Corners of Melbourne, by Robyn Annear

Following on from Robyn Annear's Adrift in Melbourne, the historian brings more stories – both alarming and entertaining – of Melbourne's early years.

In this new history of Melbourne by much loved writer Robyn Annear, the overarching theme is street corners. Before home entertainment – radio, television, the internet – people took to the streets to keep themselves amused. The streets were loud, noisy, crowded, exciting and dangerous. Drunks, chancers, larrikins, sex workers, snake oil merchants and pickpockets, among other unsavoury types, thronged the inner city. Life was lived very much in public in the 19th century, which could create problems such as marauding gangs (the larrikin phenomenon) and street congestion: people hung around street corners in large numbers and simply didn't move on. The sheer volume of people that would turn up for public meetings and flamboyant street performers could easily reach the thousands. Many street corners carried their own pet names and reputations.  “Puppy-Dog corner”, as it was known during its heyday, on the corner of Swanston and Collins, was a hangout for foppish young men who liked to ogle passing young women.

While Corners of Melbourne ostensibly sticks to street corners as its theme, the book ranges over subjects such as city sanitation (or lack thereof), rudimentary water systems and shoddy buildings, some simply collapsing under their own poor construction. The sections of the book dealing with toilet waste are stomach churning. Human waste (and all sorts of other garbage) was often simply dumped in what are now public parks. Men relieved themselves in alleyways (Melbourne didn't get its first public urinal until 1859) and the urine ran freely in the streets. In summer the smell was intolerable.
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Robyn Annear brings her usual wit and eye for a cracking good story to Corners. The book is full of characters and incidents gleaned from the newspapers of the day, including The Argus and The Herald. There's never a dull moment in this gritty yet humorous history which manages to truly bring the streets of early Melbourne alive. An interesting place to read about, but one which you may not want to visit!  

Corners of Melbourne, by Robyn Annear. Published by Text. $35

DEC23

Killing for Country, by David Marr

In a work of peerless research, David Marr shows how Australia was won by the rifle, the carbine and the sword. Not by peaceful settlement.

In 2019, journalist David Marr was asked by his uncle about a mysterious person in their family. Marr's great grandmother, Maud, was still alive when he was in his twenties, but he'd lost contact with her since the age of eight. What had happened to her in the intervening years? What Marr's research found was that Maud's father Reg, and his brother Darcy, were part of Australia's Native Police. They essentially cleared the land of its Indigenous people so squatters could run their sheep.

In Marr's portrait of early Australia, the country is little more than a brutal money factory. Official word from the English Crown and Parliament was that the native inhabitants were to be left alone. The English knew it was their country; they also knew it was being usurped. These fine words from the mother country, however, evaporated upon Australian shores. No vigorous laws protected Aboriginals or their right to Country. In the early years of the colony, Aboriginal people weren't even allowed to give testimony in court, ensuring the law worked to advance white interests. Public concern in protecting Aboriginals was lukewarm at best. The mood was one of turning a blind eye to atrocities committed, allowing the Native Police to do its unspeakable work. It was in everyone's best interests to secure as much land as possible.

Killing for Country quotes extensively from the contemporary record of letters, journals, memoirs, newspapers and parliamentary record. (The book is a triumph of research.) It seems clear that everyone knew what was going on. Through the newspaper reports of the time, it was part of public discourse and couldn't be ignored. Terrible mass killings were taking place, but there was no one – no laws, moral authority or public outrage – that could stop it.

Perhaps one of the greatest tragedies is that land use could have been negotiated and much bloodshed avoided. Early pastoral leases actually stipulated shared land use between settler and traditional owners – but none of this was ever observed. It was rather a brutal land grab.

David Marr's book makes for ugly, confronting reading. Even those who have read much about Australia's Frontier Wars may still be shocked by how pervasive and widely known the killings were. How little was done to stop it. And ultimately, that this was the method by which the early colonies established themselves, paving the way for modern Australia. 

Killing for Country, by David Marr. Published by Back Inc. $39.99

NOV 23

Everything You Need to Know About the Voice, by Megan Davis and George Williams

Megan Davis and George Williams take an historical perspective on the Voice in this instructive and useful guide. 

Constitutional experts Megan Davis (a Cobble Cobble woman from south-west Queensland) and George Williams AO have put together a neat, easy-to-read history of the Indigenous struggle for recognition in Australia's founding document, with useful timelines and appendices. Starting with an explanation of how the constitution came to be, Everything You Need to Know About the Voice then moves onto the 1967 referendum, which proposed changes that would allow Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to be counted as part of the population and provide the Commonwealth with the power to make laws for them. This referendum was carried with an overwhelming majority and the authors spend much time dissecting the reasons for its success and the misunderstandings as to what was being proposed.

The rest of the book describes the democratic process that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart and some of its key goals, namely Voice, Treaty and Truth-Telling. Davis and Williams put the Voice referendum in historical perspective, highlighting its challenges and clearing away the fog of misinformation. A vital contribution to the upcoming referendum that will help citizens to make an informed decision.

Everything You Need to Know About the Voice, by Megan Davis and George Williams. Published by New South Publishing. $27.99

SEP23

Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire, by Walter Marsh

A new biography of Rupert Murdoch concentrates on his early years.

Rupert Murdoch’s influence is ubiquitous, yet the man himself remains oddly opaque. Contradictions abound. During his university days, he toyed with left-wing politics, but soon moved to the right. He painted himself the outsider, but quickly became the establishment. As Murdoch once said candidly: “Monopoly is a terrible thing, until you have it.”
 
Journalist Walter Marsh’s new biography of Murdoch concentrates on the mogul’s formative years in Adelaide at the helm of The News, especially its controversial coverage of the 1959 Stuart royal commission, which brought Rupert and his editor, Rohan Rivett, close to a jail term for seditious libel. 
 
The book also works as a dual biography of his father, Keith. Murdoch senior started as the editor of the Melbourne Herald and was soon engineering a series of ambitious business deals that sowed the seeds of the Murdoch empire, but left him overdrawn and overstretched. Rupert clearly inherited his father’s penchant for high stakes and risk taking. 
 
Young Rupert is a scrupulously well-researched history that examines the power of the press in the twentieth century, and its influence on politics. Rupert Murdoch remains largely elusive, yet new research shows glimpses of a man under pressure and unable to enjoy his success. Readers interested in Australian politics and publishing will find much to satisfy here.

Young Rupert: The Making of the Murdoch Empire, by Walter Marsh. Published by Scribe. $34.99

JULY23

The Voice to Parliament Handbook, by Thomas Mayo and Kerry O'Brien

Two experts explain what the Voice to Parliament will and won't do. With cartoons by Cathy Wilcox.

Indigenous leader Thomas Mayo and former ABC journalist Kerry O'Brien have come together to write this short “handbook” to the Voice to Parliament. They have kept its length short, the idea being to make it easily posted or shared.

What do you get inside? It's a mix of personal stories, some history of previous referendums, a calling out of the misrepresentations about the Voice (it won't be a third chamber of parliament) and a section devoted to FAQs. A closing essay from Marcia Langton and Fiona Stanley explains how the Voice will help close the gap on Indigenous disadvantage. The final section provides some good tips for spreading the Yes message.

What do we learn? The Voice will be a representative body loosely similar to ATSIC (The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission) set up by the Labor Hawke government in 1990, and dismantled by the Liberal Howard government in 2005. The world “loosely” should be stressed. If the Yes vote is successful, then the model could take any form, and change over time, according to legislation. The vexed issue of the Voice's form is really more of a procedural one. The key point is that if the Yes vote is successful, the Voice will be enshrined in the constitution. No government will be able to dismantle the Voice, ensuring continued representation from First Nations people.
An accessible explainer and impassioned call to vote Yes.

The Voice to Parliament Handbook, by Thomas Mayo and Kerry O'Brien. Published by Hardie Grant. $16.99

JUNE23

The Queen is Dead, by Stan Grant

 

Stan Grant on the British monarchy, Australia and its legacy of whiteness.

Wiradjuri man and author Stan Grant says he wrote his new book, The Queen is Dead, in an explosive burst and in real time, as events unfolded. Despite the quick writing time, there is nothing rushed or rash in Grant's book. This is a deeply considered work with not a word wasted or out of place.

When Queen Elizabeth died, Grant expected there would be some discussion of the effect of colonialism and conquest on the lives of First Nations people. While many may have wished to mourn the queen, there should also have been recognition of the terrible legacy of English invasion and occupation. As a Wiradjuri man, Grant felt this personally.  When colleagues and friends confessed feeling a sadness, even shedding a tear, over the queen's passing, Grant felt betrayed. Why didn't his friends consider his perspective, or that of his people's? Didn't they know the queen represented hundreds of years of oppression, suffering and violence? 

The major theme, you could say, of The Queen is Dead is the notion of whiteness. Whiteness as an historical phenomenon and institutional power. A whiteness that is so pervasive, at every level of society, that white people themselves don't see it. They simply see life proceeding as normal. Yet for First Nations people, everyday they are running up against whiteness – at work, in politics, in popular culture. Most importantly, in everyday life, in the endless comments on race, skin colour and heritage.

While Stan Grant discusses the large philosophical issues – the weight of history, white ignorance and blindness, how these power structures crush First Nations people – the book has a deep, almost confessional vein. Grant examines his personal emotions, how they swing from hate and resentment to love and forgiveness. These sections are vulnerable and brave in trying to get across the truth of the author's experience and feelings. They make for humbling reading.

Stan Grant brings his formidable mix of intellect, passion and truth-telling to a subject many may want to turn away from. Uncomfortable reading, but essential. 

The Queen is Dead, by Stan Grant. Published by 4th Estate. $34.99

MAY23

Making Australian History, by Anna Clark

Historian Anna Clark examines how the writing of Australian history has changed over time.

Inspired by undated rock art paintings above the Dyarubbin-Hawkesbury River, Anna Clark has endeavoured to write a history of Australia that is a mixture of the non-linear and the traditionally chronological. Each chapter covers a theme, “Gender”, “Country”, “Convicts” etc., and uses as a point of departure a particular text. These texts need not be a written work. For example, the chapter “Emotion” uses the ABC Radio National debate from Philip Adams' Late Night Live program, while the chapter “Time” references ancient fish traps (Ngunnhu).

Technically speaking, Making Australian History is a history of how we as a nation have seen ourselves. A history of our history. Our European beginnings have meant we have seen the country through a white, male lens. First Peoples didn't really exist, and if they did, they were on the way out. Natural selection would take care of that. Some of the texts that Clark cites are blunt on this point. Before Europeans came, so the thinking went, nothing had existed: no culture, no history, no people.

As the nation matured, First Nations voices were permitted. Besides the publication of breakthrough texts, theirs was an oral history, requiring imagination and empathy on the part of non-Indigenous people. All of which brings us up to the present day, where Anna Clark teases out what the future possibilities of Australian history could be.
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Making Australian History is often meandering and ponderous. Some readers may find the book long-winded and overly wordy. Despite this, the book  works well to evoke the shifting perspectives and attitudes to Australia's story. An interesting road less travelled by a thoughtful writer.

Making Australian History, by Anna Clark. Published by Vintage. $34.99

MAR22

A Witness of Fact: The Peculiar Case of Chief Forensic Pathologist Colin Manock, by Drew Rooke

A cautionary tale about power unchecked.

From 1968 to 1995, Colin Manock was South Australia's chief forensic pathologist. During that time, he was there at every crime scene where an autopsy was required. His evidence helped secure some 400 criminal convictions. There was only one problem. A lot of his work as a pathologist was considered substandard. He was also lacking in qualifications, having no training in histopathology – the practice of taking tissue samples from various organs to discern more complex signs of disease or injury.

In 1968, Manock had seen an advertisement for the director of pathology at South Australia's institute of Medical and Veterinary Science. The institute was eager to fill the position, and with no other promising candidates, Manock was accepted, with the hope that he would undertake further training. He didn't. Manock's English accent (he emigrated from the UK), self-possession and refusal to concede mistakes meant his evidence was often accepted without demur. But as his work has come to be reviewed over the years, deficiencies have become obvious. In the handful of cases author Drew Rooke examines in A Witness of Fact, many have spent decades in prison due in large part to questionable forensic work. Some have had their convictions entirely overturned.

Drew Rooke has written a fascinating, easy-to-read biography of a strange, disturbing character. The middle sections concentrate on a number of cases and read like the best of true crime – enigmas to be solved. The book offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of giving too much power, unchecked, to one person. Clearly the work of forensic pathologists, as presented in A Witness of Fact, requires rigorous peer review before being used in courts of law. Once legal decisions have been made, lives can be ruined for decades. Or forever. Derek Bromley, who still protests his innocence of murder, has been behind bars for close to forty years. He could have walked free in the early 2000s if he'd admitted guilt, but maintains his innocence. He was convicted in large part on Manock's evidence, which has come under increasing scrutiny in the past two decades.

Public interest journalism mixed with compelling true crime cases.

A Witness of Fact: The Peculiar Case of Chief Forensic Pathologist Colin Manock, by Drew Rooke. Published by Scribe. $32.99

​FEB22

Vandemonians: The Repressed History of Colonial Victoria

 

A compelling social and economic history of Tasmania's convict class that made their way to Victoria.

Vandemonians were convicts originally sent to Van Dieman’s Land, later migrating to Victoria. They were an underclass much abhorred by Victorian society. Many hid their convict past – even from their own children - making up fake identities, backstories and names. The history of Victoria’s Vandemonians is one of violence, alcohol, poverty, disease, starvation, repeat court appearances and jail time. Careers in crime could be multi-generational, passed down the family tree. Children often died young, from disease, hunger or neglect. Sexual abuse of children was shockingly common. In short, the odds were stacked against ex-convicts, and they often failed to produce a lineage, making them lost to history.

Historian Janet McCalman has written a sharp, intellectually bracing portrait of this doleful cohort of early Victorian settlers. Based on research from the Ships Project, McCalman presents a gallery of tough, tragic and yet resilient battlers who carved out a precarious existence in a hostile world. With its strong grasp of the economic, social and historical forces that entrench poverty and disadvantage, Vandemonians illustrates how so many of these problems are still with us today. A first class history that will surely become a classic.

Vandemonians: The Repressed History of Colonial Victoria, by Janet McCalman. Published by Miegunyah Press. $39.99

DEC 21

Adrift in Melbourne, by Robyn Annear

 

Historian Robyn Annear takes the reader on seven walks through Melbourne.

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Robyn Annear is well known for her pithy, always amusing histories of Melbourne, including Bearbrass and A City Lost and Found. In Adrift in Melbourne, Annear takes the reader on a perambulatory adventure through the city's major landmarks and its lesser known byways. Street corners, dead ends, crumbling buildings all have their story to tell. Not only the streets, but beneath we find an old Melbourne - “Pompeii-like” - buried underground. Old houses, fences, cellars were built over, leaving a mysterious subterranean world. Archaeological digs in the notorious Little Lon district, famous for its brothels and rough characters, show its erstwhile residents not so down at heel as once presumed. They owned, among other things, fine China and jewelry.

Melbourne is not just its monuments and street grid, and Annear takes joy in its varied personalities and unusual professions: mesmerists, fortune tellers, wig makers, tooth pullers, herbalists, phrenologists, quacks and crooks. Indeed, the city is its people, the mad shopkeepers, visionary business people such as Edward Cole (famous for Cole's Book Arcade) and even the tramps who cling to the city for succour. The descriptions of Bourke Street's Job Warehouse drapery store will bring back memories for many, with its dingy, unkempt windows and notoriously querulous proprietor. Even the intrepid Annear was too scared to enter.

Adrift in Melbourne is a vivid history that moves back and forth in time, from pre-invasion to now. Readers who have lived in or regularly visited Melbourne will recall places from the past: the clanging noise of Coles Cafeteria, the short lived skateboard ramps at the old Queen Victoria Hospital site, the 1980s City Square. The hilly Flagstaff Gardens, we learn, is one of the few places in Melbourne that retains its original landscape. If you want to imagine Indigenous Country before white settlement, go visit.
An entertaining romp and joyous celebration of a city that keeps on giving.

Adrift in Melbourne, by Robyn Annear. Text Publishing. $27.99

DEC 21

Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero, by Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements

 

A first class biography of a forgotten Australian war hero.

Tasmania's Black War raged from the mid 1820s until its conclusion in 1832. The conflict was between the Oyster Bay – Big River clans and white settlers. There were many shocking atrocities on both sides. Initially the First Nations tribes thought the Europeans were their returned ancestors, but this reasoning came under sustained pressure as their lands were appropriated and women abducted, raped and murdered. Life became an intense struggle as food sources were dramatically reduced and comfortable resting places taken. Out of this chaos emerges the leader and war strategist Tongerlongeter. He managed to organise and maintain a dogged resistance against impossible odds, causing a general terror among the white population. Surrounded and with no other option, he and the last 25 of his people made a peace agreement. He was offered land to live on and guaranteed protection from whites. This promise was broken and he and his compatriots were sent to Flinders Island, which was rife with disease. He would die there, never seeing his homeland again.

An excellent work of scholarship that chronicles in lucid detail a terrible war and acknowledges Tongerlongeter as an extraordinary fighter, one that history must remember.

Tongerlongeter: First Nations Leader and Tasmanian War Hero, by Henry Reynolds and Nicholas Clements. Published by NewSouth. $34.99

Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, by Henry Reynolds

Historian Henry Reynolds examines the legal underpinnings of Australia.

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What are the legal foundations for Australia? How was a whole continent simply claimed by the British Crown? Was such a move even legal under international law? And what of the estimated original five hundred nations that lived on the landmass, ruled by their own laws and customs? Did they even exist, or were they no more than the flora and fauna covering the land? These and many other fundamental legal questions historian Henry Reynolds addresses in Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement.

What we learn is that the British were on shaky legal ground when Australia was claimed. It was more a massive land grab than a legally binding property transfer. International law and thinking at the time bears this out. Land that was already inhabited by indigenous peoples could not be appropriated. The only option was treaty making, a practice that was already happening in America with its First Nations.

The total absence of treaty making in Australia, along with the shaky legal foundations of claiming a continent as uninhabited (terra nullius), meant there was no clear pathway to negotiating with the First Nations. Official word from England was to treat the indigenous population with respect and to avoid violence. But this authority was too far away to enforce its directives and soon settlers were pushing out into First Nation territories. Violence ensued, with no legal foundation to mediate the conflict. Were Indigenous people now subjects of the British Crown, with a right to its legal protections, or could they simply be killed? (The euphemism was “disperse”, that is, groups of Indigenous people could be “dispersed” by shooting.) Media reporting and letters at the time refers to the progress of this frontier as warfare. As Henry Reynolds maintains, no one at the time was under any illusion as to what was happening.

Fast forward to the National Constitutional Convention in 2017 and its landmark Uluru Statement from the Heart, which declares sovereignty has never been ceded or extinguished. Truth-Telling demonstrates that so much more work needs to be done, on treaty making and the recognition of Australia's frontier wars, among other things.

Henry Reynolds must surely be one of Australia's most penetrating historians, with his deep reading of the contemporary literature on our country's early years. His writing is intellectually honest and brave. Whether you agree with his conclusions or not, Truth-Telling is deeply considered and researched, presenting some of the most serious issues facing Australia today.

Truth-Telling: History, Sovereignty and the Uluru Statement, by Henry Reynolds. Published by New South. $34.99

Three Thousand, by A.E. Cochrane

A lovesick and desperate young man wanders through the city and meets over 200 people from Melbourne's past.

A young man ponders his future by the Yarra River and decides it's not worth living. Having made the decision to jump in and end it all, he's accosted by Captain Matthew Flinders, the English navigator who was the first to chart much of the coast of Australia. It is the real Flinders, straight out of the history books and now made flesh in contemporary Melbourne. The two strike up a conversation and the young man is suddenly distracted from his immediate woes. They begin to perambulate the city, somewhat like Boswell and Johnson traversed London centuries ago, and make their way through some of Melbourne's smaller lane ways and byways. Each street they enter, the person the street was named after makes an entrance and begins a conversation. Captain Flinders soon falls away, and the young man continues on in a feverish daze through the city's streets, meeting along the way over 200 historical figures - merchants, councilors, publicans, performers, builders, pastoralists and even the odd saint.

The cause of the young man's distress (who narrates the story, although we never learn his name) is Chloe, a barmaid at the Young and Jackson. Having enjoyed a brief, idyllic time together by the beach, he now finds himself estranged from his great love. As he notes of his troubles, “…mine is an extreme case. I measure this whole city by the pain I feel about her – I don’t know if anyone else has ever done such a thing.” Throughout the novel he seeks help for his romantic dilemma from Melbourne's fair and famous, only to receive useless or silly advice.

The young man yearns to find work as a shepherd – surely the simple life will cure his ills – but becomes discombobulated by so many random conversations and finally ends up drunk, staggering into the night. (He meets a succession of publicans who ply him with wine.)

Three Thousand is a self-published novel by writer A.E. Cochrane. A story based on such a conceit shouldn't really work. The whole idea risks getting bogged down in repetitiveness. What holds the book together is the engaging narrator and his lovesick plight, pining for a return to an idyllic past with Chloe the barmaid, a past that may have been experienced more in the imagination than in reality. The book reads like a mix of Voltaire's Candide, with its humorous escapades, and Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, for its melancholic romanticism (with a hint of the tongue-in-cheek). There's also a touch of Kafka thrown in as the narrator finds himself in a never ending maze, full of  bubbleheaded famous people, with seemingly no way out. There is a lot of delightful wit in Cochrane's writing and his prose has an elegant precision, able to capture complex philosophical and religious concepts and render them in simple, often ironic, language.

History buffs will enjoy this clever story about Melbourne's early beginnings; readers of literature will derive much pleasure from the young narrator's personal story of romantic melancholy and bumbling adventure in the city.

Three Thousand, by A.E. Cochrane. Published by Decision Press. $25

First published at northmelbournebooks.com.au June 2020

Buckley's Chance, by Garry Linnell.

Garry Linnell’s portrait of escaped convict William Buckley is a stunning triumph.

William Buckley (1780 – 1856) is surely one of the most intriguing and enigmatic characters of Australian history. He fought Napoleon as a soldier in the King's Own Regiment in 1799, but later came undone for receiving stolen goods - a bolt of cloth. He was given 14 years and sent to New South Wales, arriving upon the Calcutta in 1803. Exhausted and terrified, Buckley soon bolted with three other prisoners. The group separated and Buckley spent weeks on his own, living off shellfish. He probably would have expired, if not for the contact he made with the local Aboriginal people who thought he was a ghost, one of their ancestors who had died, then “jumped up” again as a white man.

Buckley spent the following 32 years living with the Wadawurrung people. He was respected by the Wadawurrung and was influential in trying to preserve the peace between different clans and groups. In 1835, Buckley re-entered European society. He was given a pardon by Governor Arthur and worked as an interpreter. This role as intermediary took its toll on Buckley, who saw many abuses of First Nations people and moved to Van Diemen's Land for the rest of his life.

Garry Linnell takes an interesting approach in Buckley's Chance, presenting the narrative in an almost fictional form. In some ways the structure of the book is like an 18th century epistolatory novel, with Linnell addressing himself to an imaginary Buckley, posing questions about his emotional state and responses to key events. Almost like speculative fiction, this style of writing gives the book a tone of intimacy and humanity, asking the reader to imagine Buckley's personal conflicts and psychological states of being. The narrative is interweaved with thorough research and quotes from key contemporaries, making the book invaluable as an early history of New South Wales, Tasmania and most notably, Victoria.

The portrait that emerges of Buckley himself is of a sad and tortured soul, caught between two cultures, one exterminating the other. His two years working with the Port Phillip Association, most notably with John Batman, was extremely painful as he assisted the land grab that saw widespread dispossession of the Wadawurrung and other peoples. Yet for all that we have on the record, plus Buckley's own memoir, The Life and Adventures of William Buckley written by journalist John Morgan (Buckley was illiterate), the man himself remains frustratingly distant and mysterious. He was often portrayed as a dolt, but surely knew more than he let on.
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Buckley's Chance is a tremendous achievement. Engaging, passionate and fascinating it's a book that invited the reader to re-imagine Australia's formative years, a time that was harsh and often horrific.

Buckley's Chance, by Garry Linnell. Published by Michael Joseph. $34.99

Review by Chris Saliba 

First published December 2019 at northmelbournebooks.com.au

Maurice Blackburn: Champion of the People, by David Day

David Day brings to life an important figure in Australian history.

Maurice Blackburn (1880 – 1944) was an influential member of the Australian Labor Party and a barrister, specialising in cases defending socialist causes. He held seats at both the state and federal levels, was heavily involved in the divisive conscription debates during the First World War and could at times be a controversial figure, due mainly to his intellectual independence and dogged integrity. His relationship with the Labor Party was often strained as he differed on party policy and would not compromise his beliefs for political expediency. The Labor Party twice expelled him.

Esteemed historian David Day brings to life the rowdy and theatrical politics of the time: street meetings in Melbourne's inner suburbs; rousing speeches on the Yarra; and dodgy political and business characters, such as Prime Minister Billy Hughes and thuggish businessman John Wren. Against this backdrop Maurice Blackburn emerges as a rare beast, a politician and activist who was broadly esteemed for his integrity and consistency.

David Day writes a splendid history of Australia's nascent Labour movement and one of its major figures, distilling the complex social and economic issues of the time into a bracing narrative. Maurice Blackburn: Champion of the People will appeal to the general reader and history buff alike.

Maurice Blackburn: Champion of the People, published by Scribe. $49.99

This review first published at Books + Publishing. Click here.

 

First published October 2019 at northmelbournebooks.com.au 

Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics, by Troy Bramston

New historical material coupled with biographer Troy Bramston's meticulous research makes for a worthy re-appraisal of Robert Menzies, Australia's longest serving prime minister.

Journalist and former political advisor Troy Bramston’s new biography of Robert Menzies, Australia’s longest serving prime minister, aims to refocus the historical lens. Too often Menzies is written off as an antediluvian character, hopelessly devoted to Queen and Empire, while his ardent supporters keep him on an unrealistic pedestal. Using newly released material and a broad range of author interviews with friends, family and colleagues, a portrait emerges of a brilliant yet flawed man.

Menzies’ best qualities were his ability for personal reflection and change. After the crushing failure of his first prime ministership (1939-1941) he managed to re-invent himself and create a new political force, the Australian Liberal Party. Philosophically gifted, he fashioned an appealing narrative of progressive values based on the rights of the individual. There were also serious missteps: his support, in 1938, for Hitler’s Germany; his attitudes towards race; the testing of nuclear bombs on Australian soil; a lax attitude towards apartheid; volunteering our troops for the Vietnam war.

Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics is always judicious and balanced, providing a multifaceted portrait of a key figure of Australian history. Essential reading for students of politics and history, or anyone interested in the Liberal Party and its deep national influence.

Robert Menzies: The Art of Politics, by Troy Bramston. Published by Scribe. RRP: $49.99

This review was first published at Books + Publishing. The original article can be seen here.

Australia Day, by Stan Grant

Following on from Stan Grant’s 2016 memoir Talking to My Country comes Australia Day, an eloquent and neatly organised series of essays that examine how two centuries of British cultural and political hegemony have impacted Australia’s First Nations People. 

Stan Grant, a Wirdadjuri and Kamilaroi man, tries to weave into a harmonious whole the differing parts of his identity: First Nation, personal and Australian citizen. A lover of European thinkers such as Hegel and Kant, some of whom he admits were terrible racists, Grant nonetheless admires their philosophical brilliance. The question remains: how to appreciate the triumphs of European culture, law and politics when your people’s history is one of dispossession and loss? The First Fleet didn’t bring European Enlightenment, but dispossession, disease and death.

It is this unresolvable tension that is at the centre of Australia Day, making it a work of acute personal struggle. Grant stretches his intellect and compassion in order to reconcile his admiration for Australia’s law, political culture and good citizens with its treatment of First Nations People. In the end, the attempt can’t proceed much beyond being an act of cognitive dissonance. The pain and suffering Grant feels, for his family, his ancestors, his people, is a wound that can’t heal. Many pages are spent weighing emotional and philosophical strategies for dealing with the legacy of dispossession, but none will work. What makes the pain so much greater is the blithe attitude of the non-Indigenous. There is a critical lack of understanding of what it means to be a First Nations Australian.

Grant provides many personal stories that highlight ongoing humiliation. Family members being arrested on the most spurious of reasons, Grant’s experiences at school, where he was asked why his skin colour was so dark. And then the trauma of the Don Dale detention scandal, a tragedy that hits home as the victims were the same age as his sons.

The book’s arguments are made all the more potent by Grant’s luminous prose and clear thinking. He has thought and read deeply on race, history, trauma and nationhood, providing thought provoking discussion while referencing an impressive array of other writers. Australia Day is both erudite and passionate.

Stan Grant lays down the challenge for non-Indigenous Australians. We need to learn to walk in someone else’s shoes. Our ignorance alone is the cause of so much suffering. To heal the divide calls for listening and an open heart. Australia Day offers an opportunity that must be grasped.

Australia Day, by Stan Grant. Published by HarperCollins. RRP: $34.99

Kindred, by Kate Legge

Two passionate botanists marry and embark on a quest to preserve Tasmania’s Cradle Mountain.

When journalist and novelist Kate Legge was told by a girlfriend that her favourite place in the world was Cradle Mountain in north-west Tasmania, she made a memo to self: go see. Upon visiting the famous landmark, she was immediately struck by its awe inspiring beauty and entertained writing a fiction based around two of the mountain’s great pioneers, Kate Cowle and Gustav Weindorfer. This idea soon lost its appeal; Legge realised that Kate and Gustav deserved a direct biographical account, one that paid homage to their contribution.

Austrian born Gustav Weindorfer arrived in Melbourne in 1900. The following year, at a meeting of the Victorian Field Naturalists Club, he met Kate Cowle, a woman some 11 years his senior. Their shared enthusiasm for botany led to their marriage in 1906 and during their honeymoon at Mount Roland in Tasmania they both first glimpsed Mount Cradle, a place Legge describes as “…a sculpture garden of rock and cliff and tree.” The couple bought a farm in the nearby rural district of Kindred and made their first field trip to Cradle Mountain in 1909. Besides the intense study of the flora and fauna, the couple shared a passion to preserve the area as a national park and tourist spot. They purchased land in the valley of Cradle Mountain and built a guesthouse called Waldheim (meaning “home in the forest”). 

The most tragic part of this story is Kate’s death, most likely from cancer, in 1916 (she was only 53 years old). Gustav was bereft. The two shared not only a deep love for each other, but a spiritual connection to the Tasmanian woodlands and its breathtaking scenery. Gustav pressed on, the uplifting Cradle Mountain environment sustaining him. There were unwanted difficulties, however. During the First World War, many locals made trouble for the Austrian born mountaineer, believing he was a spy. This hurt him deeply. The indignities of the war were endured and Gustav eventually returned to promoting Cradle Mountain as a tourist destination.  He died in 1932, aged 58, of a heart attack.

Kate Legge has written a wonderfully energetic and bracing account of not only Gustav and Kate Weindorfer, but also a sumptuous natural history of a treasured Tasmanian landmark. Kindred is brilliantly researched, with Legge’s passion for her subject matter evident throughout the text. There is much to learn in its pages, not only about the width and breadth of our native bio-diversity, the magic inherent in our trees, plants and animals, but also the beginnings of Australia’s conservation movement and the great personalities that committed themselves to the task. A moving and inspiring story told with verve and affection. 

Kindred: A Cradle Mountain Love Story, by Kate Legge. Published by Melbourne University Press. RRP: $44.99

Blue Lake: Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp, by David Sornig

Staff review by Chris Saliba

David Sornig’s history of West Melbourne’s Dudley Flats provides an absorbing and evocative portrait.

Residents of North and West Melbourne would be well familiar with Dudley Street. The busy roadway passes by the Flagstaff Gardens, the iconic Festival Hall and down into the Docklands area. What is less known is the Depression era shanty town, the Dudley Flats, that was once located at the end of Dudley Street, south of Footscray Road, roughly on the area where the Melbourne Star Observation Wheel and Harbour Town shopping centre now sit.

The Dudley Flats had its heyday, if it could be called that, between the 1920s and 50s. When the land belonged to its indigenous people, a beautiful blue lake occupied a large part of the area. The lake was surrounded by a magenta coloured pigface flower, which grew in wild profusion. But along with European incursions into the land came intense industry, and rendering factories caused the blue lake to be polluted. By the 1920s it was the site of several council and railway tips. It was the tips that formed the backbone of the Dudley Flats economy. Residents foraged in the tips, sold scrap metal and other finds, and built their shacks with reclaimed materials.

The population of the “tin town” at its height was around forty people. It had a notorious reputation. Many of its residents drank, committed petty crime and got involved in fights. Despite this, authorities thought the Dudley Flats were no worse than many of Melbourne’s slums. Authorities who visited saw the makeshift homes were quite well put together and opined that the residents showed considerable resourcefulness.

Novelist and historian David Sornig grew up in Sunshine and well remembers the regular train journey from Footscray to North Melbourne  station, a journey that roughly covered the area that once held the Dudley Flats. It’s a stretch of land that has always haunted the author, with its eerie, no man’s land quality.

In Blue Lake: Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp, Sornig concentrates on three characters who lived in the Dudley Flats: Elsie Williams, a singer and alcoholic, born in Bendigo to Afro-Caribbean parents; Lauder Rogge, a German man who lived on a boat moored on the Yarra; and Jack Peacock, a trader who made a decent living scavenging off the garbage tips. In telling the stories of these three characters, Sornig also tells the strange and wild history of the landmass along Footscray Road, a West Melbourne badlands if ever there was one.

Elsie Williams would walk the streets of North Melbourne, drunk and singing, picking fights, experiencing the racism that went along with the White Australia policy. Lauder Rogge had the misfortune of being German when Australia was frequently at war with that country. He experienced the humiliation of being interned as an enemy alien during the First World War. And finally Jack Peacock, who the authorities spent years trying to remove from Dudley Flats. An outsider, he preferred the lifestyle at the shanty town and never wanted to leave.

David Sornig has written a haunting and humane history of Melbourne’s Depression era, with its focus on the often lawless Dudley Flats, the down and out people who made a life there and the eerie, hostile zone of land that to this day still refuses to be gentrified. Blue Lake employs a novelist’s prose and imagination, bringing to life a seedy part of our city’s history, but done with a great sympathy and sensitivity. A book of superb imagination and scholarship that will transport you to a strange yet familiar land.

Blue Lake: Finding Dudley Flats and the West Melbourne Swamp, by David Sornig. Published by Scribe. ISBN: 9781925322743 RRP: $35

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Murder at Myall Creek, by Mark Tedeschi

Staff review by Chris Saliba

Mark Tedeschi has written a compelling history of the Myall Creek Massacre, shining a light on a dark passage of Australia’s past. 

Readers of historian Henry Reynolds’ work on frontier violence will know how bloody the early history of Australia really was, tantamount to a full blown war between first Australians and invading European settlers. As Australia’s first peoples were pushed off their traditional lands, their livelihood was destroyed. In the desperate search of food, they were often forced to kill and eat the cattle of European squatters. The squatters in turn saw the ‘blacks’ as savages and a menace, to be got rid off. This was a common sentiment shared by the early Australian community, often voiced in strident terms by politicians, leading businessmen and newspapers such as The Sydney Herald. Massacres of Aborigines were not uncommon. Sympathy overwhelmingly was with the perpetrators of these crimes.

What makes the 1838 Myall Creek Massacre so unique is the fact that the case was brought to trial. It was extensively covered by Australia’s newspapers and hence we have a detailed record of the whole horrible story. We also have a vivid portrait of contemporary attitudes to Australia’s indigenous people. Eleven stockmen were tried for the murder of between 20 to 30 members of the Wirrayaraay tribe in central New South Wales. Many of the victims were women and children, some still too young to walk. The Wirrayaraay people had been living peacefully at the Myall Creek station with the knowledge of the station owner. A group of eleven stockmen who had had their livestock speared went on a rampage, determined to kill. The Wirrayaraay tribe weren’t in any way responsible for killing cattle. They were entirely innocent.

The details of the mass murder are horrific. The Wirrayaraay people were tied up with rope, taken to a stockyard, then butchered with knives and stampeded on by the stockmen’s horses. Blood remained on stock yard’s wooden fence for decades thereafter. Two young Wirrayaraay boys managed to flee. Their descendants are alive today, as are the descendants of some of the killers. There was one witness to the murder. The manager of the station, William Hobbs, had been away when the massacre occurred. Upon his return, learning of the horrific events, he visited the scene of the crime and found bodily remains. He tried to count the number of bodies, but they were so disfigured and burnt (the killers had tried to incinerate all the remains) that this was difficult.

The case was brought to court and the eleven stockmen were tried for murder (the leader of the party, John Henry Fleming, managed to escape and go into hiding). New South Wales’ Attorney General, John Hubert Plunkett, acted as prosecutor. Plunkett is an interesting character. Irish Catholic, he had experienced prejudice in his own country. He came to Australia hoping to advance himself. He believed in many progressive causes and fought for legal and educational reform. He was especially interested in the better treatment of Indigenous Australians. The job of prosecuting the Myall Creek killers was an extremely difficult one. Virtually the whole colony was against the white men going to trial. It was seen as a travesty of justice to have European men sentenced to hang for killing ‘barbaric savages’. This wasn’t just the opinion of the man in the street, it also formed much elite opinion. When the first trial of the men failed to get a conviction, Plunkett controversially insisted on a second trial. It was at this second trial that seven men were found guilty and sentenced to death. The men, when they confessed the crime to their religious counsellors, said they had no idea it was a crime to kill the Aborigines.

Murder at Myall Creek reads almost as a biography of John Hubert Plunkett and a history of a terrible crime. Author Mark Tedeschi QC writes in a simple and elegant manner, explaining the legal twists and turns of the Myall Creek case with considerable ease. He also shows how deep the antipathy to Indigenous Australians was in the early colony, leading to widespread violence.

A brilliant and evocative book that brings to light a dark passage in the nation’s history.

Murder at Myall Creek, by Mark Tedeschi. Published by Simon and Schuster. ISBN: 9781925456264 RRP: $32.99



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