Join me Lisa Keane Elliott, The Plodding Historian, Mini-Adventurer and Cultural Institution Tart, as I share history "stuff" with you lucky readers who stumble across my little site as you avoid what you should actually be getting on with.
Yesterday, August 15, was the 55th birthday of the National Library of Australia, which was opened in 1968 by Australian Prime Minister John Gorton. A Greek-styled monument, the birthday cake as it is affectionately known, was the first building opened along the banks of the recently completed Lake Burley Griffin.
I was procrastinating over the thesis in the Library a couple of months ago and I came across a scrapbook of press cuttings regarding the Library’s grand opening. One of the Librarians caught me and, enabling my procrastination, in a good way, suggested I pen a blog post for the Library’s 55th birthday, which I did.
The anecdote that did not get included, which I absolutely love, is the story of Hungarian-French artist and designer, Mathieu Matégot and the “grog” controversy. Canberra is no stranger to ‘grog controversies’, but I think this just pips the ‘Duke of Gloucester / Joseph Lyons’ anecdote at the post.
Mathieu Matégot took on the commission to create tapestries for the Library’s foyer. The Three Tapestries took two years to create and were placed in pride of place in the foyer. Arts correspondent for The Australian, Laurie Thomas thought the tapestries’ positioning was not to the advantage of the foyer or the visitor, “they too, are powerful”, though “splintered” and discombobulating when one “become[s] conscious, far too conscious, of things like sheep’s heads and pineapples”. (The Australian, 15 August 1968, page 9.)
However, the tapestries themselves were not the controversy of the day.
“A diplomatic row blew up today over a champagne party in the new National Library”, wrote Claudia Wright of Melbourne’s Herald. It appears that the French cultural attaché, Monsieur Henri Souillac, had organised a champagne reception in the foyer for Monsieur Matégot and his tapestries. However, the Library’s chairman, Sir Archibald Grenfell Price, decided “at the last minute” that the event would be “no liquor”.
“A champagne row”, led Melbourne’s The Sun report of the opening.
“Not today”, the French contingent were told as they arrived at the National Library with a car full of ice-cold French champagne, despite Monsieur Souillac’s exclamation, “it is for M. Matégot to meet the press”! (Courier Mail, ‘Honours to the French’, 16 August 1968.)
Mr Henri Souillac, French attaché, Mathieu Matégot and unknown gentleman.
“You could call it a storm in a teacup – but it was really a champagne glass, and the champers was French.”
However, that did not stop the French from having a great opening, enjoying the formalities before moving their party to another venue in the capital where they could “pop, pop, pop” all night long.
A photograph of Matégot appeared in the Herald on 17 August with the caption: “French painter Mathieu Matégot downs a meat pie, [an Australian delicacy he loved], with champagne at his non-party before the opening.” As the saying sorta goes, ‘when life gives you lemons, make champagne and eat a meat pie’!
* Inspiration for champagne references is and always will be Edward Woodward’s version of Champagne Charlie, from his 1975 album, Edwardian Woodward, an Elliott Family favourite.
I came across a scrapbook of press cuttings for the National Library of Australia’s opening months (on this day, 15 August 1968) and it got me thinking about other significant anniversaries that occurred around this time.
Seven years and one day after the National Library of Australia opened the doors to its new building on the banks of Lake Burley Griffin, Vincent Lingiari and Australian Prime Minister Gough Whitlam met at Wattie Creek and with speeches and the symbolic gesture of a handful of soil, a nine-year protest about workers rights and sovereignty reached its conclusion. (Photograph by Mervyn Bishop in the National Library of Australia; nla.gov.au/nla.obj-153513023/view.)
On 23 August 1966, Lingiari and 200+ Gurindji men, woman and children, left the cattle station of Lord Vestey at Wave Hill and began the long walk to Wattie Creek. On this anniversary of the gathering at Wattie Creek and in the year in which Australia will have a chance to acknowledge all First Nations peoples with The Voice Referendum, it seems fitting to reflect upon the Wave Hill Walk Off and bring my 2019 post to the fore.
And as I did with the post from 2019, I want to leave Vincent Lingiari with the last word; words so appropriate as the country thinks about The Voice Referendum and whether they will be voting yes or no.
“Let us live happily together as mates, let us not make it hard for each other. …We want to live in a better way together, Aboriginals and white men, let us not fight over anything, let us be mates.”
In the Victorian Parliament on 12 September 2022, Opposition Leader, Matthew Guy MP, in his speech regarding the passing of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II on 8 September, referenced Her Majesty’s position in “one of history’s most enduring institutions” and to King Arthur himself.
“Tracing its history back as far as the petty kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England and early medieval Scotland, it is an institution that can draw on centuries of history, in fact, over 1,000 years, back to the house of Wessex. In all those times, among all those monarchs, from figures well known – King Arthur, Henry VIII and so on – the longest reigning of them all was Queen Elizabeth II.”
First Draft of Matthew Guy’s speech to Parliament on the death of Queen Elizabeth II, 12 September 2022
In a matter of hours, the Hansard, from which this quote was taken and as per the televised coverage of the speech – see @PRGuy17’s tweet for the footage – the official Hansard report had been altered and the Victorian Opposition Leader was not looking like such a naff gaffer referencing instead King Alfred the Great who liked to eat cake instead of the mythical King Arthur, who didn’t; possibly, well maybe, perhaps. We don’t know because he wasn’t real.
Indeed, if Mr Guy was any kind of historian, he would have learned not to make this mistake if only he had read the greatest historical tome on English history, 1066 And All That, by misters Sellar and Yeatman.
“Alfred ought never to be confused with King Arthur, equally memorable but probably non-existent and therefore perhaps less important historically (unless he did exist).”
The Twitterverse was going crazy in the wee small hours, or at least, that was when insomnia meant I was scrolling through the Twitterverse enjoying my fellow Tweeter’s enjoyment of Guy’s Gaffe. But it did get me thinking, as there have been several instances in recent years of parliamentary speeches featuring gaffes and factually incorrect statements a lot worse than Guy’s, that have been edited post-delivery. Is this allowed, I thought?
I went straight to the website of the Parliamentary Education Office. Designed primarily for school kids, it is actually an excellent resource for those of us whose schooling did not consist of the Civics and Citizenship units the youth get to enjoy today.
Mystery solved: The PEO have a Hansard Fact Sheet that explains Mr Guy’s correction of his gaffe, and revisions by other gaffe-ing or factually incorrect politician, is permitted and is in fact a normal part of the process.
“Members of parliament receive a draft version of their speeches and can suggest corrections. When all ‘turns’ for a day are complete, the proof – draft – Hansard is uploaded to the Australian Parliament House website. The proof is available online within 3 hours of the Parliament finishing for the day. The proof is later checked and, if necessary, amended – changed – to become the Official Hansard.”
Edited version of Guy’s speech. Mythical King Arthur is now actual King Alfred.
Thanks to Tim Sherratt, aka @wragge, the Hansard expert, for the link to the ‘Hansard editing and corrections policy‘, which lays out the detail of what constitutes an “error of fact” and, therefore, allowable to be edited and save parliamentarians from perpetual ignominy.
Unlike our early parliamentarians whose gaffes and factually incorrect statements could be edited from the record, never to be mentioned again, Australian parliaments have been broadcast (since 1946) and televised (since the early 1990s). Parliamentarians can edit their Hansard as much as they like, but their gaffes and cock ups will live forever. Social media users, for one, will never let them forget.
On 17 October 1964, Australia’s Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies stood atop the little hill at Regatta Point, outside the exhibition building, after a drought-thwarted attempt the year previously when the Queen came to visit, to finally declare Canberra’s Lake Burley Griffin open.
The Queen with Prince Philip on the terrace of the exhibition building at Regatta Point, Canberra looking at the Lake Burley Griffin that isn’t quite a lake yet thanks to drought in the ACT and NSW regions, c. 1963. Photo from ArchivesACT.
The lake was the central feature of the National Triangle area in Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin’s award-winning design for the new Federal Capital City of Australia’s new Commonwealth. However, following quickly on from the Griffin Plan being confirmed as ‘The Plan‘, the world was plunged into war, a Great Depression and another world war, so all development plans for Canberra, as the Commonwealth of Australia’s Federal Capital City was named in 1913, were halted as resources were re-directed to more pressing needs.
Inauguration Day, 17 October 1964
Alas, Her Majesty could not be present, but it did not deter Menzies from venturing out on a lovely Saturday morning to officially inaugurate his 30-year-old pet project. It was a long-time coming and not without a few hiccups along the way; a theme that Menzies referred to a few times during his speech.
“The creation of this lake is the result of a pretty long struggle. I remember being very much in favour of it in the late thirties, but I was a humble, miserable out-voted Attorney General at that time and there were powerful forces arrayed against me because there was a golf course…”
First of all, Menzies “humble”? Okay; if he says so. And prioritising a lake over golf? What was he thinking? I am assuming the golf course in question is the Royal Canberra Golf Links.* Given the grumbles from Canberra residents since 1927 about the lack of amusements in the new capital city, we can understand why the pollies felt the golf club came first. They were obviously not water-hobby enthusiasts. (Lisa refers you to her blog post about Ernest Tristram Crutchley.)
Spy the ‘Royal Canberra Golf Links’ bottom middle, lakeside. From a 1966 brochure produced by the National Capital Development Commission titled ‘Creating a Setting for Lake Burley Griffin’.
Menzies also mentioned the machinations of “evil men”, (insert gasps of horror at the thought of such creatures in our Federal Parliament), thwarting his lake project.
“I wouldn’t like to go into the details of it, but at least twice during its history, having been abroad, I found when I got back that evil men had been at work and that something was being taken away from us and I had to be the humble instrument of providence to restore it.”
One of the “evil men” was Menzies’ Treasurer Harold Holt (later Prime Minister Holt, 1966-1967). Following HMQEII’s ‘Hello I’m Your New Queen’ tour in 1954, Menzies was determined to rid the land around Parliament House of grazing sheep and get Canberra its lake:
“I have always believed… that you can’t have a great city unless you have water in it.”
Before he popped over to London to make more home movies of his hobnobbing with Her Maj, (he was a big fan), Menzies gave Treasurer Holt the cash to get the lake built. However, Holt had other ideas and directed the money elsewhere.
A discussion upon Menzies’ return got the project underway; a “discussion” I imagine that went a little like that between Melchett and the Queen in Blackadder II in which Melchett agrees elephants are orange, not grey, upon being asked pointedly, “Who’s Queen?”.
And Holt didn’t object to the lake for too long; in his personal papers held in the National Archives is a cuttings book in which is pasted a 1966 newspaper article from the Kings Cross Newspaper declaring: ‘Holt swims Lake Burley Griffin’.
In addition to the “evil men”, by the time the lake was carved into the heart of the city, a drought had hit the area and there was insufficient Molonglo River water in the Scrivener Dam to ‘fill her up’. (Lake BG features the water of the Molonglo River.) This turned the lake site into a breeding ground for “odours” and mosquitoes, or mossies (pronounced mozzies) as we call them Down Under. Menzies gave credit where it was due and admitted it was not his “ uttered imprecations” that rid the area of the mossies nesting in our muddy lakebed; no, the disappearance of the mossies was down to “the skill of the Commission” – the Commission being the National Capital Development Commission whose Lake BG Team are still skillfully keeping the lake clear of pests and pongs in the guise of the National Capital Authority.
Menzies’ inauguration speech for Lake BG is an utter delight. I enjoyed the full speech via the transcript first, which includes the points of “(laughter)” from the crowd; obviously doing their civic duty by showing appreciation for the PM’s ‘jokes’. Reading it again during lockdown has re-invigorated my appreciation of Lake BG, so it seems the perfect opportunity to wander down there and use it just as Menzies hoped we would; as an ‘amenity of life’ that would help us “forget all about politics”. Good plan! I’ll see you lakeside!
* Does it freak you out when your browser history just sends you answers to questions you have been pondering? During my Insomnia-Induced-Google in the wee small hours of this morning, my browser had, at the top of the feed, a Canberra Times article from January 2021 by Greg Blood all about the ‘sporting history under Lake Burley Griffin‘. The golf club that Federal ministers deemed more important than Menzies’ lake was in the Acton area with a few other less-than impressive sporting grounds/fields. Thank you Google and thank you Greg!
Further reading
Menzies’ Lake Burley Griffin Inauguration Speech, 17 October 1964 – available via PM Transcripts website managed by the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet.
Listen to the speech via the National Library of Australia, here.
View ‘The Canberra Lake Spring-time Sixty-Four’, which features some footage from inauguration day, via the National Film and Sound Archives YouTube Channel, here.
I have just completed my first job as a self-employed research assistant and realised that I should have been offering this service to my fellow academics for the past year with all our crazy lockdown, no travel for you, #CoronaChaos. My sincerest apologies, first of all.
My only excuse is that I have been so busy trying not to meltdown with the sudden relevance of my long-awaited, long-avoided PhD thesis. From about November 2019, I had been plotting and planning to make 2020 my year of thesis completion, returning to comfortable underemployment and leaving myself a few days a week to get my flow on and finish the blasted thing / Magnificent Octopus. I stockpiled toilet paper (I’ll come back to that!), laundry liquid, girly essentials (I’m in my 40s, which requires a lot of serums and potions), chocolate, gin and foodstuffs a grown-up is supposed to have. And into Officeworks to print all the chapters written, half-written, Shirley-Planned, and the study cleaned and organised in readiness for the writing and screaming.
20 March 2020 – #WTF2020 Began
That is the date I set for my returning to comfortable underemployment for Thesis Completion 2020, but by which time most of the world went into lockdown and working/schooling from home, Zooming and staying in PJs all day (not much of a change for me on that front to be honest) became a global reality.
So my loo roll stockpile; while the world went crazy buying up toilet paper, I was sitting in My Little Flat (MLF) watching the news and, on this topic only, feeling very smug as my Thesis Writing Isolation preparation meant I had lots and LOTS. I did intend for my 320 rolls to last me until well into the mid-year, but once Canberrans were allowed to visit each other, in small numbers, I was bribing my way into my siblings’ homes for what I called an ‘Eight Rolls Roast’.
While I’m on my #SparklingIsolationToInsanity, an honourable mention and thank you to The Canberra Distillery and their medicinal Blood Orange Gin, which I consumed rather a lot of over the course of #WTF2020. And thank you to the Canberra & Region Visitors Centre for stocking it commensurate with my imbibing. (No W & C, I wasn’t drinking it all myself! I did share.) Cheers and gin-gin!
The ‘Suddenly Relevant Thesis’ Meltdown
Despite what my blog suggests, my thesis is not about Canberra, the Commonwealth of Australia or our Federation history. Back in 2006, I began work with my long-suffering supervisor, Professor Susan Broomhall, on the history of poverty and poor relief in sixteenth-century France, with my PhD to be Paris-focussed.
Over the years, as I have delved intermittently into all my lovely primary sources gathered during Indiana Jonesing* research trips to Paris (in those days when international travel was possible), my thesis has come to focus on the reform of the largest charity hospital in Europe, the Paris Hôtel-Dieu. (I will write about it once I’ve conquered the technological nightmare that is Appendix G and have my Appendix A chronology of VIP events and “stuff” completed; aka the appendices that will help me remember what the flippin’ heck my thesis is all about and, what was the original and groundbreaking point I was trying to make?)
Paris’ Hôtel-Dieu c.1550 map by messieurs Truschet and Hoyau. This is the best map of sixteenth-century Paris. High resolution version available at the excellent Old Maps of Paris website.
So. One cannot write about the reform of a charity hospital for the poor in the sixteenth century without mentioning the prevalent horror of plague, pox and pestilences; hence my almost-meltdown last year as I experienced first-hand what my Parisian poor went through; albeit in the comfort of MLF, and with Zoom and my Aged Aunt #1’s streaming services to keep me connected, entertained and distracted, and with the certain hope that the world’s genius scientists would come up with a vaccine to make us safer and prevent year after year of death counts beyond comprehension.
Now nearly the end of July 2021 (how??!!) and the thesis is still a work in avoidance/progress, but progress was made last year (and slowly but surely still is) thanks to my Study Buddies Shanan and The Favourite Niece, who forced me from MLF into the lovely Main Reading Room of the National Library of Australia to suffer, I mean, work in companionable silence. Completion for 2021, not sure, as I have an iron in the fire, but I turn 50 in 581 days, so I can guarantee it will be completed and submitted before then!
Research Assistant Extraordinaire Available for Hire
The point of this blog post was to let my fellow academics know that, in what will no doubt be a never-ending saga of lockdowns and travel restrictions, if you need the services of a Canberra-based researcher, I’m here and available for hire. I can’t do “love jobs”, but I can / will / do negotiate “mates rates”.
The Plodding Historian is here for you. You can reach me here or email me at lke73historian@gmail.com. My bona fides can be assessed via or my Academia.edu or LinkedIn profiles.
Please note that I have managed to get thesis-related papers published across the course of the 5,623 days that has been my PhD Journey to date. I just keep getting distracted. If you want to avoid a similar never-ending journey, I advise you read my 6 February 2020 blog post or let me take you to the Hotel Kurrajong or the Tipsy Bull for a little Auntie Lisa Chat over a G&T or two.
In the mean time, stay safe, stay home (if you’re NSW!), watch your loo roll stocks and if you’re hitch-hiking on your Aged Aunt’s streaming services, logout and get on with your research!
* Indiana Jonesing is Lisa-speak for my, what I call, raiding of the archives! Order up, photograph, repeat.
As many of you know, I’ve become rather fascinated by the Australian Constitution since my days at the National Archives of Australia. If any of you have read, or tried reading, the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Australia, you will know it is a boring read. Unless, of course, you’re a Constitutional lawyer or High Court Judge, in which case, it definitely tickles your fancy.
For this historian, however, it is our Constitution’s Section 51 (link, then page 10), the what I call “weird and wonderful” section, that interests me. Back in February, the National Library of Australia posted a blog about the digitisation project of the Library’s poster collection and as I browsed the collection’s finding aid, I discovered some interesting Section 51-themed posters to share with you. Students and teachers of ‘Civics and Citizenship’, here come some excellent Constitution-related primary sources.
Constitution Day, 9 July 1900
Basically, on this day 9 July 1900, from her desk in Windsor Castle, Queen Victoria signed our Constitution into law with the Royal Commission of Assent 9 July 1900 (UK). With this document, Australia was able to federate, on 1 January 1901, and become the Commonwealth of Australia, with our new royally assented Constitution as our governing guide.
Section 51 is the bit of the Constitution I call “the not boring one” and, for the citizens of Australia, it is the most important as it empowers the Federal Parliament “to make laws for the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth”. (Commonwealth of Australian Constitution Act 1900, Section 51, page 20, nla.gov.au/Record/3768047.)
Section 51 includes the areas of trade and commerce (i), taxation (ii), quarantine (ix), banking (xiii), the what I call The Castle law, “the acquisition of property on just terms” (xxxi), immigration and emigration (xxvii) andinflux of criminals (xxviii).
The latter was inspired by the “swarms of convicts and ticket-of-leave-men from other settlements [who] invaded the colony [of Victoria] and became a nuisance and menace to its peace and welfare” during the goldrush. (See the annotated edition of the Constitution by misters Quick and Garran, pp. 629-631.)
However, I want to focus on “fun” laws that resulted in the production of the gorgeous posters in the National Library’s collection.
Section 51 (v): Postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services
Prior to Federation, the mail systems of the six colonies operated independently to each other. As did the railways, with each colony using different railway gauges, which meant having to change trains at the borders. That was until Section 51 xxxii and xxxiv empowered the federal parliament to get things choo-chooing uniformly across state lines.
With section 51 (v), the office of the Postmaster-General (PMG) was created and a national postal and communications system was developed. (For my fellow West Australians, the first PMG was Federation Father and the first WA Premier, Sir John Forrest.) Canberra’s East Block building (currently home to the National Archives) was the headquarters for the PMG when Parliament moved to the new Federal Capital City in 1927. Like its fellow Section 51ers, Section 51 (v) has resulted in some fine posters over the years, including this nod to our colonial past to advertise the speed of the airmail postal service established in 1914.
Section 51 (vii): Lighthouses, lightships, beacons and buoys
Who doesn’t love a lighthouse? Strange people, that’s who! I love this first poster as not only does it include a lighthouse, Victoria’s Port Fairy Lighthouse, but other buildings and institutions that embody Section 51 – “to make peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth” – and get the states connected.
Australia: Discover Yesterday Today, Australian Tourism Commission, 1973, nla.gov.au/Record/4968387.
Section 51 (xii): Coins, currency and legal tender
From 1788, Australia’s system of currency was pounds, shillings and pence, just like the United Kingdom. However, wielding the power of Section 51 (v), on 14 February 1966, the federal parliament converted Australia to “dollars and cents”. In addition to teaching aids for the classroom and a 48-page guide for citizens; the Commonwealth government released television advertisements informing Australians how the new currency worked, with a catchy jingle that I guarantee older readers will now be singing – “in come the dollars, in come the cents”. And of course, there were posters to illustrate how to calculate decimally and, what our notes and coinage looked like. (For more examples, see here.)
With the successful rollout of our new currency, and empowered by Section 51 (xv), 1970 saw Australia’s system of measurement change with the Australian Metric Conversion Act 1970, taking us from the imperial system (miles) to metric, which, ironically, is miles better. (Bad historian joke.)
The rollout to the new metric system was a little slower, (can we make a mileage joke here?), than our currency conversion. The Act was passed on 12 June 1970 and the Metric Conversion Board established the following month to start the ball rolling on the public awareness campaign. However, we didn’t go fully metric until 1988. Guides and advertisements were produced, the former without a catchy jingle, with many focussed on what it meant for speed limits on our roads. An 18-page guide, Metric conversion and you, was posted “To the householders” of Australia and, again, posters appeared in post offices, banks and schools across the country.
Catalogue entry for this poster suggests a date of 1963, however, as the Metric Conversion Board was not established until 1 July 1970, this poster is likely from the 1970s. nla.gov.au/Record/5333999.
So that’s a few of my favourite examples of our Constitution’s Section 51 in action. There are so many others, and I particularly love the ones relating to trade and commerce (i), and not just because there are lovely posters of chocolate.
Enjoy Constitution Day with a browse through the National Library’s Australian advertising poster collection, which is a much pleasanter way to get to know our Constitution than reading it.
Further reading and primary source links
For students and teachers, the National Library’s Digital Classroom has a wealth of curriculum-linked resources on the Constitution, Federation and a lot more. For other Readers like myself, who are attempting to make up for their lack of ‘Civics and Citizenship’ studies back in their school days, the Digital Classroom is also an excellent resource to fill in the gaps, and fool one’s children into thinking you know exactly what you’re talking about when assisting with homework.
Have a read of the original 1900 version of our Constitution via the most excellent Documenting a Democracywebsite, which includes all important acts of Federal Parliament since 1 January 1901 when our Constitution went into business!
HAPPY CONSTITUTION DAY!!!
Commemorative picture: the opening of the first Commonwealth Parliament at Canberra on May 9, 1927 by his Royal Highness the Duke of York, nla.gov.au/Record/8149848.
I was meant to be on “holiday” recently, but it turned out to be somewhat fraught with, ironically or annoyingly, work and lots of Life-Min with only sprinklings of socialising. No rest; which I suppose isn’t too bad considering rest is meant for the wicked?
Anyway…
I returned to work on Saturday past and discovering I wasn’t on the roster for Sunday, as per my diary, I have just signed on for my Tuesday evening shift after spending the past three days on the couch from whence I came to the conclusion that those who say telly isn’t educational don’t know what they are talking about.
I spent Sunday and Monday binging the British telly comedy new/quiz shows Mock the Week and QI (Stephen and Sandi-hosted episodes) and came away with a list of quite interesting facts and people I had to learn more about. (The historian in me, I suppose.)
I’m not going to write about it in detail here, because, how boring. The point of this blog post is simply to direct you to excellent websites that satisfactorily eased my curiosity about two stories that aroused me from my slothful stupor long enough to Google more info.
Betty Lou Oliver – Survivor of the longest fall in an elevator
On 28 July 1945, lift operator Betty Lou Oliver reported for work at the Empire State Building in New York. It was a foggy day in NY City, which created a little disorientation for the B-52 bomber flying in some servicemen from Massachusetts. The pilot, Captain William Smith, ignored advice from air traffic control and his miscalculation led him to crash between the 78th and 80th floors of the Empire State Building.
Betty survived the impact of the crash – she was on the 79th floor at the time – and was thrown from her elevator suffering a broken pelvis, back and neck. Her colleagues placed her in the elevator for evacuation and sent her down to the ground floor for transportation to hospital.
However, the crash had weakened the cables of Betty’s elevator and around the 75-storey mark, according to the Guinness Book of Records entry, it plummeted the remaining [just over] 300 metres / 1,000 feet to the basement from where Betty had to be cut out of the wreckage.
Anti-Suffrage Cartoons – ‘A Woman’s Mind Magnified’
Many of you will already know about the ‘Votes for Women’ battles across the world. Here in Australia, we were the first country to enfranchise women and enable them to run for Federal Parliament following the Commonwealth of Australia’s big Federation bash on 1 January 1901. (Check out Professor Clare Wright’s You Daughters of Freedom: The Australians Who Won the Vote and Inspired the World.)
One of the arguments against female suffrage is that we little ladies didn’t have enough space in our head for manly things like democracy! (An attitude that hadn’t changed much in Australia by 1973, despite enfranchisement and women in Parliament, judging by this picture-book of a recruitment pamphlet.)
NB: I agree with only two of these “womanly” concerns – chocolate and snail-mail correspondence.
Honestly! The reasons for denying women the right to vote may seem hilarious now; but I have to say that I still get a bit enraged, as such complete and utter bollocks still gets trotted out by politicians and others trying to “keep women in their place”. (Don’t get me started on those five words!)
Anyway…
As I said, this isn’t about me being all analytical, merely directional. I found the above postcard discussed on QI via Spartacus Educational’s ‘Anti-Suffrage Society’ and that was quite a good, illustrated read.
That’s all from me. As soon as my shift finishes I’ll be heading back to the couch to finish my binge-watch of The Durrells on ABCiView, which has fascinating real-life inspirations; but this is not why I’m tuned in. I have a thesis to avoid, remember.
On the 25 May 1868, Johnny Mullagh, Bullchanach, Sundown, Dick-a-Dick, Johnny Cuzens, King Cole, Red Cap, Twopenny, Charley Dumas, Jimmy Mosquito, Tiger, Peter and Jim Crow walked onto The Oval in London ready to take on the English at their revered national game in the first of 47 matches across the course of a six-month tour. Johnny and the boys were not only the first Australian XI to take on the Poms at home, but also the first Aboriginal XI.
National Library of Australia, ‘First Australian team of cricketers that visited England, 1868, published c. 1915-1930.
I first learned of the Aboriginal XI back in 2000 when living in London and my brother’s friend Baden was part of another Aboriginal XI undertaking a commemorative tour of England, including playing on the ground known as the Home of Cricket, Lords. I recently visited the Don Bradman Museum in his hometown of Bowral, which includes a fabulous display about the boys and their momentous tour. (See ‘Further reading and viewing’.)
Over 20,000 spectators turned up to see the first Aboriginal cricket team to tour England on this day in 1868. Their arrival twelve days earlier had caused quite a stir, with the English fascinated by “the conquered natives of a convict colony”, as they were described in The Times, although not all were pleased about this “travestie upon cricketing at Lords”, aka the hallowed ground of cricket.
The team had been playing together since the 1866 selection series in Victoria. Initially captained by William Hayman, captaining duties then fell to Tom Wills, who was captain of the Victorian cricket team.
In 1867, the team acquired a new coach, Charles Lawrence, who negotiated the finance for and organised the tour of England of the first Australian cricket team.
In the lead up to their first match on 25 May 1868, speculation was rife in the newspapers about just how good these “conquered natives” could possibly be at this most English of games. The Sporting Life ran a story on May 16 with the journalist surmising:
“They are the first native Australians to have visited this country on such a novel expedition, but it must not be inferred that they are savages; on the contrary. …They are perfectly civilised, having been brought up in the bush to agricultural pursuits. …With respect to their prowess as cricketers – that will be conclusively determined by their first public match.”
‘The arrival of the Australian Aboriginal cricket team in England’, The Sporting Life, London, 16 May 1868, Wikipedia.
The First XI performed most admirably, much to the surprise of the English. Of the 47 matches played during their six-month tour, they won 14, lost 14 and drew 19. The anticipated annihilation of the natives from the colonies didn’t happen; Johnny and the boys turned out to be very adept at this most English of games.
Unaarrimin, or Johnny Mullagh, of the Jardwadjali people in Victoria, was the player of the series scoring 1,698 runs, bowling 1,877 overs (831 maiden overs), took 245 wickets and, as his Wikipedia profile proclaims, “[as] if this wasn’t enough, he would occasionally don wicket-keeping gloves, achieving four stumpings”. The first Aboriginal cricketing all-rounder! In December 2020, 129 years after Unaarrimin’s death in 1891, his excellence with the bat, ball, gloves and everything else, led to his induction in the Australian Cricket Hall of Fame. Selection is based, as the ACHF website states, “on the players status as sporting legends in addition to their outstanding statistical records”. Better late than never.
As we get ready here in Australia to acknowledge and learn about the history of the oldest living civilisation in the world during National Reconciliation Week (27 May – 3 June), I thought I would start my participation and learning sharing this fabulous story of the greatest sport in the world and the first Aboriginal XI who showed the unsuspecting English some power from Down Under; a taste of what was to come when we won what became the first ‘The Ashes’ series in 1882. HOWZAT!
Bernard Whimpress, ‘Johnny Mullagh: Western District Hero or the Black Grace?’, Aboriginal History, vol. 18, 2011. (Available via the State Library of NSW)
On this day in 1982 my brother John Arthur Elliott was born, interrupting his doctor’s squash game to arrive sometime in the early afternoon. You probably don’t recognise him from this photograph. This was taken during the period of his life when he showered.
John Arthur Elliott playing artiste’s model for his Photographer Sister (that’s me),now known as The Plodding Historian, c. 1988.
You may recognise / smellognise him these days as ‘John The Camel Man’, the unwashed, bearded, can’t smell him apart from his 4.5 camel companions Crazy Cameleer; continuing the tradition established by the Afghan Cameleers, although they did not have the pub crawl element that my brother has added to the enterprise.
John Arthur Elliott, aka John the Camel Man, photographed byStuart Grant @StuArtPhotograph, c. 2021 in Tassie.
Today is also the two-year anniversary of the commencement of his Crazy Camel Trek from Coonarr Beach in Queensland that has turned from a Mini-Adventure into the longest Pub Crawl ever undertaken in this country.
Initial plan for the Crazy Camel Trek, which is now just a little bit longer and more encompassing of the WHOLE country. From John’s website, were you can follow the progress of the #OneManFiveCamelsAndADog travelling circus via his GPS tracker thingy.
In 1954, Her Maj Queen Elizabeth II visited us on her, what I call, ‘Hello! I’m your new Queen’ tour, travelling 18,000 miles (she’s British, we had to calculate in miles), around the country via many different means, (not camels), and it is estimated that 3 out of 4 Australians I-Spy-ed her.
Given Johnno will trek through all of Australia’s eight states and territories, plus the Great Australian Bugger All (GABA: Aussie slang for the middle of the country where there is, well, bugger all!), over however many bloody years this Crazy Camel Trek takes, and from the number of #schoolgroups I have encountered through my work who have come across him, I reckon 75% of the country will have spotted this #OneManFiveCamelsAndADog travelling circus by the time they reach their final destination in Western Australia.
Excellent map of Australia illustrating where the GABA is (basically the big bit in the middle)created by Jennifer Baulch on #dMania. (View it via Steemit.)
If you are not one of the 75% yet, you can follow John on Instagram @johnartelliott, which is also his Twitter and Facebook handle, although he is too garrulous for Twitter, so he doesn’t tweet much. You can also follow his journey via his website – johnelliott.com.au – where there is a live GPS feed so our Mother knows where he is at all times. It is a really good system as we found out last 3 May 2020 when he and the camels fell off a cliff in Jamieson. (He will do anything to get on the news! Heading the wrong way down a track and needing SES assistance to get the camels back on track, for example. It was brilliantly presented on ABC News Tasmania by Guy Stayner who was very pleased with his Hump Day joke – it happened on a Wednesday 17 February 2021. I was also very tickled with his Hump Day joke.) There is also a lovely interview with Sarah Tayler (from where I found the lovely photographs by Stuart Grant) on We Are Explorers.
NB: We are #Elliott, two Ls and two Ts, aka #TheProperWay, in case you go searching for more of John’s, what I call, ‘News Hound’ moments.
My favourite photograph so far of John and Ted, Arthur, Bill, Jackson, Charlie and Bruski. Heading up the Parliament Lawns to the Skin Check Clinic run by Beard Season for whom John is raising awareness and donations, November 2019. The photograph was taken by John’s friend, filmmaker Cameron Watt. You can follow Cam on Instagram @camcamwatt and check out his YouTube channel.
Discussion on The Twitter a couple of weeks ago between historians about our research methods led to the sharing of this LRB article by historian Keith Thomas. Just read it. Love it!
Reflecting on his words about my own Plodding Historian-ingness: I’m a product/beneficiary of both The Old and The New. Aided by technology and digitisation, I can find and gather materials easily and curate my own archive of goodies – Raider of the Archives, I dub my researcher self, all very Indiana Jones, without the boulders, Nazis and, ARGH!!!, snakes, thank the gods. I can type up my notes, store and easily access vaguely remembered quotes via a quick keyword search on the laptop. One source per Word document, bibliographical details atop, page numbers meticulously recorded in brackets after each bullet pointed or indented quote/extract/Lisa-pontification-on-a-point.
But…
I think better with a pencil / favoured-pen in hand and paper to jot the great thoughts and record the notes. (And fortunately, no matter how frantically I pen my notes, my writing always remains legible, unlike poor Keith.) All my VIP notes or photographed/digitised sources are printed – one-sided. There are also copious notebooks, not one-sided, because VIP info & quotes are extracted onto paper, one-sided, for literal cutting and pasting. (I am never without a dinky pair of scissors and sticky tape.) My apologies to Mother Nature for all the paper-usage, but if it helps, once a project is complete, the paper notes are digitised and the piles of paper sent to recycling.
And thanks to my lovely friend, Shirley-now-Ariel, after a disaster that was my first history essay, an incoherent mess of scattered thoughts and bad research method that led to an unprecedented Footnote Disaster, I have in my Historian’s Methodology Arsenal, The Shirley Plan from which the above developed. When Keith Thomas wrote about his pooling of research into a plan that enabled writing his histories, it reminded me of The Shirley Plan for my dissertation. This was the apotheosis of Shirley Planning! Five weeks to collate and organise 15 months of research and brilliant ideas, if I do say so myself, into a coherent and very detailed Shirley Plan that enabled the writing of the dissertation in just two weeks. (Maybe if I had taken an extra week, I would have scored those three marks I needed for a First. But we historians don’t dwell on what ifs.) It may be old school, it could be done another more 21st-century-techno way, but it worked, and still works, for me. Whenever I don’t take time to Shirley Plan my writing, madness and tantrums ensure. Every time I pull the DSP from the shelf it is to remind myself that taking the time to collate my research and organise my thoughts into a Shirley Plan is a vital and invaluable part of my method. Besides, look at it. The printed version of my DSP is a thing of beauty, if I do say so myself.
Just a little Sunday Morning Reflection I felt compelled to share as I get ready for a busy week of research and writing. Possibly on the thesis, but given my recent declarations of Thesis Recommencement have led to disaster – abdications, a spectacularly broken ankle, unemployment, fires, plague and, brothers and camels falling off cliffs – I declare no such hope or intention for the safety of not just the self, but the world!
Remember that tomorrow is Towel Day. Grab your towel, stay safe at home, wash your hands, settle down with your research and note-taking tools and, under no circumstances, no matter how trying, DON’T PANIC!
The Plodding Historian 
