DOCSLIB.ORG

The ADB's Story

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The ADB's Story The ADB ’s Story Edited by Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon The ADB ’s Story Edited by Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon Published by ANU E Press The Australian National University Canberra ACT 0200, Australia Email: [email protected] This title is also available online at http://epress.anu.edu.au National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Title: The ADB’s story / edited by Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon. ISBN: 9781925021196 (paperback) 9781925021202 (ebook) Subjects: Australian dictionary of biography--History. Encyclopedias and dictionaries--Australia--History. Biography--Dictionaries--History. Australia--Biography--History and criticism. Other Authors/Contributors: Nolan, Melanie, editor. Fernon, Christine, editor. Dewey Number: 920.094 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Cover illustration: Keith Hancock planting an English oak tree on the southern lawn of University House in 1984 to celebrate the house’s thirtieth anniversary. The ‘Hancock oak’, grown from an acorn he brought from Cambridge, commemorates the association between The Australian National University and Cambridge, England. The ADB was another of Hancock’s ‘oaks’. ANUA225-511 The ANU Lives Series in Biography is an initiative of the National Centre for Biography in the History Program in the Research School of Social Sciences at The Australian National University. The National Centre was established in 2008 to extend the work of the Australian Dictionary of Biography and to serve as a focus for the study of life writing in Australia, supporting innovative research and writing to the highest standards in the field, nationally and internationally. Books that appear in the ANU Lives series will be lively, engaging and provocative, intended to appeal to the current popular and scholarly interest in biography, memoir and autobiography. They will recount interesting and telling life stories and engage critically with issues and problems in historiography and life writing. Cover design and layout by ANU E Press Printed by Griffin Press This edition © 2013 ANU E Press Contents A Dictionary of Public Figures . ix Geoff Page Foreword . xi Tom Griffiths Obligations and Debts in Writing the ADB’s Story . 1 Melanie Nolan and Christine Fernon 1. ‘Insufficiently Engineered’: A Dictionary Designed to Stand the Test of Time? . 5 Melanie Nolan Document: ‘The Australian Dictionary of Biography’, paper presented to ANU Council, 10 May 1960 . 34 Document: ‘The Australian Dictionary of Biography’, paper presented to ANU Council, 12 April 1962 . 36 Document: Keith Hancock launches Volume 10 of the ADB, 1986 . 42 Editors and their Eras 2. Sir Keith Hancock: Laying the Foundations, 1959–1962 . 49 Ann Moyal Document: Report of My Journey to Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne and Hobart, August–Sept. 1959, by Ann Moyal . 78 Profile: Ann Moyal . 86 Profile: Keith Hancock . 88 Profile: Malcolm Ellis . 90 The Wild Colonial Bore by O. K. H. Spate . 92 Profiles: Geoffrey Sawer and Ross Hohnen . 93 Profile: Norman Cowper . 95 Profile: Gwyn James . 97 Profile: A. G. L. Shaw . 99 3. ‘Born to do this work’: Douglas Pike and the ADB, 1962–1973 . 101 John D. Calvert Profile: Nan Phillips . 120 Profile: Jim Gibbney . 122 Profile: Sally and Bob O’Neill . 125 Profile: Ruth Frappell . 128 4. Bede Nairn and Geoffrey Serle: A Fine Partnership, 1973–1987 . 131 Christopher Cunneen Profile: Chris Cunneen . 147 Profile: Bryan Gandevia . 149 Profiles: Margaret Steven and Heather Radi . 150 5. John Ritchie: Consolidating a Tradition, 1987–2002 . 153 Geoffrey Bolton Document: Phar Lap: an ADB entry by B. G. Andrews . 172 Profiles: Richard Tolhurst, Gough Whitlam and Barry Jones . 174 Profiles: Barry and Ann Smith . 176 Profiles: John La Nauze and Ken Inglis . 178 6. The Di Langmore Era, and Going Online, 2002–2008 . 181 Darryl Bennet Profile: Darryl Bennet . 201 Profile: Gavan McCarthy . 203 Profile: John Molony . 205 Profiles: Ivy Meere, Edna Kauffman and Karen Ciuffetelli . 207 The ADB’s Workflow Board . 208 ADB Files . 209 The ADB’s Corrigenda Ruler . 210 National Collaboration 7. Working Parties: Recollections of the South Australian Working Party . 213 John Tregenza The New South Wales Working Party . 218 Beverley Kingston Recollections of the New South Wales Working Party . 227 Russell Doust The Queensland Working Party . 229 Spencer Routh Profile: Spencer Routh . 234 Profile: Michael Roe . 236 Profile: Wendy Birman . 238 Profile: Cameron Hazlehurst . 240 Profiles: Maurice (Bunny) Austin, Alec Hill and Frank Brown . 242 Profiles: Gordon Briscoe and Frances Peters-Little . 244 Profile: John Poynter . 246 8. From the First Fleet to ‘Underbelly’: Writing for the ADB . 249 Gerald Walsh Profile: Gerry Walsh . 261 Profile: Ann Hone . 263 Profile: Ken Cable . 264 Profiles: Martha Campbell and Suzanne Edgar . 266 A King’s Remains by Suzanne Edgar . 269 The ADB—My Best Friend by P. A. Selth . 271 9. National Collaboration: The ADB Editorial Board and the Working Parties . 277 Jill Roe Profile: Jill Roe . 295 Profile: Geoffrey Bolton . 297 10. Assessing the ADB: A Review of the Reviews . 299 Mark McGinness Review of ADB, Volumes 1 and 2 (1967) by Geoffrey Blainey . 322 Review of ADB, Volume 9 (1983) by Stuart Macintyre . 329 Review of ADB, Volume 18 (2012) by Mark McGinness . 332 Pasts and Futures ADB Volumes . 337 11. Opportunities for National Biography Online: The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2005–2012 . 345 Philip Carter 12. From Book to Digital Culture: Redesigning the ADB . 373 Melanie Nolan Appendices Appendix 1: Time Line . 397 Appendix 2: ADB Staff List, 1958–2013 . 403 Appendix 3: National Committee, Editorial Board and Working Parties by Volume . 411 Appendix 4: ADB Medal Recipients . 443 Appendix 5: ADB Bibliography . 447 Abbreviations . 469 Index . 471.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • New Books January – June 2021 Our Team
    The discussion starts here NEW BOOKS JANUARY – JUNE 2021 OUR TEAM Greg Bain, Acting Director [email protected] Sarah Cannon, Senior Marketing Coordinator [email protected] New and forthcoming books 2 Joanne Mullins, Coordinator [email protected] Award winners and shortlisters 22 Les Thomas, Designer Recent highlights 24 [email protected] Sam van der Plank, Publishing Officer Backlist 25 [email protected] How to order and distributors 37 About our eBooks and open access books 37 Monash University Publishing Monash University Level 2, Matheson Library Annexe 44 Exhibition Walk, Clayton Campus Wellington Road Clayton VIC 3168, Australia +6 13 9905 0590 [email protected] www.publishing.monash.edu Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and LinkedIn CONTENTS New and forthcoming books 2 Award winners and shortlisters 22 Recent highlights 24 Backlist 25 How to order and distributors 37 About our eBooks and open access books 37 NEW AND FORTHCOMING BOOKS EVE LANGLEY AND THE PEA PICKERS By Helen Vines ‘Eve Langley’s strange story, its secrets and silences, has baffled many literary sleuths’ Brenda Niall ‘Such skilful literary detective work into one of Australia’s most astonishing and misunderstood writers’ Cathy Perkins Autobiography or fiction? This question has shadowed the work of enigmatic Australian author Eve Langley since her first novel, The Pea Pickers, was published in 1942. Almost immediately after, Eve was committed to a mental asylum in Auckland where she remained for more than seven years, separated from her three RRP: AUD/US $34.95 | May 2021 young children. Hailed as a tour de force, The Pea ISBN (paperback): 9781922464392 Pickers was based on Eve’s real-life experiences in the 1920s and tells the story of two feisty sisters who wander the Australian countryside dressed as men magazine and she co-authored seeking work and adventure.
    [Show full text]
  • Australia and Britain at Empire's End
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Sydney eScholarship A “Foreign” Country? Australia and Britain at Empire’s End. Greta Beale A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of B.A. (Advanced)(Hons) in History. University of Sydney October 2011 − Acknowledgements – ____________________________________________________________________________________________ I would like to firstly thank my supervisor Dr. James Curran for his patience, support and for sharing with me his incredible knowledge and passion for Australian political history. Your guidance was invaluable and much appreciated. I would also like to thank the 2011 honours coordinator, Dr. Kirsten McKenzie, for guiding me in the right direction and for her encouraging words. To the staff at Fisher Library, the National Library of Australia and the National Archives of Australia, your assistance in the research stages of the thesis was so helpful, and I thank you for going above and beyond your respective roles. To my family, I thank you for talking me through what sometimes seemed an overwhelming task. To Dad and Sasha, my calming influences, and to Mum, for her patient and precise proof reading, day trips to Canberra, and for listening with genuine interest to my ongoing discussions about the finer details of the Anglo- Australian relationship, many, many thanks. 2 - Contents - _____________________________________________________________________ Acknowledgements 2 Introduction Disentangling From Empire 4 Chapter 1 The Myth of “Civic Britannicus Sum” The United Kingdom Commonwealth Immigration Act 27 Chapter 2 “Austr-aliens” The Commonwealth Immigration Act, 1971. 49 Chapter 3 “Another tie is loosed” The transfer of responsibility for Australia House, 1972.
    [Show full text]
  • The Australian History Summit, 17 August 2006 Biographical Details Of
    THE AUSTRALIAN HISTORY SUMMIT, 17 AUGUST 2006 BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS OF SUMMIT PARTICIPANTS Mr Andrew Barnett, Year 12 Level Co-ordinator and Senior Teacher, Ruyton Girls' School Mr Barnett is Year 12 Level Co-ordinator (Pastoral Care) and Senior Teacher of Economics, History and Politics at Ruyton Girls' School, Kew in Victoria. He has an MA in History, a BA and a Dip Ed from La Trobe University. He has taught in the Humanities discipline (Secondary Level -Years 7 to 12) for over 30 years in a range of Victorian schools including Thomastown High School, Heidelberg High School, Camberwell Grammar School, Trinity Grammar School, Lauriston Girls' School and (since 2001) Ruyton Girls' School. He has taught History, Social Sciences/Studies, Economics (including the International Baccalaureate), Politics, Asian Studies and Philosophy (from Years 7-12). Concurrently, he has served as Year 9/10 Social Sciences Co-ordinator (Camberwell Grammar), Co-ordinator of Asian/Australian Studies (Lauriston), Head of Economics/Politics Department (Lauriston), Senior House-Master (Lauriston), Co-ordinator of Pastoral Care for Years 9/10 and 12 (Ruyton), and an Acting Deputy Principal for Student Administration (Lauriston). Emeritus Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC, Ernest Scott Professor of History, University of Melbourne (1977-1988), Chancellor of the University of Ballarat (1994-1998) Emeritus Professor Blainey has published over 30 books on Australian history and world history. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Academy of the Humanities in Australia. He studied History at the University of Melbourne under R M Crawford and worked as a freelance historian, pioneering the field of business history with The Peaks of Lyell; Gold and Paper: a History of the National Bank of Australasia; and Mines in the Spinifex.
    [Show full text]
  • Western Australian History – the Next Assignments Address to the History Council of Western Australia
    HISTORICAL PRACTICE WESTERN AUSTRALIAN HISTORY – THE NEXT ASSIGNMENTS ADDRESS TO THE HISTORY COUNCIL OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA Geoffrey Bolton, Emeritus Professor of History and Chancellor of Murdoch University Correspondence to Geoffrey Bolton: [email protected] When Pope Alexander VI in 1494 divided the world between Portuguese and Spanish spheres of influence he can never have imagined that he was creating Western Australia. By placing the dividing line of longitude at a point which would give Brazil to Portugal he inadvertently ensured that the western third of the then unknown Australian continent would lie in the Portuguese zone while the rest went to Spain. Three centuries later when the British asserted sovereignty over Australia they at first laid claim only to the former Spanish sphere of influence, at first east of longitude 135 and subsequently as far as the ‘Pope’s line’ at longitude 129 degrees. It has been suggested that the failure to annex Western Australia was due to respect for the British East India Company, who could be seen as inheriting the shadowy Portuguese entitlement in the Indian Ocean region. When in 1826 Governor Darling eventually sent a garrison to show the flag at King Georges Sound, now the site of Albany, the East India Company’s authority had waned and it seemed necessary to discourage foreign powers from laying claim to Western Australia. Soon afterwards Captain James Stirling established the Swan River Colony and Western Australia was defined as all that part of the continent lying west of longitude 129 east. For much of its length this boundary line has some justification, as the Nullarbor Plain and the Great Sandy Desert are geographic features which might well foster a sense of separateness; however there is little logic in dividing the Kimberley district from the western part of the Northern Territory.
    [Show full text]
  • The Voice of Edith Cowan: Australia's First Woman Parliamentarian 1921-1924
    Edith Cowan University Research Online ECU Publications Pre. 2011 1996 The voice of Edith Cowan: Australia's first woman parliamentarian 1921-1924 Harry C.J. Phillips Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks Part of the Legislation Commons, Political Science Commons, and the Women's History Commons Phillips, H.C.J. (1996). The voice of Edith Cowan: Australia's first woman parliamentarian 1921-1924. Churchlands, Australia: Edith Cowan University. This Book is posted at Research Online. https://ro.ecu.edu.au/ecuworks/6821 Edith Cowan University Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorize you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: • Copyright owners are entitled to take legal action against persons who infringe their copyright. • A reproduction of material that is protected by copyright may be a copyright infringement. • A court may impose penalties and award damages in relation to offences and infringements relating to copyright material. Higher penalties may apply, and higher damages may be awarded, for offences and infringements involving the conversion of material into digital or electronic form. THE \TOICE OF EDITH COWAN AUSTRALIA'S FIRST WOMAN PARLIAMENTARIAN, 1921-24 HARRY C. J. PHILLIPS EDITH COWAN UNIVERSITY CHURCHLANDS, WESTERN AUSTRALIA Published by Edith Cowan University Pearson Street, Churchlands, Western Australia 6018 First published in 1996 Copyright-Edith Cowan University This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.
    [Show full text]
  • Cleansing the Dunghill: Water Supply and Sanitation in Perth 1878-1912
    CLEANSING THE DUNGHILL: WATER SUPPLY AND SANITATION IN PERTH 1878-1912 SU-JANE HUNT AND GEOFFREY BOLTON After half a century of backwardness Western Australia in the 1880s embarked upon an unprecedentedly rapid period of growth. During this era of railway building and the gold rushes the population increased tenfold, to 300,000 in 1912. At the same time the level of prosperity and of expected living standards improved markedly. Demands for the provision of public services grew much faster than the availability of resources to meet them or of civil servants and politicians able to devise solutions to the host of problems which pressed upon them. Models of public administration or private involvement developed in Britain and eastern Australia did not always prove appropri­ ate to local conditions. Among the social demands generated during that period questions of public health and sanitation figured prominently and led eventually to a major degree of formal intervention by the Western Australian government. This was not the result of a pre­ conceived preference for state control. On the contrary, successive administrations tried to remit the initiative to municipal corporations, statutory boards, and where appropriate to private enterprise. In the absence as yet of a thorough exploration of the processes by which Western Australia's administrative machinery, fashioned be­ fore 1890 to meet the needs of a slow-growing and paternalistically governed Crown Colony, was overhauled to cope with the great upsurge of social demands generated by the long boom, it may be useful to trace the forces making for increased govern­ ment intervention in public health and sanitation.
    [Show full text]
  • 246 Nov for Doran
    Australian Book Review ABR is most grateful for the generous support of our November 2002, No. 246 chief sponsor, La Trobe University. ISSN 01 55-2864 Registered by Australia Post Published by Australian Book Review Inc. PO Box 2320, Richmond South, Victoria 3121 EditorialABR has been assisted by the Commonwealth Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory Editor Peter Rose body; Holding Redlich; and Arts Victoria. We also acknow- Assistant Editor Aviva Tuffield ledge the generous support of our national sponsor, the Office Manager Dianne Schallmeiner National Library of Australia. Cover Designer Chong Printer Doran Printing Chair Robert Manne Treasurer Matt Kumar Board Members Peter Craven, Michael Crennan, Ramona Koval, Vicki Nicholson, Russ Radcliffe, Peter Steele Subscription rates (all prices include GST) Editorial Advisers Don Anderson, Peter Bishop, Isobel Crombie, Kerryn Goldsworthy, Paul Hetherington, John Hirst, Paul Kane, One year (ten issues) Patrick McCaughey, Pam Macintyre, Hilary McPhee, Allan Individuals: $63.50 Patience, Craig Sherborne, Michael Shmith, Ilana Snyder Institutions: $72.00 Editorial Assistants Elisha McMullen, Michael Williams Students/pensioners: $52.00 Overseas (airmail) Asia/NZ: Individuals: $82.00 Telephone: (03) 9429 6700 Institutions: $90.00 Fax: (03) 9429 2288 Overseas (airmail) Rest of World: Individuals: $107.00 E-mail: [email protected] Institutions: $112.00 http://www.vicnet.net.au/~abr/ Two years (twenty issues, Australia only) Unsolicited manuscripts will not be returned unless accompanied Individuals: $117.00 by stamped, self-addressed envelopes. Editorial matters should be Institutions: $135.00 directed to the editor; advertising/marketing ones to the assistant Students/pensioners: $93.00 editor; and subscription queries to the office manager.
    [Show full text]
  • Research at ECU's School of Arts and Humanities
    2020 Research areas And supervisors ARTS and HUMANITIES world ready There is where you are right now, and there is where you want to get to. in between you need a bridge. ecu is that bridge between your world, and the whole world. Become world ready at ecu. contents Message from the Associate Dean of Research 3 Research Groups 9 Research Areas 4 Our Researchers and Supervisors 10 Centre for Research in Entertainment, Arts, Technology, Research Highlights 52 Education and Communications (CREAtec) 6 Applying to ECU 55 Sellenger Centre for Research in Law, Justice and Social Change 7 Edith Cowan Centre for Global Issues (C-Global) 8 ECU is committed to reconciliation and recognises and respects the significance of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ communities, cultures and histories. ECU acknowledges and respects the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, as the traditional custodians of the land. ECU acknowledges and respects its continuing association with Nyoongar people, the traditional custodians of the land upon which its campuses stand. 2 MESSAGE FROM THE ASSOCIATE DEAN of RESEARCH The ECU School of Arts and Humanities has the most I welcome your interest in exploring the postgraduate interesting research program in the university because research projects on offer in the School of Arts and of the wide variety of disciplines in the school. The Humanities. In this brochure you will find descriptions disciplines range from the creative arts, such as writing, of research highlights from the school’s three research visual arts and design, through humanities, such as centres and most active research supervisors.
    [Show full text]
  • Geoffrey Bolton Lecture—From Bolshevism to Populism
    Geoffrey Bolton Lecture— From bolshevism to populism: Australia in a century of global transformation1 Stuart Macintyre University of Melbourne One hundred years ago last week, an obscure Russian named Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov directed a seizure of power in the Russian capital of St Petersburg. Ulyanov was a professional revolutionary, better known as Lenin (because he had been exiled in Siberia, close to the Lena river), and was living in Switzerland in April 1917 when Germany took him back to his homeland to foment discord there. For Germany was at war with Russia and the growing strain of that conflict had brought down the tottering Tsarist regime in the previous month. Since Lenin was known to oppose the war, his arrival in Russia was calculated to weaken the efforts of the new Provisional Government to revive that country’s military effort. And so it did. With his call for an end to the war, Lenin’s Bolshevik Party (Bolshevik meaning the majority wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party) grew rapidly from some 10,000 members in March 1917 to 400,000 by November. Effective power passed during 1917 from the Provisional Government to local councils of workers, soldiers and peasants, known as soviets, which took over the running of factories, removed unpopular military officers and redistributed the landholdings of the nobility. With their 1 This is the text of the Geoffrey Bolton Lecture for 2017, which was delivered in Perth at the invitation of the State Records Office of Western Australia. I was asked to mark the centenary of the Russian Revolution and offer observations on the rise of populism 100 years later.
    [Show full text]
  • INTRODUCTION Environmental History in Western Australia Before 1980
    INTRODUCTION Environmental History in Western Australia before 1980 Geoffrey Bolton Murdoch University Amateur and professional historians both contributed to the evolution of environmental history in Western Australia. While due recognition must be made of the influence of international and eastern Australian scholarship, the historical geographers in particular, it remains the case that much of the impetus for recognising the importance of environmental factors in the Western Australian past came from historians working locally. This should not be surprising in a society of recent European origin which until the 1960s depended on wool and wheat as major staples. Researchers tracing historical change over the relatively brief period of settlement since 1829 could not help observing rapid transformations of landscape and ecology during that period. It was maybe also relevant that even the residents of the capital city, Perth, lived with Kings Park as what was considered an icon of natural bush, although in reality one that had undergone considerable modification. The observers came from a variety of sources. The proceedings of the [Royal]1 Western Australian Historical Society founded in 1926 included from its beginnings members whose rural experience enabled them to make practical observations on local environmental change. As early as 1927 Mary Farrelly and H.K. Maley drew attention to an enlightened initiative of Maitland Brown, as resident magistrate of Geraldton in the early 1870s. Confronted with the encroachment of sandhills on the town area, he set the unemployed to plant native shrubs and trees extensively around the outskirts of Geraldton, earning the praise of Governor Weld.2 Later contributors to the Historical Society, among 1 The Western Australian Historical Society was granted the right of including ‘Royal’ in its name in 1963.
    [Show full text]
  • Biographies and Autobiographies of Historians, Edited by Doug Munro and John G
    List of Contributors Geoffrey Bolton (1931–2015) was a prolific and versatile historian and biographer. In a long and distinguished career, he held chairs of history at the University of Western Australia, Murdoch University, the University of Queensland and Edith Cowan University, and also served as foundation director of the Australian Studies Centre in London. His work for the Australian Dictionary of Biography included the authorship of 94 entries. A recent publication in his honour is A Historian for All Seasons: Essays for Geoffrey Bolton, edited by Stuart Macintyre, Lenore Layman and Jenny Gregory (Monash University Publishing, 2017). Barbara Caine is Professor of History and Head of the School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry at the University of Sydney. She has worked extensively on historical biography and on the importance of individual lives in writing history. Her publications include Destined to be Wives (Oxford University Press, 1986); Bombay to Bloomsbury: A Biography of the Strachey Family (Oxford University Press, 2005); and Biography and History (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). She is currently writing a history of women’s autobiography. Sheila Fitzpatrick is Professor of History at the University of Sydney and Distinguished Service Professor Emerita of the University of Chicago. Her recent books include two memoirs, My Father’s Daughter: Memories of an Australian childhood (Melbourne University Press, 2010) and A Spy in the Archives (Melbourne University Press, 2014), a monograph, On Stalin’s Team: The Years of Living Dangerously in Soviet Politics (Princeton University Press and Melbourne University Press, 2015) and a book on her late husband’s experiences as a displaced person in Germany in the 1940s, Mischka’s War: A European odyssey of the 1940s (Melbourne University Press, 2017).
    [Show full text]
  • GEOFFREY CURGENVEN BOLTON Ao 1931–2015 Fellow · Elected 1974
    THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES ANNUAL REPORT 2015–16 27 GEOFFREY CURGENVEN BOLTON ao 1931–2015 fellow · elected 1974 life he could passages from Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England. A secondary scholarship took him to Wesley College, where at the age of sixteen he won the State exhibitions for History and English, with distinctions in Latin and German. At university he contributed scripts to the ABC’s local radio station, won a state quiz competition, helped establish the forerunner to the literary journal Westerly and edited the undergraduate newspaper, Pelican (with John Stone as business manager and Rolf Harris as cartoonist). He first travelled beyond his home state in 1950 by arranging a conference of university newspaper editors in Melbourne. His counterpart there, Geoffrey Blainey, wrote to say he saw no need for such a conference and, in an odd anticipation of their later debate over the tyranny of distance, Bolton replied that he would if he lived in Perth. For his honours thesis Geoffrey explored the career of Alexander Forrest, surveyor, politician and businessman, which he expanded into a monograph while completing a Masters thesis on the Kimberley pastoral industry – his informants included Mary Durack and Don photo: aah archives McLeod. At Oxford he was taught by Richard Southern, Christopher Hill and E. H. Carr, and obtained first- eoffrey Bolton was the most versatile and widely class honours in Modern History before undertaking Gtravelled of his generation of Australian historians. a DPhil. His thesis, published subsequently as The Passing After completing a BA and MA at the University of of the Irish Act of Union (1966), recast the traditional Western Australia, a Hackett fellowship allowed him to interpretation of the measure with a command of detail study overseas, and he followed many earlier historians and felicity of expression that became his hallmark.
    [Show full text]