VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 87, NUMBER 2, DECEMBER 2016 ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL ROYAL HISTORICAL SOCIETY OF VICTORIA The Royal Historical Society of Victoria is a community organisation comprising people from many fields committed to collecting, researching and sharing an understanding of the history of Victoria. The Victorian Historical Journal is a fully refereed journal dedicated to Australian, and especially Victorian, history produced twice yearly by the Publications Committee, Royal Historical Society of Victoria. PUBLICATIONS COMMITTEE Jill Barnard Marilyn Bowler Richard Broome (Convenor) Marie Clark Mimi Colligan Don Garden (President, RHSV) Don Gibb David Harris (Editor, Victorian Historical Journal) Kate Prinsley Marian Quartly (Editor, History News) John Rickard Judith Smart (Review Editor) Chips Sowerwine Carole Woods BECOME A MEMBER Membership of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria is open. All those with an interest in history are welcome to join. Subscriptions can be purchased at: Royal Historical Society of Victoria 239 A’Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Telephone: 03 9326 9288 Email: [email protected] www.historyvictoria.org.au Journals are also available for purchase online: www.historyvictoria.org.au/publications/victorian-historical-journal VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL ISSUE 286 VOLUME 87, NUMBER 2 DECEMBER 2016 Royal Historical Society of Victoria Victorian Historical Journal Published by the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 239 A’Beckett Street Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia Telephone: 03 9326 9288 Fax: 03 9326 9477 Email: [email protected] www.historyvictoria.org.au Copyright © the authors and the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 2016 All material appearing in this publication is copyright and cannot be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher and the relevant author. Design: Janet Boschen, Boschen Design Desktop Production: John Gillespie, Kiplings Business Communications Printer: BPA Print Group Print Post Approved: PP349181/00159 ISSN 1030 7710 The Royal Historical Society of Victoria acknowledges the support of the Victorian Government though Creative Victoria—Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources. Front cover: Janet Mitchell, ‘From the drawing by Hope Weston’, published in Janet Mitchell, Spoils of Opportunity: An autobiography, London, Methuen, 1938 (NLA CDP-10573593) Become a Patron of the Victorian Historical Journal The RHSV invites you to become a patron of the journal to guarantee its future for the next 100 years. WHY WE NEED YOUR DEVOTED TO VICTORIA’S HOW TO BE INVOLVED SUPPORT HISTORY We suggest the following levels The journal costs almost The Victorian Historical Journal of pledge for your consideration. $20,000 per annum to produce dates from 1911, being one of and post. Behind this cost is the oldest historical journals Annually: $250 the unpaid work of authors, published in Australia. It is the $500 editors, referees, the RHSV most distinctive accomplishment $1,000 image team, proof-readers of the Royal Historical Society of other $............ Victoria (RHSV). and Publications Committee Annually for the following members. This voluntary Devoted to the history periods I year labour was estimated in a of Victoria or history that 3 years recent successful grant for illuminates Victorian history, the 5 years the special World War I issue journal publishes academics, in 2015 at $153,000 (costed postgraduates and community (The RHSV is a tax-deductible modestly at $85 per hour). historians. entity and all contributions from patrons will be tax-deductible). As a patron you will be It is issued twice annually in hard acknowledged in the journal (if copy and on the web through agreeable). The RHSV would the WEB of SCIENCE (2015+), be delighted if you would INFORMIT (1994+) and on become a patron. Journal the State Library of Victoria’s patrons will receive free RHSV website (1911+). membership. Please reply with your preferred pledge to Richard Broome, Chair of the Publications Committee on [email protected] and you will be contacted regarding payment. If you are unable to become a patron at this time, please consider an RHSV membership, see http://www.historyvictoria.org.au/ and choose the ‘support us’ button on the service bar. CURRENT PATRONS Emeritus Professor Richard Broome, La Trobe University FRHSV, Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison, Monash University His Honour Paul R Mullaly QC, Professor Lynette Russell, Monash University, Carole Woods, FRHSV Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 What a great Christmas gift idea! Remembering Melbourne 1850–1860, Yarra. Besides this, it presents key an imaginative collaboration between the buildings and streetscapes of twenty of Royal Historical Society of Victoria and the Melbourne’s neighbouring suburbs. Queensland Book Depot, and based on the Each street and suburb is introduced voluntary efforts of over 100 people, has by a short essay written by an expert, established a new benchmark in recording catching the essence of that precinct. the early history of one of the world’s most These authoritative introductions provide liveable cities. a context for the magnificent photographs Melbourne has been reshaped since the to follow. There are also introductory 1950s, the completion of ICI House in chapters on Aboriginal Melbourne, on 1958 being symbolic of the glass tower how the city was shaped, on the city revolution that changed the face of this and suburbs as a whole, and on how magnificent 19th-century city. This book, Melbourne and suburbs were captured by Remembering Melbourne 1850–1960, the camera, which was born at the same captures what has been lost and forgotten, time as the city. concealed and overlaid, demolished and reborn, in the transformation of a Cost: $35 plus P&P city’s buildings and You can purchase at streetscapes. www.historyvictoria. It is a unique book, org.au for it reveals in over or ring RHSV direct on 700 photographs the 9326 9288 face of fourteen of Melbourne’s finest streets, and also its lanes and little streets, its parks and gardens, and of course the Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 1960 - 1850 Melbourne Remembering 1960 - 1850 Melbourne Remembering 1960 - 1850 Melbourne Remembering 1960 - 1850 Melbourne Remembering Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Remembering Melbourne 1850 - 1960 Enhance your next book with an Index by Terri MacKenzie Professional Back of Book Indexer Member of Australian and New Zealand Society of Indexers Honorary Victorian Historical Journal Indexer [email protected] VICTORIAN HISTORICAL JOURNAL VOLUME 87, NUMBER 2 DECEMBER 2016 ARTICLES Introduction 193 David Harris ‘I feel it dreadful to be out of work’: Tom Purcell and William Farrell 196 and the Melbourne Labour Market 1875–1908 John Lack and Charles Fahey Melbourne Journalist Reports on the ‘Storm Centre of Asia’, 1931–32 217 Janet Mitchell: Journalist, Internationalist, Educationalist Patricia Clarke Beechworth Goldfield and Large-scale Water Management in 237 Colonial Victoria Peter Davies, Susan Lawrence and Jodi Turnbull The Wirrengren-Kulkyne Pathway: Locating a Cultural Icon 261 John Burch ‘The Remarkable Disappearance of Messrs Gellibrand and Hesse’. 278 What Really Happened in 1837? A Re-examination of the Historical Evidence Paul Michael F Donovan, Ian D Clark and Fred (David) Cahir HISTORICAL NOTE The Day Georgiana McCrae Got It Wrong 298 Barbara Minchinton REVIEWS Judging for the People: A Social History of the Supreme Court 308 in Victoria 1841–2016 Edited by Simon Smith Kim Rubenstein with Marina Loane Respectable Radicals: A History of the National Council of Women of 310 Australia 1896–2006 By Marian Quartly and Judith Smart Kate Laing These Walls Speak Volumes: A History of the Mechanics’ Institutes 312 in Victoria By Pam Baragwanath and Ken James Don Garden Lost Relations, Fortunes of My Family in Australia’s Golden Age 315 By Graeme Davison Marie Alice Clark Wild Bleak Bohemia, Marcus Clarke, Adam Lindsay Gordon and 318 Henry Kendall—A Documentary By Michael Wilding Marie Alice Clark Modern Love: The Lives of John and Sunday Reed 321 By Lesley Harding and Kendrah Morgan John Rickard J.P. Campbell: Pictorialist Photographer at Home and at War 324 By Alan Harding Richard Trembath Victoria and the Great War 326 Edited by John Lack and Judith Smart with John Arnold Walter Phillips Sport in Victoria: A History 330 Edited by Dave Nadel and Graeme Ryan Don Gibb Notes on Contributors 332 About the Royal Historical Society of Victoria 335 Guidelines to Contributors 336 viii Victorian Historical Journal, Volume 87, Number 2, December 2016 Introduction In this issue of the journal we have an array of articles tracing different aspects of Victoria’s history, from a traditional Indigenous pathway in the Mallee to the working life of a Melbourne-born woman journalist during the 1930s. In between, there is an examination of how water was used during the gold rush in the Beechworth region and an insight