiger’ has gotten rich selling, is Ireland for Irish-Americans’. Manvel goes on to write: ‘Do you really think most Americans want to see the reality of Dublin or Belfast? Of course not. We want the nostalgie de la boue, and will spend lots of money to get it’. Manvel’s point is as applicable to the Irish in Australia where Flatley’s
254 Notes to pp 14–26
creations, along with Irish-themed pubs, have helped establish a new, if you like postmodern, multicultural sense of Irish ethnic identity. 77 This distinction between pubs, and restaurants, opened to serve the community and those opened to serve both the community and the core Australian population operates among other ethnic groups as well. Perhaps the best example is the legendary ‘No Name’ Italian restaurant — usually known as ‘No Name’s’ — in Sydney which has successfully made the leap from community restaurant to multicultural cult icon. 78 Ghassan Hage, ‘At home in the entrails of the west’ in Helen Grace, Ghassan Hage, Lesley Johnson, Julie Langsworth, Michael Symonds, Home/World: Space, Community and Marginality in Sydney’s West, Sydney, Pluto Australia, 1997, p 144. 79 This development needs to be distinguished from the development of a Pacific Rim fusion cuisine which, while now available in numbers of bistro bars, has a heritage in the haute cuisine experiments of Australian chefs. 80 For one discussion of the differences in form of the cuisines in France and England, in particular the emphasis on a vernacular cuisine rather than haute cuisine in England, see Stephen Mennell All Manners of Food: Eating and Taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the Present, esp Chap 5. 81 The history of fish and chips as an English food is itself worth comment. Far from being quintessentially English from time immemorial, it has only existed since the late nineteenth century. Moreover, its evolution appears to be connected with the movement of Jewish migrants into the East End of London during that period. These Ashkenazi Jews ate a lot of fried fish. Thus, fish and chips has a working class and, at least to some extent, migrant origin. (The best history of fish and chips is John K Walton Fish and Chips and the English Working Class, 1870-1940, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1992.) Perhaps, then, it is not so surprising that one of the early creolised foods to come out of the South Asian migration to Britain in the 1960s and 1970s was chips with curry sauce, often served in fish and chip shops in those English cities that had large South Asian populations. 82 I am told that some of the students studying theatre arts at Curtin supported themselves at university by working there. 83 There is a theatre restaurant in Melbourne called Dirty Dick’s Medieval Madness but this is under different ownership. 84 Hage, 1997, op. cit., p 122. 85 Tara Brabazon, 2000, op. cit., ch 1. 86 ‘In Search of an English pork pie’, Endeavour, November/December, 1999, p 2. 87 Hage, 1997, op. cit., p 106. 88 There is a certain humour here as Tesco’s branded goods are sold cheaper than other brands in England because they are the chain’s own brand. 89 Cochrane in ‘Britishness in Australia’ describes the emergence of those he calls British Australians as a self-conscious group in the second half of the nineteenth century. He argues that their slow demise began after the second world war. He writes that ‘[t]their ideal England was strong, tolerant and just, the centre of a great, powerful and harmonious Empire’ (p 71). 90 To be fair, I was told that Sydney might well have a stall selling curries at the 2001 BritFest. In England, in the mid-90s, the result of a now legendary survey showed that English people in general are now more likely to have curry for Sunday lunch than the previously traditional roast beef and roast potatoes. 91 I am not including Aborigines in this dichotomy. 92 I discuss this distinction in more detail in ‘Making social space for jews in America’ in my Coming Out Jewish: Constructing Ambivalent Identities, London, Routledge, 2000, pp 257-258.
South African and Australian Relations in the New Millenium G L Shelton, R Catley and A D Schmulow
1 Ranchod (personal interview conducted by one of the authors with His Excellency, Dr Bhadra Ranchod, High Commissioner of the Republic of South Africa, to the Commonwealth of Australia, in Adelaide on Thursday 19 February 1998) underscored this point when he remarked that former Australian Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies was a regular at South African Embassy parties in Canberra, and that to this day there is a tree in the grounds of the South African High Commission
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planted by Sir Robert. It is also of note that for an extended period, Australia had a whites only immigration policy, which had a natural ally in the form of South Africa’s apartheid policy. 2 Interview with Jackie Selebi, Global Dialogue, vol 3.3, December 1998, p 14. 3 Giving substance to new policy emphasis, the South African Department of Foreign Affairs has started a recruitment drive for ‘African specialists’. 4 According to some observers, Mbeki’s foreign policy interventions have been decisive in charting a new course on important issues. See C Landsberg. and F Kornegay, ‘The African Renaissance: a quest for Pax Africana and Pan-Africanism’, South Africa and Africa : Reflections on the African Renaissance, FGD Occasional Paper, no 17, October 1998, p 16. 5 An African Renaissance Institute has been established to provide intellectual backing to policy statements. Mbeki has appointed a senior level committee to promote the issue, while outside of government a team of publishers, academics and businessmen have been mobilised in support. The long-term objective is to provide support for Mbeki’s bid to become an African statesman in the mould of Nelson Mandela and Julius Nyerere. 6 Ibbo Mandaza, a leading critic of the African Renaissance, describes Mbeki’s philosophy as the ìideology of self-deceptionî and he admonishes Mbeki to recognise the current realities of Africa. See I Mandaza, ‘Southern African Identity: A Critical Assessment’, paper presented at a conference on Shifting South African Identities, Cape Town, July 1998, p 28. 7 Selebi, Global Dialogue, op. cit., p 14. 8 The major powers are accused of using closed meetings to persuade developing nations not to block proposals by the North. 9 Quoted in M Granelli, ‘South Africa spurns seat at centre of real power’, The Star, 14 October 1997, p 3. 10 Department of Foreign Affairs, Meeting between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Civil Society, DFA, Pretoria, 25 January 1999, p 3. 11 Discussions with Mr M Ferguson, Head Middle East Desk and Acting Director, Foreign Service Institute, Department of Foreign Affairs, 12 February 1999. 12 ibid. 13 Department of Foreign Affairs: Meeting Between the Department of Foreign Affairs and Civil Society, op. cit., p 3. 14 ibid. 15 Quoted in A Hadland, ‘Selebi takes over foreign affairs with global reputation as miracle worker’, The Star, 10 October 1998, p 7. 16 Selebi, Global Dialogue, op. cit., p 15. 17 Since the democratic elections in 1994, there has been an increase from 40 to 95 South African diplomatic missions. In terms of new foreign policy priorities, all missions are being reassessed and a number are expected to close if they are not considered to be supportive of Pretoria’s international agenda. 18 Quoted in a Speech by the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Alfred Nzo, in the National Assembly, 18 May 1995, (Policy Guidelines by the Minister and Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs 1995, 21). 19 Ranchod attributes this to two factors: firstly Australia ‘got up and running very quickly’ by establishing a trade office in South Africa, part of whose purpose is to channel exports to sub- Saharan Africa through South Africa; and second, Australia’s quarantine regulations act as a non- tariff barrier. Ranchod did point out however that South Africa is starting to export high value- added products to Australia (such as 3 series BMWs, and the C180 Mercedes, all of which are entirely manufactured in South Africa), which is a new development in South Africa’s trade patterns. 20 T Fischer, ‘Australia and the Asia Pacific’, Paper Delivered to Members of the African-Asian Society, Johannesburg, 10 July 1997, p 10. 21 Australia, like many agricultural countries, uses tariff and non-tariff barriers (phytosanitary requirements) as a means of protecting domestic markets. 22 R Burns, ‘Australia, South Africa and the Asian Renaissance’, East Asia Project Working Paper Series, no 4, 1994, p 5. 23 There appears to be considerable interest from Australia in certain other South African weapons platforms, such as the Rooivalk attack and air-combat support helicopter, and certain of the self- propelled howitzers manufactured by South Africa, such as the 155mm G6 cannon. A possible joint venture for a South African armoured vehicle to be manufactured in Australia is presently
256 Notes to pp 14–26
under consideration. If the project proceeds, there may well be opportunities for export in the region. The recent defence review completed in South Africa also holds opportunities for Australia to supply frigates, corvettes, minesweepers and submarines to South Africa. 24 Ranchod (1998) suggested that South Africa could learn a great deal from Australia in this respect. He made the point that at one stage South Africa was attracting three times as many tourists as Australia, and that now Australia attracts three times as many as South Africa. He ascribed this to the fact that Australia has developed ‘a wonderful service culture’, as well as being ‘pastmasters in the art of marketing’. Ranchod went further to say that South Africa ought to be able to match, or exceed Australia’s tourist industry, due to South Africa’s closer proximity to its potential tourist markets, as well as South Africa’s greater potential for eco- tourism, than Australia. Ranchod stated: ‘inch-for-inch South Africa is a more beautiful country, and should be able to attract more tourists [than those which Australia is able to attract]’. This author would add to these factors Australia’s internal political stability, and lack of high levels of violent crime, as reasons which contribute to Australia’s high tourist influx. 25 The Sunday Independent 1997, p 23. 26 A further disincentive for Australian investors is the payment of double taxation. An agreement to avoid such payments has recently been negotiated and is expected to come into force later this year. 27 Quoted in A Begg, ‘Australia and New Zealand: relations with South Africa’, in South African Yearbook of International Affairs, 1997, South African Institute of International Affairs, Johannesburg, 1997, p 124. 28 G Barclay, ‘Australian-South African bilateral relations’, in D Tothill (ed.), Australian Perceptions of South Africa, South African Embassy, Canberra, 1991, p 10. 29 East Asia Analytical Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Australian Government Printing Service, Canberra, 1992, p 127. 30 It must be noted however that India vigorously and successfully opposed the Evans initiative. 31 The IOR-ARC is at present designed to promote trade, and is not a security arrangement. This however would not preclude the IOR-ARC from addressing security issues at a later stage.
The Heart of Gipps Land: Envisaging Settlement Julie Carr
1 ‘Gipps’ Land’, Port Phillip Herald, 14 November 1843. 2 In two letters written to an unnamed friend in England describing his trips to Port Albert, Russell acknowledged his authorship of the article on Gipps Land. Copies of the letters dated Melbourne November 1843 and Melbourne December 1843 are held at Port Albert Maritime Museum. 3 ‘Supposed Outrage by the Blacks’, Sydney Herald, 28 December 1840. 4 Russell had visited the Avon River where McMillan’s station Bushy Park was located. McMillan may have been the unnamed person who told Russell the story. 5 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, esp. pp 60–75, 202–227. 6 Letter to the Editor, signed ‘Humanitas’, published in ‘Miss Lord’, Port Phillip Herald, 20 August 1846. 7 Letter to the Editor, signed ‘XYZ’, published in Port Phillip Gazette, 5 September 1846. 8 Letter to unnamed correspondent, Melbourne, 30 March 1843. Copy in Port Albert Maritime Museum. 9 G Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1992, p 12. 10 P Carter, Living in a New Country: History, Travelling and Language, London, Faber and Faber, 1992, pp123–24. 11 Spivak develops this argument in ‘Three women’s texts and a critique of imperialism’, Critical Inquiry, vol 12, no 1, 1985, pp 243–261, and ‘Criticism, feminism, and the institution’, in The Post-colonial Critic: Interviews, Strategies, Dialogues, S Harasym (ed.), New York and London, Routledge, 1990, p 1. 12 M Marples, White Horses and Other Hill Figures, Gloucestershire, Alan Sutton Publishing Ltd, 1981 [1949], p 57.
257 Notes to pp 216–218
13 ibid., p 119. 14 J Matthews The Grail: Quest for the Eternal, London, Thames and Hudson, 1981, p 60. 15 J Adams (ed.), Notes on Gippsland History, Port Albert, 1990, vol 4, p 3. Also ‘Notes for Boys — Peculiar Stones’, Argus, 27 August 1912, p 9, and ‘Notes for Boys — The Heart Estate’, Argus, 17 September 1912, p 9. 16 A W Howitt, The Native Tribes of South East Australia, London, Macmillan, 1904, p 575. This figure was seen by Howitt’s informant, Dr E M McKinley, in the Dungog District about 1844. 17 ibid., p 494–95, p 553, and fig 32. Readers should be aware that the 1996 Aboriginal Studies Press reprint of Howitt’s text warns that its information on initiation would not be published if for the first time. Details about these practices are therefore withheld. 18 A Massola,‘The challicum bun-yip’, The Victorian Naturalist, vol 74, No 6, October 1957, pp 76– 83. See also Massola Journey into Aboriginal Victoria, Rigby, Adelaide, 1969, pp 80–81, 186; Massola, Bunjil’s Cave: Myths, Legends and Superstitions of the Aborigines of South-East Australia, Melbourne, Lansdowne Press,1968, p 147. 19 For viewpoints on the Marree Man see: ‘Outline of man upsets Aboriginal groups’, ABC News, 17 July 1998, (http://www.abc.net.au/news); ‘Where’s Mulder when you need him?’, The Daily Telegraph, 18 July 1998, and postscript dated 4 November 1998, (http://www.newage.com.au); ‘The evidence suggests Marree Man was created by people with expert knowledge of Aborigines’, Age, 17 October 1998, p 14; ‘Anthropologists stick it to Marree’, Sydney Morning Herald, 17 October 1998; ‘Marree Man: now for some answers’, Age, 19 January 1999, p 3; ‘Man of letters teases Marree’, The Australian, 19 January 1999, p 5; ‘New clue in Marree mystery’, Age, 26 January 1999, p 4; ‘New Owners Want Marree Man to Fade Away’, Nine News, Australia, from Gerry Lovell, 24 January 1999. (http://www.sightings.com/ufo2/maree.htm). 20 ‘I love a purple country, a land of flowery plains ...’, Age, Friday 30 October 1998, p 10. 21 D McCaughey et al, Victoria’s Colonial Governors 1839-1900, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press at the Miegunyah Press, 1993, p 20; J Critchett, A ‘distant field of murder’: Western District Frontiers 1834-1848, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1990, pp 118–19. 22 C J Tyers late of the Survey Department, Portland, was appointed Commissioner of Crown Lands of Gipps Land on 13 September 1843, on the day Gipps Land was proclaimed a district. 23 PPH, 3 September 1846, ‘White Woman Meeting’.
Savages or Saviours? — The Australian Sealers and Tasmanian Aboriginal Culture Rebe Taylor
1 Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1996, p 57. 2 Parry Kostoglou, ‘Sealing in Tasmania: historical research project — a report for the Parks and Wildlife Service’, Dept. of Environment and Land Management, 1996, p 17. 3 J S Cumpston, Kangaroo Island, 1800-1836, Canberra, Roebuck Series, Roebuck Society Publication, 1970, p 30. 4 Kostoglou, op. cit., pp 21-2. 5 Letter from John Hart to Governor La Trobe, Melbourne, 24 April 1854, in Thomas Francis McBride (ed.), Letters From Victorian Pioneers, Melbourne, published for the Trustees of Public Library by Robert S Brain, Government Printer, 1898, p 302. 6 Irynej Skira, ‘Tasmanian Aborigines and muttonbirding: A historical examination’, PhD thesis, University of Tasmania, 1993, p 118. 7 Ryan, op. cit., p 71. 8 Philip A Clarke, ‘The Aboriginal presence on Kangaroo Island, South Australia’ in Jane Simpson and Luise Hercus (eds), History in Portraits — Biographies of nineteenth century South Australian Aboriginal People, Aboriginal History, Monograph 6, Sydney, Southwood Press, 1998. 9 Ryan, op. cit., p 71. 10 ibid., p 222. 11 ibid., pp 227-9. 12 Encyclopeadia Brittanica, (http://search.britannica.com/search?miid=1251952&query=Tasmanian). 13 Australian Bureau of Statistics, 1996 Census of Population of Housing, Summary of findings (Tas), (http://www.abs.gov.au). 14 Jean Nunn, This Southern Land, A Social History of Kangaroo Island, 1800-1890, Adelaide, Investigator Press, 1989, p 40 and Ryan, op. cit., p 135.
258 Notes to pp 14–26
15 Rhys Jones, ‘Rocky Cape and the Problem of the Tasmanians’, PhD thesis, University of Sydney, 1971, p 11. 16 Lyndall Ryan, entry on Truganini (Trukanini) in Graeme Davison, John Hirst, and Stuart Macintyre (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian History, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1998, p 651. 17 N J B Plomley, Friendly Mission, The Tasmanian Journals and Papers of George Augustus Robinson, 1829-1834, Hobart, Tasmanian Historical Research Association, 1966, pp 1011, 1018. 18 Clarke, op. cit., pp 33-4. 19 Jones, op. cit., p 11. 20 Geoffrey Blainey, The Tyranny of Distance, Melbourne, Sun Books, 1966, pp 106-7. 21 Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, London, Collins Harvill, 1987, p 333. 22 Manning Clark, History of Australia [abridged by Michael Cathcart], Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1997, p 187. 23 John Molony, The Penguin History of Australia, Melbourne, Viking Penguin, 1988, p 31. 24 Lyndall Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1981 [all references here are to the 2nd edition, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1996.] 25 Ryan, op. cit., p 71. 26 ibid., p 135, pp 67, 69. 27 Henry Reynolds, Fate of a Free People, Melbourne, Penguin, 1995, pp 27-52. 28 Ryan, op. cit., p 69. 29 Jan Kociumbas, Possessions, 1770-1860, in Geoffrey Bolton (ed.), The Oxford History of Australia, vol 2, no 2, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1995, pp 101-2. 30 ibid., p 342. It certainly was in Kelly’s interest to present a ‘rosy picture’; his description was presented as evidence before the Commission into the administration of New South Wales and its dependencies in 1820. It was chaired by Bigge who strongly disapproved of the sealers’ relations with Aboriginal women. 31 James Boyce, ‘Journeying home’, Island, vol 66, 1996, pp 40-6. Boyce is quoting Henry Reynolds, ‘The Black War: A New Look at an Old Story’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, vol 31, no 4, 1984, p 3. 32 ibid. 33 ibid., p 52. 34 ibid., p 49. 35 Greg Lehman, ‘Narrative, Identity and Land: Partisan Research for Identifying Palawa Knowledge and the Facilitation of Co-management’, Honours thesis, University of Tasmania, 1998, p 32. 36 Blainey, op. cit., p 106. 37 Captain George Sutherland, ‘Report of a voyage from Sydney to Kangaroo Island’ in Edward Gibbon Wakefield, Plan of a Company to be Established for the Purpose of Founding a Colony in Southern Australia Purchasing Land Therein, and Preparing the Land so Purchased for the Reception of Emmigrants, South Australian Facsimile Editions. no 6, Adelaide, Public Library of South Australia, 1962 [originally, London, Ridgway and Sons, 1832], p 73. 38 Major Lockyer, ‘Expedition sent from Sydney in 1826 to found a settlement at King George’s Sound, Western Australia’ in H P Moore, ‘Notes on the early settlers in South Australia prior to 1836’, Royal Geographical Society of Australia, South Australian Branch, vol 25, 1923, p 125. 39 Captain George Sutherland, op. cit., p 73. 40 Major Lockyer, op. cit., p 125. 41 Hobart Town Gazette, 26 August 1826. 42 ibid. 43 ibid. 44 ibid. 45 Reynolds [1995], op. cit., p 93. 46 Lloyd L Robson, A history of Tasmania, Van Diemen’s Land From the Earliest Times to 1855, vols 1-2, no 1, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1983, pp 48-9, p 86 and pp 100-1; T E Wells, Michael Howe: The Last and Worst of the Bushrangers of Van Diemen’s Land, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1926; James Bonwick, The bushrangers: illustrating the early days of Van Diemen’s Land, Melbourne, George Robertson, 1856; James Bonwick, Mike Howe, the Bushranger of Van Diemen’s Land, London, Henry S King and Co., 1873; Charles Barrett, White Blackfellows: the Strange Adventures of Europeans Who Lived Among Savages, Melbourne, Hallcraft, 1948, pp 1-
259 Notes to pp 216–218
32; George Boxall, An Illustrated History of Australian Bushrangers, Melbourne, Viking O’Neil, 1988, pp 18-19. 47 Recognising the bushrangers as obvious ‘propoganda targets’, Hamish Maxwell-Stewart discusses the extravagent dressing of later bushrangers emulating the ‘gentlemanly airs’ of Matthew Brady after 1924, in another, contrasting example of blurring lines between opposed identities, in those cases between convict and master. Hamish Maxwell-Stewart, ‘“I could not blame the rangers”: Tasmanian Bushranging, Convicts and Convict Management’ in Papers and Proceedings, Tasmania Historical Research Association, vol 42, no 3, 1995, pp 113-4. 48 Kostoglou, op. cit., p 18; James Bonwick, The Lost Tasmanian Race, London, Sampson Low, Marston, Searle, and Rivington, 1884, p 191. 49 Hobart Town Gazette, 10 June 1826. 50 John West, The History of Tasmania, A G L Shaw (ed.), Sydney, Angus and Robertson in association with the Royal Australia Historical Society, 1971 [originally Launceston, Henry Dowling, 1852], p 274. 51 Henry Reynolds, The Law of the Land, Melbourne, Penguin, 1987, p 114. 52 South Australian Colonization Commission, ‘Report of the colonization commissioners for South Australia to her majesty’s principal secretary of state for the colonies’, 1836-1838, vols 1-3, no 1, London, 1836, pp 8-9. 53 ibid., ‘Supplement’. 54 Kostoglou, op. cit., p. 26. 55 Cumpston, op. cit., p vi. 56 ibid., p 5. 57 Margarette Lincoln, ‘Shipwreck narratives of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century: indicators of culture and identity’, British Journal for Eighteenth-century Studies, vol 20, 1997, p 155. 58 Daniel Defoe, The Life and Strange and Surprizing Adventures of Robinson Crusoe, London, W Taylor, 1719. 59 W A Cawthorne, The Islanders, Melbourne Illustrated Post [monthly serial] from 25 January 1865 to 18 February 1866 [all references here from the edition renamed and presented as a novel by W A Cawthorne, The Kangaroo Islanders, The Story of South Australia Before Colonization, 1823, Adelaide, Rigby, 1926, p 28. 60 Kostoglou, op. cit., p 45. 61 G F Angas, Savage Life and Scenes in Australia and New Zealand, vols 1-2, no 1, London, Smith Elder, 1847, p 184. 62 W H Leigh, Reconnoitring Voyages, Travels and Adventures in the New Colonies of South Australia, London, Smith Elder, 1839, p 102. Some of the various books which refer to the story of Alexander Selkirk include: Woodes Rogers, A Cruising Voyage Round the World, London, Bernard Lintot and Edward Symon, 1726; John Howell, The Life and Adventures of Alexander Selkirk, Edinburgh and London, Oliver and Boyd and G B Whittaker, 1829; R L Megroz, The Real Robinson Crusoe, London, Cresset Press, 1939. 63 Tom Griffiths with assistance from Alan Platt (eds), The Life and Adventures of Edward Snell: The Illustrated Diary of an Artist, Engineer and Adventurer in the Australian colonies 1849 to 1859, North Ryde, Angus and Robertson and The Library Council of Victoria, 1988, p 42. 64 Daniel Defoe, The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe of York, Mariner, London, Gall and Inglis, 1847, p 158. 65 Clarke, op. cit., p 17. 66 James Bonwick, The Last of the Tasmanians Or the Black War of Van Diemen’s Land, Sampson Low, London, Son and Marston, 1870, p 295. 67 The various books which refer to the story of William Buckely include, James Bonwick, William Buckley: the Wild White Man, and his Port Phillip Black Friends, Melbourne, George Nichols, 1856, [republished as The Wild White Man and the Blacks of Victoria, Melbourne, Fergusson and Moore, 1863]; W T Pyke, Savage Life in Australia: The Story of William Buckley the Runaway Convict Who Lived Thirty-Two Years Among the Blacks of Australia, Melbourne, E W Cole, 1889, [republished as Thirty Years Among the Blacks of Australia: The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, The Runaway Convict, London, George Routledge and Sons, 1904 and 1912]; George Sutherland, Sixteen Stories of Australian Exploration and Settlement, Melbourne, James Ingram, 1901; Barry Hill, Ghosting William Buckley, Port Melbourne, Heinemann, 1993; Alan
260 Notes to pp 14–26
Garner, Strandloper, London, Harvill Press, 1996. 68 John Morgan, The Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Thirty-Two Years a Wanderer Amongst the Aborigines of the Then Unexplored Country Round Port Phillip, Now the Province of Victoria, Hobart, Archibald Macdougall, 1852. 69 ibid., pp 91-2, 14-16, 82, 146-7. 70 John Morgan, Life and Adventures of William Buckley, Roland Schicht (ed.), Sydney, R Schicht, 1996. 71 John Morgan, Ein Australischer Robinson: Leben und Abenteuer des William Buckley, Helmut Reim, F A Brockhaus (trans.), Verlag, Leipzig, 1964; John Morgan, Uil’iam Bakli, Avstraliiskii Robinzon: Zhizn’ i Prikliucheniia Uil’iama Bakli Rasskazannye Dzhonom Morganom, Moscow, Nauka, 1966. 72 Morgan [1852], op. cit., pp 91-2, Barrett, op. cit., p 1 and Sutherland [1901], op. cit., p 31. 73 Bonwick, [1856], op. cit., p 3. 74 ibid., p 1. 75 Barrett, op. cit., p 29. 76 Sutherland, [1901], op. cit., pp 31-2. 77 Jahoda, op. cit., p 118. 78 James Bonwick [1870], op. cit., p 296. 79 Clark, op. cit., p 29. 80 Patsy Cameron and Vicki Matson-Green, ‘Pallawah women: their historical contribution to our survival’, The Tasmanian Historical Research Association Papers and Proceedings, vol 41, no 2, (part 1 by Patsy Camerson), pp 65-66.
‘Amid th’encircling gloom’: The Moral Geography of Charles Sturt’s Narratives Adrian Mitchell
1 Edgar Beale, Sturt: The Chipped Idol, Sydney, Sydney University Press, 1979. 2 C M H Clark, A History of Australia, vol 3, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1973, p 71. 3 Daniel G Brock, To the Desert with Sturt: A Diary of the 1844 Expedition, K Peake-Jones (ed.), Adelaide, Royal Geographical Society of Australasia, South Australian Branch, 1975, pp 36, 100, 144-5. 4 Michael Langley, Sturt of the Murray, London, Robert Hale and Co., 1969; Discovery Press, Penrith, 1972, illus., p161. 5 Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History, London, Faber and Faber, 1987. 6 Ross Gibson, The Diminishing Paradise: Changing Literary Perceptions of Australia, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1984. 7 Charles Sturt, Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, During the Years 1828, 1829, 1830, and 1831, London, Smith, Elder and Co., 1833, vol I, p xiv. 8 Robert Dixon, The Course of Empire: Neo-Classical Culture in New South Wales 1788-1860, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1986. 9 Bernard Smith, European Vision and the South Pacific 1768-1850; A Study in the History of Art and Ideas, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1960, passim but see especially chapters 4 and 5. 10 Charles Sturt, Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia: Performed Under the Authority of Her Majesty’s Government, During the Years 1844, 5, and 6; together with a Notice of the Province of South Australia in 1847, London, T and W Boone, 1849, vol 1, p 180. 11 Sturt, 1833, op. cit., vol 1, p xv. 12 ibid., p xiv. 13 ibid., p 48. 14 ibid., p xxviii. 15 ibid., vol 2, pp 18-19. 16 ibid., vol 1, p xiv. 17 Sturt, 1849, op. cit., vol 1, p 7n. 18 Langley, op. cit., illus., p 80. 19 Sturt, 1833, op. cit., vol 2, p 59. 20 ibid., vol 2, p 56. 21 ibid., p 58.
261 Notes to pp 216–218
22 A W Howitt’s 1904 study, The Native Tribes of South-Eastern Australia, Aboriginal Studies Press, 1996, p 52, identifies the ‘people who attempted to prevent the descent of the Murray by Captain Sturt in the year 1829’ as the Wiimbao. 23 Sturt, 1833, op. cit., vol 1, p 107. At times Sturt gave detailed accounts of the aborigines, and at others as here he wrote them out of his text. He could present a benevolent face to them, yet there was also a disposition to remark on what to him was their ugliness. It is revealing that like the topographical features, they too were delusive, unreliable in what they signified — they were stronger than their skinny limbs suggested, and their evidence was not to be relied upon; they both delivered his mail, and neglected to deliver his mail. Down the Murray they are progressively demonised — from such memorable incidents as the possum-hunter up a burning tree, the fearful encounter at the river junction, the inevitable dance of skeletal figures in a corroboree, and ending with Sturt repeating information of aboriginal infanticide and cannibalism. As narrative, this sequence precedes what for him is a conviction of the irredeemable savagery of the natives, with the death of Captain Barker. In his account of the Central Australian expedition, he expressed some fondness for certain tribal elders, authority figures, but he noted the treachery of the younger men. The desert people were grotesques — they are beyond the pale; they are also figures of acute pathos. They are enigmatic and confusing to Sturt, for they appeared to understand what a boat is for, and a net, which encouraged him to believe in the proximity of water. 24 Roslynn D Haynes, Seeking the Centre: The Australian Desert in Literature, Art and Film, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1998. 25 Sturt, 1833, op. cit., vol 2, p 171. 26 ibid., p 172. 27 Sturt, 1849, op. cit., vol 2, p 2. 28 ibid., vol 1, pp 277-8. 29 ibid., p 23. 30 ibid., p 61. 31 ibid., vol 2, p 390. 32 Sturt, 1833, vol 2, p 228. 33 Charles Sturt, Journal of the Central Australian Expedition 1844-1845, Jill Waterhouse (ed.), London, Caliban Books, 1984, p 86. 34 Sturt, 1847, op. cit., vol 2, p 9. 35 Adapting James Clifford’s remark that ‘allegory prompts us to say of any cultural description not “this represents, or symbolizes, that” but rather “this is a (morally charged) story about that”’. From ‘Ethnographic Allegory’, cited in Simon Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1996, p 135. 36 At Sturt’s first surrender, he wrote in his journal quite specifically of the spiritual debate which he had to resolve for himself: ‘Providence had denied that success to me with which it had been pleased to crown my former efforts ... In vain had I prayed to the Almighty for success on this to me all important occasion. In vain had I implored for a blessing on you and on my children, if not on myself [his journal is a weekly account addressed to his wife]. But my prayer has been rejected, my petition refused, and so far from any ray of hope having ever crossed my path I felt that I had been contending against the very powers of Heaven, in the desperate show I had made against the seasons, and I now stood blighted and a blasted man over whose head the darkest destiny had settled’ (Journal of the Central Australian Expedition, p 79). Sturt was not quite ready to wear the mantle of Job however; for he soon after redoubled his efforts and made one further sortie into the desert. Given the orthodoxy of his faith he should hardly have been surprised that he was turned back yet again. 37 Sturt, 1833, op. cit., vol 1, p 10.
‘That Critical Juncture’: Maternalism in Anti-Colonial Feminist History Nicole Moore
1 Rita Felski, The Gender of Modernity, Cambridge Mass. and London, Harvard University Press, 1995, p 208. 2 Meaghan Morris, ‘Question for Carolyn Steedman, “Culture, cultural studies and historians”’, in Lawrence Grossberg, Cary Nelson and Paula Treichler (eds), Cultural Studies, New York and London, Routledge, 1992, p 62.
262 Notes to pp 14–26
3 Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation, New York and London, Routledge, 1992, passim. 4 Vron Ware, Beyond the Pale: White Women, Racism and History, London and New York, Verso, 1992, p xii. 5 ibid., pp xi-xii. 6 Jane Gallop, ‘History is like mother’, Around 1981: Academic Feminist Literary Theory, New York and London, Routledge, 1992, p 215. 7 David Collins, An Account of the English Colony in New South Wales with Remarks on the Disposition, Customs, Manners, etc, of the Native Inhabitants of that Country [first published 1798], Brian Fletcher (ed), Sydney, Wellington, London, Reed and Royal Australian Historical Society, 1975, pp 464-9. 8 Eleanor Dark, The Timeless Land, London and Sydney, Collins, 1941. 9 Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marion Quartly, Creating a Nation: 1788- 1990, Melbourne, McPhee Gribble, 1994. 10 Marilyn Lake, ‘Birth of history’, The Weekend Australian, 18-19 March 1995, p 26. 11 Marilyn Lake at a feminist history conference at RMIT in Melbourne, July 1995. 12 Collins’ account uses the spelling War-re-weer. Warreweer is the version used by Eleanor Dark’s The Timeless Land and some other subsequent references. 13 Grimshaw, et. al., op. cit., p 7. 14 Collins, op. cit., p 464, my emphasis. 15 Amanda Wilson, ‘Dead men running: A review of Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1980s [sic]’, Australian Women’s Book Review, vol 5, no 3, 1993, p 6. 16 Lyndall Ryan, review of Creating a Nation: 1788-1990, Patricia Grimshaw, Marilyn Lake, Ann McGrath and Marian Quartly, Australian Feminist Studies, vol 21, 1995, p 230. 17 Ryan, op. cit., p 232. 18 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, New York, 1983. 19 Jane Haggis, ‘“Good wives and mothers” or “dedicated workers”? Contradictions of domesticity in the “mission of sisterhood”, Travancore, south India’, in Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds), Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp 81-113. 20 Elizabeth Povinelli, ‘Sex acts and sovereignty: race and sexuality in the construction of the Australian nation’, in Roger N Lancaster and Micaela di Leonardo (eds), The Gender Sexuality Reader, New York and London, Routledge, 1997, p 515. 21 Povinelli, op. cit., p 519. 22 The Timeless Land was widely lauded and best selling, received internationally as a ‘novel of towering stature’ as Katherine Woods declared in the New York Times. Woods’ comments were reprinted on the back cover for the Collins London Australian edition of 1941: ‘The stuff of epic drama here, is not merely the movement of event and outward struggle, stirring as that may be. It is especially — behind all circumstance — the drama in the minds and hearts of men of different races, cultures, classes; their purposes and efforts and despairs, their adjustments, above all their unescapable, insoluble conflicts’. 23 Brenton Doeke, ‘Challenging history making: realism, revolution and utopia’, Australian Literary Studies vol 17, no 1, 1995, p 54. 24 Penny Van Toorn, ‘Mastering ceremonies: the politics of ritual and ceremony in Eleanor Dark, Rudy Wiebe and Mudrooroo’, Australian and New Zealand Studies in Canada, vol 12, 1994, p 77. 25 ibid. 26 On ‘Aboriginalism’, see Ian McLean, ‘Aboriginalism: white Aboriginies and Australian nationalism’, Australian Humanities Review, May 1998, (http://www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-May- 1998/mclean.html). 27 Dark, op. cit., p 60. 28 Susan Sheridan, Along the Faultlines: Sex, Race and Nation in Australian Women’s Writing, 1880s- 1930s, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1995, p 125. 29 Kay Schaffer, Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1988, p 108. 30 Bob Hodge and Vijay Mishra, Dark Side of the Dream: Australian Literature and the Postcolonial Mind, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1991, p 30. 31 See the work of Jackie Huggins, for example and specific articles of Huggins’ with Heather
263 Notes to pp 216–218
Goodall, or of Roberta Sykes, histories such as Raymond Evans’ and Victoria Haskins’. 32 Margaret Jolly, ‘Colonizing women: The Maternal body and empire’, in Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman (eds), Feminism and the Politics of Difference, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1993, pp 103-127. 33 Ware, op.cit., p 162. 34 Anna Davin, ‘Imperialism and motherhood’, History Workshop Journal, vol 5, Spring, 1978, pp 9-65. 35 Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things, Durham and London, Duke University Press, 1997, p 99. 36 Marilyn Lake, ‘Feminism and the gendered politics of anti-racism, Australia 1927-1957: From maternal protectionism to leftist assimilationism’, Australian Historical Studies, vol 110, 1998, pp 91-108; Fiona Paisley, ‘Race and rememberance: contesting Aboriginal child removal in the inter- war years’, Australian Humanities Review, November 1997, (http:www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/ archive/Issue-November-1997/paisley.html); Francesa Bartlett, ‘Clean white girls: assimilation and women’s work’, Hecate vol 25, no 1, 1999, pp 10-38. 37 Jackie Huggins, ‘Wedmedi — if only you knew’, Sistergirl, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1998, p 32. 38 Victoria Haskins, ‘“Lovable natives” and “tribal sisters”: feminism, maternalism and the campaign for Aboriginal citizenship in New South Wales in the late 1930s’, Hecate, vol 24, no 2, 1998, pp 8-21. 39 See details in the recent biography of Dark: Barbara Brooks with Judith Clark, Eleanor Dark: A Writer’s Life, Sydney, Pan Macmillan, 1998, pp 150-56. 40 Heather Goodall and Jackie Huggins, ‘Aboriginal women are everywhere: contemporary struggles’, in Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans (eds), Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and Negotiation, Sydney, Harcourt, 1992, p 407. 41 Lake, ‘Feminism and the gendered politics of anti-racism’, passim. 42 Grimshaw, et. al., op. cit., p 206. 43 Sabina Lovibond, ‘Maternalist ethics: a feminist assessment’, South Atlantic Quarterly, vol 93, no 4, 1994, p 789. 44 Gyan Prakash, ‘Introduction: after colonialism’, in Gyan Prakash (ed.), After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, Princeton NJ, Princeton University Press, 1995, p 6. 45 ‘Europe remains the sovereign, theoretical subject of all histories, including the one we call “Indian”, “Chinese”, “Kenyan” and so on’, he argues. Dipesh Chakrabarty, ‘Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History: Who Speaks for “Indian” Pasts’, Representations, vol 37, 1992, reprinted in Padmini Mongia (ed.), Contemporary Postcolonial Theory: A Reader, London, Arnold, 1996, pp 223-47. 46 Brigitta Olubas and Lisa Greenwell, ‘Re-membering and taking up an ethics of listening: a response to loss and the maternal in “the stolen children”’, Australian Humanities Review, July 1999, (http:www.lib.latrobe.edu.au/AHR/archive/Issue-July-1999/olubas.html). 47 Margaret Jolly, ‘Colonial and postcolonial plots in histories of maternities and modernities’, introduction to Kalpana Ram and Margaret Jolly (eds), Maternities and Modernities: Colonial and Postcolonial experiences in Asia and the Pacific, Cambridge UK, Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp 1-25.
Eyeing The Lady’s Hand: The Concealed Politics of Mary Morton Allport’s Colonial Vision Ian Henderson
1 The miniatures, labelled in Mary Morton Allport’s own hand, appear in her ‘Book of Treasures’, an album featuring amongst other sketches and paintings by herself, early paintings of and by Allport’s children. Most of Mary Morton Allport’s surviving art, and the journals referred to below, are housed in the Allport Library and Museum of Fine Art (ALMFA) in Hobart. I would like to thank Bill Brennan, Heather Curnow, and Marian Jameson of ALMFA for their assistance in researching this article, and to acknowledge the board of ALMFA for support with reproduction costs. I am also generally indebted to Joan Kerr for her article ‘Mary Morton Allport and the status of the colonial “lady painter”’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (Papers and Proceedings), vol 31, no 2, 1984, pp 3-17. Geoffrey Stilwell’s contribution towards bringing Allport’s art to public attention, and his extraordinary knowledge of the Allports and every aspect of Tasmanian colonial life should also be acknowledged. See also the website featuring many of Allport’s artworks, (http://www.tased.edu.au/tasimg).
264 Notes to pp 14–26
2 ‘In 1831 the Joseph Allports and several others including M M Allport’s brother James Evett Chapman, decided to settle in Van Diemen’s Land. They arrived at Hobart Town by the Platina in December of that year and almost at once obtained land at Black Brush in the Broadmarsh district, some twenty-five miles from the capital. None of the partners was a practical farmer, and within a year Joseph Allport had left the land to become a lawyer in Hobart Town’. The Allport Library and Museum of Fine Art [pamphlet], Hobart, State Library of Tasmania, 1993, p 9. 3 See Ian Henderson, ‘Portrait of a lady: Mary Morton Allport’s Paul and Virginia’, Australian Journal of Art, vol 1 no 2, 2000. Certain aspects of my argument here, and some actual phrases, feature in this article. 4 Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paul et Virginie [1788], Pierre Trahard (ed.), Paris, Garnier, 1964. All translations mine. 5 Saint-Pierre uses the term in his ‘Avant-propos’ to the first edition. ibid., p cxlv. 6 The externalising of the internal trouble is noted in Anna Neill, ‘The sentimental novel and the republican imaginary: slavery in Paul et Virginie’, Diacritics: A Review of Contemporary Criticism, vol 23, no 3, 1993, p 44. 7 Saint-Pierre, op. cit., p 203. 8 While this is not an orthodox reading of the text, it is very close to that recommended by Joyce Lowrie in a brief article from 1971. Contemporary understanding of Saint-Pierre’s work is still unduly influenced by later popular re-workings of the Paul and Virginie story. See Joyce Lowrie, ‘The structural significance of sensual imagery in Paul et Virginie’, Romance Notes, vol 12, no 2, 1971, pp 355-6. On Paul et Virginie generally, see Jean-Michel Racault (ed.), Études sur Paul et Virginie et l’oeuvre de Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Paris, Didier, 1986. 9 For a discussion of these changes, see the appendix to Bernard Bray, ‘Paul et Virginie: un texte variable à usages didactiques divers’, Revue d’Histoire Littéraire de la France, vol 89, no 5, 1989, pp 873-8. 10 See James Cobb, ‘Paul and Virginia: a musical entertainment in two acts’, in The London Stage, G Balne, London, n.d. [1827], vol 4, n pag. Cobb’s Paul and Virginia was produced at Sydney’s Royal Victoria Theatre on 3, 5, 7, and 15 November 1842; again at the Royal Victoria on 20 April 1844; and at Launceston’s Olympic Theatre just over a month later on 31 May 1844. 11 Thomas Dutton, The Dramatic Censor, or Weekly Theatrical Report, London, W Justins, 1800, vol 2, pp 135-6. 12 Jean-Marie Goulemot, ‘L’histoire littéraire en question: l’exemple de Paul et Virginie’, in Racault, Études, op. cit., p 208. 13 Nancy Armstrong, Desire and Domestic Fiction: A Political History of the Novel [1987], New York, Oxford University Press, 1989. 14 ibid., p 41 15 Armstrong writes: ‘My point is that language, which once represented the history of the individual as well as the history of the state in terms of kinship relations, was dismantled to form the masculine and feminine spheres that characterize modern culture’. ibid., p 14. 16 ibid., p 38 17 Felicity A Nussbaum, Torrid Zones: Maternity, Sexuality, and Empire in Eighteenth-Century English Narratives, Baltimore, John Hopkins University Press, 1995, p 48. 18 Joan Kerr, The Dictionary of Australian Artists: Painters, Sketchers, Photographers and Engravers to 1870, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1992, p 14. 19 As noted in Joan Kerr, ‘Mary Morton Allport and the status of the colonial “lady painter”’, Tasmanian Historical Research Association (Papers and Proceedings), vol 31, no 2, 1984, p 9. 20 Alan Shaw, ‘The British contributions, 1803-55’, in Michael Roe (ed.), The Flow of Culture: Tasmanian Studies, Canberra, Australian Academy of the Humanities, 1987, pp 83-4. 21 ibid., p 85. 22 Jean-Michel Racault, ‘Paul et Virginie et l’utopie: de la “petite société” au mythe collectif’, Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, no 242, 1986, pp 443-4. 23 Nussbaum, op. cit., p 18 24 ibid., p 32. 25 Nussbaum, op. cit., pp 47-8. 26 The convicts themselves often were manifestly opposed to the end of transportation (or at least were manoeuvred to appear so), for fear of what Allport’s journals certainly appear to forebode, a potent exclusion of them by the free settlers from notice in future public life. For example, a
265 Notes to pp 216–218
pamphlet entitled Defence of the Prisoner Population of Van Diemen’s Land by a Prisoner of the Crown was published in Hobart Town in 1847. Purportedly by a convict, it sets out this argument against ‘abolition’, disavowing convict ‘pollution’ of Van Demonian society. 27 Oliné Keese [pseud.], The Broad Arrow, Being Passages from the History of Maida Gwynnham, A ‘Lifer’, London, Richard Bentley, 1859. 28 Geoffrey Stilwell discounts this possibility on the grounds of the early dates of the other contributions to the ‘Book of Treasures’. My conjecture would date the miniatures in the year after Virginia’s death (she died 23 January 1837), and definitely before Stephen’s remarriage in July 1838. The miniatures’ placement in the ‘Book of Treasures’ seems all the more understandable if placed there after the death of one of their subjects. 29 See Racault, ‘Utopie’, op. cit. 30 Elisabeth Bronfen, Over Her Dead Body: Death, Femininity and the Aesthetic, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1992.
Gender, Place and Travel: the case of Elsie Birks, South Australian Pioneer Elaine Stratford
This paper has been a long time gestating in three cities. Thanks are due to Julie Kesby and Paul Ballard at ADFA for their cheerful care with research assistance and cartography, Roger André, Senior Archivist at the Mortlock Library in Adelaide, and staff at the National Library of Australia in Canberra. Constructive feedback on an earlier draft were gained from Shirley Grosvenor and Les Wood. In particular, I would like to thank Robin Peace, Stewart Williams, and Matthew Bradshaw for feedback on various drafts.
1 E Bondi, ‘Gender and geography: crossing boundaries’, Progress in Human Geography, vol 17, no 2, 1993, pp 241-46; J Monk, ‘Gender in the landscape: expressions of power and meaning’, in K Anderson and F Gale (eds), Inventing Places: Studies in Cultural Geography, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire/John Wiley, 1992, pp 123-38. 2 The Advertiser, 28 November 1950, page unknown, in E Birks, Papers [D2861/1-25(l)], Mortlock Library, State Library of South Australia, Adelaide. 3 E George, Two at Daly Waters, Melbourne, Georgian House, 1945. 4 J Docker, The Nervous Nineties: Australian Cultural Life in the 1890s, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1991; S Magarey, S Rowley and S Sheridan (eds), Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1890s, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1993; K Schaffer, Women and the Bush: Forces of Desire in the Australian Cultural Tradition, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1993. 5 Various scholars have written about women and travel during the Victorian period, and about women and tourism and travel more generally. See, for example, A Blunt, Travel, Gender, and Imperialism. Mary Kingsley and West Africa, New York, The Guilford Press, 1994; K Morin, ‘British women travellers and constructions of racial difference across the nineteenth-century American west’, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS vol 23, 1998, pp 311-30; K Morin, ‘Peak practices: Englishwomen’s ‘heroic’ adventures in the nineteenth-century American west’, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, vol 89 no 3, 1999, pp 489-514; S Veijola and E Jokinen, ‘The body in tourism’, Theory, Culture and Society, vol 11, 1994, pp 125- 51. 6 H Lefebvre, The Production of Space, Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1991. 7 E Stratford, ‘Gender and environment: some preliminary questions about women and water in the South Australian context’, Gender, Place and Culture vol 2 no 2, 1995, pp 209-16; Women of the EWS, ‘Like Pieces of Gold’: A Story of Women’s Contributions to Water Services in South Australia, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1994. 8 W Lane, The Workingman’s Paradise: an Australian Labour Novel, Cosme Publishing, Sydney, 1948; L Ross, William Lane and the Australian Labor Movement, Sydney, Forward Press, 1936. 9 S Bann, ‘Introduction’, in K Kumar and S Bann (eds), Utopians and the Millennium, London, Reaktion Books Limited, 1993, pp 1-6; R Levitas, The Concept of Utopia, Philip Alan, New York, 1990; P Mühlhäusler and E Stratford, ‘Speaking of Norfolk Island: from Dystopia to Utopia?’ in R King and J Connell (eds), Small Worlds, Global Lives: Islands and Migration, London, Cassell Academic Press, 1999, pp 213-34. 10 W Metcalf, Cooperative Lifestyles in Australia: from Utopian Dreaming to Communal Reality,
266 Notes to pp 14–26
Sydney, University of New South Wales Press, 1995. 11 D Gobbett, ‘South Australian village settlements: a centenary perspective’, South Australian Geographical Journal vol 94, 1995, pp 50-65. 12 South Australian Parliamentary Debates, 1893, I: 2130. 13 South Australia, Final Report of the Royal Commission on Renmark and Murray River Settlements no 37, Government Printer, Adelaide, 1900. 14 On some of the characters who championed that region at the time, see M Saunders, ‘For Remark and the South Australian Riverland: Harry Samuel Taylor and the “Murray Pioneer”, 1873-1932’, Journal of the Historical Society of South Australia, no 23, 1995, pp 82-96. 15 V Burgmann, ‘“The land, the land, ‘twas God who gave the land”: socialism in South Australia’, In Our Time: Socialism and the Rise of Labor, 1885-1905, Sydney, George Allen and Unwin, 1985, pp 145-62. 16 R Matthews, Australia’s First Fabians: Middle-Class Radicals, Labour Activists and the Early Labour Movement, Melbourne, Cambridge University Press, 1993. 17 C H Spence, A Week in the Future, Sydney, Hale and Iremonger, 1888/1988. 18 See also E Stratford, ‘Health and nature in the 19th century Australian women’s popular press’, Health and Place: an International Journal vol 4 no2, 1998a, pp 101-12; E Stratford, ‘A biopolitics of population decline: the Australian Women’s Sphere as a discourse of resistance’, Australian Geographer vol 29 no 3, pp 357-70. 19 P Glenie, and B Glenie, Murtho Village Settlement 1894-1900, New Australia on the Murray, Renmark, 1994. 20 R Woods, The Birks Murtho Letters, 1894-1900: Hardship and Happiness for Two Families on the River Murray, Kangarilla, South Australia, Richard Woods, 1994. 21 South Australia, 1900, p xxiv; testimony of John Shackleton. 22 Metcalf, op. cit. 23 Birks Papers, ‘Letter to Miss Vivian, 8 October 1894’. 24 Birks Papers, ‘Letter to Elisabeth George, 27 April 1945’. 25 Burgmann, op. cit.; Gobbett op. cit.; Matthews op. cit. 26 Woods, op. cit. 27 Birks Papers, ‘Letter to Elisabeth George, 27 April 1945’. 28 Burgmann, op. cit.; South Australia op. cit.; see also Matthews op. cit. 29 Birks Papers, ‘letter to Miss Vivian, 25 November 1895’. 30 A Blunt, ‘The Flight from Lucknow: British women travelling and writing home, 1857-8’, in J Duncan and D Gregory (eds), Writes of Passage: Reading, Travel, Writing, London and New York, Routledge, pp 92-113. 31 See S Ryan, The Cartographic Eye: How Explorers Saw Australia, Sydney, Cambridge University Press, 1996, Chapter 1. 32 Birks Papers, ‘19 May 1895’. 33 G Pratt, ‘Spatial metaphors and speaking positions’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space vol 10, 1992, pp 241-44. 34 Pratt, ibid. 35 Birks Papers, ‘Letter to Elisabeth George, 29 April 1945’. 36 Birks Papers, ‘Letter to Elisabeth George, 29 April 1945’. 37 G Rose, Feminism and Geography, The Limits of Geographical Knowledge, Cambridge, Polity, 1993. 38 Birks Papers, ‘Letter to Elisabeth George, 29 April 1945’. 39 Birks Papers, ‘21 May 1895’. 40 J Wolff, Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism, Cambridge, Polity, 1995. 41 J B Harley, ‘Deconstructing the map’, in T J Barnes and J S Duncan (eds) Writing Worlds: Discourse, Text and Metaphor in the Representation of Landscape, London and New York, Routledge, 1992, pp 231-47; D Wood, The Power of Maps, New York, The Guilford Press, 1992. 42 S Ryan, op. cit., Chapter 4. 43 Birks Papers. Letter to Elisabeth George, 29 April, 1945. 44 M Foucault, ‘Questions on geography’, in C Gordon (ed.), Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-1977, Brighton, Harvester Press, 1980, pp 63-77. 45 E D Ermarth, Sequel to History: Postmodernism and the Crisis of Representational Time, Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1992.
267 Notes to pp 216–218
46 M Foucault, ‘Of other spaces’, Diacritics vol 16, 1986, pp 22-7. 47 Birks Papers, Letter to Elisabeth George, 29 April 1945. 48 J Clifford, Writing Culture: the Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1986; D Gregory, Geographical Imagination, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Blackwell Publishers, 1994. 49 C Philo, ‘Foucault’s geography’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, vol 10, 1992, pp 137-61.
Staging Masculinity: Late Nineteenth Century Photographs of Indigenous Men Margaret Maynard
My thanks to Kerry Heckenberg for her research assistance. 1 Michael Aird, Portraits of Our Elders, Brisbane, Queensland Museum, 1993, p 10. 2 Ken Orchard ‘J W Lindt’s Australian Aboriginals 1873-4’, History of Photography, vol 23, no 2 Summer, 1999, p 164. Twelve of these images were assembled in the Album of Australia, 1880. See the entry on Lindt in Joan Kerr, The Dictionary of Australian Artists to 1870, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1992. 3 See for instance Isobel McBride, ‘Thomas Dick’s photographic vision’ and Nicolas Peterson, ‘The Popular Image’ in Ian and Tamsin Donaldson (eds), Seeing the First Australians, George Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1985 and Judy Annear (ed.), Portraits of Oceania, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales,1997. 4 For an account of the problems associated with Aboriginal photographs as ‘scientific’, see Elizabeth Edwards, ‘Representation and Reality: Science and the Visual Image’ in Howard Morphy and Elizabeth Edwards (eds), Australia in Oxford, Pitt Rivers Museum, University of Oxford, Monograph 4, 1988. 5 Shar Jones, J W Lindt: Master Photographer, Melbourne, Library Council of Victoria, 1985, p 28. 6 I use this term more literally than Homi Bhabha who claims the construct of colonial otherness or the stereotype is dependent on the paradoxical concept of ‘fixity, as the sign of cultural/ historical/ racial difference’, being a highly ambivalent even contradictory mode of representation. Homi K Bhabha, ‘The Other Question — The Stereotype and Colonial Discourse’, Screen, vol 24, no 6, 1983, p 18. 7 Greg Dening, Performances, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1996, p 109. 8 Roslyn Poignant, ‘The Photographic Witness’, Continuum, vol 6, no 2, 1993, pp 184-5. 9 Orchard, op. cit., p 164. 10 Anthropologist Rosaldo has shown this to be the case in American frontier life. Renato Rosaldo, ‘Imperialist nostalgia’, Representations, vol 26, 1989, p 108. 11 Suren Lalvani, ‘Photography, Epistemology and the Body’, Cultural Studies, vol 7, no 3, 1993, p 451. 12. Christian Metz, ‘Photography and fetish’, in Carol Squiers, The Critical Image. Essays on Contemporary Photography, Seattle, Bay Press, 1990, p 58. 13 Metz, op. cit., p 159. 14 Richard Dyer, Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society, Macmillan, Houndsmills,1987, p 116. 15 Kobena Mercer and Isaac Julien, ‘Race,Sexual Politics and Black Masculinity: A Dossier’ in Rowena Chapman and Jonathan Rutherford (eds), Male Order Unwrapping Masculinity, London, Lawrence and Wishart, 1988, p 145. 16 Bob Stewart, ‘Athleticism revisited: sport, character building and protestant school education in nineteenth century Melbourne’, Sporting Traditions, vol 9, no1, Nov 1992, pp 36-7. 17 J A Mangan and James Walvin (eds), Manliness and Morality. Middle-class Masculinity in Britain and America 1800-1940, Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1987, p 9. 18 Peter Childs and R J Patrick Williams, Introduction to Post-colonial Theory, London, Prentice Hall, p 123. 19 Gail Ching–Liang Low, ‘His stories?: narratives and images of imperialism’, New Formations, vol 12, Winter 1990, p 110. 20 Brenda Croft, ‘Laying ghosts to rest’, in Judy Annear (ed.), Portraits of Oceania, Sydney, Art Gallery of New South Wales, 1997. 21 Croft, op. cit., p 13. 22 Eric Michaels, ‘A primer of restrictions on picture-taking in traditional areas of aboriginal Australia’,
268 Notes to pp 14–26
in Racism, Representation and Photography, Sydney, Inner City Education Centre Cooperative, 1994, p 189. 23 Reproduced as Figure 88 in Portraits of Oceania. 24 Roslyn Poignant, ‘Looking for Tambo’, Olive Pink Society Bulletin, vol 9, no1 and 2, 1997 and Captive Lives. Looking for Tambo and his Companions, exhibition National Library of Australia, 1998. These shows were held from the 1850s in Queensland which had a reputation for staging them. Judith McKay ‘A Good Show/ Colonial Queensland at International Exhibitions’, Phd Thesis, The University of Queensland 1996, p 126. 25 Brisbane Courier, Nov 1, 1892, p 146. 26 Mangan and Walvin, op. cit., pp 179-180. 27 James Urry, ‘Savage sportsman’, in Ian and Tamsin Donaldson (eds), Seeing the First Australians, p 64. Baden Powell argued that there were good connections between hunting with the camera and hunting with a gun. Mangan and Walvin, op. cit., p 193. 28 This is one of four photographs by Marquis held by the Queensland Art Gallery. 29 Ulrich Conrads (ed.), Programmes and Manifestoes of Twentieth-Century Architecture, London, Lund Humphries, 1970, p 20. 30 Illustrated in Aird, op. cit., figure 89. 31 Elizabeth Grosz, Volatile Bodies: Towards a Corporeal Feminism, St Leonards, Allen and Unwin, 1994, p 140. 32 Margaret Maynard, Fashioned From Penury. Dress as Cultural Practice in Colonial Australia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1994, p 62. 33 Ching-Liang Low, op. cit., p 108. 34 Reproduced as figure 87, in Portraits of Oceania. 35 See Leonard Bell, Colonial Constructs. European Images of Maori 1840-1914, Carlton Victoria, Melbourne University Press,1992, p 146, for an account of representations of exotic indigenous women making use of this formula. 36 Abigail Solomon-Godeau,‘Going Native’, Art in America, vol 77, July 1989, p 124. 37 Aird, op. cit., figure 16. 38 Leigh Astbury, ‘Dressing Up. Masquerade in the Heidelberg School’, Australian Journal of Cultural Studies, vol 13, 1994, p 143.
The Feeling Eye: Nation, Nerves and Masculinity in the Colonial Adventure Romance Philippa Moylan
1 Edith Searle Grossmann, ‘The Decadence of Tragedy’, Contemporary Review, vol 89, January- June, 1906, pp 843. 2 ibid. 3 ibid., p 849. 4 ibid., p 850. 5 ibid., p 849. 6 ibid. 7 Stephen D Arata, ‘A Universal Foreignness: Kipling in the fin-de-siècle’, ELT, vol 36, no 1, 1993, p 9. 8 Richard Fraser, Victorian Quest Romance: Stevenson, Haggard, Kipling and Conan Doyle, Plymouth, Northcote House Publishers, 1998, p 7. 9 ‘Notable Fiction of Spring and Summer’, American Monthly Review of Reviews, vol 31, January- June, 1905, p 761. 10 Frederic Taber Cooper, ‘The first impression and some recent novels’, The Bookman, vol 27, 1908, pp 102-3. 11 H I Brock, ‘Novels of the Spring’, New York Times, Saturday Review of Books, Saturday, April 21, 1906, p 254. 12 Martin Green, Dreams of Adventure, Deeds of Empire, New York, Basic Books, 1979, p 3. 13 Janet Oppenheim, ‘Shattered Nerves’: Doctors, Patients, and Depression in Victorian England, New York and Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1991, pp 150-1. 14 ibid. 15 G B Lancaster, ‘A Son of Martha’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, June 1901, vol 119, p 120. 16 ibid., 117.
269 Notes to pp 216–218
17 Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements, and Isobel Grundy (eds), The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present, London, Batsford, 1990, p 626. 18 For example, in the case of Kipling, whose literary reputation was recuperated in the 1940s, critics found a variety of ways to de-emphasize the problematic aspects of his writing. The intentions of the writer, rather than those of the man, were taken into account; and attention was paid to the ‘good’ Kipling of the later stories, rather than the ‘bad’ Kipling of the earlier ones. 19 Martin Jay, Downcast Eyes: The Denigration of Vision in Twentieth Century French Thought, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993, p 3. 20 Timothy Mitchell, Colonizing Egypt, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1988, p 6. 21 Bruce Avery, ‘The subject of imperial geography’, in Gabriel Brahm Jr and Mark Driscoll (eds), Prosthetic Territories: Politics and Hypertechnologies, Colorado and Oxford, Westview Press, 1995, pp 55-70. 22 Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1984, p 36. 23 Susan Sheridan, ‘“Temper romantic: bias, offensively feminine”: Australian women writers and literary nationalism’, Kunapipi, vol 7, no 2 and 3, 1985, pp 49-58; Fiona Giles, ‘Romance: an embarrassing subject’, in Laurie Hergenhan (ed.), The Penguin New Literary History of Australia, pp 223-37; John Docker, The Nervous Nineties: Australian Cultural Life in the 1890s, Melbourne, Oxford University Press, 1991; and Robert Dixon, Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction, 1875-1914, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995. 24 Homi Bhabha, ‘Of mimicry and man: the ambivalence of colonial discourse’, October, vol 28, Spring, 1984, pp 123-33, and ‘Signs taken for wonders’, Critical Inquiry, vol 12, Autumn, 1985, pp 144-165; Patrick Brantlinger, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism 1830- 1914, Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 1988, p 227; and Gail Ching-Liang Low, White Skins/Black Masks: Representation and Colonialism, London and New York, Routledge, 1996, p 114. 25 This criticism includes the following texts: Mark S Micale, Approaching Hysteria: Disease and Its Interpretations, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1995; Sander L Gilman, Helen King, Roy Porter, George Rousseau, and Elaine Showalter, Hysteria Beyond Freud, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993; Charles Bernheimer and Claire Kahane (ed.) In Dora’s Case: Freud, Hysteria, Feminism, London, Virago, 1985; Elaine Showalter, The Female Malady: Women, Madness, and English Culture, 1830-1980, London, Virago, 1987 (1985); Athena Vrettos, Somatic Fictions: Imagining Illness in Victorian Culture, Stanford, Stanford University, 1995; Renée A Kingcaid, Neurosis and Narrative: The Decadent Short Fiction of Proust, Lorrain, and Rachilde, Carbondale and Edwardsville, Southern Illinois University Press, 1992; Tom Lutz, American Nervousness, 1903: An Anecdotal History, Ithaca, Cornell University Press, 1981; and Gail Bederman, Civilization and Manliness, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995. 26 Kirby Farrell, Post-Traumatic Culture: Injury and Interpretation in the Nineties, Baltimore and London, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. 27 David Walker, ‘Modern nerves, nervous moderns: Notes on male neurasthenia’, Cultural History, 6, 1987, pp 49-63; and ‘Continence for a nation: Seminal loss and national vigour’, Labour History, no 48, May, 1985, pp 1-14. 28 G B Lancaster, ‘North’s bargain’, Harper’s Monthly Magazine, 132, May 1916, p 838. 29 This novel was first published in 1905, under the title The Spur to Smite (London, Andrew Melrose). In this paper I refer to the American edition of the novel, entitled The Spur, published in New York by Doubleday in 1906. 30 I do not take issue with the argument put forward by Docker and others that the Bulletin comprised other discourses in addition to its popularly known masculinist national identity. I focus on this dominant ethos of the Bulletin school because it is the one that The Spur delineates. 31 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 6. 32 Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View, London, Frank Cass, 1967 (1927), p 4. 33 ibid. 34 It is difficult to pinpoint the novel’s exact time-frame. We are informed that before Kin became a shearer, he ‘humped his swag across to Ballarat, and washed gold’ (38), which effectively
270 Notes to pp 14–26
locates the novel within a mid-century time-frame. However, references to drought on the Queensland border; ‘a slump in the Home market’ (14); the difficulties of finding employment; a shearing-shed owner’s derogatory comment about the trade unions; and political unrest in Samoa; suggests that the novel is set during the 1880s or 1890s. Historically, this later period encompassed a succession of droughts in the north of Australia, the consolidation of industrial unionism, a downturn in the economy, and a fight among British, American and German countries for their imperial interests in Samoa. 35 Graeme Turner, ‘Ripping Yarns, Ideology, and Robbery Under Arms’, Australian Literary Studies, vol 14, no 2, October, 1989, p 244. 36 Dixon, op. cit., p 8. 37 After the publication of her masculinist adventure romances, there was a fourteen year silence before Lancaster revealed herself as a woman novelist with her three family sagas, Pageant (1933), Promenade (1938), and Grand Parade (1943). These three novels address the colonisation of Tasmania, New Zealand and Nova Scotia respectively. 38 Lancaster’s reply to F A de la Mare in de la Mare, ‘G B Lancaster 1873-1945: A Tribute’, printed for private circulation, New Zealand, Hamilton, 1945, p 11. 39 H I Brock, ‘Novels of the Spring’, New York Times, Saturday Review of Books, op. cit., p 254. 40 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 15. 41 ibid., pp 6-7. 42 ibid., p 34. 43 ibid., p 55. 44 ibid., p 6. 45 ibid., p 3. 46 G A Wilkes, The Stockyard and the Croquet Lawn: Literary Evidence for Australia’s Cultural Development, Melbourne, Edward Arnold, 1981, p 3. 47 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 7. 48 Quotation dated 1872, cited in Wilkes, op. cit., p 32. 49 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 95. 50 ibid., p 216. 51 ibid., p 10. 52 Linzi Murrie, ‘The Australian legend: Writing Australian masculinity/Writing “Australian” masculine’, Journal of Australian Studies, no 56, 1998, p 73. 53 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 189. 54 ibid., p 50. 55 Grossmann, op. cit., p 850. 56 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 279. 57 ‘New books and new editions’, The New Zealand Mail, April 11, 1906. 58 Bulletin, July 27, 1901, p 33. 59 Triad, vol 71, no 10, January 10, 1914, p 45. 61 Showalter, ‘Hysteria, feminism, and gender’, in Sander L Gilman et. al., Hysteria Beyond Freud, op. cit., p 292. 62 Walker, ‘Continence for a nation’, op. cit. 63 Walker, ‘Modern nerves, nervous moderns’, op. cit. 64 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., pp 56-8. 65 George Cheyne, The English Malady, introduction by Eric T Carlson, New York, Scholars’ Facsimiles and Reprints, Delmar, 1976, p 4. 66 G J Barker-Benfield, The Culture of Sensibility: Sex and Society in Eighteenth-Century Britain, Chicago and London, The University of Chicago Press, 1992, p 9. 67 ibid., p 253. 68 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 58. 69 Cate Poynton, ‘The privileging of representation and the marginalising of the interpersonal: a metaphor (and more) for contemporary gender relations’, in Terry Threadgold and Anne Cranny- Francis, Feminine, Masculine, and Representation, Sydney, Allen and Unwin, 1990, p 240. 70 Marilyn Lake, ‘The Politics of respectability: Identifying the masculinist context’, Susan Margerey, Sue Rowley, and Susan Sheridan (eds), Debutante Nation: Feminism Contests the 1890s, St Leonards, New South Wales, Allen and Unwin, 1993, (article first published in 1986), p 12. 71 Lancaster, The Spur, op. cit., p 149.
271 Notes to pp 216–218
72 ibid., pp 304-5. 73 Lancaster, Promenade, London, John Lane, Bodley Head, 1938, p 172. 74 Letter from Nettie Palmer to Frank Dalby, 26 December 1933, in Vivian Smith (ed.), Letters of Vance and Nettie Palmer: 1915-1963, Canberra, Canberra National Library of 1977.
‘Colonial’ Catastrophe: Football Spectatorship and Local Business / Political Culture in a ‘Globalising’ Era Stephen Alomes
1 As late as March 2000, (Welcome to Docklands newsletter, n.d.) the seating capacity was given as 54,000 (p 2), with more in non-Australian Football mode. The Herald-Sun supplement in early 2000 on Colonial gave its capacity as 52,660; this was later reduced, given seats without clear sightlines to the ground. However, rare sell-out crowds were no higher than 45,000 (Essendon vs Western Bulldogs, 28 July 2000), for another reason — members in various categories who did not come. 2 A paradox remarked on by international visitors and some republicans was the unfortunate imperialist connotations of the name, ‘colonial’ in an era of debate over relations between settlers/ invaders and indigenous Australians. Other observers noted a different paradox related to the name. That was that a stadium marketed with 21st century ‘state of the hype’ PR spin carried a name from another era and seemed to introduce inefficiencies which would have been more understandable in the first decades of white settlement and invasion of the continent, than after 200 years of economic and institutional and economic development. 3 This was the approach of Australians: A Bicentennial History, a major 1988 publishing project. 4 Colonial News, however, trumpeted the positives of the concert. The finishing of the stadium had been delayed by industrial action. Even when finished, it was less complete than expected in fundamental respects. It could not obtain a safety certificate for moving the roof when occupied by spectators and on one occasion heavy bolts fell from the roof, endangering workers; the roof also developed hairline cracks. 5 This paper only addresses some dimensions of spectatorship, leaving open Colonial’s claim that spectators would be closer to the play and the critics’ view that it is an atmosphere-less concrete stadium and Australian traditions of support, for example June Senyard’s pioneering work on Australian football barrackers as spectators, see ‘The Barracker and the Spectator’, JAS, no 62, 1999, pp 46-55. 6 Given the Commonwealth Bank’s successful takeover wags joked about ‘Which Stadium?’ 7 Malcolm Blight had an entirely different analysis, seeing the ground as encouraging wider skilful ball- carrying play, aided by the calmer conditions when the roof was closed. Age, 25 February 2000. 8 It was reported that often injured Western Bulldogs ruckman Scott Wynd wondered if playing regularly on Colonial’s hard surface had truncated his career. ABC 3L0, football discussion, 21 July 2000. 9 Age, 18 May 2000. 10 3MMM, 4 June 2000 (Geelong vs Western Bulldogs) 11 ‘Death tag a Seven sin’, Herald-Sun, 17 June 2000, p 36. 12 Age, 22 May 2000 13 The historical study addresses its history and character, the paper by the sports history heritage consultants, Roy Hay, Marnie Haig-Muir and Peter Mewett, ‘A social history of Waverley Park’, unpublished paper, Deakin University, 2000. 14 Earlier matches had drawn only a few thousand spectators. 15 Dwayne Russell, ABC 3L0, June 2000. Ticketmaster denied it was at fault, suggesting that delays for club members came from problems with their databases: ‘Ticketmaster diverts blame’, Age, 27 April 2000. A similar experience of telephone queuing was had by Sunday Age reporter, John Elder, over two days in trying to contact the general telephone inquiry line of another new institution, City Link, 30 April 2000. Perhaps the Colonial experience of long queues had also helped bring the word back into the language. 16 Some wags joked that the old BASS or Best Available Seating System of Ticketmaster’s predecessor, when it was government owned, had been replaced by WORST, Worst Options for Rotten Seat Tickets. 17 These are pre-GST figures. Post-GST, I was quoted general admission at $18.98 (including booking fee + $5.50 telephone booking fee) or offered a gold seat at $45.00 when I made a
272 Notes to pp 14–26
telephone inquiry on 26 July 2000 regarding the 30 July 2000 Kangaroos vs Collingwood match. No middle range seats were offered. Axcess One Membership (advertised as ‘The Best Value Footy Membership Around’) offers ‘free admission to AFL games’, reciprocal rights to the MCC Members’ Reserve and a ‘Members’ Bar’ plus ‘priority access to major events’. In the post-GST era it cost $55 a month (that is $660) plus a $165 joining fee. Its particular appeal is ‘premium seating on the centre wing, Level 2’. 18 Colonial Stadium News, no 3, May 2000, p 1. Even, after several months of despair and difficulty, the PR tone was hyperbolic and unstinting in its enthusiasm. Having waited in queues on occasions I have also heard the term ‘Stuff Up Stadium’. 19 One view was that this stemmed not just from the corporate colours of Colonial but from the colour-tastes of its Essendon-supporting architect, Daryl Jackson. The stadium also has several shades of green, with no footballing connotations. 20 One Hundred Years of Australian Football , Ringwood, Victoria, Viking, 1996, p 252. Unfortunately, it was built in a rain-belt and to some fans and commentators it was actually ‘Arctic Park’ or ‘Siberia Park’. 21 The end of this ‘noise pollution’ was enthusiastically endorsed by the floor ,when Caroline Wilson called for a return to reserves or other lead-up matches instead, at a discussion on ‘The Future of Football’ sponsored by the Age, at Dallas Brooks Hall on Tuesday 25 July 2000. 22 Elliott’s populist style appealed to the audiences of TV football shows such as The Game and The Footy Show, who had little awareness of his own declared priority of ‘what’s good for Carlton’ rather than the interests, and survival, of other struggling clubs in the AFL. 23 ‘Revealed: MCG’s legal bombshell’, Australian, 9 June 2000; Herald-Sun, 9 June 2000. 24 Age, 16 June 2000. Ex-Premier and MCG Trust member John Cain was an even stronger defender of the MCG and critic of the AFL. 25 In a different view, the AFL’s focus on ‘the game’ rather than ‘the place’ as important suggested an incorporated sporting body with post-modern conceptions of entertainment, or ‘sportainment’, rather than a traditional view of sport. On sportainment see S Alomes, ‘A Special Small Event: Local, National and Global Challenges to Traditional, Sport, Entertainment and Culture in a New Zealand Small Town’, Cultures of the Commonwealth, 6, Spring 2000, pp 51-65. 26 Age, 4 March 2000. 27 See ‘Docklands : lacking in substance’, Metro News, 16 February 2000; ‘Destination Docklands’, RoyalAuto, March 2000; Welcome to Docklands, newsletter, n.d., 2000. 28 Transurban sponsored the first Kennett government Formula Grand Prix when no suitable sponsor could be found. 29 Significantly, the AFL gave up its leased space in the Great Southern Stand at the MCG for its new Docklands location. 30 ‘Footy gets a new home by the docks’, Sunday Age, 23 May 1997. 31 Other owners included: Colonial (10 per cent), Hastings Funds Management (20 per cent), Permanent Trustee, Citipower, Spotless Group, National Australian Financial Management Group and Queensland Investment Corporation. Ticketmaster, the American-owned ticketing company, had the rights to sell tickets to the all-ticket stadium and also had the ticketing contract for the MCG. Age, 13 June 2000. 32 ‘Colonial Stadium: your ultimate guide to our new sports and entertainment arena’, Herald-Sun, p 32, n.d., 2000. Headlines included ‘Super stadium’, ‘Nowhere is grass greener’ and ‘Tickets please’, all of which would come to haunt it. On 10 March 2000 the Herald-Sun front page read ‘Super Bowl’. The Age also ran a supplement. Soon, in populist contrast, it would advertise itself as ‘not the AFL official newspaper’. 33 Other front page headlines included ‘What can go wrong next?’, after a power outage during a match, Sunday Herald-Sun, 30 April 2000, p 1; ‘Dirty Weekend’, Sunday Age Sport, 11 June 2000, p 1. 34 In both cases Kerry Stokes denied issuing such directives. 35 SOCOG — Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games. Despite popular anger at Kevan Gosper’s daughter Sophie being the first Australian to carry the torch in Greece (at 11 she was also too young to carry it in Australia), regarding controversial IOC member Phil Coles carrying it on Bondi Beach, and distaste regarding the number of celebratory and commercial sponsor torch-runners, the torch would be a popular success, perhaps the one thing which challenged general cynicism regarding the Games.
273 Notes to pp 216–218
36 Like City Link, which would be owned by the taxpayer after several decades, it was built on the BOOT system: the owners would Build, Own, Operate and then Transfer back the ground, in this case to the AFL. 37 Australian, 19 June 2000. The club noted here was the Western Bulldogs. Running costs were said to have fallen from $80,000 to $60,000 a match after the venue managers were changed, according to AFL CEO Wayne Jackson, ABC 3LO Football, 29 July 2000. The stadium’s owners did not now expect to receive the anticipated 15 per cent return in the first year and plans to list on the stock exchange were put on hold. Age, 13 June 2000. 38 Gudinski and player manager Ricky Nixon were partners in this underdeveloped venture, Age, 15 June 2000. 39 ‘Turfed Out’, Herald-Sun, 28 June 2000, pp 1-2. 40 The casino was eventually bought by Kerry Packer for a smaller sum than might have once been expected. It was, however, one of the most visited entertainment complexes in the state, by locals and visitors alike. The American and international sports stars who provided its main images were eventually reduced in number while Australian sports stars were increased. 41 The electronic ticketing system for privatised public transport also had many difficulties, including technical failures and public resistance to its requirements of customers. Perhaps a new principle had been established for an electronic era: ‘the system is always right, the customer must adjust’. 42 ‘AFL fans spoilt: Docklands chief’, Age, 7 October 1999. 43 See Brian Costar and Nicholas Economou, eds, The Kennett Revolution, Sydney, UNSW Press, 1999, particularly Graham Little, ‘Celebrity leadership’. Like many state politics the book is otherwise limited on the era’s use of political drama, in Kennett’s case big events such as the Grand Prix. 44 See Alan Patching, Stadium: The Project Director’s Diary, St Leonards, NSW: Allen and Unwin, 1999. Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Stade de France in Paris (which hosted rugby and soccer World Cups) were other examples. The AFL expended over $1.4 billion in stadium upgrading in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Brisbane and in Stadium Australia during the 1990s. AFL Annual Report, 1999, Melbourne, 1999, p 46. 45 John Bale, Sport, Space and the City; London, Routledge, 1993; John Bale and Olof Moen (eds), The Stadium and the City, Keele, Keele University Press, 1995. 46 For example, Lancaster Park in Christchurch was renamed Jade Stadium in 1998 after a computing company bought the rights. 47 Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, the election of rural independents and the defeat of the Kennett government in Victoria, and criticism of SOCOG were amongst the many expressions of populist resentment at an Australia increasingly divided between haves and have nots. 48 There was no park outside, only concrete. Signs on the screens informed patrons that a fine of up to $5,000 was the penalty for going onto the ground after a match.
‘A stadium as fine as any on earth’ or ‘Arctic Park’? — The tortured past and uncertain future of a cultural icon Roy Hay, Marnie Haig-Muir and Peter Mewett
1 Christopher Forsyth, The Great Cricket Hijack, Camberwell, Widescope, 1978, p 49. 2 Colonial Stadium at Docklands was to suffer what were described as ‘teething problems’ when it was opened in March 2000. The experience was reminiscent of the early days of Waverley Park. 3 Victorian Heritage Register, Waverley Park, Statement of Cultural Heritage Significance, Explanatory Notes, 30 August 2000. The hearing of the Registration Committee, occupying five and a half days, was the longest since the creation of the Heritage Council in 1996. The nomination by the City of Greater Dandenong was opposed by the AFL and the City of Monash. 4 Simon Inglis, The Football Grounds of England and Wales, London, Willow Books, 1985 edition, p 17. 5 This article began as a commissioned project for the City of Greater Dandenong and we record our indebtedness to the Council for its support for the writing of a social history of Waverley Park. The authors are very grateful for the critical comments of Colleen Lazenby, Nigel Lewis, Rob Hess, and Dave Nadel on various drafts of this brief account and to Kevin Taylor both for his excellent compilation Football Footystats 2000 and for additional data supplied. 6 The architect, Reg Padey, said it was the ‘most contentious’ project with which he was involved. ‘It was the most contentious of jobs in my career as an architect. Certainly some people have a little go at me about it. But in my view, it could have been the stadium we wanted’. Caroline
274 Notes to pp 14–26
Overington, ‘End result leaves architect cold’, Age, 14 September 1995. 7 One recent commentator thought that the designers of Waverley should be sued for negligence as the spectators were so far from the game, while another, in comparing the viewing distances at Colonial Stadium, the MCG and Waverley, said that in the last of these the back row spectators ‘were in the next Melway grid’. Malcolm Maiden, ‘The corporate colosseum’, Age, News Extra, Saturday 4 March 2000, p 3. 8 The link between the new stadium and the centralisation of power in the league was mooted at least as early as 1954 by Kenneth Luke, as quoted by John Ross (ed.), One hundred years of Australian Football, 1897-1996, Melbourne, Penguin, 1996, 17 March 1954, p 199; Sporting Globe, 17 March 1954, p 1, for a fuller account of Luke’s vision. 9 The VFL Commission dates from 1984-5. L Rob Hess and Bob Stewart (eds), More Than a Game: An Unauthorised History of Australian Rules Football, Melbourne, Melbourne University Press, 1998, pp 222-24. The VFL became the AFL at the end of 1989, and the AFL Commission’s power was further strengthened following a report by David Crawford in 1992; ibid., pp 234, 238- 9. 10 Robert Pascoe, The Winter Game: The complete history of Australian Football, Port Melbourne, Text Publishing Company, 1995, p 245. 11 There is a good brief account of the Princes Park proposal and its eventual rejection in Lionel Frost, The Old Dark Navy Blues: A history of the Carlton Football Club, St Leonards, NSW, Allen and Unwin, 1998, pp 103-4. 12 Sir Kenneth Luke, Vice-President of the VFL from 1946 to 1955, President of the VFL from 1956 till his death in 1971. He was vice-president of Carlton in 1937 and became President in 1938. He remained in that position until 1955. Not a member of the Melbourne establishment according to Lionel Frost, he was educated in state schools in Brunswick and Ballarat, leaving at 14. He eventually ran a string of metal manufacturing businesses. He was made CMG in 1954 and knighted in 1962 (J D Legge (ed.),Who’s Who in Australia, 1962). Luke was a man of great vision and large ideas, according to Reg Padey and others. Indeed it may have been his plan to revise the Princes Park stadium plan upwards which led to the rise in costs which in turn alarmed the State Government and contributed to the return to the MCG as venue. In the case of Waverley it is interesting that the planned capacity of 157,000 would have made the stadium the second largest in the world and the biggest in the British Empire in the 1960s. A later VFL publication made the more modest claim that it would be ‘a stadium as fine as any on earth’! (Waverley: A permanent home at last for Australia’s national game, Melbourne, Victorian Football League, 1964). 13 Such, in essence, is the interpretation of Keith Dunstan, The Paddock That Grew: The story of the Melbourne Cricket Club, Surry Hills, Hutchinson Australia, 1988 edition, pp 269-274; It was denied by Eric McCutchan, administrative director of the VFL in 1974, who argued that the VFL had been bled white by exorbitant ground rentals at the MCG. ‘The gnomes of VFL House’, Age Insight, 27 May 1974. E O McCutchan, OBE, was Secretary of the VFL from 1956 till 1966, then Administrative Director until 1976. He was succeeded by Jack Hamilton, AM as General Manager in 1977. 14 K G Luke, Sporting Globe, op. cit., 17 March 1954, p 1. 15 ‘If the league owned a ground capable of holding a crowd of 125,000 people, there would be more money to benefit the clubs and the game in Victoria’, John Ross (ed.), One Hundred Years of Australian Football, 1897-1996, Melbourne, Penguin, 1996, p 199. 16 Bob Stewart, The Australian Football Business: A spectator’s guide to the VFL, Kenthurst, Victoria, Kangaroo Press, 1983, p 98. 17 Rob Hess says Mentone racecourse was also considered, personal communication, 17 January 2000. 18 Peter Simunovich, ‘Grounds for discontent’, Sun, Wednesday 3 August 1988, p 74. 19 AFL Yearbook 1990, p 142 gives the date of the start of the search as 1959. 20 ‘New stadium is rushed by fans’, Sun-Herald, 19 October 1969. According to this article 200 acres was purchased in 1962 for $417,670, then 12 acres was added to the western boundary bringing the total outlay to $450,000. 21 ‘It will be served by buses from Sandown, Springvale and Glen Waverley stations until it eventually gets its own station’, ibid. 22 Melbourne Football Club voted against the Waverley scheme and Collingwood abstained, according to one report, Age Insight, 27 May 1974; see also Peter Simunovich, ‘Grounds for Discontent’,
275 Notes to pp 216–218
Sun, Wednesday 3 August 1988, p 74, which quotes Jack Hamilton, ‘When the VFL Board had to make the decision whether to start building the stadium at Waverley it become [sic] a very hotly contested issue’. Hamilton went on to say, ‘From what I recall the decision was well received by the public and the response for VFL Park membership exceeded our expectations’. 23 Victorian Football League, VFL Park: Resume of development and planned growth of Victoria’s home for Australian Football, 1972, p 3; The following section is based on an interview with Reg Padey, 19 January 2000. Transcript in the possession of the City of Greater Dandenong. 24 In fact he had saved up for flying lessons in 1961, but when he found out the cost of that, he decided to spend the money on the overseas tour. It turned out to be a good investment, because he was reimbursed by his office on his return. Interview with Reg Padey, 19 January 2000. 25 ‘Before I left I told K G I was going because I was doing his factory work and he said, ‘Well, have a look at stadiums when you’re around …”’ (ibid). 26 ‘The plans included a three-tier grandstand, two smaller ovals, a swimming pool, an indoor sports stadium, a motel, parking for 25,000 cars and a railway spur line’. ‘The gnomes of VFL House’, Age Insight, 27 May 1974. 27 This was in line with an Australian tradition of multi-sport facilities, see Marnie Haig-Muir, Peter Mewett and Roy Hay, ‘Sport in Victoria: A thematic history’, Melbourne, Heritage Victoria, 2000, forthcoming; Caroline Overington, ‘End result leaves architect cold’, Age, 14 September 1995; Waverley: A permanent home at last for Australia’s national game, Melbourne, Victorian Football League, 1964. A copy is in the possession of Reg Padey. 28 The idea was attributed to Padey by Ron Carter, ‘What gives at VFL Park in the summer — water skiing?’ Age, 21 April 1970. 29 We owe this point to Dave Nadel who is currently completing his PhD thesis on football in Australia. 30 The 1962 average weekly aggregate attendance of 151,123 was not exceeded until 1981. R K Stewart, ‘The economic development of the Victorian Football League 1960-1984’, Sporting Traditions, vol 1, no 2, May 1985, p 11. 31 Roy Hay, ‘Soccer and Social Control in Scotland, 1873-1973’, in R Cashman and M McKernan (eds), Sport: Money, Morality and the Media, Kensington, New South Wales University Press, 1981, pp 223-247, for a comparison between Australian Rules Football crowds in Melbourne and those at soccer matches in Scotland. In 1956, the Grand Final of the VFL attracted 115,802 to the MCG. Kevin Taylor, Football Footystats, Oakleigh, ACP Action, 1999, p 38. For cricket attendances see Wray Vamplew (ed.), Australians: Historical Statistics, Broadway, NSW, Fairfax, Syme and Weldon, 1987, pp 384-5. The Melbourne Cup drew 101,478 in 1960, ibid., p 386. 32 Construction was begun in 1948 but it was not completed until 1965. A world record attendance was set for the final match between Brazil and Uruguay in 1950 of 199,850. It has an uninterrupted cantilever roof around the perimeter of the oval stadium. There is a moat three metres wide and three metres deep between the pitch and the spectators. Several other Brazilian stadia had capacities of over 100,000 at this time. The Maracana is now in severe disrepair and its capacity is much reduced. Though it was used for the World Club Championship in January 2000 with a nominal capacity of around 75,000. Richard Henshaw, The Encyclopedia of World Soccer, Washington, New Republic Books, 1979, pp 466-7. 33 John Bale, The Landscapes of Modern Sport, Leicester, Leicester University Press, 1994, p 15, citing Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space, Boston, Beacon Press, 1969; See also John Bale and Olaf Moen (eds), The Stadium and the City, Keele, Keele University Press, 1995. 34 Wray Vamplew and his colleagues have studied the economic and social impacts of football ground relocations in the United Kingdom. Wray Vamplew, Newcastle United Football Club: An Economic Impact Assessment (1997); John Coyle, Julie Heath, Brian Naymyth and Wray Vamplew, ‘Sweet FA: Fans’ Rights and Club Re-locations’, Football and Identities Conference, Brisbane, 1997. 35 Simon Inglis, The Football Grounds of Europe, London, Willow Books, 1990, p 8. 36 Nigel Lewis, Waverley Park (Formerly VFL Park), Conservation analysis and Heritage Nomination, Prepared for the City of Greater Dandenong, February 2000, p 27. Daryl Jackson does not agree, ‘It’s brutal but it is not Brutalist’, Louise Milligan, ‘Heritage claims ground down’, Australian, Friday, 3 March 2000. 37 Interview with Reg Padey, 19 January 2000. 38 ibid. Padey mentioned stadia he had looked at in Helsinki, Stockholm, Gothenberg, Wembley, Crystal Palace, which was a very interesting one, Cardiff, Rome, Milan, Mexico City, the University
276 Notes to pp 14–26
stadium not the Olympic, that hadn’t been finished in 1962. He saw it in 1968. The other stadia were in Rio de Janeiro, Candlestick Park, San Francisco, Dodgers Stadium, Los Angeles, Shea Stadium New York [only completed in 1964], Yankee Stadium New York and the designs on the drawing board for the Tokyo Olympics. 39 Bob Stewart, The Australian Football Business: A spectator’s guide to the VFL, Kenthurst, Victoria, Kangaroo Press, 1983, p 100. This statement is contentious. As a non-profit-making organisation the VFL/AFL is exempt from income tax, something which has become increasingly problematic as it has evolved into a multi-million dollar industry. See Kerrie J Levy, ‘The Australian Football League: Is It Time For the Siren To Blow?’ in Myles McGregor Loundes, Keith Fletcher and A S Sievers (eds), Legal Issues For Non-Profit Associations, North Ryde, LBC Information Services, 1996, pp 95-120. 40 For biographical details and an account of Luke’s role in the development of Waverley Park, see Frost, op. cit., pp 103-4; Ross, op. cit.; Legge, op. cit., p 544; David Dunstan, Sir Kenneth Luke, John Ritchie (ed.), Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 15, forthcoming 2000. I am indebted to the author and the editor for a chance to consult this entry prior to publication. 41 Greg Hobbs, ‘Cats first up at VFL HQ’, Age, Newsday, 8 April 1970. 42 Interview with Reg Padey, 19 January 2000. Padey says that local authority insistence that the ramps were for disabled patrons, and required to have a horizontal section every twenty metres or so, which would have meant that you would have been in the Dandenongs before you reached the upper tier, scuppered this plan. 43 Football grounds in Australia had nearly always been multi-purpose facilities used for cricket and sometimes other sports as well. For an interesting discussion of the impact of cycling on football in the late nineteenth century, see Rob Hess, ‘A mania for bicycles: The impact of cycling on Australian Rules Football’, Sporting Traditions, vol 14, no 2, May 1998, pp 3-24, especially pp 14-15. Ground sizes and shapes had been determined by the space available. There was no standardisation of Australian Rules grounds to compare with those of soccer or rugby union and league. 44 Henry Faulkner-Brown’s study of football grounds in the United Kingdom concluded that the outer limit to allow spectators to see their heroes’ faces, expressions and movements was between 90 metres to the centre of the ground and 150 metres to the far corner. Waverley’s distances were thus just within these parameters for front-row patrons but well in excess for those even mid-way back in the viewing area. Simon Inglis, The Football Grounds of England and Wales, p 25. 45 Interview with Reg Padey, 19 January 2000. 46 ibid. 47 There is a common belief that Waverley lies in path of every depression, which comes in from the Indian Ocean. See Hess and Stewart, More than a game, p 195. Rob Hess said, ‘Waverley is in a rainbelt. We had it checked out’, Personal communication, 17 January 2000. 48 VFL press release, 11 August 1970. 49 Victorian Football League, VFL Park, Resume of Development and Planned Growth of Victoria’s Home For Australian Football, n.d., probably 1972. 50 ‘Bulldogs Want Football Fans to Get Better Deal’, Age, 1 December 1970. ‘As finance becomes available for the development of Waverley Park, finance should also be available to improve conditions at home grounds for the loyal supporter who attends the majority of home-and-away games’, quoting Footscray Annual Report. 51 Ron Carter, ‘Clubs vote against MCG’, Age, 3 April 1975. 52 ‘Park under fire again’, Age, 21 March 1973. Richmond was supported in a showdown meeting with the VFL by Melbourne, Collingwood, Fitzroy, Footscray and South Melbourne. ‘Waverley work freeze’, Age, 25 May 1974. 53 ‘Munch-up at VFL park’, Herald, 2 September 1974. 54 ‘VFL car snarl a shocker — police’, Sun, 26 April 1975. 55 Ron Carter, ‘Grand final at park? It’s a chance — next year’, Age, 25 September 1975. 56 Scot Palmer, ‘VFL baby comes of age’, Sun, 15 April 1976. 57 Channel 7 agreed to sponsor the night series for prize money of $200,000 for each of five years. VFL Yearbook 1988, p 154. 58 Peter McFarline, A Game Divided, Richmond, Victoria, Hutchinson of Australia, 1977, p 60. 59 Christopher Forsyth, The Great Cricket Hijack, Camberwell, Widescope, 1978, pp 49-50. 60 Gideon Haigh, The Cricket War, East Melbourne, Text Publishing Company, 1993, p 115. Haigh’s description of the events surrounding the installation of the wickets is a highlight of a beautifully
277 Notes to pp 216–218
crafted account. 61 McFarline, A Game Divided, op. cit., pp 84-5. 62 Forsyth, The Great Cricket hijack, op. cit., p 181. 63 Alan Aylett, My Game: A Life in Football As Told to Greg Hobbs, Melbourne, Sun Books, 1986, p 115. 64 Age 10 January 1979. 65 Sun, 5 July 1978; ‘VFL gets into concert game’, Age, 6 July 1978. 66 David Guthrie-Jones, ‘VFL all-clear on pop shows, Sun, 26 August 1978. 67 VFL Yearbook 1988, p 154. 68 Peter McFarline, ‘Life at the top super and costly’, Age, 2 September 1982. 69 According to Reg Padey at one game, which he thought was a grand final, but probably was not, ‘Jack Hamilton stupidly put the attendance up on the board which was about 10,000 in excess of the capacity of the ground. The health department and everybody else was screaming’. Interview with Reg Padey. 70 Victorian Football League, Press Release, The Future of VFL Park, August 1981. 71 Ron Carter, ‘1984 Grand Final, VFL to push ahead for Park’, Age, 10 June 1982. 72 Wray Vamplew et al. (eds), Oxford Companion to Australian Sport, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, Second edition, 1994, pp 54-6 and 478. 73 Stefan Kamasz and Jane Taylor (eds), Australian Baseball League Media Guide 1994-5, Sydney, 1994, p 46; Melbourne Reds, Yearbook 1998-99, Melbourne, 1998, p 11. The crowd record was later exceeded in Sydney in 1994. 74 Information from Les Flower, Executive Director of the Victorian Baseball League, 12 January 2000. Flower said, ‘I’d be mortified if they bulldozed the stadium. I was out there at Christmas and the surface was like a bowling green’. 75 Doug Wade tells Mike Sheahan, ‘I think we will make history’, Age, 15 April 1970. 76 Michael Gawenda, ‘The fight for the Grand Final’, Age, 24 September 1982; Gerry Carman, ‘MCC fights back on ’84 final’, Age, 4 September 1982. 77 Hess and Stewart, More Than a Game, p 218. 78 For the VFL case see Chapter 16, ‘Government Interference’, in Aylett, My Game, pp 201-15. 79 John Ross (ed.), One hundred years of Australian Football, p 354. 80 Stephen Linnell, ‘Waverley gets five year reprieve’, Age, 29 April 1995, 3 May 1995. 81 Garry Linnell, Football Ltd: The Inside Story of the AFL, Sydney, Ironbark, 1995, p 271. 82 An analysis of the signatures to the Save Waverley campaign petitions in the City of Greater Dandenong Archives by postcode is being undertaken, which should provide some interesting data. 83 Following the nomination to the Heritage Register by the City of Greater Dandenong, it was reported that the AFL was prepared to put a condition on the sale of the Waverley site that it contain a sporting venue. Karen Lyon, ‘AFL to relent in sale of park’, Sunday Age, News, 5 March 2000, p 6. 84 Patrick Smith, ‘Rites, rights and wrongs’, Age, Footy 2000, Supplement, Monday 6 March 2000, p 8. 85 Karen Lyon, ‘AFL to relent in sale of park’, Sunday Age, News, 5 March 2000, p 6; In addition there was a considerable public subsidy through income tax for some, see footnote 38 above.
Japanese Newspaper Representations of Australia Masayo Tada
1 ‘The joint declaration on the Australia-Japan partnership’, Australian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade Home Page, http://www.amfat.gv.au 2 Gavan McCormack (ed.), Bonsai Australia Banzai: The Multifunctionpolis and the Making of a Special Relationship with Japan, Leichhardt, Pluto, 1991, p 30. 3 See Ben Hills, ‘Australia seen dimly through Japanese eyes’, Age 1 March 1993, p 5, and Richard McGregor, ‘We’re still cuddly to Japanese’, Australian 1 March 1993, p 3. 4 Jeffery Pittam, Yoshihisa Kashima and Saburo Iwawaki, ‘Dimensionality and national function in Australian and Japanese ethnic stereotypes’, Australian Journal of Psychology, vol 42, no 3 (1990), p 304. 5 Susan J Pharr, and Ellis S Krauss (eds), Media and Politics in Japan, Honolulu, U of Hawaii P, 1996, pp 4, 245. 6 ibid., p 15.
278 Notes to pp 14–26
7 D Eleanor Westney, ‘Mass media as business organizations: a US-Japanese comparison’, ibid., p 69. 8 This information is from the Tokyo head office of Asahi Shimbun Publishing Co. 9 Trevor Matthews and Neville Meaney, ‘Attitudes to Japan and Australia-Japan relationships’, Meaney, et al., The Japanese Connection, Melbourne, Longman Cheshire, 1988, p 78. 10 Seiichi Kubota, ‘Minami jûjisei no tairiku ôsutoraria 7: gaijin butai’, Asahi Shimbun 24 Feb 1971, p 6. 11 Kubota, ‘Minami jûjisei no tairiku ôsutoraria 8: kuni no naka no kuni’, Asahi Shimbun 25 Feb 1971, p 6. 12 “Gôshu no ôkisa mite kitai’: kôtaishi gofusai ga kaiken’, Asahi Shimbun 2 May 1973, p 22. 13 Hiroshi Kobayashi, ‘Takamaru shigen nashonarizumu’, Asahi Shimbun 19 Aug 1973, p 4. 14 ‘Oseania no seiji fûcho kawaru’, Editorial, Asahi Shimbun 17 Dec 1975, p 5. 15 Yasuhiko Sagara, ‘Chotto amakatta kana Nichigô satô chôki bôeki kyôtei’, Asahi Shimbun 13 Sep 1977, evening ed, p 3. 16 Hiroshi Aoki, “Rakuen’ ni ôkina shôgeki’, Asahi Shimbun 13 Feb 1978, evening ed, p 2. 17 Aoki, ‘Gô e no ijû sokushin e jimusho’, Asahi Shimbun 27 Feb 1979, evening ed, p 8. 18 ‘Hijaku mezasu ôsutoraria’, Kôkoku tokushû, Asahi Shimbun 24 Oct 1984, evening ed, p 7. 19 Kinki Nippon Tourist Co, Ltd, Advertisement, Asahi Shimbun 7 Mar 1983, evening ed, p 2; Australian Tourist Commission, Advertisement, Asahi Shimbun 22 Mar 1983, evening ed, p 16; Asahi Travel Centre, Advertisement, Asahi Shimbun 7 May 1983, evening ed, p 6; Asami ue, ‘Minami hankyû no jûjintachi: ôsutoraria hôkoku: bokujô’, Asahi Shimbun 10 May 1981, p 15 Tamotsu Nagashima, ‘Hôsaku ... komugi nôka wa kukyô: shin ôsutoraria jijô’, Tokuhain hôkoku, Asahi Shimbun 9 Jan 1985, p 6. 20 Australian Tourist Commission, Advertisement, Asahi Shimbun 18 July 1984, evening ed, p 6. 21 ‘VIP koara: 25 nichi rainichi ningen sama ijô no kikubari’, Asahi Shimbun 20 Oct 1984, evening ed, p 15; ‘Koara kun shinkyo okushon kansei Tama dôbutsuen’, Asahi Shimbun 22 Oct 1984, evening ed, p 12. 22 ‘Koara kun yôkoso: Tama nado ni tôchaku’, Asahi Shimbun 25 Oct 1984, evening ed, p 1. 23 Tatsuhisa Yue, “Koara’ kara ‘haiteku’ e: kagaku gijutsukoku mezasu ôsutoraria’, Asahi Shimbun 1 Dec 1993, p 5. 24 Kenji Fukushima, ‘Gô de hatsugen suru ‘nihon tôsôsha”, Asahi Shimbun 25 Jan 1991, p 16, ‘Gôshû ni nezasu dai ni no jinsei’ Asahi Shimbun 18 Jan 1991, p 18, ‘Nihon kara gô e ‘kyôiku nanmin”, Asahi Shimbun 11 Jan 1991, p 16. 25 Yôji Ishikawa, “Kaerazaru michi’ o sentaku: gô ni sakasu kosei no hana’, Sorezore no sararîman, Asahi Shimbun 21 Oct 1991, p 7. 26 The words used are: ‘free and easy’ (nonbiri; Hatano Hirokazu, ‘Kochira wa kurabu zensei: ôsutoraria no supôtsu’, Asahi Shimbun 4 Nov 1972, p 18; Kobayashi, ‘Ikkamoku 2 man en nari: shiken mondai ga jizen more’, 11 Nov 1974, p 3; Aoki, ‘Chin chin densha kochira kenzai: gô, meruborun’, Asahi Shimbun 20 Jan 1979, p 21; ‘_sutoraria shinpojiumu: yutori taikoku ôsutoraria’, Kôkoku tokushû, Asahi Shimbun 29 Mar 1990, evening ed, pp 16-17), ‘relaxed’ (yuttari; Yagisawa, ‘_ana no meruborun kappu’, sekai no mado, Asahi Shimbun 10 Nov 1972, evening ed, p 2, or yûyû to shite; Jûtarô Tsuchida, ‘Suto suto suto’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 26 Mar 1980, evening ed, p 2) and ‘big-hearted’ (ôraka; Aoki, ‘Hatarakisugi’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 14 July 1979, evening ed, p 2, ‘Nichiyô nogyô: kengyô bukujô demo tôshi no taishô ni’, Gyûiku, Asahi Shimbun 19 Apr 1978, p 4, ‘Shizenji: heri de ushioi gô no soho bokuchiku’, Gyuniku, Asahi Shimbun 18 Apr 1978, p 4; ‘Motomu supai no oyabun’, Asahi Shimbun 5 Sep 1978, p 7; Nagashima, ‘Shin ôsutoraria 11: bokujô mo shigen mo’, Asahi Shimbun 22 Jan 1984, p 7; or ôyô; Tsuchida, ‘Hae’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 18 Nov 1980, evening ed, p 2). 27 Yagisawa, ‘Tomeru minzoku: karamu jinshu to gaikô/ ajia to wa nao kabe’, Zahyô, Asahi Shimbun 10 Apr 1973, p 7; Yagisawa, ‘Kikô no gôkasen ni tameiki’, Asahi Shimbun 18 Feb 1974, p 3; Yagisawa, ‘2DK’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 4 Feb 1974, evening ed, p 6. 28 ‘Minami hankyû no yûjintachi: ôsutoraria hôkoku: rejâ’, Asahi Shimbun 17 May 1981, p 15. 29 Nagashima, ‘Manatsu no kurisumasu’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 11 Dec 1982, evening ed, p 3. 30 ‘sutoraria shinpojiumu: yutori taikoku ôsutoraria’, op. cit. 31 Kobayashi, ‘Yûbin suto 2 shûkan, kokumin seikatsu mahi’, Asahi Shimbun 21 June 1974, p 3. 32 Kobayashi, ‘Nichigô shinjidai 3: sutoraiki’, Asahi Shimbun 15 June 1972, p 6. 33 ‘Nihonjin ga hatarakisugiru!: gôshû hatsudensho no 1200 nin ga suto’, Asahi Shimbun 23 Aug 1972, p 23.
279 Notes to pp 216–218
34 Tsuchida, ‘Suto suto suto’, op. cit. 35 Aoki, ‘Hatarakisugi’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 14 July 1979, evening ed, p 2. 36 Tsuchida, ‘Yoyû’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 21 June 1980, evening ed, p 2. 37 Yagisawa, ‘Tomeru minzoku’, op. cit. 38 Kobayashi, ‘Gô gaikô, 180 do tenkan e’, Asahi Shimbun 14 Dec 1975, p 7. 39 Aoki, ‘Betonamu nanmin, tsugi tsugi hyôchaku: gô, shitsugyô ôi ori kara hitomome’, Asahi Shimbun 26 Nov 1977, p 7. 40 Aoki, ‘Hakugô shugi no tesuto kêsu’, Kokusai keizai repôto, Asahi Shimbun 23 Sep 1979, p 9. 41 Aoki, ‘Gô kôsanbutsu no tai nichi yushutsu kisei’, Asahi Shimbun 24 Nov 1978, p 4. 42 ‘Hakugô shugi ni henka no kizashi’, Asahi Shimbun 9 Apr 1974, p 5. 43 Kobayashi, ‘Shussei hette ‘hakugô shugi henjô’: kankoku kara yôshi o nen hyaku nin’, Asahi Shimbun 25 May 1977, p 7. 44 “Hakugô shugi’ suteta shin imin seisaku’, Asahi Shimbun 28 June 1978, p 4. 45 Toshio Ozawa, ‘Kieyuku hakugô shugi’, Sekaishi no butai, Asahi Shimbun 18 Nov 1979, p 27. 46 Takeshi Suzuki, ‘Aratana shakai mosakusuru gôshû’, Koramu watashi ni mikata, Asahi Shimbun 30 July 1994, p 4. 47 Yôichi Kagaya, ‘Ajia taiheiyô hen 3: katsuro wa ajia’, Burokkuka suru sekai keizai 4, Asahi Shimbun 27 Jan 1992, p 7. 48 Hideo Yoshida, ‘Ajiajin ni nomikomarete shimau’, Asahi Shimbun 18 Oct 1996, p 9. 49 Yoshida, ‘Jinshu mondai ronsô yureru gô shakai’, Asahi Shimbun 31 Oct 1996, p 8. 50 ‘Gô, ajia e kyûkeisha’, Asahi Shimbun 19 Jan 1973, p 7. 51 Yagisawa, ‘Chikaku ‘kita’ to kokkô kyôgi’, Asahi Shimbun 7 Feb 1973, p 7. 52 Yasisawa, ‘Watashi mo naito no shôgô hoshii’, Asahi Shimbun 12 Jan 1974, p 3. 53 Kobayashi, ‘Yomigaeru? eikoku kokka’, Asahi Shimbun 23 Jan 1976, p 3. 54 Kobayashi, ‘Eikoku banare’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 11 June 1977, evening ed, p 2. 55 Kôji Takeuchi, ‘Gaikô shisei no henka, chûmoku: tônan ajia shokoku’, Asahi Shimbun 8 Mar 1996, p 8. 56 Suzuki, ‘Gô sôsenkyo yatô rengô ga asshô: 13 nen buri ni seiken e’, Asahi Shimbun 3 Mar 1996, p 7. 57 Suzuki, ‘Rôdôtô kara 13 nen buri ni seiken o ryakkan shita gô, jiyûtô kokumin to rengô no John Howard daihyô’, Nyûsu no kao, Asahi Shimbun 5 Mar 1996, p 9. 58 Suzuki, ‘Gô, ôbei to kyôchô mo jûshi: ajia to renkei keizoku’, Asahi Shimbun 8 Mar 1996, p 8. 59 Yoshida, ‘Gô hoshu seiken ‘datsu a nyûbei’ de hamon: ajia kakukoku to masatsu tsugitsugi’, Asahi Shimbun 7 July 1996, p 7. 60 Kobayashi, ‘Nichigô shinjidai 1: nihongo bûmu’, Asahi Shimbun 13 June 1972, p 6. 61 Aoki, ‘Kienu tainichi keikaishin: kataomoi tsunoreba bakuhatsu mo’, Asahi Shimbun 10 Oct 1979, p 4. 62 Aoki, ‘Takamaru gô no kataomoi: nihon kankei hôsô ni miru’, Asahi Shimbun 17 Jan 1980, p 21. 63 Hiro’o Kawamura, ‘Rukeishûtachi no kaitakuchi: gôshû kuînzurando’, Asahi Shimbun 16 Sep 1982, evening ed, p 8. 64 Kubota, ‘Minami jújisei no tairiku ôsutoraria 11: kaishingeki’, Asahi Shimbun 2 Mar 1971, p 6. 65 Kubota, Minami jújisei no tairiku ôsutoraria 6: kuru hito saru hito’, Asahi Shimbun 23 Feb 1971, p 6; and Kobayashi ‘Nichigô shijidai 2: gôsuto taun’, Asahi Shimbun 14 June 1972, p 6. 66 Chihiro Katô, ‘Kiraku na tabi daga kiraku de nai genchi: shushô hôgô kanemochi nihon ni kitai to fuan’, Asahi Shimbun 3 July 1988, p 3. 67 Katsuhiko Futamura, ‘Nihon shihon nuki dewa go keizai naritatazu: jimotoshi ga shiteki’, Asahi Shimbun 12 Feb 1989, p 9. 68 Kobayashi, ‘Nihonsei’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 20 Apr 1975, p 4. 69 Yagisawa, “Seiji’ jiku ni nichigô shintaisei: asu kara hatsu no kakuryôi’, Asahi Shimbun 11 Oct 1972, p 2. 70 “Otehon’ nihon mondai ôsugiru’, Asahi Shimbun 7 Mar 1984, p 7. 71 ‘Keizai enjo no zôkyô hyômei e’, Asahi Shimbun 28 June 1988, p 2. 72 Krauss, op. cit., p 261. 73 Kobayashi, ‘Rikaido’, Tokuhain memo, Asahi Shimbun 2 Oct 1976, evening ed, p 2; “Fujiyama’ ‘geisha’ ima wa mukashi’, Asahi Shimbun 10 Oct 1976, p 3; ‘Gô de kitai sareru nihon’, Asahi Shimbun 14 Apr 1977, evening ed, p 8; and Aoki. ‘Mada 3 bun no 1 ga sensô ni kodawari: gô no tainichi ishiki chôsa’, Asahi Shimbun 22 Oct 1979, p 2.
280 Notes to pp 14–26
74 ‘Nichigô satô funsô no nigai kyôkun’, Editorial, Asahi Shimbun 28 Oct 1977, p 5. 75 Toshihiko Wada, ‘Hôjin kankôkyaku ga ôhabazo: hadena kanezukai hanpatsu mo’, Kokusai keizai repôto, Asahi Shimbun 1 Dec 1987, p 10; Katô, ‘Hômon no shushô ni tôshi sokushin yôsei: tochi kaishime hihan takamaru gô higashi kaigan’, Asahi Shimbun 2 July 1988, p 3, “Kiraku na tabi’ ni omoi miyage: shushô hôgô nihon no tôshi kitaisuru gô’, Asahi Shimbun 5 July 1988, p 2; ‘Nichigô bôeki kakudai nozomu ga tôshi wa hodohodo ni ... ôsutorariajin no tainichikan’, Asahi Shimbun 24 Aug 1988, p 3; Futamura, ‘Nihon no ‘shokuminchi wa gomen da’: takinô toshi kôsô jimoto de hanron funshutsu’, Asahi Shimbun 25 Jan 1990, p 11, ‘Nihon teian no ‘takinô toshi’ gô sôsenkyo no sôten ni’, Asahi Shimbun 18 Mar 1990, p 3. 76 Futamura, ‘Gô no tainichi keikaikan nebukaku: nihonhei satsugai meguru senhan ronsô’, Jiji kokukoku, Asahi Shimbun 21 Nov 1988, p 3, ‘Nihongun no zangyaku kôi hôdô’, Toshi kagami, Asahi Shimbun 10 Feb 1989, p 6. 77 Yoshio, Sugimoto, ‘Australia-Japan: partnership across a cultural divide’, McCormack, op. cit., p 170. 78 Aoki,‘One and only encounter of the White Australia Kind: Japanese view of life down under’, Age 10 May 1982, p 13.
‘Unpublishable scoops’: Australian Journalists as Prisoners of the Japanese, 1941-45 Prue Torney-Parlicki
1 This is a revised and extended version of a paper presented at the ‘Australian Media Traditions: Historical Perspectives’ conference held in Sydney in July 1999. 2 For Percival’s material, see Sydney Morning Herald, 6, 7, 10, 12, 24 February 1945, 5 March 1945. 3 For a sample of this material see Sun, 10, 11, 16, 24 September 1945 (Ferry); Sunday Sun and Guardian, 9 September 1945, Herald, 14 September 1945 (Hudson); Mercury, 13 October 1945 (McCabe); Argus, 13, 15, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22 September 1945 (Rivett). See also Rohan D Rivett, Behind Bamboo, Angus and Robertson, Sydney, 1946. 4 In particular, Joan Beaumont, ‘Captivity Reconstructed: The literature of Australian prisoners of the Japanese’, unpublished paper, presented to the 50th Anniversary Conference of the Australian War Memorial’, 12 November 1991. See also Humphrey McQueen, Japan to the Rescue, William Heinemann Australia, Melbourne, 1991, pp 295-317; Robin Gerster, Big-Noting: The Heroic Theme in Australian War Writing, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1992, pp 227-36; David Walker, ‘The writers’ war’ in Joan Beaumont (ed.), Australia’s War 1939-45, Allen and Unwin, Sydney, 1996, pp 155-57. 5 Rohan Rivett in David Foster (ed.), Self Portraits, National Library of Australia, Canberra, 1991, pp 117-20. 6 Gavin Souter, Company of Heralds, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1981, pp 202-3, 225- 6; Pat Burgess, Warco: Australian Reporters at War, William Heinemann Australia, Melbourne, 1986, pp 95-7. 7 Jack Percival, ‘Three years as prisoner of the Japanese’, Sydney Morning Herald, 24 February 1945, p 8. 8 ‘On the job til the last moment’, The Journalist, vol 36, no 6, November 1945, p 3. 9 R J Cloake, ‘POW (Now Home) says one meal kills memories’, Sun, 17 September 1945, p 4. 10 For an example of the serialised version of Ferry’s Lost Division, see Mercury, 10-25 October 1945. 11 Mercury, 29-31 October, 1-9 November 1945; Graeme McCabe, Pacific Sunset, Oldham, Beddome and Meredith, Hobart, 1946. 12 Lionel Hudson, The Rats of Rangoon, Leo Cooper, London, 1987. 13 Souter, Company of Heralds, p 225; Burgess, Warco, p 105. 14 McCabe, Pacific Sunset, p 52. 15 Rivett, Behind Bamboo, pp 149-50. 16 Norman Carter, G-String Jesters, Currawong, Sydney, 1966, pp 4-5. 17 Rivett, Behind Bamboo, pp 87-8. 18 ‘Story of eighth division in captivity’, The Journalist, vol.36, no.6, November 1945, p 4. 19 Hudson, The Rats of Rangoon, pp 31, 57-8. 20 Lionel Hudson, ‘I was bashed by the Japanese … But’, Herald, 14 September 1945, p 4. 21 Quoted in George Johnston, ‘Query by Men of 8th. “Was Australia ashamed?”’, (Adelaide) Advertiser, 7 September 1945, p 1.
281 Notes to pp 216–218
22 G R Dwight, quoted in John Barrett, We Were There: Australian Soldiers of World War II, Viking, Ringwood, 1987, p 245. 23 Souter, Company of Heralds, pp 225-6; Burgess, Warco, p 105. 24 ‘“Am again in business”’, Sydney Morning Herald, 6 February 1945, p 1. 25 H J Summers, ‘War correspondents meet at camp’, Sydney Morning Herald, 10 February 1945, p 3. 26 Jessie Elizabeth Simons, While History Passed: The story of the Australian nurses who were prisoners of the Japanese for three and a half years, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1954. 27 W S Kent Hughes, Slaves of the Samurai, Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1946, pp vii-ix; Stan Arneil, One Man’s War, Alternative Publishing Co-operative, Sydney, 1981, p 3. 28 Humphrey McQueen, Japan to the Rescue, op. cit., 1991, p 307. 29 Rivett in Foster, Self Portraits, p 120. 30 Burgess, Warco, p 95. 31 Hudson, The Rats of Rangoon, pp 65-6. 32 ‘Survived Malaya air battle’, Mercury, 13 October 1945, p 1. 33 ‘On the job til the last moment’. 34 ‘Story of eighth division in captivity’. 35 Rivett, Behind Bamboo, p 115. 36 Burgess, Warco, p 97. Burgess’s account, which draws on Percival’s oral testimony, is quite clear about Percival’s status in the camp However, it is interesting to note that there is no mention of Percival in the comprehensive study of the Santa Tomas camp by Dutch journalist, A V H Hartendorp See Hartendorp’s The Santo Tomas Story, McGraw Hill, New York, 1964. 37 Hudson, ‘I was bashed by the Japanese’. 38 Quoted in Hudson, The Rats of Rangoon, pp 199-200. 39 ‘Back from Siam with secret camp records’, Sun, 12 September 1945, p 5. 40 ‘Indictment of camp authorities’, Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1945, p 3. 41 Rohan D Rivett, ‘War correspondent indicts Jap POW authorities’ Argus, 15 September 1945, p 8. 42 Rohan Rivett, ‘Massacre of nurses on Banka beach’, Argus, 19 September 1945, p 3. See earlier footnote for the rest of Rivett’s articles. 43 Mercury, 10-25 October 1945 (Ferry); 29-31 October, 1-9 November 1945 (McCabe). 44 Rivett, Behind Bamboo, pp 379-80. 45 Rivett in Foster, Self Portraits, p 120. 46 Percival, ‘Three years as a prisoner’. 47 Ferry, Lost Division. 48 Hudson, ‘I was bashed by the Japanese’. 49 Hudson, The Rats of Rangoon, p 3. 50 Graeme McCabe, ‘Grim voyage to Japan in hell ship’s hold’, Mercury, 29 October 1945, p 3. 51 McCabe, Pacific Sunset, pp 104, 106. 52 McQueen, Japan to the Rescue, p 308; Rivett, Behind Bamboo, ch. xv. 53 Rivett, Behind Bamboo, pp 142-3; O’Conroy quoted in ibid., p 142. 54 Quoted in McCabe, Pacific Sunset, p 104. Australia: A Philippine Gaze Raul Pertierra
1 M Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans., T Parsons (1930), London, George, Allen & Unwin, 1904. 2 N Luhmann, Trust and Power, New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1979. 3 R Pertierra, Explorations in Social Theory and Philippine Ethnography, Quezon City, University of the Philippines Press, 1997. 4 R Pertierra, The Dutch as voluntary objects of ethnology, Ethnofoor, no 111 (2), 1990, pp 61-70. 5 L Dumont, Essays on Individualism, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1983. 6 B Kapferer, Legends of People: Myths of State, Washington, Smithsonian Institution Press, 1988. 7 R Ileto and Sullivan (eds), Discovering Australasia – Essays on Philippine Australian Interactions, Townsville, James Cook University, 1983. 8 R Perdon, Early Philippine-Australian Relations, M A (Asian Studies) thesis, University of New South Wales, 1993. 9 The Australian, 10 December 1997. 10 E Wolf, Perilous Ideas: Race, culture, people, Current Anthropology, no 35, 1994, pp 1-12.
282 Notes to pp 14–26
Mythologising a Natural Disaster in Post-Industrial Australia Brad West
1 ‘Mr Whitlam on the spot’, Age, 28 December 1974, p 9. 2 ‘Star-studded concert aims to raise $100,000’, Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1974 p 3. 3 This point is evidence in both popular and academic discourses. B Fraser (ed.), The Macquarie Book of Events, Sydney, Macquarie Library, 1983, p 577; J Western and G Milne, ‘Some Social Effects of a Natural Hazard: Darwin Residents and Cyclone Tracy’, in R L Heathcote and B G Thom (eds), Natural Hazards in Australia Canberra, Australian Academy of Science, 1979. 4 Dorothea Mackellar, I Love a Sunburnt Country, Fortitude Valley, Herron Books, 1995. 5 Charles Bean, The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 June 1907, p 6. 6 Brad West and Philip Smith, ‘Natural disasters and national identity: time, space and mythology’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 1997, vol 33, no 2, pp 205-15. 7 Brad West and Philip Smith, ‘Drought, discourse and Durkheim’, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology, 1996, vol 32, no 1, pp 93-102. 8 ‘Help for Townsville’, The Brisbane Courier, 14 March 1903, p 4. 9 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism, London, Verso, 1983. 10 Michael Schudson, ‘Culture and the Integration of national societies’, International Social Science Journal 1994, vol 46, no 1 (139), pp 63-81; Edward A Tiryakian, ‘The Wild Cards of Modernity’, Daedalus, 1997, vol 126, no 2, pp 147-181. 11 Imaginary Homelands: Australian Dreamings, Longreach Queensland, June 13-20, 1997; Lyn Spillman, Nation and Commemoration: Creating National Identities in the United States and Australia, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996. 12 Raymond Williams, Keywords: a vocabulary of culture and society, London, Fontana/ Croom Helm, 1976. 13 Philip Smith and Brad West (forthcoming), ‘Cultural studies’, Encyclopedia of Nationalism, Academic Press. 14 Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism London, Verso, 1983, p 16. 15 ibid., p 15. 16 ibid., p 6. 17 ibid., p 39. 18 Helen Frizell, ‘Darwin touches a nation’s heart’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 1 January 1975, p 6. 19 ‘Air force doctor works non-stop carrying injured’, The Australian, 27 December 1974, p 2. 20 ‘Cyclone toll’, The West Australian, 27 December 1974, p 6. 21 ‘Biggest challenge since war — Cairns’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1974, p 3. 22 John Lombard, ‘Man in the centre of it all’, The Advertiser, 27 December 1974, p 5. 23 Neil Smelser, Social Change in the Industrial Revolution-an application of theory to the British cotton industry, Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1959. 24 Jon Stratton, ‘Deconstructing the Territory’, Cultural Studies, 1989, vol 3, no 1, p 45. 25 Wallace Crouch ‘Was Darwin Unprepared?’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 27 December 1974, p 7. 26 ‘Death toll in Darwin Tragedy 44’, The Age, 26 December 1974 p2. 27 ‘Biggest challenge since war — Cairns’, The Sydney Morning Herald, 28 December 1974, p 3. 28 Bernard Boucher, ‘Cyclone Devastated City Will Rise Again: Cairns’, The Advertiser, 27 December 1974, p1. 29 ‘Flattened city “worse than A-bomb attack”’, The Mercury, 27 December 1974, p 1. 30 Western and Milne, op. cit. 31 E R Chamberlain, L Doube, G Milne, M Rolls, J S Western, The Experience of Cyclone Tracy, Canberra, Australian Government Publishing Service, 1981. 32 Patricia Short ‘“Victims” and “Helpers”’, in R L Heathcote and B G Thom (eds.), Natural Hazards in Australia, Canberra, Australian Academy of Science, 1979. 33 B Stannard, ‘Humble hero helps city back on feet’, The Australian, 30 December 1974, p 1. 34 ibid. 35 Alan Stretton, The Furious Days: The relief of Darwin, Sydney, Collins, 1976, p 169. 36 Marcel Mauss, The Gift: Forms and Functions of Exchange in Archaic Societies, London, Cohen and West, 1954, p 10.
283 Notes to pp 216–218
37 ibid., p 63. 38 For a discussion on how new forms of technology relate to the Durkheimian dualism of sacred and profane, see Jeffrey C Alexander, ‘The Promise of a Cultural Sociology: Technological Discourse and the Sacred and Profane Information Machine’ In Neil J Smelser and Richard Munch (eds) Theory of Culture, Berkeley, University of California Press, 1993, pp 293-323. 39 Journal of Australian Studies, 1999, no 60. 40 K S Inglis, ‘The Anzac tradition’, Meanjin, 1965, no 1, pp 25-44. 41 Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz, ‘The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past’, American Journal of Sociology, 1991, vol 97, no 2, pp 376-420; Vera L Zolberg, ‘Contested Remembrance: The Hiroshima Exhibit Controversy’, Theory & Society, 1998, vol 27, no 4, pp 565-90. 42 Brad West, ‘The ritual of international civil religious pilgrimage and its challenge to national collective memory’, American Sociological Association Annual Conference, 12-16 August, 2000. 43 In contrast, newer forms of environmental disaster such as acid rain and the greenhouse effect disrespect national boundaries and undermine traditional national sovereignties. 44 Ulrich Beck, Democracy Without Enemies, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1998; Jurgen Habermas, ‘Learning by Disaster? A diagnostic look back on the short 20th century’, Constellations, vol 5, no 3, 1998; Martin Shaw, Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the End of the Twentieth Century, Cambridge, Polity Press, 1991.
The Americanisation of the Outback: Cowboys and Stockmen Jim Hoy
1 Mary Durack, Sons in the saddle, Richmond, Hutchinson, 1983, p 211-12.
Robert Lawlor Tells a ‘White’ Lie Mitchell Rolls
1 See for example, E Stockton, The Aboriginal Gift: Spirituality for a Nation, Alexandria, 1995; J Cowan, Messengers of the Gods: Tribal Elders Reveal the Ancient Wisdom of the Earth, Milsons Point, 1993; J Cowan, Two Men Dreaming: a Memoir, a Journey, Rose Bay, 1995; H Arden, Dreamkeepers: A Spirit-Journey into Aboriginal Australia, New York, 1995; M Furlong, Flight of the Kingfisher, Hammersmith, 1996; P McCloy, The Survival Dreaming, Lindfield, 1995. 2 R Lawlor, Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, Rochester, 1991. 3 M Morgan, Mutant Message Down Under, New York, 1994. 4 Elaine Adams, ‘Ooota, a magic lotion and a chosen mutant: experts scoff at book on trek across Australia’, Kansas City Star, 28 June 1992, p A13. 5 Susan Wyndham, ‘The mystery of Marlo Morgan down under’, Weekend Australian: Australian Magazine, 17-18 December, 1994, pp 26-8, 53-4. 6 Gareth Griffiths, ‘Mixed up messages down under: the Marlo Morgan “hoax”: a textual travesty of Aboriginal culture’, Ulitarra, no 9, 1996, pp 78-9. 7 Barry Hill, ‘Travelling towards the other’, Overland, no 130, Autumn 1993, p 11. 8 Lawlor, op. cit., p 7. 9 ibid., p 151. 10 ibid., pp 8, 14. 11 See Peter Thorslev, ‘The wild man’s revenge’, in E Dudley, M E Novak (eds), The Wild Man Within: An Image in Western Thought from the Renaissance to Romanticism, Pittsburgh, 1972, p 281. 12 In proposing that Australia, and in particular Tasmania, is the birthplace of Homo sapiens, and that Aborigines, especially Tasmanian Aborigines, remain the original, primal people, Lawlor is revisiting theories that date from the 1860s, theories which have been categorically rejected (see Tim Murray, ‘Tasmania and the constitution of “the dawn of humanity”’, Antiquity, vol 66, no 252, September 1992, pp 732-36). Whilst Lawlor’s text and bibliography indicate that he has not consulted this early work, it is significant that through yet another explanatory system — in this instance magnetism — he is reintroducing a past construction of Aborigines in order to place them in the service of yet another origin myth. 13 Lawlor, op. cit., p 86. Lawlor is referring to the 1981 speculations of the biochemist Allan Wilson (see Lawlor, op. cit., pp 24-7). Preliminary mutation counts of Aboriginal mitochondrial DNA
284 Notes to pp 14–26
revealed unexpected patterns and base changes. Wilson provocatively suggested that this pointed to Australia as the origin of Homo sapiens. This ‘discovery’ was proved false almost immediately (see M H Brown, The Search for Eve, New York, 1990, pp 84-7, 98). 14 A Memmi, The Coloniser and the Colonised, London, 1990, p 164. 15 Lawlor, op. cit., p 86. 16 ibid., p 87. 17 ibid., p 86. 18 Quoted in M E Novak, ‘The wild man comes to tea’, in Dudley, Novak, op. cit., p 201. 19 Lawlor, op. cit., pp 91-2. 20 The sequence I use in these examples indicates in order: page number in Voices, end note referred to, then Lawlor’s end note reference which I have standardised: Lawlor, op. cit., p 79, en12, Bernard Smith, ‘The first European depictions’, in I Donaldson, T Donaldson (eds), Seeing the First Australians, North Sydney, 1985, pp 21-34. 21 D J Mulvaney, Encounters in Place: Outsiders and Aboriginal Australians 1606 — 1985, St Lucia, 1989, pp 29-31. 22 Lawlor, op. cit., p 81, en17, J Urry, ‘Savage sportsmen’, in Donaldson, Donaldson, op. cit., pp 56-8. 23 Lawlor, op. cit., p 83, en19, 20, G Williams, ‘Reactions on Cook’s voyage’, in Donaldson, Donaldson, op. cit., pp 41-2. 24 Monaghan, P. Untitled Booklist ‘Review’ of Lawlor, op. cit., (http://www.gotoit.com/titles/ vofidati.htm#Reviews), 27 April 1998. 25 Lawlor, op. cit., pp 65, 233; see also pp 232-33, 237. 26 ibid., pp 81, 86. 27 ibid., pp 80-1. 28 See H T Lewis, ‘Fire Technology and Resource Management in Aboriginal North America and Australia’, in N M Williams, E S Hunn (eds), Resource Managers: North American and Australian Hunter-Gatherers, Boulder, 1982, p 60, figure 2. 29 L Ryan, The Aboriginal Tasmanians, St Leonards; 1996, pp 17, 21, 23, 24, 38. 30 J Flood, Archaeology of the Dreamtime, Sydney, 1983, pp 213-14. 31 Lawlor, op. cit., p 11. 32 ibid., p 151. 33 ibid., p 159. 34 ibid., p 293; see also pp 65, 190, 237, 325, 376. 35 P Hountondji, African Philosophy: Myth and Reality, London, 1983, p 164. 36 Kim Akerman, ‘Tradition and Change in Aspects of Contemporary Australian Aboriginal Religious Objects’, in C Anderson (ed.), ‘Politics of the secret’, Oceania, Monograph 45, Sydney, 1995, pp 43-9; see also Tim Murray, ‘Creating a Post-Mabo Archaeology of Australia’, in B Attwood (ed.), In the Age of Mabo: History, Aborigines and Australia, St Leonards, 1996, pp 73-87; T Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia, Melbourne, 1996, pp 93-4. 37 Bain Attwood, ‘Making History: Imagining Aborigines and Australia’, in T Bonyhady, T Griffiths (eds), Prehistory to Politics: John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual, Carlton South, 1996, pp 98-116. 38 Fred Myers, ‘Critical trends in the study of hunter-gatherers’, Annual Review of Anthropology, vol 17, 1988, p 263. 39 See Lawlor, op. cit., pp 23-4, 34, 67, 76, 91, 137-38, 317 40 N Thomas, Colonialism’s Culture: Anthropology, Travel and Government, Princeton, 1994, p 176. 41 Lawlor, op. cit., p 173. 42 ibid., p 173. 43 ibid., pp 154-55, 169-77, 209-31. 44 ibid., p 176. 45 ibid., p xii. 46 See C Tatz, Obstacle Race: Aborigines in Sport, Sydney, 1996, pp 300-01. 47 P Jones, Boomerang: Behind an Australian Icon, Kent Town, 1996, pp 70-7. 48 Lawlor, op. cit., pp 10-11. 49 ibid., pp 61, 126, 140, 141, 175, 228, 312, 387. 50 ibid., p 211. 51 ibid., pp 213-14. 52 ibid., pp 225-31. It should also be noted, to take but one example from this section, that Lawlor’s
285 Notes to pp 216–218
explanation of how Aborigines employed their women in the role of ritual prostitute so as to satisfy the lust of roving parties of men on the hunt, directly contradicts on several points the information provided in his cited source (Lawlor, op. cit., pp 229-30, en28, R Tonkinson, The Mardudjara Aborigines: Living the Dream in Australia’s Desert, Orlando, 1978, p 120; see also another of Lawlor’s key references, R M Berndt, C H Berndt, The World of the First Australians, Canberra, 1988, p 357). 53 Thomas, op. cit., p 175; See also Annette Hamilton, ‘A complex strategical situation: gender and power in Aboriginal Australia’, in N Grieve, P Grimshaw (eds), Australian Women: Feminist Perspectives, Melbourne, 1981, pp 69-85. 54 J Money, J E Cawte, G N Bianchi, B Nurcombe, ‘Sex training and traditions in Arnhem Land’, in G E Kearney, P R De Lacey, G R Davidson (eds), The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians, Sydney, 1973, pp 401-15. 55 Lawlor, op. cit., p 169. 56 Janice Newton, ‘Aborigines, tribes and the counterculture’, Social Analysis, no. 23, August 1988, p 61; See also Money et al., op. cit.; A O Lovejoy, G Boas, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, New York, 1965, p 9. 57 Lawlor, op. cit., p 206. 58 ibid., p 111. 59 Myers, op. cit., p 264; see also Lovejoy and Boas, op. cit., p 7; M Torgovnick, Gone Primitive: Savage Intellects, Modern Lives, Chicago, 1991, pp 8-9. 60 See for example, Lawlor, op. cit., pp 7, 58, 59, 62, 77, 137, 139, 140, 141, 169, 172, 176, 181, 192, 208, 236, 252, 271, 273, 275, 324, 351, 384, 385, 387. 61 ibid., pp 149-51, 386-87. 62 ibid., pp 386-87. 63 ibid., p 280. 64 Hayden White, ‘The Forms of wildness: archaeology of an idea’, in Dudley, Novak, op. cit., pp 27, 26. This also provides another indication of Lawlor’s reliance upon out-dated constructs of Aborigines developed under the scientific paradigms he spurns. The fact that Aborigines did not have to contend with fierce animals (nor compete with ‘higher races’) was a popular Darwinian theory as to why their wits had supposedly remained dulled (see W B Spencer, ‘Chapter II: The Aboriginals of Australia’, in G H Knibbs (ed.), Federal Handbook: Prepared in Connection with the Eighty-Fourth Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1914, p 33). Because Lawlor relies on the notion of Aborigines being an ancient people bearing an ancient culture, rather than turning to contemporary theorems, he simply changes the values accorded to concepts long rejected by most working in the field of Aboriginal Studies. 65 Lawlor, op. cit., p 138; see also pp 386-87. 66 ibid., p 386. 67 ibid., pp 386-87. 68 ibid., p 248. 69 M Charlesworth, H Morphy, D Bell, K Maddock (eds), Religion in Aboriginal Australia: An Anthology, St Lucia, 1984.
286 Contributors
Stephen Alomes
Julie Carr is a graduate scholar of the School of English, La Trobe University. Her forthcoming book, provisionally titled, ‘The White Woman of Gipps Land’, is to be published by Melbourne University Press, 2001.
R Catley is Professor and Chair, Department of Political Studies, University of Otago, New Zealand.
Robert Dixon is Professor of English and Head of the Department of Humanities and International Studies, University of Southern Queensland. He has previously taught at the University of Sydney, the University of Newcastle, Curtin University and James Cook University. He has published widely on Australian literature, postcolonial literatures, cultural studies and Australian art history. He is the author of Writing the Colonial Adventure: Race, Gender and Nation in Anglo-Australian Popular Fiction 1875-1914 (Cambridge UP, 1995). He is the editor, with Delys Bird and Susan Lever, of CanonOZities: The Making of Literary Reputations in Australia (Southerly 1997) and, with Alison Bartlett and Chris Lee, of Australian Literature and the Public Sphere (ASAL, 1999). Australian Literary Criticism: 1950-2000, co-edited with Delys Bird and Chris Lee, will be published by UQP in 2001. He is currently preparing for publication in the UQP Australian Studies series ‘Prosthetic Gods: travel, representation and colonial governance’.
Ian Henderson is a postgraduate in the School of English, Art, Film and Media Studies at the University of Sydney. He is writing a thesis on the reception in Australia of Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie (1788).
Marnie Haig-Muir is a Lecturer in Economic and Social Studies at Deakin University, Geelong, Her main teaching areas cover aspects of British, European and Australian economic and social history. Her research interests focus on gender and sport, particularly on equal opportunity and participation and equity issues in women’s golf, and on sporting history and heritage in Victoria. She has published on the Australian economy during the first and second world wars, rice-growing and regional development, and gender issues in women’s golf.
Roy Hay is Senior Lecturer in Economic and Social Studies at Deakin University, Geelong. He teaches sports and labour history and is the author of books on social policy and articles on the history of soccer, ethnicity and migration in Australia. Along with his colleagues he is producing a thematic history of sport in Victoria for Heritage Victoria and is acting as consultant for the City of Greater Dandenong in the heritage nomination of Waverley Park. He is President of the Australian Society for Sports History.
Jim Hoy, a folklorist in the Department of English at Emporia (Kansas) State University, is an authority on the folklife of ranching. Among his books are Plains Folk: A Commonplace of the Great Plains (with Tom Isern), Cowboys and Kansas: Stories from the Tallgrass Prairie, and the forthcoming Mounted Herders of North America: Vaqueros, Cowboys, and Buckaroos (with Lawrence Clayton and Jerry Underwood). He has twice visited Australia and New Zealand on research and lecture trips, most recently in 1998.
Margaret Maynard Margaret Maynard is a senior lecturer in the Department of Art History,
287 The University of Queensland. She has written widely on Australian nineteenth and twentieth century art, photography, design and dress. Her latest book ‘Out of Line: Australian Women and Style’ is shortly to be published by UNSW Press.
Peter Mewett teaches sociology in the School of Social Inquiry at Deakin University in Geelong, Australia. His research interests centre on sport, identity and nationalism. Having researched and published on Scotland and on Australia, his main research focus is now on sport. Over the past few years he has been involved in a study of professional running and of the Stawell Easter Gift. Currently he is investigating sport and the body, with a particular emphasis on the development of sports training practices; sport and nationalism; and sporting sites.
Adrian Mitchell teaches at the University of Sydney. He has taught in Adelaide, Texas, Ontario, and British Columbia. He has published extensively on Australian literature and is currently researching Australian non-fictional prose.
Nicole Moore (contacted)
Philippa Moylan Philippa Moylan is completing her PhD at the University of Melbourne. Her thesis addresses the cultural manifestations of nervousness in the late colonial texts of Kipling, Galsworthy and Lancaster.
Raul Pertierra has published extensively in the areas of: Southeast Asia and Philippine Society; Anthropological and Sociological Theory; Time, Religion and Rural Life. He has conducted fieldwork in the Philippines and among overseas workers. He teaches courses on Southeast Asia, religion and sociological theory. Raul has supervised postgraduate students doing research on Bangladesh, China, Indonesia and the Philippines. His current research interests are National Traditions in the Social Sciences; the globalization of local cultures; the role of intellectuals in Philippine society; anthropological theories of the ‘Other’. His main publications include Religion, Politics and Rationality in a Philippines Community (1988), Philippine Localities and Global Perspectives (1995) and Explorations in Social Theory and Philippine Ethnography (1997).
Mitchell Rolls holds a degree from the University of South Australia and a Masters and PhD from Monash. He lectures in Aboriginal Studies at the University of Tasmania. His research interests include non-material cultural appropriation and cultural colonisation, and Australian indigenous life-histories and autobiographies. He has published recently in the journals Australian Studies (BASA), Australian Feminest Law Journal, Melbourne Journal of Politics and Antithesis.
Advocate A D Schmulow is Advocate of the High Court of South Africa. He is a Research Fellow in the Asian Law Centre, University of Melbourne; Honorary Research Associate, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg; Visiting Fellow, Institut Kajian Malaysia dan Antarabangsa, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia; and National Visiting Fellow in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, in the Australian National University.
G L Shelton is the Research Director of the East Asia Project in the Department of International Relations at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg.
Elaine Stratford is a Lecturer in the School of Geography and Environmental Studies at the
288 University of Tasmania. Her research interests include cultural geography, sustainable communities, and social theory.
Jon Stratton is Professor of Cultural Studies at Curtin University of Technology. His most recent books are Race Daze: Australia in Identity Crisis (Pluto Australia 1998), and Coming Out Jewish: Constructing Ambivalent Identities (Routledge 2000).
Masayo Tada is a PhD candidate in Australian Studies at the History Department, School of Humanities, Australian National University. Her current research deals with Australian studies in Japan, considering representations of culture of the Other in university education, and questions of national identity.
Rebe Taylor Rebe Taylor is a doctoral student studying Aboriginal Tasmanian history under the supervision of Dr Tom Griffiths in the History Program of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. She has recently returned from Oxford where she was researching as an exchange student and a Bicentennial Scholar of the Sir Robert Menzies Centre of the Australian Studies in the Pitt Rivers Museum. Rebe is also reworking her Masters into book which will soon published by Wakefield Press as ‘Unearthed: the Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island, South Australia’, a project supported by Arts SA and Melbourne University.
Prue Torney-Parlicki is currently a fellow in the department of history, University of Melbourne. The author of Somewhere in Asia: War, Journalism and Australia’s Neighbours 1941-75 (UNSW Press, 2000), as well as journal articles on aspects of Australian media and journalism history, she is working on a biography of the Australian journalist and broadcaster, Dr Peter Russo.
Brad West is a PhD candidate in the department of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Queensland. He has published a number of articles on the theme of natural disasters and national identity. His dissertation theorises national pilgrimage in the current era of globalisation. He spent three months of 1998 in Gallipoli interviewing Australian backpackers. With Philip Smith, he has a co-authored the chapter ‘Cultural Studies and Nationalism’ in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Nationalism (Academic Press). Other recent research include the historical representation of Waltzing Matilda and the problematic nature of American Civil War battle reenactments.
289 J A S Australia’s Public Intellectual Forum
Board of Management and Advisory Board
Professor Dennis Altman, Government, La Trobe University Professor Bruce Bennett, English, Australian Defence Force Academy Associate Professor Verity Burgmann, Politics, University of Melbourne Professor Ann Curthoys, History, Australian National University Dr Kate Darian Smith, Australian Studies Centre, University of Melbourne Professor Robert Dixon, English, University of Southern Queensland Professor Mark Finnane, Humanities, Griffith University Dr Andrew Hassam, Australian Studies, University of Wales, Lampeter Dr David Headon, Australian Studies, Australian Defence Force Academy Dr Dorottya Hollo, Australian Studies, Eotvos Lorand University, Budapest Dr James Jupp, Social Sciences, Australian National University Professor Beverley Kingston, History, University of New South Wales Professor Marilyn Lake, History, La Trobe University Professor Stuart Macintyre, History, University of Melbourne Associate Professor Ann McGrath, History, University of New South Wales Professor John McLaren, English, Victoria University of Technology Dr John McQuilton, Geography, University of Wollongong Professor Brian Matthews, European Studies, Victoria University Prof Meaghan Morris, Cultural Studies, Lingnan University, Hong Kong Professor Rosemary Pringle, Women’s Studies, Griffith University Professor Henry Reynolds, History, James Cook University Professor Jill Roe, History, Macquarie University Dr Deborah Bird Rose, North Australian Research Unit, Darwin Professor Lyndall Ryan, Australian Studies, University of Newcastle Professor Werner Senn, Australian Studies, University of Berne, Switzerland Professor Peter Spearritt, Australian Studies, Monash University Angela Smith, Australian Studies, Stirling University, Scotland Professor C T Stannage, Humanities and Social Sciences, Curtin University Associate Professor Elaine Thompson, Political Science, University of New South Wales Professor David Walker, Australian Studies, Deakin University Professor James Walter, Humanities, Griffith University Professor Hu Wen Zhong, Australian Studies, University of Beijing, China Dr Adi Wimmer, Australian Studies, University of Klagenfurt, Austria Associate Professor Gus Worby, Australian Studies, Flinders University