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JULY 2012

ISSN 1834-1004 Fryer ‘Back to Nature’: Oodgeroo’s Return to FryerF Library, The University olios of Queensland Volume 7 | Number 1 | JULY 2012 Stradbroke Island Special Issue 3 6 10 Stradbroke

‘BACK TO NATURE’: STRADBROKE ISLAND WRITERS’ FOOTPRINTS OODGEROO’S RETURN TO (NORTH) STRADBROKE Ros Follett interviews Stanton (JSD) An extract from Writers’ footprints: a Mellick, the author of Writer’s footprints: William Hatherell discusses Oodgeroo Queensland literary companion by JSD a Queensland literary companion. Noonuccal’s life and work at Moongalba. Mellick 13 17 20 William Hatherell discusses Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s life and work at Moongalba. STRADBROKE: A BRIEF THE PASSIONIST MISSION ON 2012 Fryer Library Awards HISTORY STRADBROKE ISLAND & Frank Thompson AO n 1970, Australia’s bestselling poet and luminaries such as Judith Wright, Nancy prominent Indigenous activist Kath Walker Cato and Ian Fairweather); manuscripts of Marion Diamond surveys the eventful Stefano Girola examines an early, ill-fated Profiles of our Fryer Library Award Ireturned permanently to her childhood home poems and stories (generally written in school history of Stradbroke Island. Catholic mission on Stradbroke Island. winners and a recent honour to note at Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island), escaping exercise books), and articles, speeches and from what she called the ‘concrete jungle’ of correspondence from this period; architectural Above: ‘Camp theatre with moon, emu, 1973’. Brisbane. The move signalled a new direction plans and funding submissions that document UQFL84, album 3, in her career, following the unprecedented Oodgeroo’s (sadly unrealised) vision for image 42 popular success of her poetry books We are Moongalba; curiosities such as a ‘rhymes’ book 21 24 28 going (1964), The dawn is at hand (1966) and (Box 38) apparently used as a kind of rhyming Below: ‘Kath digging My people (1970), and years of intense political thesaurus; and voluminous material relating to bungwall, 1975’. engagement culminating in Walker’s leading role Oodgeroo’s extensive political and community UQFL84, box 14, in the triumphal passage of the 1967 referendum activities on Stradbroke and beyond, including image 158 MOOLOOMBA HOUSE FUTURES PASSED: UTOPIAN WHAT’S NEW to grant full civil rights to Indigenous Australians. campaigns against new mining leases and the BRISBANE IN NINETEENTH- She soon leased five acres from the Redlands building of a bridge from the mainland. Brit Andresen describes a beach house CENTURY NOVELS Fryer welcomes a new University Shire Council just off the main road between designed to take advantage of Stradbroke Librarian, three new staff, and some Dunwich and Amity Point at Moongalba (‘sitting By the 1970s mainstream Australian culture James Halford, 2011 Fryer Library Award Island’s unique landscape and climate. wonderful new additions to its down place’). Here Walker shared the natural and had readily embraced Oodgeroo as Australia’s winner, explores utopian visions of Brisbane collections. cultural riches of the island with about 30 000 semi-official ‘Aboriginal poet’ and spokeswoman in three late nineteenth-century novels. schoolchildren who visited the site over two for her people. Her life at Moongalba was decades, even though she never realised her regularly profiled in anodyne ‘lifestyle’ pieces in Front Cover: Frenchman’s Beach, Stradbroke Island, FRIENDS OF FRYER: PAGE 32 OBITUARIES: PAGE 34 dream of creating a comprehensive Indigenous newspapers and magazines, including a ‘My day’ photo by Mila Zincone. piece in Woman’s Day in July 1976. More rigorous A look at events enjoyed by the Friends, Betty Crouchley and John Knight cultural centre. She lived in a caravan at Back Cover: Stradbroke Island photos by Mila Moongalba until her death in 1993, changing her analysis of Oodgeroo’s unique achievements Zincone and upcoming activities name in 1988 to Oodgeroo (paperbark tree) of the and her relationship with Stradbroke came Noonuccal tribe (the original inhabitants of North through Frank Heiman’s film Shadow sister (1978), Stradbroke) as a further gesture of identity with the ABC television documentary Stradbroke Fryer Folios is published by The University of Queensland Library to illustrate the range of special collections in the Fryer Library and to showcase scholarly research dreamtime (1977), and a scholarly article by based on these sources. ISSN 1834-1004 (print) ISSN 1834-1012 (online). Fryer Folios is distributed to libraries and educational institutions around Australia. her ancestral country. If you wish to be added to the mailing list, please contact the Secretary, Friends of Fryer, The University of Queensland Library, The University of Queensland Q 4072. visiting American academic Margaret Read Lauer Telephone (07) 3346 9427; Fax (07) 3365 6776; Email: [email protected] (Note: individuals wishing to receive a copy will need to join Friends of Fryer). The Oodgeroo Noonuccal papers at the Fryer (published in 1978), based on an extended visit (UQFL84) include a large amount of material to Moongalba. All these projects are extensively Unless otherwise stated, the photographs in this magazine are taken by the Fryer Editors Marion Diamond, Ros Follett, Laurie McNeice, related to the Moongalba/Stradbroke period: documented in the Fryer papers. Library Reproduction Service. The views expressed in Fryer Folios are those of Chris Tiffin, Penny Whiteway the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors Photographers Penny Whiteway, Andrew Yeo, Mila Zincone the ‘Moongalba diaries’ (a kind of visitor’s book or publisher. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright Graphic design Lilly Borchardt that also records cash and in-kind donations At times, Oodgeroo implies that her Stradbroke holders for illustrative material in this magazine. Where this was not possible, the Printed by Westminster Printing, Milton, Qld to the project by supporters, including cultural period involved a withdrawal from the heady copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher.

2 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 3 literary and political engagement of the 60s. As and writing about the Island … Any students, (Box 60). In an article titled ‘Dunwich: Stradbroke she puts it in the Woman’s Day piece: anthropologists, linguists who have visited the Island: assimilation of Aborigines’, Oodgeroo Island to study the people or the culture would uses the biography of her father to make a point So far about 8000 children have visited me be obliged to place copies of their works in the about the complex history of race relations here. They seem to be my whole life now. Cultural Centre’ (Box 52). on the island. Her father’s grandfather was a Of course, the future is with them. When Manila man of Spanish descent who married an I do get time for writing it’s rarely lengthy In fact, none of these plans, apart from the open- Aboriginal woman on the island, and his mother, stuff. Mostly I’ve been doing short stories air theatre, were ever realised as sufficient state the outcome of this union, had married a German for children. (Box 2(b)(i)) and federal funding was never forthcoming (the (Box 27). long history of Oodgeroo’s frustrations in her Certainly Oodgeroo took her responsibilities plans for Moongalba is documented by Kathie The island also imposed its presence on as an educator remarkably seriously (as Cochrane in her biography).1 Oodgeroo lived Oodgeroo’s poetry. In her interview with discussed below), and her major publication simply in a caravan and schoolchildren and other Margaret Read Lauer included in the 1978 article, of the Moongalba period was Stradbroke visitors camped nearby. But Oodgeroo and Oodgeroo articulates this influence as a new dreamtime (1972; new editions with different her collaborators did succeed in developing a concern with nature: illustrators 1982 and 1993; publisher’s proof is sophisticated program for thousands of visiting in Box 1(ii)), a collection of stories about her own schoolchildren. A detailed schedule for a ‘Year I think my poetry, since I came here, has island childhood as well as dreamtime stories, 11 Guidance Camp’ in 1980, apparently aimed changed, is now more subtle. I now fight clearly written with quite a different purpose at Indigenous students, features sessions on for butcher birds, for university students, and audience in mind than the highly politicised college, career search, black literature, study for the rights of possums, for everything poems and speeches of the 60s. As she puts it in skills, pottery/macramé, and assertiveness that is alive, not just the human race, but some manuscript notes: ‘I’m out of the civil rights everything—be they plants, snakes or Above: ‘The Dunwich training (Box 52). Visitors to Moongalba also artclass kids, August movement. I’m back to nature’ (Box 3(i)). included students from elite private schools such golden-orbed spiders—because man is as ‘Churchie’ and Ipswich Girls’ Grammar. lost without any of these. Man has the 1973’. UQFL84, album Yet the Fryer papers also reveal the extent and 3, image 19 power to communicate and has fallen intensity of Oodgeroo’s commitments, not just Apparently Oodgeroo herself at one stage down on his job. (Box 38) to her island home and the continuing struggle contemplated writing a history of the island. of her people, but also to many of the causes A submission to Redland Shire Council in Manuscript poems from the Stradbroke period that defined the period, including the emerging October 1971 refers to an intention ‘to apply for show a sensitivity to the natural beauties of conservation movement, opposition to uranium a Commonwealth Literary Fund grant to write the island as well as a more personal voice, mining and resistance to various actions of the the proposed book on the history of Stradbroke addressing issues such as friendship and love, Bjelke-Petersen government. They also show Island’, mentioning research already done by than is found in most of the published poetry principles that dominated the practice and Oodgeroo starting to explore new creative Nancy Cato that would contribute to the project of the 60s. Experimentation with the short line, criticism of poetry in post-war Australia (although Above: Oodgeroo outlets. Catalogues for her exhibitions of paintings (Box 29/4). The history of the island, and its and a form of free verse (perhaps reflecting the there are some interesting attempts to engage Noonuccal, 1980s. in Brisbane and Noosa in 1981 (Box 52) show the interaction with Oodgeroo’s personal and family wider ‘New Poetry’ movement of the 1970s) also with her as both poet and political activist in the UQFL84, album 1, image 106 beginnings of an interest that would culminate history, loom large in the Fryer material, as they contrast with the sometimes awkward insistence 1994 ‘tribute’ issue of Australian Literary Studies). in Quandamooka: the art of Kath Walker (1985). do in Stradbroke dreamtime. Several manuscript on formal rhyme schemes in the earlier poetry. The Fryer collection not only documents the Numerous manuscripts, poems and stories show notes refer to the traumatic post-colonial history ‘Full moon’ (Box 27) is a particularly arresting extent and intensity of Oodgeroo’s educational, that Oodgeroo also continued to explore new of the island—Dunwich as Brisbane’s first port, example of this new mode: political and ecological activities during her ‘semi- directions in creative writing. sailors bringing venereal disease to Indigenous The full moon retirement’ on Stradbroke, but also—particularly women, the Dunwich Benevolent Asylum for the Bent over the tree-tops, in the unpublished manuscript poems and stories Oodgeroo spent much of her time during her indigent aged (which moved to its current location Bathing the island and in the material about her development as Stradbroke period on the lecture circuit. She at ‘Eventide’, Sandgate in 1946 after eighty years) With silver light. a visual artist—the development of a new, and spoke at most Australian universities and The black pines (Box 28/11). In the unpublished story ‘Old Mick’ arguably subtler, aesthetic. colleges of advanced education on topics Shivered in the easterly breeze. (Box 27), a Benevolent Asylum resident thinks including Australian literature, Aboriginal culture Possums played on tilted branch he is helping Oodgeroo’s family by bringing As I stared in lonely awe and conservation. A 1978 itinerary shows her them leftover food from the home, but the family, At the magic of the night, REFERENCES travelling to Western Australia, Sydney, New dismissive of western food even at its best, Listening for your voice Guinea, Wollongong, Melbourne and Tasmania No longer there. 1. K Cochrane, Oodgeroo, University of Queensland Press, discreetly throws it to the chooks. between April and July (Box 38). Yet the island, Curlew cries St Lucia, 1994, pp. 87-103. and Moongalba in particular, remained at the His mournful tune; Oodgeroo also refers disparagingly to the Black wattles groan centre of her activities. Christian missionaries who visited the island As easterly breeze brushes past William Hatherell is the author of The third as early as the 1840s. In a sometimes amusing To caress my tear-stained cheeks. metropolis: imagining Brisbane through art and Detailed architectural drawings (Box 29/11) and transcript of a hearing at the Mining Warden’s I shiver and stumble literature 1940-1970 (UQP, 2007), which was various statements and submissions show the Court in 1984, Oodgeroo, who was opposing an Towards the door based largely on research conducted in the ambitious vision of the Moongalba project. ‘The Shutting out the beauty of the night, application for a mining lease, told her counsel Fryer Library between 2000 and 2003. His other Nuccle Nughie Cultural Centre’ (named after the That my lonely aching body (the future Queensland Attorney-General Matt publications include journal articles on Australian two main tribal groups on the island, the latter Without you, Foley) that the Noonuccal had gravitated to Cannot bear to endure. literature and cultural history and the Australian displaced from neighbouring Moreton Island Moongalba ‘when the missionaries came in and dictionary of biography entries for Laurence during the nineteenth century) was to have Mainstream Australian literary culture has never told them they had to become Christians and Collinson and John Manifold. He is currently a included a park, art gallery, museum, open-air quite known where to place the poetry of Walker/ they told them to select a place but they must sit Senior Development Officer in QUT’s Alumni and theatre, and library (Box 2b(ii)). The centre was Oodgeroo, which in its frequent didacticism and down in one place and stop their pagan … ways’ Development Office. also envisaged as a repository of ‘all documents use of traditional forms often defies the modernist

4 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 5 Stradbroke Island

An extract from Writers’ footprints: a Queensland literary companion by JSD Mellick (North)

STRADBROKE ISLAND (NORTH)

27o 35 S/153o 27 E

Minjerribah, the original name of the island, was Saunders’ collection, June (1939), becomes In another brief poem, ‘Stradbroke’ (1980), Judith Another, in different vein, tells of a faithful bride home to Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal prophetic and poignant in the light of her being Rodriguez uses three images from the island to who chose death rather than be captured by two (formerly Kath Walker), whose poems and swept off the rocks with three companions and capture it successfully: the feel of walking on of her husband’s brothers. Steele, who discusses prose writings are many and well known. Paul drowned off Point Lookout on New Year’s Day hot sand; the sight of ever-present surf-fishers aspects of Aboriginal life elsewhere in Queensland, Sherman’s ‘For Oodgeroo’ (1995) commemorates 1939. standing in foam; and old Cylinder Beach, with its too, has also written on Moreton Bay explorers and her and in doing so refers to ‘that red vein to pandanus on the Point etched against the sky. on Brisbane in convict days. the bay’, Myora Spring, likening it to the deep She wrote several poems about the sea, but wellspring of her poetry. in this poem, high on a wind-blown cliff, she is As she describes it, the headland between Goin’ to the island, a play by Therese Collie moved by the vastness of the Pacific Ocean with Cylinder and Frenchman’s Beaches is overhung (b. 1953), is set on Stradbroke Island and was He recollects Oodgeroo as being: its ceaseless rollers. with pandanus and draped with vines, while rocks performed by Kooemba Jdarra Theatre in 1999. Proud of your race, steely and sharp at times My childish heart knew then that I was randomly project among its grass. Some of the action takes place on a barge travelling yet voice as liquid as the lost lagoon born Two poems, ‘Stradbroke ferry’ and ‘Stradbroke across Moreton Bay to the island, while other and old eyes rippled by a dream of dawn A slave to ocean—yet a master, too, dreaming’, of Jan Turner-Jones (b. 1945) in scenes unfold a vigorously vernacular play rich in And worshipper and follower and fool, that wounds would heal like paperbark’s Moongalba cycle (1982), are a response to the family communal life. Another play, Story of the As one can be the fool of any man. scarred trunk. ‘Straddie’ experience. miracles at Cookie’s table (2007) by Wesley Enoch, Or fool of any woman. When she calls, has the ambience of Stradbroke Island and the I go. The first poem uses a difficult, nearly disastrous Creeks to be crossed (p. 22) island’s stories in its narrative core. trip across Moreton Bay to reflect on those who The Aboriginal people of the island are indirectly Oodgeroo’s work is too extensive to be referred to pursue life calmly in the face of danger and who The play is non-naturalistic but its staging centre praised in the satire of John Manifold, in his poem Photos by Mila Zincone here in detail. Suffice to say her interests included defuse our heightened sense of adventure by their is a table made from an ancestral birthplace-tree. ‘Ocean beach’ (1971). It won the Patrick White Award for 2006; was Mila works in the a just recognition of her people and a questioning prosaic attitudes, e.g. a woman on deck, knitting, of white civilisation’s values. In addition to her Deriding the time-acquired suntans of whites on indifferent to impending doom. played at the Stables, Sydney, in 2007 by Griffin Teaching and Learning the island, Manifold laconically describes Tom of and Hothouse Theatres; and was published by many poems, she wrote children’s stories and The second poem reflects on how far the Service at the UQ Dunwich as having a beautiful tan—one acquired Currency Press in 2007. recorded many delightful Aboriginal legends trappings of contemporary life have distanced Library and spends during the past several thousand years. her free time with her of Stradbroke Island and Australia. In Legends us from our natural beginnings. In doing so, they ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS camera on Stradbroke and landscapes (1990), she tells three stories Manifold also protests in ‘Nightmares and have despoiled our environment and started our which give the origin of South Passage, between sunhorses’ against place names derived from This extract has been reprinted with the kind Island. Mila’s solo inevitable decline—summarised succinctly in permission of the author and the publisher, Moreton and Stradbroke Islands; of the ‘Blowhole’ overseas when ‘what the land prefers’ are the Turner-Jones’ ‘The final phase has been set in exhibition ‘Shadows Australian Scholarly Publishing Pty Ltd. and reflections’ off Point Lookout; and the hostility of the Nughies musical Indigenous names of Eurunderee, motion’. Background: The sea at of Moreton Island (Moorgumpin) towards the Gunnewin and Thunda and those locally derived Stradbroke Island featured images JG Steele’s article ‘Aboriginal legends of Noonuccal tribe of Minjerribah (Stradbroke Island). such as One Tree Hill and Nightcap Range. of Italy, Holland Stradbroke Island’, in Focus on Stradbroke Left: North Gorge, and Australia. Her During the six months of Brisbane’s Expo in 1988, Graham Rowlands (b. 1947) in ‘Days’ (1975), writes (1984), examines in detail ten surviving legends Stradbroke Island photographs have the Rainbow Serpent Theatre played continuously graphically of the beaches and sand on the island, of the island which deal with the origin of some Top right: Deadman’s appeared in several and gave 10 000 shows, all with Aboriginal actors. describing the scuttling away of small crabs when of its features and whether they can be related to Beach, Stradbroke Island publications. All of the shows were written by Oodgeroo approached and the unresisting looseness of the earlier topographical events. Examples are those Bottom Right: Fisherman Noonuccal and her son Vivian. sand dunes down which he slides. focusing on South Passage Bar, South Passage, at Stradbroke Island An extract from an unfinished poem in Margaret Amity’s disappearing, Whale Rock, Blue Lake and the genesis of Pimpama Island.

6 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 7 STRADBROKE For Oodgeroo STRADBROKE DREAMING Four poems If the long beaches burn, there will be a pool. for Oodgeroo Noonuccal, Moongalba Your smile, ripple of light in a Stradbroke lagoon The pool’s hidden. Burn for it. Grind heels in a sift (Stradbroke, once Minjerriba, your tribal home). of beach—a ridge of sandheld boulders—a beach. echoed in a portrait in Lecce’s Australian library In the beginning, the spawning mangroves People fish, each on his own stretch hairy with foam. lovingly wall-pinned by Bernard Hickey, were nudged towards the sea. about Turn the point, shoes in hand. It could be the first day cuts through the dark as I write these words Land creatures, swollen with the theory on Frenchman’s, the pallor, its washes hard as eggshell a week after your death, with cold rain falling. of their climb, turned from the womb and trackless at noon. and counted recent gain. Poet and activist. Impromptu tags in the Press obituaries Stradbroke Far along, forms of life, still we have left no mark. as if a dichotomy there as in sugar and salt Will we find bones of the four-legged men The sea-dumped jellyfish rings gape pink as footsoles. but poems should not purr like sedatives crumbling in the middens? They too are dying. and yours were meant to sting as well as sing. The bleached white shells rattle at the sun Words were the wellspring of your deep lagoon while we sit mumbling together, Island Now look on, look up, shadow fills us. The overhang that red vein to the bay, Myora Spring. shuffling notes and adjusting our learning. bristles with pandanus, vine-lipped, grins rock loosened from the grassed whaleback headland. We pass in. The pool Your father’s totem mate, the carpet snake How many moons were lost in the tide lies, body of water poured out in sand, the slow “Old Carpie” in the tale you loved to tell, before we brought plague and the diesel’s economy, stone-leached tincture of soils under blowing rain. cradled your baby sister, panicked the house before we discovered disease in the sand? You stand to feel it gathering down, it is nearly but brushed a rainbow smile from old Biami’s eye. Trapped by the dark, we made uneasy truce, stillness. I prop: let’s sight across beach, dazzle and You gave me charter to perform your tale slipping away from words like the flying fox at dawn. there! hole-to-hole rushes and dust-ups against sea-wind and so I did, from Italy to Tully, of flickering sandcrabs… twinning Australian lore with Shakespeare’s page, We have taken off our lives and hung the bones a carpet-weave oblivious to divisions on broken branches around the fire. We judge You squat, and puddle. You say “Taste”. It has slowed and pooled as was your way, pointing a way to us. the shadows more real than life, and steal bitterer than ocean. the publican’s wine to accompany our guitar Proud of your race, steely and sharp at times and drive the night through its pain. Judith Rodriguez1 yet voice as liquid as the lost lagoon and old eyes rippled by a dream of dawn The final phase has been set in motion: that wounds would heal like paperbark’s scarred trunk. the leeward plain exposes its core to the sea. The crawling paradise groves Paul Sherman2 practise sensation and change, moving to the quickening sounds … DAYS Small crabs scuttle on the beach, scatter Yet still we come with maps and gauges, adjusting like marbles spilled from a bag the awkward tripod, directing the downward stroke, as we slip down sand hills. until each texture is stripped from its place, They always run away. revealing a bleeding history that does not justify reclamation. Sometimes, we, the two of us, chafe against each other, hand in hand, Red sails stain the horizon: as we slide down a damp crease the ghosts disperse without a fight, in the wind-folded dunes. beaten by a careless spill of air. I feel I cannot resist, The sun climbs mountains, I resent this sand. marking the point of our decay.

REFERENCES Graham Rowlands3 It is too late to begin: black gold slides along the chute, 1. J Rodriguez, Mudcrab at Gambaro’s, University of Queensland piles inside the waiting belly. Press, St Lucia, 1980. We have distorted The Dreaming 2. P Sherman, Creeks to be crossed, SweetWater Press, and numb creatures, confused, Sunnybank, QLD, 1995. scramble for relief in the middle of the day. 3. G Rowlands, Replacing mirrors, Saturday Centre, Cammeray, NSW, 1975. 4. J Turner-Jones, Moongalba cycle, SweetWater Press, Jan Turner-Jones4 Brisbane, 1982.

These poems have been reprinted with the kind permission of their authors and the publishers.

8 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 9 and support of the work is acknowledged by its The next deposit is related to the Australian dedication. Academy of the Humanities edition of The recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn. Not only are the Writers’ footprints RF: There is an Italian connection original sheets present showing all the variations mentioned in the preliminaries of the book - in the early editions of the original book but also Ros Follett, director of the library’s research information the University of Udine - how did that arise? the correspondence relating to the project. service, discusses with StanTON (JSD) Mellick his latest work, JSDM: I was having difficulty getting the book As well, all the research material developed Writers’ footprints: a Queensland literary companion. published. University of Queensland Press and arising from involvement with the Oxford could not accommodate it and, when in Italy, riters’ footprints is a reference work plays set on the northern cane fields. Origins and literary guide to Australia and Writers’ footprints I mentioned this to Professor Antonella Riem- is deposited with the library and includes data I reviewing the specific locations that beliefs feature strongly in Aboriginal oral tales Natale who did post-graduate work here. She have fired the literary imagination recorded by Dick Roughsey, Wilf Reeves (Mooni arranged by towns, photocopies and research W was adamant that it be published because of sheets containing texts from which selections in Queensland since its separation from New Jarl), Clem Christesen and Oodgeroo Noonuccal. the several Italian references in it and made South Wales in 1859. The work lists cities, towns The call of the coast and the Pacific Ocean were made, correspondence with local councils, funds available to help. On my return Richard country papers, information from writers and places giving contextual discussion and ranging from Torres Strait to Point Danger can Fotheringham generously augmented these with examples of works relating to these places. be discerned in poems by David Rowbotham, and others as well as their photographs and Faculty of Arts funds as part of the UQ100 Years’ information about where their books were written Mark O’Connor and others; and blatant racism is celebrations. Subsequently Michael Wilding RF: Stan, where did the idea for this book and when. It is a collection that will be even depicted by Eric Baume and Thea Astley. Always, and Laurie Hergenhan referred me to Australian come from? more valuable as time goes by. I also deposited though, one senses the presence of the land in Scholarly Publications and the rest followed. I the writing whether it be of the tropical North, with Fryer a complete set of National Australia JSDM: I started work on it in 1978 because I owe much to them both. Professor Riem-Natale’s 5 Central Queensland or the West. Bank calendars which are collectors’ items and didn’t believe the accepted academic view of husband, Luigi, is a leading Italian poet and wrote contain prints of paintings from various Australian poems about Straddie after he and Antonella the day that Queensland was a barren aesthetic RF: Songs and oral traditions also have an galleries illustrating nineteenth-century life in stayed there as guests of Laurie Hergenhan. I waste from which writers had to flee. Apart from important link with place in Queensland. Australia as well as scenes of cities, towns and which I knew there was a strong if thin cultural believe the relevant manuscript of his poem is the country. 2 stream, literary and musical, in the state and JSDM: Yes, I have mentioned some already. held by Fryer. Luigi’s photo (with David Malouf, Maureen Freer’s two essays in Writers’ footprints1 They’re important in covering the land with a a close friend of Antonella’s and Luigi’s) is in the RF: Your daughter, Jill, is a poet herself bear witness to that. There had to have been mantle of imagination as Eva Mary Kelly (1830- book on page 34. and her poem ‘Moongalba’s Island’ is writers in Queensland. Now, this research started 1910), an Irish poet who settled in Brisbane, featured here. What prompted her to write well before the Oxford literary guide to Australia wanted. Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s work regarding RF: Stan, for many years you have deposited it, especially that change of tone in the last (1987) was mooted in the early 1980s. When Stradbroke Island is important in this respect. papers relating to your research in the Fryer stanza? that came along, Queensland was the only state She, of course, was much encouraged and Library. What additional information will which had any research on local writers available guided by poet Judith Wright who had Noonuccal researchers find in your papers to assist JSDM: The poem is a retrospect focusing on the Above: Footprints with future research? changes and development at Stradbroke since its on the beach at and the late Barry Andrews of the Association for as a guest at her home on Tamborine Mountain. the Study of Australian Literature, its originator, Myths, songs and oral traditions of Queensland early days—wanted Stradbroke Island, JSDM: In general there are three areas. asked me to edit that book. For various reasons Aboriginal people were all but unknown to our by some, rejected photo by Mila Zincone by others. I declined but wrote its Queensland section with early settlers. Otherwise Eva Mary Kelly would The earliest deposits3 are a rich source of help from country colleagues. If the data I put into not have lamented the absence of story linked to material relating to Henry Kingsley and towns in In the late 1950s, the Oxford literary guide to Australia, though, had the land in her poem ‘Queensland’ in 1877. The the goldfields areas and other places in Victoria. access from been included in Writers’ footprints as I intended, bibliography in Writers’ footprints helps those I collected the local histories of every town I Cylinder Beach to Writers’ footprints would have been more interested in this aspect to read further. visited as well as other material. It is all in the the Point was via comprehensive still. It was while researching Fryer Library. The relevant folders are arranged a walking track RF: Your book is dedicated to your late wife, the book that I realised how strongly place and alphabetically. Many papers relating to Henry under a canopy of Letty, and also to Cecil Hadgraft who played story were linked. Furthermore, there seemed Kingsley, as well as rare photographs I took trees and vines— an important role in the early years of Fryer to be a subtle presence of a Queensland of the of Charles Kingsley’s papers collected by his an all-green route Library’s collection development. Why imagination whether sourced in the appeal of the wife are there. The originals were accidentally later supplanted them? North, the extensive plains of the Darling Downs destroyed on the country property where they by a bitumen road. or the West. were so the photos in the Fryer Library are the JSDM: Cecil Hadgraft, I much admired as Visitors to the place teacher, writer and critic and was privileged to only evidence that they existed. Apart from all this in those days loved As it was, I didn’t include any of the author the Library has now what could be a collection biographical information, where their books were call him friend. He was a great supporter of this its wilderness project who, after I told him about it in 1978, of more editions of Kingsley’s work than are which, even then, written or many of the photographs I collected held anywhere else. It also has a rare edition by from so many authors as I needed to finish and said immediately, ‘If you don’t do it, it will never by word of mouth, be done. You have to’. My wife, Letty, was a Charles Kingsley that contains at least one direct brought overseas there were still more people to be contacted. That adverse reference to Henry. material is lodged in the Fryer Library. composer of Australian music and saw the people there. essence of her work as affirming an Australian Early, too, is a deposit of glass photographic Bertie Clayton, RF: What are some of the common identity. Her two ballads ‘Never Never’ and ‘A plates from the turn of the nineteenth century mentioned in the Queensland themes that come through town like Alice’ are widely known in the Australian recovered by my brother, pharmacist SOA Mellick poem, was a well- these works? country music scene. Hugh Lunn admired her from a garage in South Brisbane. They are a known identity as an Australian icon and after his Lost for words rich source of views of tall ships at Kangaroo JSDM: They’re varied. Some relate to life on the (2006) appeared, she wrote him saying, ‘You have and built the first land as in Steele Rudd’s work, writings set on the Point and elsewhere and were the property of a road in the area reminded every man and his dog that we have Brisbane artist4. Atherton Tablelands and the Gulf Country, and our own background’. Cecil’s and Letty’s belief in

10 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 11 thus linking Amity and Cylinder Beach. It skirted MOONGALBA’S ISLAND the beach flats en route and went around Adder “For time is running out Rock to Cylinder Beach. This made the area and time is close at hand...” more accessible to those who went to the island Stradbroke: A briEf history Oodgeroo Noonuccal on Hayles’s ferries. Noteworthy were several fishing addicts who made the ferry trip on a Oodgeroo’s people were mostly gone Friday night and many were the tales told about when Bertie Clayton set up tent their exploits. above beach and scrub. He squatted by palms on the point This poetic look at Straddie’s years of change, watching turtles, dolphins and whales as I have written in Writers’ footprints, contains move by below memories suffused with regret for things past. in the opal Pacific swells. The regret (ruefulness?) lies inextricably in the The guest huts he built essential fabric of joy in the memories. The had glassless windows, prosaic ending in the last stanza epitomises the frames for Southern stars fate of most human endeavours—an anonymous and wild horses who blew warm air immortality embedded in words meaning little to into nights so dark the uninformed who read them. only ears could believe in the trees and the waves. The ferries brought fishermen. They brought wives. REFERENCES The children chased frail sky-blue soldier crabs 1. JSD Mellick, Writers’ footprints: a Queensland literary into crafted holes in clouds of sand. companion, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North There was talk of a bridge. Melbourne, 2010. The huts peeled paint. 2. Luigi Natale, ‘Australia’, F3535. The miners came 3. Papers of JSD Mellick, UQFL108. with prizewinning conservation plans Marion Diamond surveys the eventful history of Stradbroke Island. 4. These glass plates are being digitised as part of Fryer’s and guides to native animals, plants ongoing digitisation program. and tribal burial grounds, 5. National Bank calendar, National Bank of Australasia, and severed the arms tradbroke Island is the most southerly of the the Southport Spit. Thomas Welsby2 reported Above: ‘Early Amity’. Melbourne, 1957-1982. of the island’s dunes. three great sand islands—Bribie, Moreton that Toompani, who died in 1888, was told by his UQFL122, box 9, The fishermen’s children Sand ‘Straddie’—that guard the entrance to father that he remembered when his Noonuccal image 32 bought blocks of land Moreton Bay. It has been the home of Aboriginal people, and the people of Moreton Island, could StanTON (JSD) Mellick, a former senior north of the reconstructed dunes, people for thousands of years; the oldest shout to each other across a small gap that later lecturer in the University’s English Department, built holiday houses evidence of Aboriginal occupation dates from grew to become the South Passage. was an early President of the Friends of the of weathered wood. perhaps 20 000 BCE. Europeans first discovered Fryer Library. His work as a research consultant The sand track was named for Bertie; and occupied the island in the early nineteenth Matthew Flinders first recorded the South after retiring appears in the Oxford literary a ferry, named for the People. century. Passage during his exploration of the area in guide to Australia, the Academy edition of The Jill Mellick 1799. Four years later, coming south from the recollections of Geoffry Hamlyn and Writers’ In 1770, sailing the Endeavour north along the wreck of the Porpoise in the cutter Hope, he east coast of Australia, James Cook passed to came ashore on Cylinder Beach, where the footprints. He has been Chairman of the Jill Mellick, PhD, a Jungian psychologist in Above: Detail of the Grace College Council and also effected major the east of Moreton Bay. The names he gave Noonuccal people showed him where to collect private practice in Palo Alto, California, is the to features of the coastal landscape—Mount water. bark of a pandanus restoration of colonial architect FD Stanley’s gem, author of many publications including Coming tree, photo by Mila Warning, Point Danger, Point Lookout—tell us St Paul’s Presbyterian Church in the city. As well, home to myself (with Marion Woodman), The art The first Europeans to spend any time on Zincone something of his state of mind as he struggled having been a long-time member of the Board of dreaming, The natural artistry of dreams, and the island were Thomas Pamphlett and John of St Andrew’s War Memorial Hospital, he wrote with contrary winds and weather in this area. The worlds of P’otsunu (with Jeanne Shutes). An Consequently he stayed well out from the shore, Finnegan, two timber-getters from Sydney whose its history. He was awarded an OAM in 2005. English Honours graduate of this University and boat was wrecked nearby, and who were trying His pre-University career included World War and while he knew from the currents that a large a former editor of Makar, her poetry has been river must empty into the bay, he didn’t venture to find their way home to Sydney. John Oxley, the II service, being mentioned in despatches and published in various journals. Now Professor Government Surveyor, found them on Stradbroke serving post-war in senior appointments. While far into Moreton Bay, and did not identify three Emeritus at the Institute of Transpersonal separate islands. Island in 1823, and with their help found his way Vice-President of the Pharmaceutical Society Psychology in Palo Alto, California, she was for into the Brisbane River. of Queensland, he successfully led efforts to many years Professor and Founding Director of It is quite possible that in 1770 there were no transfer pharmacy education from the Technical the creative expression tracks within its masters separate islands for Cook to ‘discover’. These The following year, Governor Thomas Brisbane College to the University and was appointed and doctoral degrees. She is an exhibiting sand islands are subject to constant erosion, established the Moreton Bay Settlement. After to its Pharmacy Board of Studies. All this multimedia artist and photographer and travels which has been a feature in the history of several false starts at Redcliffe and Cleveland, notwithstanding, literature and writing have been widely, often with a special focus on the role Stradbroke Island since European occupation, the settlement eventually moved upstream to his first loves. His poems have been published of Indigenous arts in individual and community most spectacularly when the sea broke the present Brisbane CBD, but throughout here and in the US and he is an advocate for healing, development, and creative expression. through between North and South Stradbroke the nineteenth century, Brisbane had a close Queensland’s early writers. Stradbroke Island, which she visits annually, was Islands during a storm in 1896. Durbidge and association with the islands of Moreton Bay—and part of her childhood and remains an important Covacevich1 suggest that in 1770, Moreton and particularly with the most southerly, Stradbroke place for her. Stradbroke Islands were possibly still linked to Island.

12 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 13 Right: Detail of ‘East By the 1850s, there were two main miles around Point Lookout, and swam cattle Lookout (Mooloomba), grew during Coast, sheet 2’ from settlements on Stradbroke Island. over from the Southport Spit. Although he the twentieth century as a holiday and Matthew Flinders, Amity Point, stripped of its pilot never renewed his licence after the first year, he retirement settlement. In the 1930s, Charts of Terra station, remained as a community of continued to run cattle there until he retired in Bert Clayton built the first guesthouse, Australis or Australia: fishermen and dugong hunters. In 1930, supplying beef to the Benevolent Institution. beginning with tents that he gradually showing the parts many ways, it conformed to Caroline replaced with one-room cabins. He explored between Ralston’s definition of a Pacific beach Oystering was important. The Moreton Bay also started the first bus service to 1798-1803, G&W Nicol, community,3 with a mixed-race Oyster Company was formed in 1876, with Point Lookout.9 The Point Lookout London, 1814 population of beachcombers and shareholders including the politicians Thomas Lighthouse was built in 1932, and fishermen, many with Aboriginal McIlwraith and Arthur Palmer. The Aboriginal during World War II, Point Lookout families. During the 1850s, Amity families who worked for the company ‘appear to was the site of an American radar Point was surveyed and town have been more efficient at managing the specific station, which later passed to the allotments sold. Thomas Welsby, the leases for which they had responsibility than the RAAF. The sinking of the Centaur in 8 early historian of Moreton Bay, had a parent company’, and continued to work the 1943 was first reported from here. home there, but the settlement has beaches after the company was finally wound up been subject to inexorable erosion in 1963. With the removal of the Benevolent by the Rainbow Channel, to the point Institution at the end of the war, the And then there is sand mining, which remains a that the pilot station, a racecourse focus of Stradbroke Island shifted to contentious issue to the present day. The first and Welsby’s original cottage are all sand mining on the one hand, and mining company, Zinc Corp, set up operations now many metres out to sea.4 recreation and leisure activities on the in 1949, followed by Titanium and Zirconium other. A vehicular ferry service began Meanwhile government functions Industries in the 1950s, and Consolidated Rutile in 1947, the same year that lifesavers were concentrated in the other main in 1963. The sand is mined for heavy metals, began to patrol Point Lookout.10 settlement, Dunwich. On 15 July particularly zirconium and titanium, which have Mining and tourism remain in constant 1850, a government quarantine become ever more valuable as raw materials in tension to the present day. station was proclaimed there, and the electronics industry, but while mining remains only two weeks later, the Emigrant a major employer of labour on the island, it has The sand islands of Moreton Bay arrived with typhoid on board. increasingly been seen as incompatible with the are in constant flux, with only a few Above: Detail of ‘A Over fifty passengers and crew other major driver of economic development, rocky outcrops, like Point Lookout, that are reduction of Captain died, and are buried in the old tourism. permanent fixtures within the shifting sand dunes. Cook’s original chart cemetery at Dunwich. In 1864, the In geological terms, the most significant event of the East Australian Stradbroke first became a destination for quarantine buildings were taken since the European occupation of Stradbroke Coast-Line 1770 from recreational fishing, camping, bushwalking and over by the Benevolent Institution,5 Island occurred between 1894 and 1896, when originals in the British sailing in the late nineteenth century. As Amity when it moved from the Brisbane South Stradbroke Island separated from the Museum, south sheet’, Point gradually disappeared into the ocean Hospital at Herston, bringing a larger, northern part of Stradbroke Island. In from James Cook, as a result of erosion, a third settlement, Point In 1827, the Commandant of the Moreton Bay miscellany of vulnerable people, aged, poor, early September 1894, the Cambus Wallace was Captain Cook’s journal during his first voyage Settlement, Patrick Logan, established a convict insane or otherwise troublesome to society. The wrecked off Stradbroke Island. around the world, and military settlement at Dunwich, on the Benevolent Institution remained at Dunwich for The local residents turned landward side. With the end of the convict era, out to help rescue most of made in H.M. Bark more than eighty years, and over 8000 of its ‘Endeavour’, 1768-71: this settlement was abandoned until 1843, when those on board. The Brisbane inmates are buried there. a literal transcription of a group of Passionist priests set up a Catholic Courier reported: the original mss. with mission to the Aborigines in the abandoned Until it moved to Eventide at Sandgate after notes and introduction, buildings. The mission failed, and they left in The scene of the World War II, the Benevolent Institution Stock, London, 1893 18 47. dominated the economy of Stradbroke Island. wreck is only about ‘As the only government institution in the area, two hundred yards off Right: The Brisbane Brisbane looked to the sea for communication [it] became an administrative centre dominating the shore, but the surf Courier, 24 Jul 1896, with Sydney and the rest of the world, but the the island through the lack of regulations which which is constantly p. 5 long, shallow channel up the Brisbane River was could limit its power.’6 The institution employed breaking over her would slow and unsuitable for ocean-going ships until a Aboriginal people from the nearby Myora Mission, render it a rather risky deeper current was cut, much later in the century. supplementing their inadequate pay with rations task to swim ashore. Until the 1840s, ships entered Moreton Bay via and blankets. In the 1930s, the ‘Aboriginal Portions of the cargo, the South Passage, guided by a pilot based at gang’ was led by a ‘bossman’, Teddy Ruska, such as cases of Amity Point (Pulan) on Stradbroke Island. A small whose agitation for improved conditions led to spirits, salt, dynamite, settlement grew up around this pilot station. conflict with the administration of the Benevolent and large pieces of 7 wreckage, are to be The South Passage was dangerous, and in 1847 Institution. In 1944 he was dismissed. His seen strewn along the the passenger steamer Sovereign was wrecked daughter, Kathleen Ruska, would eventually beach of the Island for coming through into Moreton Bay, with forty- become famous as Kath Walker, later Oodgeroo about two miles, and four people drowned. After that tragedy, ships Noonuccal. the Customs authorities used the safer northern shipping route between Other economic activity on Stradbroke are doing their best to Moreton and Bribie Islands, and the pilot station Island was limited. In 1895 Bill North took an prevent … thefts …11 moved to Cape Moreton. occupational licence for one year on ten square

14 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 15 The Passionist Mission on Stradbroke Island (1843-1847)

Stefano Girola examines an early, ill-fated Catholic mission on Stradbroke Island. tradbroke Island or Minjerribah occupies Then there was the problem of getting an important place in the history of Roman accustomed to living in a recently colonised SCatholicism in Australia. It was here, in area, in a sub-tropical climate that was very 1843, that the first Catholic mission among different from the climate of southern Europe. Australia’s Indigenous peoples was founded.1 These priests had always lived in the sheltered life of European seminaries or convents and had At that time, the Catholic Church was beginning contemplative or intellectual habits; they lacked to establish its own hierarchy in the Australian practical skills that were necessary for their colonies. The Church had been dependent until enterprise. then on the far-away bishop of Mauritius, but on 5 April 1842, Pope Gregory XVI appointed Moreover, Moreton Bay was not the English Benedictine John Bede Polding (1794- ‘uncontaminated’ place, far from European 1877) as the head of the new metropolitan and influence, which they thought would have offered archiepiscopal See of Sydney. The new prelate the best conditions for the announcement of believed that his Church had overlooked for too the Gospel and the teaching of the Catechism. long the evangelisation of Aborigines.2 The missionaries quickly realised that contact between Indigenous peoples and the Europeans In 1842 Polding travelled to Rome to discuss living in the Bay had begun to produce the same his plans with the Pope, who was a strong negative effects as in the south of the colony. supporter of missionary work. Polding was able to recruit for his mission four priests of the There was conflict about the status of the Congregation of the Passion of Our Lord Jesus mission, its dependence on Rome, and the Christ (Passionists): the Italians Raimondo Vaccari extent of the Sydney archdiocese’s authority. Men in boots marched up and down the beach, 6. Goodall, p. 41. Above: ‘Naturalists of Rome, Luigi Pesciaroli of Canepina (Viterbo), The Passionists, for instance, would only baptise and scientists at Point guarding the remaining cargo. Their activity 7. Goodall, p. 240. Maurizio Lencioni of Lucca and the Swiss Joseph children on the verge of death, whereas Polding Lookout at cottage, damaged the fragile grasses that stabilise the 8. Goodall, p. 257. Snell.3 The four missionaries arrived in Sydney argued for a more flexible interpretation of the the home of Billy dunes, and more damage occurred when the 9. ‘Island history’, About Straddie, viewed 10 June 2012, http:// straddieonline.com.au/AboutStraddie/StradbrokeIslandHistory. on 9 March 1843, and then travelled north to moral theology taught in the seminaries. North’. UQFL122, box authorities blew up the cargo of dynamite, fearing aspx. Stradbroke Island, opposite the small town of 9, image 28 it might become unstable. Two years later, during 10. ‘Island History’. Brisbane, still part of the colony of New South Besides these factors, which were recognised another winter storm, the sea broke through at 11. The Brisbane Courier, 5 September 1894, p. 5. Wales. The wooden pier at Dunwich where they at the time, today we focus on other causes of what is now Jumpinpin. 12. Durbidge and Covacevich, p. 91. landed in May 1843 had been built by convicts, the failure of this Catholic mission: in particular an underlying incapacity to overcome the great The shipwreck and its aftermath undoubtedly who had recently left the island. intercultural barriers. hastened this event.12 Men in boots were new to Marion Diamond retired in 2011 from the The mission was undertaken with exaggerated the island. Yet the creation of South Stradbroke School of History, Philosophy, Religion and expectations of easy success, but these did By the time the Passionists arrived on Stradbroke, Island was inevitable nevertheless, part of the Classics at the University of Queensland, and not last long. Pesciaroli, Lencioni and Snell Aborigines were wary of the Europeans. Even constant pattern of erosion that has affected the is now an Honorary Associate Professor. She abandoned the island in 1846, when the failure though they felt that the motivations of the area for millennia, and will continue to do so. researches and writes Australian colonial history, and has recently started a history blog, Historians of their efforts ‘to convert and civilise the missionaries were different from those of the other colonists, Indigenous Australians regarded REFERENCES are Past Caring. Aborigines’ became evident. Vaccari stayed on alone for another year, spending more time in the missions mainly as an opportunity to obtain 1. E Durbidge & J Covacevich, North Stradbroke Island, 2nd ed., obtaining police protection against the growing resources for their survival, which was ever Stradbroke Island Management Organisation, [Point Lookout] hostility of the Aborigines than in spreading the more threatened by the advancement of the 2004, p. 51. Word.4 From the missionaries’ point of view, their colonial frontier. When the missionaries were 2. T Welsby, Early Moreton Bay, Outridge Printing Company, 5 able to satisfy their demands, the Aborigines Brisbane, 1907, p. 274. experience ended with a bitter sense of failure. appeared to be friendlier and willing to listen to 3. C Ralston, Grass huts and warehouses: Pacific beach What were the reasons for this outcome? First communities in the 19th century, ANU Press, Canberra, 1977. and foremost was their lack of preparation. Only religious instructions; otherwise they showed 4. North Stradbroke Island heritage trail, North Stradbroke Island Fr Snell could understand English and all had indifference if not downright hostility. The fact Historical Museum, Dunwich, [2007?], p. 12. great difficulty trying to communicate with the that the missionaries accused the Aborigines of 5. JB Goodall, Whom nobody owns: the Dunwich Benevolent ingratitude and opportunism reveals that they did Asylum, an institutional biography 1866-1946, PhD thesis, three different groups of Aborigines (Noonuccal, University of Queensland, 1992, p. 27. Goenpuls and Nughie). not understand that for Indigenous peoples in that context it was hard to distinguish between

16 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 17 the missionaries and completely forgotten by the local Aborigines. of Rome, Westminster, and Dublin, which are here presented to Dr Stefano Girola obtained his BA at the the public for the first time, Frank Coffee, Sydney, 1896, p. 412). other colonisers. One hundred and fifty years after their arrival on University of Milan in 1994. In 2007 he received 7. GM Forster, ‘To Protect, to instruct, to make disciples of Christ: the island, in 1993, a group of Indigenous people Aborigines, Islanders and Doctor Polding.’ Australasian Catholic his PhD in Studies in Religion from UQ. His Also the Aborigines’ celebrated this anniversary with a Mass and a Record, vol. 56, no. 2, 1979, pp. 166-7. thesis was on ‘The policies and attitudes of reluctance to give up public ceremony, dedicating a plaque to the four 8. J Mackenzie-Smith, ‘Dunwich: convicts, Passionists and the Catholic Church with regard to Australia’s the semi-nomadic life priests, which can still be seen near the small shattered hopes’, in Brisbane: Moreton Bay matters, Brisbane Indigenous peoples, 1885-1967’. He lectures in History Group, Brisbane, 2002, p. 8. of hunter-gatherers port of Dunwich. Church History at Australian Catholic University in the bush they had and teaches Italian at the Institute of Modern practised for thousands John Mackenzie-Smith has stressed a positive Languages. He has recently been awarded the of years to adopt a aspect of the legacy of the missionaries: ‘the ‘Abbot Placid Spearritt Memorial Scholarship’ by sedentary, tedious honest and earnest Passionist presence the Benedictine Community of New Norcia. life as small farmers encouraged the Aborigines to regain their was viewed by the confidence in Europeans who had hitherto missionaries as inborn betrayed, deceived and maltreated them’.8 laziness and lack of a Also for this reason, the story of the first ‘work ethic’.6 Moreover, Catholic mission in Australia should be part of according to the the historical memory of Stradbroke Island or Passionists, Aboriginal Minjerribah. Delving Deep into Australian cultural expressions such as body painting References or propitiatory 1. O Thorpe, First Catholic mission to the Australian Aborigines, ceremonies before Pellegrini, Sydney, 1950. Newspapers with Trove and hunting and fishing 2. J Harris, One blood: 200 years of Aboriginal encounter with expeditions revealed Christianity: a story of hope, 2nd. ed. Albatross Books, a barbarian nature Sutherland, NSW, 1994, p. 114. which was impossible 3. Raimondo Vaccari was born in Rome in 1801 and became a Subject Indexes Passionist in 1823. When he met Bishop Polding in Rome in the Above: Father to eradicate. It should be noted that it would early 1840s, Vaccari was the Rector of the Retreat of St. Angelo Maurizio Lencioni, one take more than a century before strategies such at Vetralla, near Viterbo, in the region of Latium. Luigi Pesciaroli The National Library’s service Trove (trove.nla.gov.au) has been described of the Passionists sent was born at Canepina, in the province of Viterbo, in 1806. A as ‘the search engine for all things Aussie’. It offers the ability to search and as the ‘enculturation of the Gospel’, based on a former diocesan priest, he was thirty-four when he became a to Stradbroke more positive view of Indigenous cultures, were Passionist. Soon after this, he responded positively to Polding’s sort millions of records from libraries and cultural institutions across the accepted as a viable missionary methodology. appeal for missionaries to Australia. Maurizio Lencioni was born country. Image: © Adelaide in Lucca, Tuscany, in 1814. He joined the Passionists when he Catholic Archdiocesan was eighteen and made his religious profession in 1833. He Included in Trove is the National Library’s groundbreaking digitised Archives, kindly The missionaries saw the children as their best was ordained as a priest in 1837 in Ancona, central Italy and supplied by Co.As. hope. The priests were convinced that if they was living in Rome when he met Polding. The oldest of the four newspapers service. Since 2008 the Library has been making digital managed to separate them from their parents men was Father Joseph Snell. He was born in Lyons in 1802 to images of Australian newspapers, dating from 1803, available online. It. Italian Historical non-Catholic parents but converted to Catholicism when he was Society, Melbourne. in order to educate them, slowly but surely they twenty-three. Soon after this, he joined the Passionists at Monte But what is most remarkable about this service is that special computer would be able to create a stable, Christian, Argentario in Tuscany. After his ordination in 1830 he was sent software was used to convert the letters on the newspaper pages to ‘civilised’ community. In 1844 they built a little to Bulgaria where he stayed in the diocese of Nicopoli for the searchable text. Of course this automated process is prone to errors, so next eight years (Thorpe, pp. 23-9). school and during some periods, probably anyone who uses the service is encouraged to submit corrections. This 4. When Pesciaroli, Lencioni and Snell left Stradbroke, they when the scarcity of resources made it difficult intended to go to Western Australia. However, they had to has proven to be popular, with tens of thousands of corrections submitted to support the children, the adults would leave change their plans and initially they all remained in the diocese of daily. them at the mission, but they would return to Adelaide. In 1848 Pesciaroli went to Mount Baker as assistant priest. Lencioni went to reside at Bishop Murphy’s House in No longer faced with the difficulties of dusty volumes or microfilm readers, reclaim the children when conditions improved. Adelaide and Snell went to Morphett Vale as priest-in-charge. This situation was frustrating for the four priests In 1849 Pesciaroli returned to Europe. He died in Italy in 1874. readers have delved into the newspaper content for a wide variety of and also for Polding, who even reached the point Fr Snell remained in the diocese of Adelaide as a parish priest reasons. Stories range from rail enthusiasts uncovering details of little- and died in 1861, while Fr Lencioni died in Adelaide in 1864, known railway lines to knitters all over the world trying out patterns first of taking some children of mixed descent with when he was about to return to Europe. In 1847 Vaccari also him to Sydney, provoking the anger of family left the Stradbroke mission forever, disillusioned and mentally published decades ago. exhausted. Nothing was heard of him for 13 years, until he was members who threatened to kill the missionaries found working as a gardener under an assumed English name Historians have long appreciated the historical worth of newspapers and if they did not bring them back.7 The idea of in a Franciscan convent in Lima, Peru. He eventually joined the Franciscans (Thorpe, pp. 147-71). have worked hard to make them more accessible. For example, the subject separating children from their parents to ‘convert index Moreton Bay in the news 1841–1860, complied by Rod Fisher and John Schiavo and published by Above: Extract from and civilise’ them had grave consequences on 5. ‘Of the failures, the largest in scale and the most persevering was that of the Passionists at Moreton Bay. It also had most the Brisbane History Group, was a helpful reference used in conjunction with Trove to identify and locate Moreton Bay in the Australian society, as is evident from the tragedy repercussions for the general morale and organization of the information for the accompanying Passionist Mission article. Such resources may prove to have new and news, dealing with of the ‘stolen generation’. Church in Australia’ (TL Suttor, Hierarchy and democracy in Stradbroke Island. Australia 1788-1870: the formation of Australian Catholicism, expanded uses in conjunction with the newspaper service in Trove. Eventually, a climate of mutual mistrust between Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1965, p. 98). The failure of the Passionist mission on Stradbroke is also discussed in RM Amanda Winters is a librarian in the Fryer Library. She holds a BA from Valparaiso University in the Passionists and the Aborigines developed Wiltgen, The founding of the Roman Catholic Church in Oceania Indiana, USA, and a Master of Information Management from QUT. on the mission, which certainly contributed to its 1825 to 1850, Australian National University Press, Canberra, early demise. 1979, pp. 360-7. 6. According to the missionaries, Aborigines were ‘by nature inconstant and prone to laziness’ (PF Moran, History of Nothing remains today of the little wooden church the Catholic Church in Australasia: from authentic sources: and the school that the priests built at Dunwich, containing many original and official documents in connection but the Passionist fathers have not been with the Church in Australasia, besides others from the archives

18 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 19 Frank Thompson, AO The Queen’s Birthday honours list included Frank Walden Thompson, AO. Mooloomba House Frank Thompson had worked in Michigan State University Press, migrated to Australia, and became manager of The University of Queensland Press, and the associated bookshop, from 1961 to 1983. The press had published mostly extended scientific papers, and administrative publications such as handbooks. Australian literature had Angus and Robertson as the dominant publisher of senior writers.

By the end of the 1960s UQP, and to a fair extent contemporary Australian literature, was being transformed. A plays series, poetry (even anthologies in paperback), fiction, with authors and editors such as Rodney Hall, Tom Shapcott, Roger McDonald, Michael Wilding, came from a quickly widening circle. David Malouf is repeatedly an important influence, as in Fryer history Left to right: Eunice generally. And not just an influence: Johnno (1975) was a pretty good title for a university publisher in Hanger, Frank Brisbane to add to its list. Thompson, Judith Wright and Kath Let’s not summarise: go instead to UQP: the writer’s press, 1948-1998, edited by Craig Munro, a lively Walker at Lennon’s but thorough history written by the key people, including Frank Thompson himself. It’s the reverse of Hotel, 1963. UQFL84, dry: Frank Thompson’s own chapter is titled ‘Creating a press of national value,’ but by two chapters album 1, image 75 onwards, we are ‘Imbibing culture at the Royal Exchange’ (by Roger McDonald).

Spencer Routh retired from The UQ Library in 1997 after a career spanning 38 years of service as Reference Librarian and later as Collection Development Librarian. He continues to serve as a member of the Queensland Working Party of the Australian dictionary of biography, as well as contributing biographical articles to this work. Spencer was awarded an honorary doctorate from UQ in 2005 in recognition of his distinguished career and contribution to the University Library. He was awarded an OAM in 2011. 2012 Fryer Library Awards Brit Andresen describes a beach house designed to take advantage of The recipient of the Fryer Library Award for 2012 is Ms D’Arcy Randall. Ms Randall received her BA in Art History from Newcomb College, New STRADBROKE island’s unique landscape and climate. Orleans, in 1976. From 1980 to 1989, she was Fiction Editor and Senior Editor at The University of Queensland Press. This was a period that ryer Library has recently received a collection of approximately 950 architectural plans Above: Mooloomba saw UQP rise to prominence as a leading Australian literary publisher and accompanying documentation from Emeritus Professor Brit Andresen of UQ’s House. Photograph for Andresen O’Gorman specialising in original works by new writers. In the 1970s, UQP’s FSchool of Architecture, pertaining to the works of Andresen O’Gorman Architects from Architects by Anthony willingness to invest in unknown writers initiated the careers of David 1965-2001. One of their iconic works was Mooloomba House at Point Lookout, Stradbroke Browell Malouf, Rodney Hall and Peter Carey. As Fiction Editor in the 1980s, Island. Brit Andresen discusses the construction of this house here. D’Arcy Randall aimed to balance this brilliant but male-dominated list The house itself comprises three different but with works by women writers. By the mid-1980s, UQP had published Our Mooloomba House at Point Lookout, North first books by Kate Grenville, Marion Halligan, and Olga Masters, Stradbroke Island, was constructed as a beach connected elements, the long north-south among many others. D’Arcy Randall also worked with Thea Astley, house during the years 1995-1999. gallery wing, the south ‘cave’ room and the north Rosa Cappiello, Beverley Farmer, Elizabeth Jolley, Barbara Hanrahan, ‘bower’ room. Built on the slope of a north-facing sand-hill, and Janette Turner Hospital. These writers quickly attracted major overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the house has The two storey, gable-roofed, gallery-wing literary prizes, strong reviews, and dedicated readers. Ms Randall is views to Shag Rock and Moreton Island. The is formed by a 2.4 metre wide, timber-frame conducting research in Fryer for a memoir of her career at UQP. This steep slope was originally benched in the 1950s structure twenty four metres long. memoir will assist scholars to interpret and contextualise the archival records of UQP held by Fryer Library Left to right: Fryer to form a flat 18m by 20m building site across the and will also examine the ways in which UQP was ‘transnational’ before we knew the word. In 1990, Library Manager Laurie 585 square metre lot. The cleared land remained In some sections of the gallery-wing the frame is McNeice with D’Arcy D’Arcy Randall returned to the US, obtained her MA and PhD in English from the University of Texas vacant until the 1990s which allowed banksia enclosed to accommodate, at the upper level, the Randall, 2012 Fryer at Austin, and currently teaches there as a Senior Lecturer. We are delighted to welcome her back to trees to regenerate. In this architectural project sleeping alcoves, bathroom and the belvedere Library Award Winner Brisbane and The University of Queensland as the 2012 Fryer Library Award winner. the house and site have been designed to form overlooking the Pacific Ocean and at the lower level, the store, kitchen bench and decks. The Fryer Library Award Committee has also chosen to award an Honorary Fryer Library Award this year a single territory of interconnected inside and outside rooms surrounding a central courtyard to Mrs Barbara Williams. Mrs Williams was a member of the staff of The University of Queensland Library The frame structure of the gallery-wing is visible that includes a pre-existing grove of mature from 1968 to 1995 in various positions. She has been a member of Graduate Women Queensland since both on the inside and outside of the walls and banksia trees and ferns. 1960, was President of the Australian Federation of University Women Queensland from 1983-1986, and has a regular ordering geometry and dressed a committee member of that organisation almost continuously from 1965 to 2003. She served on the timber members of relatively small sections. management committee of Fellowships Fund Inc. (FFI) from its inception until 2011 and now proposes Description to write a history of that organisation. She believes it is important that the story of the Fellowship Fund, Refer also to the axonometric drawing of the Elements of this timber frame structure are and its establishment, success and growth to its current status as a multi-million dollar educational fund project on the next page: repeated in the arbor on the east of the central making regular awards is properly documented. The Fryer Library Award Committee agrees and has banksia courtyard. granted her an Honorary Fryer Library Award to assist her in this task. The courtyard is bounded on three sides by an arbor, a raised deck and the gallery wing of the The north room and south room are located to Fryer Library staff look forward to working closely with both Fryer Library Award winners for 2012 and house. the west of the long gallery wing and share views assisting them in their research. into the sand court and the small garden court.

20 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 21 The timber structure of this western zone Firstly, in her essay ‘Proportioning systems and comprises thirteen cypress poles and rough- the timber framer’, Rachel Fletcher explains sawn timber roof members, mostly arranged off- that before Homeric times the ancient grid with an irregular geometry—approximating Greek word for harmony, ‘harmonica’, the Fibonacci series. The more ‘chaotic’ was a term meaning the harmonious character of this timber-frame structure contrasts pattern of sounds, visuals, colours with the opposing ‘ordered’ character of the etc. as well as a term used in gallery-wing. joinery or carpentry meaning ‘a timber frame such that to take The high walls and ceiling of the north ‘bower’ away one piece would collapse room are largely transparent or translucent and it’—informing the idea that the remain free of bracing members which have been components must fit together transposed to the upper level of the ‘aedicule’ harmonically to make a whole.1 that further defines the interiority of this ‘bower’ space. In Mooloomba House the generative 1200 x 2000 (1:1.618) The tall folding doors allow the room to open proportion of the expressed onto the small courts on either side and provide wall panel and primary frame cooling ventilation. is intended to link the ancient meaning of harmony with The north room has access to the garden and the poetic interpretation of a serves as a kitchen and studio space. mathematical proportioning system The floor level of the south room is raised one that offers visual integrity. half level above the ground to gain a view across In these days of environmental the sand court and through the north room to crisis the ancients’ belief that nature the horizon and also connects to the deck of the and the entire ‘spherical’ universe central courtyard. form a living, harmonic whole This ‘cave’ room, set against the hillside with its does not seem an inappropriate fireplace, is the only room where the wall and reference. To recognise the ceiling have been lined to create continuity of humble timber frame as the origin/ surface to form a closed and sheltered space genius of such a profound sequence inside. of thought is to expose its architectural potential. Project Intentions The second idea is that space may be characterised The design of Mooloomba House has two by constructional form. For example the open primary intentions: to intensify the presence of assemblage of relatively thin members can characterise a the landscape and to continue the exploration of bower space such as the woven balustrade of the belvedere the expressive capacity of hardwood in terms of (‘tectonic space’). Or the creation of a continuous surface, as if its material properties, geometry and metaphor. carved out of a mass, can characterise a cave space such as the lined corner of the room with the fireplace (‘stereotomic space’).2 The Hardwood has conventionally been incorporated thought in this small house was to explore the inclusion of these different within stud-framed systems to conceal the constructional forms, all of hardwood, in three different segments of defective behavior of the frame (those well-known the building, to be held together in forms of what Aldo van Eyck called characteristics of hardwoods to shrink, harden, ‘reciprocity’. warp, twist, cup and crack as they dry after milling). Sheeting over hardwood has always The third idea, made possible by the benign climate of North Stradbroke seemed to us an unfortunate loss of architectural Island, is the opportunity of creating space with ‘transparencies’ inherent seen from within the site across neighbouring Above: Mooloomba opportunity in a material where high strength References and Acknowledgements in tectonic form. Such opportunities begin to bridge technology (material properties. House. Axonometric and durability does permit an external use and and technique), territoriality (the plan), light, and relationship with the This article draws upon a special issue of international architecture drawing for Andresen potential to contribute to building expression. landscape, and also offer an opportunity for what Colin Rowe termed Secondly, the design explores the inclusion of magazine UME devoted to the works of Andresen O’Gorman Architects: UME 22: Andresen O’Gorman Works 1965-2001, O’Gorman Architects ‘phenomenological transparency’ where several conditions may be ‘layered’ mythical and metaphorical landscapes together In Mooloomba House the simple strategy edited by Haig Beck and Jackie Cooper, available online at www. by Michael Barnett together. with their small shelters such as the child’s tree unemagazine.com. Fryer also holds one of 50 hard copy portfolios adopted in order to tame excessive lateral house or the small bower in Paradise. of this publication, published to accompany the launch of the web movements has been to vertically laminate The design of Mooloomba House also explores the proposition that to defer document, and kindly donated by Professor Michael Keniger. thin, hardwood members of opposing grain to the existing landscape, to allude to a mythical landscape and to create a 1. R Fletcher, ‘Proportioning Systems and the Timber Framer,’ The perched sleeping alcoves and the ‘lookout- Timber Framing, 18 (December, 1990), pp. 8-9. formation and integrate a 1200mm by 2000mm constructed landscape can collectively contribute to intensify the place of nest’ of the belvedere invite reverie and are wall panel of 18mm waterproof plywood 2. C van de Ven, ‘Space in Architecture’, Van Gorcum, Assen / the house in its wider setting. designed with recollected experiences in mind. Maastricht, p. 5. sheeting sandwiched in-between. The frame simultaneously forms enlarged ‘cover battens’ The first landscape is the existing island setting. To fix the location of the The third landscape is the ‘imaginary forest’ Brit Andresen is an Emeritus Professor at over the joints in sheets. This technique also house in this landscape the relatively small site has been constructed as constructed, as one continuous landscape UQ’s School of Architecture. In 2002, after a facilitates a prefabrication process. an open terrain of interconnected outdoor rooms. Continuity of the hillside adjacent to the western boundary, through the successful architectural and academic career landscape is maintained by revealing the folding topography of the slopes two principal rooms and small courts. In this spanning more than three decades, she was Having drawn the hardwood frame into playing through the centre of the site where a grove of old banksia trees is framed constructed landscape thirteen cypress columns the first woman to receive the prestigious Royal an expressive role in the building three important on three sides creating the largest of the courtyards. While the central have been set, off-grid, among growing tress Australian Institute of Architects Gold Medal. ideas inform the underlying architectural intent for courtyard is loosely bounded by a cloistered walkway the site enclosure and overhead interlaced in places with irregularly the house. has been ‘eroded’ in places to allow traces of the larger landform to be spaced rafters.

22 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 23 Futures Passed: ‘Farewell Australian land!’ Lord Stibbins had said … yet he bade farewell to it as Utopian Brisbane in he thought of it and not as it was then. He only thought of it as a land of mighty forests and of boundless pastures and of mines from which yellow gold was dug by Nineteenth-Century Novels the ton, as a land in which the creepers grew over the homesteaders’ verandas and in which the market-gardens of the yellow aliens blossomed in every waterway like chains of emeralds upon the bosom of Nature. He gave no glance at the crowded towns in which the destitution of the Old World had commenced in all its loathsomeness.3

This passage turns on an opposition almost as important to the novel as the clash of races: the clash of rural and urban values. The omniscient narrator slides in and out of Lord Stibbins’ consciousness, revealing both what he is able to see—Queensland’s natural wealth (‘yellow gold’ and ‘boundless pastures’)—and what he cannot: the suffering of the urban poor, who are denied their share of the bounty. Over the course of the novel, Brisbane’s physical layout comes to represent the city/bush divide: the inner city, home to the British-controlled parliament and old China Town, is the domain of corrupting foreign influences; the bushland and pastoral areas in the city’s west, where the resistance is based, are associated with Australian patriotism.

James Halford, 2011 Fryer Library Award winner, explores utopian visions of Brisbane was a privileged vantage point for a Brisbane in three late nineteenth-century novels. writer of Lane’s political persuasion in the 1880s and 1890s. An essentially urban creature, he nonetheless insisted on the superiority of the Above: ‘Brisbane t the end of the nineteenth century, The novel provoked this response by envisaging bush. Brisbane allowed him access to the City Skyline, 1893.’ Brisbane celebrated its half century as a a Chinese-British alliance ruling Australia barely outback Queensland landscape that he and UQFL28, album 3, Afree settlement as well as the centenary twenty years into the future. Brisbane’s population many other writers of the period saw as the real image 17 of white settlement in New South Wales. As the was still only about 100 0001 when Lane was Australia, but also offered him the opportunity to colony moved towards Federation, politicians and writing, but was increasing rapidly due to assisted observe and document the effects of the 1890s Above top: ‘Alice planners looked forward with some confidence. migration schemes. Extrapolating from this trend, recession on city life. caused hundreds of willing and able workmen to tramp through the country Street in Flood, 1893.’ Novelists, too, gave their prognostications of what White or yellow? supposes that the United States UQFL28, album 3, a Brisbane of the future might look like, using the has closed its borders to migrants, fuelling a Austin South’s Utopian novel, In those days in vain search for employment, and th image 22 fantasy trope of time travel, but evoking the real population explosion in Queensland. By 1908, 12 or life in the 20 century, is as optimistic grinding poverty lifted its gaunt head, I had city in great detail—the river, the heat, the lush million Chinese subjugate the colony’s 30 million about Brisbane’s future as White or yellow? wondered … if there were no remedy, no Above bottom: ‘Creek vegetation—detail that has become integral to the whites. ‘When our story opens in winter 1908’, is pessimistic. Unlike the charismatic editor of means by which all men could be secured St, 1893.’ UQFL28, way we imagine and experience the city today. The Boomerang, who has remained a figure of the possession of at least the necessities album 3, image 18 writes Lane, ‘it only needed a leader to light the 4 flames of racial war’.2 fascination for generations of Australian scholars, of life. William Lane’s White or yellow?: a story of the South’s identity is now lost to us. We know from race-war of 1908 was serialised in the radical Most of the text focuses on an Australia-wide the foreword of In those days, his only novel, Written and published at a time of severe newspaper, The Boomerang, in 1888. Before uprising of white working men led from Brisbane. that Austin South was the pen name of a well- recession, climate extremes, and massive leading 500 disciples to Paraguay in 1893 to Between battle scenes, the breathless prose off businessman who lived in Brisbane around strikes in Queensland, In those days imagines establish a short-lived Utopian settlement, the sometimes conveys a panoramic sense of 1890. The novel’s narrator Maurice Penton is of twentieth-century Brisbane as a classless, high- British-born Lane spent more than a decade in the city as the capital of a vast, resource-rich a similarly privileged background. A gentleman tech Utopia. Edward Bellamy’s popular 1887 Queensland. During this period he established territory. Thus the British Premier of Queensland, scientist of late nineteenth-century Brisbane, he Utopian novel, Looking backwards, is the literary himself as the most widely read and influential trapped in the clock tower of the old Queensland gradually becomes conscious of the fate of the model, while South’s philosophical framework radical journalist in the colony. His racism was Parliament, meditates on the grandeur of the city’s poor: is derived from the ideas of another American, fanatical even by the standards of the time; colony he has ruled over, while awaiting death at social theorist Henry George. In 1890, shortly White or yellow? helped fuel anti-Chinese riots in the hands of the Chinese: And now and again, when perhaps a before South began work on the first draft of Brisbane the year it was published. bad season or a commercial depression the book, George had undertaken a worldwide

24 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 25 years to launch a flying machine. He finally Queensland, and catastrophic flooding of the 4. A South, ‘In those days, or, life in the twentieth century’, in Daryl 6 Bellingham and Bill Metcalf (eds), Utopian Brisbane and all other succeeds only to be knocked unconscious by an Brisbane River. known writings of Austin South, Griffith University, Brisbane, electric shock during his maiden flight. Our hero 2003, Chapter 4.1, n.p. awakes, still flying, in the year 1995 to find his Pennington Lucas is a moralist first and a 5. R Evans, C Ferrier, and J Rickertt, Radical Brisbane, Vulgar home city greatly altered. Although he recognises novelist second, less interested in plot and Press, Carlton North, 2004. Moreton Island (‘this was Brisbane surely’), he is characterisation than in critiquing nineteenth- 6. TP Lucas, The curse and its cure, Reynolds, Brisbane, 1894, vol. 1, p. 126. astonished by the sight of futuristic sailing vessels century Brisbane society. The curse and its cure 7. ibid, vol.1, p. 5 on the bay and masses of electric flying machines finds examples of selfishness, the curse that 7 8. ibid, vol. 1, p.19. similar to his own. Fenton is nursed back to health ‘is fast ruining the world’ nearly everywhere: 9. ibid, vol. 2, pp. 62, 65. by a man named Dr Hope, who acts as his guide Samuel Griffith and Thomas McIlwraith, the two to the ‘great and busy city’ of twentieth-century most powerful Queensland politicians of the Brisbane. day, are depicted as dogs running two opposing James Halford completed a master’s thesis kennels; Pennington Lucas’s medical colleagues on William Lane’s New Australia colony at UQ Like his creator, Fenton is a bourgeois observer are quacks who prescribe ice baths for typhoid in 2010. His fiction and essays have appeared of social change, rather than an agent of it. fever; business is represented by unscrupulous in Griffith Review, Best Australian short stories, Below: ‘To the Rescue’, From a fashionable North Quay restaurant, land agents who sell off riverside land knowing Antipodes, and Meanjin. The Boomerang, 14 he observes the skyscrapers and bridges of it will flood. ‘Neither science nor art flourished April 1888, p. 9 futuristic Brisbane, while Dr Hope explains how in Brisbane’, a man of the future tells the novel’s a movement for global reform began in Brisbane hero. ‘Cash and bawbees [Scottish half pennies], in the early 1900s. In 1903, we learn, 2000 whisky and cigars, is a descriptive gauge of delegates from around the English-speaking Brisbane’s ruling aspirations’.8 world gathered at City Hall in Brisbane to plan world revolution. Society was remade swiftly The second volume of the novel suggests that and without violence by implementing reforms the ‘curse’ of selfishness can be defeated by similar to those proposed by Henry George. renewed religious faith and heightened attention In those days juxtaposes images of sunlight to the natural world. After visiting the city’s ruins dancing on the Brisbane River with Dr Hope’s in the year 2000, the protagonist travels a further revelation that poverty has been defeated. In 200 years into the future to find Brisbane rebuilt. 1995, the Queensland capital is ‘a dream city An eccentric mix of teetotalism, phrenology, and of some eastern fairy-tale’ where citizens live in strict Methodism has transformed dystopia into magnificent riverside palaces. utopia. In one memorable passage Pennington Lucas contrasts the upheavals of the human South’s image of the Brisbane dream—a big world with the beauty and continuity of Brisbane’s house on the riverbank—clearly survives today, natural environment: ‘Eucalypti towered their though it is far from accessible to most of us. heads as of old, in their ever varying, never It would fall to his near-contemporary, Thomas disrobed foliage of green … The mighty Pennington Lucas, who was working on his own convulsions of evil had shaken humanity to its Brisbane novel during the great flood of 1893, to very centre, but nature was as active as ever’.9 ponder the wisdom of building Utopia on a flood plain. Although few would claim high artistic achievement for the novels of Lane, South, and Pennington Lucas’s The curse and its cure is the Pennington Lucas, these texts demonstrate that longest, strangest, and least coherent of the three by the 1880s and 1890s the intellectual horizons Above: ‘The Last of speaking tour that included a lecture in Brisbane novels considered here. Its author, a British-born of Brisbane already extended well beyond ‘whisky Taringa Park’, The at what is now the Wintergarden arcade.5 South’s physician who came to Queensland in 1886 for and cigars’ to speculation about where the city’s Boomerang, 24 March enthusiasm for George’s ‘Single Tax Theory’ the sake of his health, is now best remembered future lay. From a forward-looking century’s end, 1888, p. 9 suggests he was in the crowd that day. as the inventor of Lucas’s Pawpaw ointment, a these writers imagine foreign invasion, a high- skin treatment that is still sold in distinctive red tech world, and even the coming of the Christian Henry George argued that the class conflict tubes by Australian chemists today. Millennium on the banks of the Brisbane River. provoked by inequality could be alleviated only Significantly, for a city that has always lived in the by distributing land, the source of wealth, more His 1894 novel, The curse and its cure is shadow of its larger, louder southern cousins, equitably. By abolishing all tax except for a levy structured as a story cycle, a series of loosely these novels show 1890s Brisbane was already a on unimproved land, George’s reforms would related anecdotes connected by a narrative generator of its own narratives. oblige large landholders either to employ more frame. In the year 2000, an unnamed nineteenth- workers (alleviating unemployment and driving up century time traveller visits the ruins of Brisbane wages), or to sell parcels of land to small farmers where a handful of pioneers are re-establishing REFERENCES (breaking up land monopolies). Austin South and the city. The secondary characters take turns to other Single Tax advocates saw George’s plan as tell stories of Brisbane’s decline and destruction 1. R Lawson, Brisbane in the 1890s: a study of an Australian urban a cure for social inequality. in the late 1800s. Although the causes are far society, University of Queensland Press, St. Lucia, 1973, p. 8. from clear, it appears the city was destroyed 2. W Lane, ‘White or yellow?: a story of the race-war of A.D. 1908’, The opening pages of In those days introduce by a combination of civil war with the southern The Boomerang, 18 February 1888, p. 9. Maurice Penton, who has been trying for many colonies over the issue of black labour in 3. The Boomerang, 21 April 1888, p. 9.

26 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 27 from QUT. He spent many years working in the and hypocrisy, political reform, and education. New York film production industry, and has his Anthony Trollope’s John Caldigate is the tale of own photography business, Andrew Yeo Pictures. an Englishman who, after relocating to Australia to make his fortune, does so and returns home, Fryer welcomes these new staff to the team, and marries and has a son, and is then surprised by looks forward to the contribution their skills and the arrival in England of a former fiancée who abilities will make to our work. claims to have become his wife in Australia. Trollope (1815-1882) was one of the most prolific and successful English novelists of the Victorian WHAT’S NEW IN FRYER LIBRARY Collections era, and John Caldigate was very popular with contemporary critics and the reading public. All of the Fryer staff, Fryer is very pleased to be able to add these two sharing network providing technology services DONATION from victorian valuable first editions to its rare book collection. whether full-time to public and school libraries. Bob started or part-time, play fiction research group his library career working for CLSI, a leading an important role automation vendor at the time. Prior to becoming TWO significant art-related in providing service to our clients and a librarian, Bob held several editorial positions, acquisitions for an indexing and abstracting service and an in caring for our hanks to two generous donations from educational testing company. collection. The Fryer Drs Catherine and Margaret Mittelhauser, staff are, from left to Bob is the editor of Information Technology and TFryer has recently been able to acquire a right: Andrew Yeo, Libraries, the official publication of the Library and first edition of The etchings of Norman Lindsay Francisco Roelas, (London: Constable & Co., 1927) and Peter Cathy Leutenegger, Information Technology Association (LITA) division Lyssiotis’ latest artist’s book Men of flowers: Holly McGuire, of the American Library Association. He presents Charles Darwin, Joseph Hooker and Gregor Elizabeth Alvey, Penny regularly at library conferences, on technology Whiteway, Laurie and scholarly-communication topics. In his spare Mendel. Norman Lindsay’s first book of etchings McNeice, Rose Wade, time, Bob is an avid runner and cyclist. was published by Constable in an edition of 129 Amanda Winters, copies, of which only 120 were for sale. Lindsay’s Robyn Clare, Darren popularity in the 1920s meant that the edition Williams, Marg Powell, new staff in fryer library sold out almost at once, and only a handful of Rebecca Carter, ryer Library has acquired three new copies reached Australia. Many copies were Lachlan Wong, and staff in recent months. Following Laurie subsequently broken to sell the plates, making Keri Williams. FMcNeice’s promotion to Fryer Library intact first edition copies even greater rarities. Below: Plate XXXIV, A deluxe edition of thirty-one copies, of which Left: Our new Manager, Penny Whiteway was the successful ‘Lands of Afternoon’ twenty-five were for sale, included an original University Librarian applicant for the Senior Librarian’s position in (1923), from The Robert Gerrity Fryer. Penny’s vacant librarian position was then etching and was even more highly sought after etchings of Norman filled by Elizabeth Alvey. Elizabeth Alvey obtained by collectors. Eleven Australian libraries are Lindsay, Constable & a BA degree with first class honours in Classical fortunate enough to hold copies of the deluxe Co., London, 1927 OUR new university librarian Language from UQ in 2007 and a Master of edition. The State Library of New South Wales held the only Australian Robert gerrity Information Technology degree from QUT in 2009. She comes to UQ from QUT, where she copy of the standard n Monday, 30 July, our new University was a liaison librarian and an academic skills first edition—Fryer Librarian, Robert Gerrity, will arrive at advisor, winning an individual Vice-Chancellor’s embers of the Victorian Fiction Research now holds the second OUQ. Bob comes to The University Performance Award for her work in 2011. Group have recently donated a sum of copy in Australia. of Queensland Library from Boston College Mmoney to Fryer to enable it to purchase Peter Lyssiotis’s Libraries, where he was the Associate University Jeff Rickertt left Fryer in January 2012 for a new first editions of George Eliot’s Middlemarch (1872) Men of flowers has Librarian for Library Systems and Information job as Senior Archivist with the Queensland State and Anthony Trollope’s John Caldigate (1879). an edition size of Technology, responsible for all technology-based Archives. His vacant librarian’s position was filled George Eliot was the pen name of Mary Ann ten—Fryer’s copy is systems and services. Bob joined Boston by Amanda Winters, who comes to Fryer from Evans (1819-1880), an English novelist, journalist No. 7. The book was College in 1999, and oversaw the selection and the Queensland State Archives. Amanda earned and translator, who said that she used a male commissioned by the implementation of a variety of technologies to a BA with majors in Philosophy and German pen name to ensure her works would be taken University of Melbourne improve management of and access to Boston from Valparaiso University in Indiana, US, before seriously. She wrote seven novels, most of them in 2009 to celebrate College Libraries’ burgeoning electronic and earning her Master of Information Management set in provincial England and noted for their the 50th anniversary digital collections. Most recently, he led the degree from QUT in 2010. She has also worked realism and psychological insight. Middlemarch of the Ballieu Library, Libraries’ development partnership with Ex at Griffith University and the Supreme Court of is her sixth novel and it is almost unanimously the 200th anniversary Libris on Alma, a cloud-based, next-generation Queensland Library. acclaimed as one of the greatest novels in the of the birth of Charles integrated library system. He also spearheaded Darwin, and the Andrew Yeo is Fryer’s new photographer, English language. Set in the fictitious Midlands the Boston College Libraries’ memberships in the town of Middlemarch during the period 1830- 150th anniversary of HathiTrust and OCLC Research partnerships. working 18 hours per week on Fryer’s current the publication of his digitisation projects and its copying service for 32, it has multiple plots with a large cast of characters and pursues a number of underlying famous book The Bob was previously the Coordinator of the clients. Andrew has a BA degree with a major themes, including the status of women, the nature origin of species. Men Metro-Boston Library Network (MBLN) at the in Photography from Griffith University and a of marriage, idealism and self-interest, religion of flowers includes Boston Public Library. MBLN is a resource- Graduate Certificate of Business Administration

28 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 29 From left to right: an introductory scholarly essay by Humphrey Members of the McQueen on Darwin, Hooker and Mendel. Peter Suburban Bicycle Lyssiotis is nationally recognised as creating Club Sydney in artist’s books which compel and confront those October 1900 and who explore them and Fryer can now add this images from the SOA book to the other examples it holds of his work. Mellick donation show a regatta on the Brisbane river, circa digitisation work in fryer 1900. ention is made earlier in this issue of Fryer’s work in digitising a collection of glass slides Mdonated by SOA Mellick. We thought we might share a couple of these images with the readers of Fryer Folios. They appear to show a regatta on the Brisbane River at the turn of the century.

Readers might also be interested in a photo recently donated to Fryer and digitised showing members of the Suburban Bicycle Club in Sydney in October 1900. Fryer aims to digitise more of its photographic holdings and make them widely available to researchers through UQ eSpace and Trove.

Top: Ariadne (1908), Left: Attendees at sculpture by Harold Website displays the Australian Early Parker. UQFL7, Box Medieval Association 12, image 7 of 24 annual conference Treasure of the Month display for the australian examine items from the Bottom: ‘Transit early medieval association Fryer Library collection of Venus group in ryer Library continues to profile a ‘treasure’ December of 1882 from its holdings each month on its conference website, accompanying it with a small at Jimbour [Station, F n April of 2012, the Australian Early physical display in the Reading Room. Treasures Queensland].’ Medieval Association held its annual profiled recently include: an album from the UQFL10, Album 4, conference at the University of Image 372 Hayes collection with late nineteenth-century I Queensland and Fryer Library mounted South Pacific images; the famous Romantic artist a display of its holdings in this area for John Martin’s mezzotints for Fryer’s rare 1827 conference delegates. In Australia, access edition of Milton’s Paradise lost; Fryer’s material to original sources in this field can be difficult, on the first Australasian Antarctic Expedition of so the scholars in attendance appreciated 1911 led by Douglas Mawson; a look at Fryer’s Fryer’s display, even though some of the political ephemera collection; a sketch of Tatura items included properly belonged to the internment camp with a unique folk-art frame later medieval period and even to the from Fryer’s Baldwin Goener collection; a profile Renaissance. Fryer is hoping to renovate and of the life and work of sculptor Harold Parker refurbish its display space shortly, to allow it based on his manuscript collection in Fryer; and to mount more extensive physical displays of rare images from the time of the 1882 Transit of its holdings, and to allow displays organised Venus from Fryer’s Hume Family collection. for a specific occasion to be exhibited for

longer and enjoyed by more viewers. See all Fryer Library’s treasures of the month at www.library.uq.edu.au/fryer/treasures/index.html.

30 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 31 Recent Events

MEMBERSHIP iNFORMATION 8 march: 40th Anniversary of women’s & geNder studies If you would like to become a Friend of Fryer please go to the Friends of Fryer On International Women’s Day, 8 March, Fryer Library, in conjunction website at: www.library.uq.edu.au/ with the UQ Gender Studies Teaching Committee and the UQ NTEU fryer/friendsoffryer/ Women’s Committee, hosted an afternoon of panel discussions Click on Join now. Complete the EVENTS commemorating the 40th anniversary of the establishment of the membership form and send the form first women’s studies course at The University of Queensland. The with your $40 (individual) or $50 discussions explored the history and future of women’s studies at UQ. (household) payment to the address 12 September: Betty Churcher AO Special guest and panellist, former UQ academic Merle Thornton, provided on the form. ‘Notebooks’ presented Fryer with some rare ephemera relating to the infamous Alternatively, please contact: occasion at the Regatta Hotel, when she, Rosalie Bogner and Elaine The Secretary In conjunction with the 2011 Dignan chained themselves to the bar in protest against laws banning Friends of Fryer Brisbane Writers Festival, women from public bars. Other panel members included Senator Fryer Library the University of Queensland Claire Moore, Professor Carole Ferrier, Professor Cindy Shannon and The University of Queensland Library was pleased to host Associate Professor Liz Mackinlay. Queensland 4072 former National Gallery Email: [email protected] of Australia Director and Phone: (07) 3346 9427 author Betty Churcher on 12 Fax: (07) 3365 6776 13 June: simon cleary ‘Closer to Stone’ September. Over a delightful hour in conversation with Keith Author and UQ Alumnus Simon Cleary spoke about his most Webster, Betty shared with the recent book, Closer to Stone, in conversation with Professor audience many experiences, Peter Holbrook at a Friends of Fryer event on 13 June. Starting particularly as they related to with a reading from the novel, Peter and Simon explored the main her most recent publication, themes of the book, and spoke about the research undertaken by Notebooks, which details her experiences as she travelled to some of the world’s Simon, which included a class in sandstone sculpting. This event great galleries, memorising her favourite artworks by drawing them herself. followed on from Simon’s earlier appearance at the Writers’ Hub during UQ’s centenary year.

12 October: Kay Saunders AM ‘Notorious Australian Women: the sensational lives and exploits of some of Australia’s most audacious women’ On 12 October 2011, author and UQ Upcoming Events academic Emeritus Professor Kay Saunders regaled the Friends of Fryer and other audience members with tales 7 & 8 SEPTEMBER: BRISBANE WRITERS’ FESTIVAL from her book, Notorious Australian On Friday, 7 September at 2 p.m. in the Library Conference Room, the University of Queensland Library will host a session, women. Kay’s exhaustive research into her chaired by Joanne Tompkins, with writers Drusilla Modjeska and Jon Doust discussing their recent novels The Mountain and subjects, much of it conducted with the To the Highlands. Both novels draw on their writers’ experience of Papua New Guinea and explore aspects of its post-colonial help of Fryer and UQL staff, was evident history. as she shared stories about women as diverse as bushrangers, courtesans, cross- On Saturday, 8 September at 10 a.m. in the Studio at the State Library of Queensland, the University of Queensland Library dressers, writers, designers and radicals, will sponsor a session with Robert Dessaix in conversation with fellow writer and friend Drusilla Modjeska about The Mountain. determined to live their lives their way. Robert Dessaix is a writer, translator, and broadcaster who has written an autobiography, novels, short stories, essays and travel memoirs. 30 November: RHYL HINWOOD AM Characters and events from the history 26 september: book launch of UQ came to life at the Friends of Fryer On the evening of Wednesday 26 September in the Fryer Library, Carol Hetherington and Kees de Hoog will launch Investigating Christmas Party when sculptor Rhyl Arthur Upfield: a centenary collection of critical essays,a book they have co-edited. A panel discussion on detective fiction in Hinwood took guests on a walking tour general, and Australian detective fiction in particular, will accompany the book launch. of the Great Court grotesques. Rhyl was commissioned as UQ Sculptor in 1976, and has created a variety of works for 28 november: christmas party the University in the years since. Rhyl’s informative history of both the grotesques On the evening of Wednesday, 28 November in the Hive, Level 1, Social Sciences and Humanities Library, the Friends of Fryer and other sculptural work was followed by will hold their annual Christmas party, which will feature Professor Peter Roennfeldt from the Queensland Conservatorium, Griffith drinks and canapés in The Hive. University, speaking about his book on the history of the Queensland Conservatorium and the history of music in Brisbane.

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2. On the founding of Fryer, Mark Cryle, ‘‘A very small based Paper Wasp haiku group and excitement. Almost all of acorn’: tracing the origins of the Fryer Library,’ Fryer Folios, June 2010, pp. 7-13. in 1989. He was also a persistent the titles in the Post Pressed list advocate and foundation editor would not have seen the light of 3. MF (Peggy) Burke, eulogy at Betty’s funeral, 16 December 2011. of paper wasp: an Australian day, had it not been for John’s 4. ‘A joint celebration at Customs House,’ Fryer Folios, journal of haiku. His published unrelenting commitment to have January 2009, pp. 10-11. haiku includes Wattle winds: an their voices heard. Often at 5. ‘Personnel news,’ Australian Library Journal, v. 17, Australian haiku sequence (with the expense of his income and p. 56, March 1968. Clark, Murray and Jack Stamm, health, John’s ideological passion 6. A lover of opera and ballet myself, this is my Paper Wasp, 1993) and his own for Post Pressed authors and interpretation of Betty’s tastes, not her statement. collection big man catching a books has resulted in a legacy small wave (Post Pressed, 2006), of dozens of authors’ careers, a Spencer Routh retired from The UQ described by Jeffrey Harpeng as a lasting intellectual contribution to Library in 1997 after a career spanning 38 ‘tender collection of graceful haiku the literature in their fields, and years of service as Reference Librarian and ever hopeful in their sadness and an ongoing forum in Contesting later as Collection Development Librarian. their joy’.2 Colonialism for emerging He continues to serve as a member of Indigenous researchers to find John’s verse and haiku were widely the Queensland Working Party of the mentors to shepherd their work published in journals and anthologies Australian dictionary of biography, as well through to publication. In my in Australia and internationally. As well as contributing biographical articles to this view, this is John’s crowning as his haiku collections, John published work. Spencer was awarded an honorary achievement. Vale John Knight – three collections of poetry: From Derrida doctorate from UQ in 2005 in recognition you have made your world a better to Sara Lee, (Metro Arts, 1994), Extracts Above: Betty Crouchley (nee McDougall) and a wattle tree with Barbara Bygott and Jane Oakley, of his distinguished career and contribution place.3 from the Jerusalem archives (SweetWater probably located where the Social Sciences and Humanities Library now stands. to the University Library. He was awarded Above: John Knight, UQ Archives. an OAM in 2011. Press, 1997) and Letters from the asylum As one of the poets published by Post ‘... unlikely for one brought up in (Sudden Valley Press, 2009). Pressed, (‘Pam, darlin’, when will you let work, except in salary. So, in November a fundamentalist context, I’ve a John was founder and owner of the me have your book?’), I have my own debt Betty Crouchley 1955, fifteen months for Betty ‘to proceed John Knight peculiar passion for poetry. Not small publishing house, Post Pressed. It of gratitude. It is a particular, empowering overseas’—no problems; 1956-1957 two 22 September 1922–9 December 2011 2 December 1935–24 February 2012 just for reading, for writing it. published both literary work (chiefly poetry) type of kindness to encourage someone in branch libraries; 1958 Serials Librarian; And for working with others who and academic works. In recent years, their creative work. I have warm memories 1959 Head Cataloguer. (In the last two share the same passion. Poetry Betty Crouchley died on 9 December it distinguished itself as a publisher of of John’s friendship and encouragement, she gave brief training to the tyro Spencer ‘Big man catching a small wave’ readings, workshops, seminars, 2011, aged 89, the day after she had been Australian Indigenous academic studies. and he is in our minds when the poets’ Routh.) As senior staff left, Harrison Bryan In February, 2012, we said goodbye editing sessions. Yes, there are to one of her clubs, and not long after a At a time when even publishers with a fine group meets each month, at a kitchen to Sydney, Barry Scott to Macquarie, Betty to John Knight—fine poet and haijin, still people out there who read round of chamber music and orchestral record of publishing Australian poetry, table or on a verandah, to share poetry, acted as Deputy then University Librarian. associate professor in the University and write poetry. I publish their concerts. such as UQP, will not consider unsolicited wine and talk. of Queensland’s School of Education, But then Betty herself went to work for work. And some of them are my poetry manuscripts, John went ahead and Before her marriage to Jim Crouchley, as generous mentor and committed both successively. After her marriage and best friends. I learn from and with published the work of writers he believed Betty McDougall she contributed much to publisher, and lively member of the retirement, the Australian Library Journal them. I love and treasure them and in. In this way, he brought the work of a REFERENCES Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Australian literary scene—after a long in 1968 published a tribute to her role as they—I hope—me. I’m alive in ways number of gifted Brisbane poets to the Library generally, and Sydney (briefly) and illness which turned sudden at the end. 1. John Knight, ‘A poetry editor’s passions: (or all he’ll Deputy in the planning and setting up of I can’t otherwise be when I’m with attention of readers, and performed a fine Macquarie University libraries. safely admit)’, Social Alternatives 20 (2), May 2001, services in the infant Macquarie University Among the many sides to John’s life, I them. (There! That’s my collective 1 service to new Australian writing. I find I pp. 11-13. Betty was born in 1922 at Ulmarra (NSW), Library. It also praised her training of knew him as poet, publisher, friend. dimension.)’ want to use the word ‘gallant’ in describing 2. Jacqui Murray, ‘John Knight (1935-2012): Tribute’, with family lineage including very early 5 librarians, in lectures and tutorials. I knew John for roughly the last ten years Jacqui Murray gave this account of how such publishers. And I’m sure it was a Haiku Oz, February 27, 2012 . After Brisbane Girls Grammar School and situations with clarity, reinforced by relevant by Ross Clark to join a group of poets into the world, despite its costs. 3. J Davidson, correspondence with the author. working in a bank, she became a secretary who meet monthly to share their new John was introduced to haiku in reading, and with a quiet authority that was Fellow publisher James Davidson (Publishing to ‘Doc Robbie’, Associate Professor FW work. My first meeting was on Lidija the late seventies after which he not authoritarian. Director, eContent Management) wrote: PAM SCHINDLER works as a librarian at UQ Robinson, founder (along with Professor Cvetkovic’s veranda in Yeronga, and in sporadically experimented with Library. Her poetry has appeared in a range of 2 Australian studies benefited again during JJ Stable) of the Fryer Memorial Library. that sunny, leafy place she read us her the form until 1988 when he came John Knight and I worked Australian literary magazines. Her first book of Betty’s married life in Brisbane. For the late Already a voracious reader, she was wonderful sequence of poems on snow under the spell of haiku masters closely together over the past poems, A sky you could fall into, was published 1970s and quite some time into the 1980s seeking the educational opportunities (later published in her book War is not Jack Stamm, Kazuo Sato and 6 years finding readerships for in 2010 by Post Pressed. Betty was a part-time state research officer that work at The University of Queensland the season for figs (UQP 2004), winner Tohta Kaneko who were brought Post Pressed’s commissioned 3 for the Australian dictionary of biography, offered. According to Peggy Burke , Betty of the inaugural Thomas Shapcott prize). to Australia by Japan Airlines books, developing a disparate in Queensland. These state researchers mackerel sky and was told that her first duty would be to The poets’ group had no name and for Brisbane’s Expo 88 … One collection of special titles on help ADB editors in Canberra, and authors read all the books in the Fryer collection no structure, but John was perhaps its glorious winter afternoon John, Indigenous Research from our two now the wild geese are calling in the field, not only with details of births, and to be curator of that library. (Talk ringleader. I remember his concentrated Ross Clark and Jacqui Murray lists into one series (Contesting into the sunset deaths, and marriages, but with much else. about ordering a fish to swim …) listening and careful comments, and his joined the masters for a leisurely Colonialism—ISSN 1838-6288), reaching land’s end Fryer was the ‘home’ for students But Betty didn’t just help struggling authors sudden intake of breath when someone lunch cruise in a yakatabune, built while drawing attention to the interested in Australian literature. At the and editors: the Australian dictionary of came out with a line of pure poetry—and in Japan and shipped to Brisbane works of novice authors in the rising moon’s track celebration of Fryer’s 80th anniversary in biography has twenty articles authored or his mischievous humour, and the times for Expo, up the Brisbane River. whom John invested so much for my journey 20084 David Malouf’s tribute to those times co-authored by Betty Crouchley. when the discussion went gloriously off- The cruise included a haiku master of his considerable intellect and had Betty aglow: Fryer Folios has several Betty continued her wide reading, travelled topic. The group came to be important class. More would follow, providing enthusiasm. John operated on the summer wine times reported his continuing association (Britain, Europe, Turkey), went to chamber to me, as a place where we could briefly guidance and confidence in equal margins of traditional academic in my hand the curve with the library. If he had been alive, the and orchestral music (but not flashy lay aside our work and all the other claims measure. In haiku John had found publishing, far removed from the of her poet Val Vallis would have spoken very theatrical stuff like operas or ballets)6, and of our lives, to honour the thinking about a literary form that freed him from financial constraints of the current much in the same way. was a gardener and bushwalker to the end life and language which go to make the tenets of postmodernist literary academic publishing oligopoly. John Knight criticism. Soon he was soaring, The annual reports of the University of her long life. poetry; and to listen, and give each other This is where he found creativity rising to become an accomplished Librarian of the 1950s show Betty’s responsive feedback, which gives us heart and internationally recognised progress after she transferred from Fryer REFERENCES to continue … haijin. in 1953, going first into the cataloguing 1. Janet Russell (her niece), eulogy at Betty’s funeral, John wrote, in an editorial in the journal staff. The library was a congenial place to 16 December 2011. Social Alternatives in 2001: His was an insistent voice behind the formation of the Brisbane- OBITUARIES 34 UQ LIBRARY FRYER FOLIOS | JULY 2012 35