Challenging Narratives: Introducing the June 2025 JRAHS

Challenging Narratives: Introducing the June 2025 JRAHS

Challenging Narratives: Introducing the June 2025 Volume of the JRAHS

A watercolour of Wangal man Bennelong wearing white ochre on the RAHS Journal's cover.

The June 2025 issue of the Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society (Vol. 111, Part I) explores new perspectives on colonial authority, identity, and Australia’s contested past. As Editor Dr Samuel White outlines in his foreword, this issue reflects the Journal’s original intent: to challenge dominant narratives and recover overlooked voices from across Australia’s history.

Dr Keith Amos revisits the 1790 spearing of Governor Arthur Phillip at Manly, interrogating the now-popular view that it was a ritualised ‘payback’. Drawing from firsthand accounts and contextual evidence, Amos offers a more immediate and reactive explanation — one rooted in personal fear, miscommunication, and the tense dynamics of early colonial encounters. His reassessment casts new light on Indigenous agency and the complexity of cross-cultural exchange in early Sydney.

Dr Geoffrey Gray examines the career of anthropologist Frederick G. G. Rose, whose unorthodox views and research methods challenged the institutional boundaries of the Australian Institute of Aboriginal Studies. Gray’s article explores how Rose’s intellectual independence brought him into conflict with government-backed visions of knowledge and cultural representation, offering a case study in the politics of academic freedom and the enduring tension between research integrity and institutional control.

Dr Mark St Leon turns to the life of John [Milner] Clark, a fugitive from justice and an army deserter who remade himself as a respected settler in Wagga Wagga. Beneath Clark’s civic reputation lay a hidden fugitive past. Through meticulous archival reconstruction, St Leon traces a story of reinvention and concealment, revealing the fluidity of identity in colonial Australia and the ways in which reputation, exile, and personal history intersected in the frontier world of the nineteenth century.

Chris Maxworthy uncovers a little-known moment in Australia’s strategic history: a Spanish plan to attack Sydney in 1796, devised by Brigadier José Bustamante and revealed through newly translated documents. Maxworthy’s research highlights the global context of early New South Wales, showing how Britain’s fledgling colony was deeply enmeshed in European rivalries. Far from being an isolated outpost, Sydney was a node in an imperial chessboard — vulnerable, contested, and far more internationally visible than often assumed.

This volume also features reviews of new works on convict orphans, forgotten war heroes, Irish lawyers, and the origins of Australian scientific institutions. Each piece speaks to the evolving shape of Australian historical scholarship.

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The Recruiting Officer: Australia’s First Recorded Play

The Recruiting Officer: Australia’s First Recorded Play

The Recruiting Officer: Australia’s First Recorded Play

Written by Rebecca Vipond, RAHS Volunteer

When you hear the word ‘convict’, what comes to mind? Chain gangs? Cat o’ nine tails? How about theatre and play acting? On 4 June 1789, the birthday of King George III, a group of convicts performed Australia’s first recorded play at Sydney Cove. (1) The play was The Recruiting Officer by Irish playwright George Farquhar.

It is not surprising that a play was performed by the colonists. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, theatrical performances were popular, especially amongst lower social classes. (2) In fact, convicts performed a play on board the First Fleet ship Scarborough on 2 January 1788 before arriving at Sydney Cove. (3) At the time, actors were ‘regarded as “a rogue and a vagabond”’, little more than criminals, so the fact that actual convicts were the actors is unlikely to have bothered anyone. (4)

The Recruiting Officer was one of the most popular plays of the eighteenth century, first performed in 1706. (5) The plot was rousing and upbeat, a typical Restoration comedy. Set during the reign of Queen Anne, The Recruiting Officer concerns the exploits of army officers who come to the town of Shrewsbury to recruit soldiers for the army—and have fun with their girlfriends. But the officers’ girlfriends have recently become heiresses and are now too rich for their men. What follows is a romp of scheming as both the men and women resort to underhanded tactics, including cross-dressing and subterfuge, to achieve satisfaction in both the military and personal life. In this way, the title The Recruiting Officer can be understood to be about recruiting husbands as much as recruiting soldiers. (6) Its military themes would have resonated with the colonial audience, and this, along with the play’s popularity, was a likely reason for it being performed to celebrate the King’s Birthday. (7)

It is not known who in the colony initiated the idea to hold a play, but it was likely suggested by a convict. (8) The script of the play was probably brought to the colony by Captain John Hunter or another officer, but it is also possible that the convict actors performed from memory. (9) Regardless, the very fact that the colonists were willing to perform a play speaks much about their energy and heartiness. (10)

The Recruiting Officer was performed at night after a day of festivities, including gun salutes and a dinner for the officers at Government House. (11) The theatre venue was a hut fitted out with benches. (12) It probably had scenery made from paper, a common approach at the time. (13) There were about 65 people in the audience, drawn from the officers. It is unlikely that there were convicts in the audience. (14) The convict actors wore costumes that they made themselves, although military costumes may have been borrowed for the occasion. (15) Unfortunately, the names of the convict actors have not survived, but it is possible that some of the convicts who performed onboard the Scarborough were among them. (16)

Although he attended the performance, Governor Arthur Phillip did not mention it in his official reports. But Captain Watkin Tench and Judge Advocate David Collins both mentioned the performance in their accounts of the colony, and both men wrote about it warmly. (17)

The King’s Birthday performance of The Recruiting Officer was not the last play performed in early New South Wales. In 1796, the first permanent playhouse was built in Sydney on the sight of the present-day Bligh Street. It was operated by convict Robert Sidaway and businessman John Sparrow. (18) It cost £100 to build and the price of admission was one shilling or foodstuffs to that value. (19) It was closed after two years. But theatre revived again. In 1800, there was another performance of The Recruiting Officer at the Sydney Theatre. A playbill from this performance still survives.

Playbill for 'The Recruiting Officer' and 'The Virgin Unmasked' performed at the Sydney Theatre in 1800

Playbill for ‘The Recruiting Officer’ and ‘The Virgin Unmasked’. Performed at the Sydney Theatre on Saturday, 8 March 1800 (Courtesy State Library of NSW)

So next time you hear the word ‘convict’, perhaps you will think of merry costumes and playful acting as much as leg irons and the Old Bailey.


References:

(1) Milestones in Australian History 1788 to the Present, compiled by Robin Brown, edited by Richard Appleton, William Collins Pty Ltd, Sydney, 1986, p. 5.
(2) Eric Irwin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre 1788-1914, Hale and Iremonger Pty Limited, 1985, p. 12; Robert Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, Currency House, 2002, pp. 5-21.
(3) Irwin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, p. 272.
(4) ‘Australian Stage Beginnings’, The World’s News, 13 January 1906, p. 9, <https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/128270738>, accessed 22 October 2024.
(5) Heather Blasdale-Clarke, ‘The Recruiting Officer’, Australian Historical Dance, updated 30 January 2012, <www.historicaldance.au/the-recruiting-officer>, accessed 15 October 2024.
(6) George Farquhar, The Recruiting Officer, edited by Tiffany Stern, Bloomsbury, London, 2010, pp. viii-ix, <https://books.google.com.au/books?hl=en&lr=&id=U0KJAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=the+recruiting+officer&ots=jXKFWAtR-1&sig=quEWPY0oi4QuPOwRoLue_rPSfbA&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=the%20recruiting%20officer&f=false>, accessed 22 October 2024.
(7) Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, p. 32.
(8) Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, p. 30.
(9) Blasdale-Clarke, ‘The Recruiting Officer’.
(10) Isadore Brodsky, Sydney Takes the Stage, Old Sydney Press, Neutral Bay, 1963, p. 4.
(11) John West and Jacqueline Kent, Theatre in Australia, Cassell Australia Limited, Stanmore, 1978, p. 9; Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, p. 29.
(12) Irwin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, p. 272.
(13) Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, p. 280.
(14) Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, p. 31.
(15) Jordan, The Convict Theatres of Early Australia, p. 30-31; Blasdale-Clarke, ‘The Recruiting Officer’.
(16) Irwin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, p. 272.
(17) West and Kent, Theatre in Australia, p. 9.
(18) Irwin, Dictionary of the Australian Theatre, pp. 10-11.
(19) Brodsky, Sydney Takes the Stage, p. 5.

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Australian Quaker Narrative Embroidery Project

Australian Quaker Narrative Embroidery Project

Australian Quaker Narrative Embroidery Project

The Australian Quaker Narrative Embroidery Project is a collection of embroidered panels designed to tell the story of The Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in Australia, through stitch.

The panels depict the history of Quakers in Australia from Sydney Parkinson on the ship Endeavour in 1770 to the present.

The panels have been designed and stitched by different groups and individuals from Quaker Meetings around Australia, with some contributions by members of community embroidery groups.

The exhibition is part of the celebrations marking the 400th Anniversary of George Fox’s birth, one of the founders of Quakerism in Britain.

This exhibition is being hosted at NSW Parliament by Alex Greenwich MP, the Member for Sydney.

Details:
3–26 April 2024.
Fountain Court, NSW Parliament House, Macquarie St, Sydney.
Monday to Friday, 9 am to 5 pm.

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Vale Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

Vale Queen Elizabeth II (1926-2022)

Sepia photograph of Queen Elizabeth II, the 27-year-old Queen, and her husband, Prince PhilipThe RAHS would like to offer condolences to those close to Queen Elizabeth II who are experiencing a profound personal loss at her death. As the longest-reigning monarch in British history, the late Queen will be remembered for her enormous dedication to the role she performed for more than seventy years.

To commemorate her passing, the RAHS has shared images and articles of the 1954 Royal Tour of Queen Elizabeth II, when the 27-year-old Queen and her husband, Prince Philip, spent eight weeks touring Australia.

The State Library of NSW also has resources on its website about the royal visit when ‘ the crowds were tumultuous, the press was effusive in its praise and every street the royals paraded along was festooned with decorations’.


The RAHS Library holds a copy of the Official Souvenir Program for the 1954 visit of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip.

Here is a downloadable digitised version of the Official Souvenir Programme: The Royal Visit to New South Wales, 3 February – 18 March 1954. Printed by Government Printer Sydney [RAHS Collection].

The RAHS also holds a collection of 78 photographs taken of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip on 3 February 1954, on what was the first day of their 58-day tour of Australia. A selection of these photographs has been compiled below.

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Good Servants and Valuable Wives: 190 years since the arrival of the Red Rover in 1832

Good Servants and Valuable Wives: 190 years since the arrival of the Red Rover in 1832

Written by Patrick Bourke, RAHS Member

On 10 August 1832 the Red Rover arrived in Sydney Harbour with 202 free young unmarried Irish women onboard. This ship had left Cork, Ireland, on 10 April 1832. On 15 August the young women left the Red Rover and were housed in the Sydney lumber yard, which was at the southern corner of George and Bridge streets, until they could find employment. There is now a Royal Australian Historical Society green plaque on the wall of the entrance alcove of Moran House, 13-15 Bridge Street, to mark the site of the old Sydney lumber yard.[1] The arrival of the Red Rover young Irish women at the Sydney lumber yard was described in the Sydney Monitor on 15 August 1832. In the newspaper report, which was quite positive about the young women, it was noted that Governor Bourke and Miss Bourke ‘have paid a kind visit to these free women.’[2] The women on the Red Rover have sometimes been referred to incorrectly as convicts, as was pointed out by C.T. Burfitt in 1909.[3]

Map of Old Sydney Town 1821 showing the Lumber Yard where the unmarried women from Cork, Ireland came to stay until they found employment in 1832

DETAIL OF ‘SKETCH OF THE TOWN OF SYDNEY’ 1821 SHOWING THE LUMBER YARD [STATE LIBRARY OF NSW]

It would be correct to say that the arrival of these free young unmarried women in Sydney in August 1832 was a challenge for Governor Bourke. He knew that these young women would arrive in Sydney in 1832 and had made some provision for them on their arrival. As well as providing the Sydney lumber yard for their temporary accommodation until they could find employment, Governor Bourke had appointed a small reception committee of women to look after their welfare and guide them in finding employment. The members of this Ladies Reception Committee were the wives and daughters of leading colonists.[4]

From the records we have, it can be concluded that most of the young women were able to obtain employment soon after their arrival. Some did return to the Sydney lumber yard due to problems with their employment, while others were sent to the country areas. By the beginning of January 1833 only one young woman remained in the Sydney lumber yard.[5]

Tracing what happened to these young women and assessing their contributions to Australia as good servants and valuable wives is not an easy task but Elizabeth Rushen and Perry McIntyre in their book, Fair Game: Australia’s first immigrant women, have made a well-researched and balanced assessment of these young women which has also included the 200 free young unmarried women from London who arrived in Hobart on the Royal Princess on 23 August 1832. Whilst several of the Red Rover women fell on hard times and committed crimes, many others fell under the radar, with their lives only being discovered through their descendants doing family history research. Some of them lived to a good age and had large families.

After the arrival of the Red Rover in Sydney on 10 August 1832, and the arrival of the Princess Royal in Hobart on 23 August 1832, another fourteen ships would bring approximately 2,700 more free unmarried young women from England and Ireland to Australia between August 1833 and February 1837 as part of a migration scheme to correct the serious imbalance between the male and female population in the colonies. The young women who came to Australia on these sixteen ships during the 1830s were depicted as butterflies by the artist Alfred Ducote in his picture E-migration, or, A flight of fair game (1832).[6]

Lithograph of young women who came to Australia on these sixteen ships during the 1830s were depicted by the Artist Ducote in his picture E-Migration, or, A flight of fair game (1832).

ALFRED DUCOTE, E-MIGRATION, OR, A FLIGHT OF FAIR GAME, LITHOGRAPH, 1832 [NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA]

The list of these migrant ships is on Liz Rushen’s website of Bounty Emigration Ships to Australia. You will also find on this website the names of the young free unmarried women, including my great, great grandmother, Mary Downey, who was arrived on the Red Rover on 10 August 1832. She lived into her 80s and had a large family. NSW State Records show that Mary Downey was initially employed by Miss Anne Bourke, Governor Bourke’s daughter. Anne Bourke was very likely on the Ladies Reception Committee for the women on the Red Rover in 1832. More information about the Red Rover women, including their initial employment in New South Wales, is in the NSW State Records.[7]

The Australian television series, Who Do You Think You Are? which has aired on SBS TV since 2008, has also uncovered the lives of two young women who came to Australia on two of these sixteen migrant ships during the 1830s. The actor Lex Marinos’ ancestor, Marianne Mortimer, arrived in Hobart on the Princess Royal on 23 August 1832, and the actress Kat Stewart’s ancestor, Eliza Martin, arrived in Hobart on the William Metcalfe on 24 January 1837.[8]


References:

[1] ‘Government Lumber Yard’, Dictionary of Sydney, <https://dictionaryofsydney.org/place/government_lumber_yard>, accessed 30 June 2022.

[2] Sydney Monitor, 15 August 1832, p.2, <https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/32141886>

[3] C.T. Burfitt (Hon. Sec., Australian Historical Society), Letter to the Editor, Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 1909, p.5, <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article15103181>

[4] Elizabeth Rushen & Perry McIntyre, Fair Game: Australia’s first immigrant women (Spit Junction: Anchor Books, 2010), p.72.

[5] Rushen & McIntyre, Fair Game, p.76.

[6] Alfred Ducote, E-migration, or, A flight of fair game, lithograph, 1832, <https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/2662521>

[7] NSW State Archives, Women on the Red Rover and other early migrant ships (NRS5312, Reel 2795, [4/4822]).

[8] Who Do You Think You Are? Series 5. Aired on SBS TV on 30 April 2013; Who Do You Think You Are? Series 11. Aired on SBS TV on 23 June 2020.

Published online: 10 August 2022

 

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National Threatened Species Day

National Threatened Species Day

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern

A black and white photograph from 1936 of Benjamin, the last thylacine at Hobart Zoo.

BENJAMIN, THE LAST THYLACINE, PHOTOGRAPHED CIRCA 1936 AT HOBART ZOO. IMAGE COURTESY TASMANIAN MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY.

On 7 September 1936, Benjamin, the world’s last known thylacine, died in captivity at Hobart Zoo from suspected neglect. Despite decades of a rapidly dwindling population, hastened by habitat destruction, disease, the incursion of introduced species, and human intervention, the species had only been declared protected two months prior. It would take fifty years before the thylacine—better known as the Tasmanian tiger after the distinctive stripes along its back—was pronounced officially extinct, in 1986. Ten years later, 7 September was declared National Threatened Species Day, to commemorate the last thylacine and raise awareness for other species facing a similar fate today.

The thylacine was once the world’s largest marsupial carnivore. That title is now held by its closest living relative, the Tasmanian devil—a species declared endangered in 2008. Characterised by its fifteen to twenty dark stripes from shoulder to tail, the Tasmanian tiger bore striking resemblance in head and figure to both dingoes and wolves, though was genetically related to neither. Scientists consider this an exceptional example of convergent evolution, in which unrelated species evolve similar physical features due to similar environmental factors.

There were an estimated five thousand thylacines in Tasmania/lutruwita at the time of European settlement. The species had previously gone locally extinct on the Australian mainland and Papua New Guinea, due in part to the introduction of the dingo approximately four thousand years ago.

Wild dogs, disease, and habitat destruction all played a part in the final demise of the thylacine, but it was hunting that signed their death warrant. Thylacines were deemed pests by local farmers, who wanted an easy scapegoat for the injury and death of their livestock—though wild dogs were likely more to blame. Bounties were set on both adult thylacines and their pups from as early as 1830 to as late as 1909. More than two thousand were collected, though it is likely more were killed. By the time zoos around the world sought their own Tasmanian tiger to display, it was too late. The wild population had been eradicated, and attempts to breed in captivity failed. The thylacine joined the more than ten percent of native Australian mammal species to go extinct since colonisation—the highest rate of mammal extinction in the world.

More than seventy percent of Australian native species are unique to our country. If they go extinct here, they go extinct everywhere. Over 518 native species are currently threatened in Australia. It is for these animals that National Threatened Species Day is held, to try and prevent another Benjamin, the last of his kind.

Visit World Wildlife Fund Australia for more information about how to help our endangered wildlife.

A picture of the WWF National Threatened Species Day logo.


References:

‘Extinction of thylacine’, National Museum of Australia, accessed 30 July 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/extinction-of-thylacine.

Emily Hanna, ‘National Threatened Species Day’, Parliament of Australia, 5 September 2017, https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/FlagPost/2017/September/National_Threatened_Species_Day.

Nerissa Hannink, ‘Secrets from Beyond Extinction: The Tasmanian Tiger’, Pursuit, University of Melbourne, 12 December 2017, https://pursuit.unimelb.edu.au/articles/secrets-from-beyond-extinction-the-tasmanian-tiger.

‘National Threatened Species Day’, World Wildlife Fund Australia, accessed 30 July 2021, https://www.wwf.org.au/what-we-do/species/national-threatened-species-day.

‘Save Australia’s Threatened Species’, Nature Conservancy, accessed 30 July 2021, https://www.natureaustralia.org.au/donate-to-our-mission/donate/threatened-species/.

‘Thylacine’, Australian Museum, accessed 30 July 2021, https://australian.museum/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/the-thylacine/.

 

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Changing times: 50 years of daylight saving

Changing times: 50 years of daylight saving

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern

Daylight saving is an accepted, if confusing, part of life for most Australians. On the first Sunday in October, people living in New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, and the Australian Capital Territory set their clocks forward by one hour to extend daylight hours after the working day. On the first Sunday in April, we set them back.

The practice is a controversial one, neatly illustrated by the five time zones daylight saving creates across the country instead of our usual three. Its advocates argue for the increased availability of after-work activities and the boost in the local economy this provides. Fewer animals are killed on roads during daylight saving time, as most workers no longer drive home during dusk. Daylight saving has also been proven to reduce electricity demand in the late afternoon and early evening. Tasmania was the first Australian state to introduce the practice permanently in 1967 as an alternative to power rationing during drought.

NSW and most other states followed suit in 1971. 2021, therefore, marks the 50th anniversary of daylight saving being permanently used across most of Australia. But did you know it was originally introduced during the First World War?

The Daylight Saving Act 1916 implemented daylight-saving time on the Australian home front and was initially intended as a wartime fuel-saving measure. The practice had begun in Germany and Austria in 1916, which in turn modelled it from Port Arthur, Canada, the first place in the world to employ daylight saving time in 1908. Academics had been proposing the clock change for years, notably New Zealand entomologist George Hudson in 1895.

Despite European successes, the practice did not go over well in Australia and was repealed in late 1917. Newspapers reported, “Nothing in the long record of Parliamentary delinquency has excited more derision … than this ill-starred attempt to divert Nature from her natural course.” “It has been tried and found wanting,” another printed, “like a good many of Billy Hughes’ plans.” The practice did not re-emerge until more than twenty years later during another world war, where daylight saving time was used nationwide from 1942 to 1944. Following the end of hostilities, it fell into disuse for another twenty years.

Today’s opponents to daylight saving argue that the practice disrupts sleep patterns, leading to health risks. It may even correlate to a spike in fatal road accidents in the first few days following the clock change as people drive while tired. When implemented in Tasmania in 1967, certain professions were affected more than others: farmers, for instance, whose work depends on daylight.

The international community has recently begun to address these concerns. In 2019, the European Union member states voted to abolish the practice entirely. Countries had the option to choose whether to stick with ‘permanent winter’ (standard) or ‘permanent summer’ (daylight saving) time, though Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic have since stalled the decision.

In Australia, Queensland, Western Australia, and the Northern Territory do not practice daylight saving, despite a number of referenda and trial periods. For those living in border communities, such as in the twin towns of Tweed Heads (NSW) and Coolangatta (QLD), simply crossing the street can lead to an hour’s time difference during daylight saving in NSW. Residents have even been known to celebrate two New Year’s.

In 1970, ABC’s Four Corners aired a segment on daylight saving in Tasmania. 80% of their Tasmanian viewers were in favour of the change. Others argued the government should “leave God’s time alone.” Bruce Grundy, the host of current affairs program Line Up, had this to say: “Times change, obviously. I’m talking about changing times.”

Daylight saving seems set to stay in NSW and most other Australian states. But who knows where the next fifty years may take us? Only time will tell.

References

Greg Baker, ‘Daylight saving time: summer 2009-10 and autumn 2010’, research paper, Parliament of Australia, 19 November, no. 10, 2009-10.

Seungmoon Choi, Alistair Pellen and Virginie Masson, ‘How does daylight saving time affect electricity demand? An answer using aggregate data from a natural experiment in Western Australia’, Energy Economics 66 (August 2017): 247-260, DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2017.06.018.

‘Daylight Saving’, Mirror of Australia (Sydney, 1915-1917), 24 March 1917, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/103826935.

‘Daylight Saving’, Scone Advocate (1887-1954), 6 February 1917, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/156909200.

Ally Foster, ‘Multiple health risks linked to daylight saving time’, News.com.au, 17 September 2020, https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health/health-problems/multiple-health-risks-linked-to-daylight-saving-time/news-story/d484a37994c7df4a2ec78c7f983499cb.

Four Corners, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 21 November 1970 https://www.abc.net.au/archives/80days/stories/2012/01/19/3415208.htm.

Rachel Houlihan, ‘Where did daylight saving come from and which states have it?’, Sydney Morning Herald, 5 April 2020, https://www.smh.com.au/national/where-did-daylight-saving-come-from-and-which-states-have-it-20191003-p52xfe.html.

Stuart Layt, ‘“It’s more than the time of day”: The facts behind daylight saving’, Brisbane Times, 3 October 2020, https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/national/queensland/it-s-more-than-the-time-of-day-the-facts-behind-daylight-saving-20201001-p56181.html.

 

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Exciting New World: Australia in the 1920s

Exciting New World: Australia in the 1920s

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Volunteer

On Saturday 6 November 2021, the RAHS held a special online event, exploring the Exciting New World: Australia in the 1920s and 1930s. This is the first in a series of two blog posts about the interwar decades, providing an overview of the broad spectrum of changes that occurred across Australian politics, society, and culture during that time.

Read the second instalment here

‘… the power of the modern … simultaneously exhilarated and alarmed the nation’ — Lucinda Janson, ‘‘Mostly Good and Always Modern’? The Limits of the Modern for Women in the Home Magazine in the 1920s’, ANU Historical Journal II no. 2 (October 2020)

American women’s jazz band the Ingenues at Central station 1928

AMERICAN WOMEN’S JAZZ BAND, THE INGENUES, AT CENTRAL STATION, 1928. COURTESY STATE LIBRARY OF NSW

The 1920s was a decade defined by change.

Emerging from the devastation of the Great War with the Spanish flu pandemic quick on its heels, the world at large faced the enormous task of rebuilding from the ashes. Though spared from the enormous destruction endured across war-torn Europe, Australia’s physical distance from the conflict did little to ease its suffering. More than seven percent of the country’s tiny population of five million served overseas between 1914 and 1918, with two-thirds of them wounded or killed. Another 15,000 Australians died from influenza after the war’s end: a final, cruel blow to an already grieving nation.[1]

Yet despite the tragedy of the preceding decade, the 1920s marked a turning point towards a hopeful future. This new ‘Jazz age’ brought about positive change in many areas of society, such as technology, arts and culture, women’s freedoms, and the new suburban Australian dream. It truly was an exciting new world, an ‘Australia Unlimited’ – though not for all who lived it.[2]

Indigenous Australians, many of whom had contributed to the war effort side by side with men and women who openly fought for a ‘White Australia’, continued to be marginalised and oppressed by a country still dictated by colonial patterns of violence.[3]

Brave new world: Innovation in technology

All kinds of new technologies were developed during the Great War. Improvements in weaponry, including the first use of tanks and poison gas, made combat more dangerous than ever before, while advancements in both medicine and radio communication allowed armies to operate more effectively across increasingly strained front lines.

Technological innovation continued in the 1920s, reaching even greater heights – literally. The success of flying corps during the war inspired a boom in both aviation and public interest in its pioneers. In Australia, Sir Charles Kingsford Smith (‘Smithy’) became a household name after completing the world’s first trans-Pacific flight with Charles Ulm from America to Australia in 1928. That same year, aviator, explorer, and war hero Sir George Hubert Wilkins pioneered Arctic air exploration, flying from Point Barrow in Alaska to Svalbard, Norway with his long-time co-pilot Carl Ben Eielson. He was knighted for the impressive feat.[4]

Sir Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm standing next to their plane after arrival in England 1929.

SIR CHARLES KINGSFORD SMITH AND CHARLES ULM STANDING NEXT TO THEIR PLANE AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND, 1929. COURTESY NATIONAL LIBRARY OF AUSTRALIA

Also in 1928, the Reverend Dr John Flynn, dubbed ‘Flynn of the Inland’, established the Royal Flying Doctor Service in an aeroplane borrowed from the newly formed Queensland and Northern Territory Aerial Services – today known as Qantas. Even the American confectionery brand Aeroplane Jelly seized upon the country’s obsession with aviation, breaking into the Australian market in the late 1920s.[5]

The motorcar, too, had its day. National motor vehicle registrations reached over 500,000 in 1928 – close to ten percent of the country’s population. In Sydney alone, car numbers more than tripled in a five-year period, from 33,000 in 1921 to 127,000 by 1926. Unsurprisingly, 1928 also recorded the country’s highest road death toll, of 1,000.[6]

World War I’s innovation in radio communication also flourished into the new decade. Radio station 2GB Sydney pioneered the first sealed-set radio broadcasting system on 13 November 1923. In 1924, Sydney’s 2FC and Melbourne’s 3AR began operations, and by 1929, twenty percent of households across the country had radio, although the distribution was overwhelmingly urban.[7] Alongside radio, cinema made great strides, with the first ‘talkies’ screened in Australian picture theatres from December 1928.

The arts and ‘mass’ culture

The 1920s are famous for their unique art deco aesthetic and modernist art and literature, but these were only ripples in the new pond of ‘mass’ culture that permeated the decade. British, European, and American creatives certainly explored the loss of innocence the Great War had precipitated, in such seminal works of anti-war literature as Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1928). But there was a simultaneous joy at work in other forms of artistic expression, now free from both pre-war Edwardian convention and wartime austerity. A riot of colour invaded modernist art in Australia as seen in the works of Grace Cossington Smith, Norah Simpson, Roland Wakelin, Roy de Maistre, and Margaret Preston, while architecture embraced the languid style of the Californian bungalow during the decade’s suburban building boom.[8]

Roland Wakelin’s Wakelin’s syncromy in orange minor 1919

ROLAND WAKELIN’S SYNCROMY IN ORANGE MINOR (1919). COURTESY ART GALLERY OF NSW

The proliferation of radio and cinema also meant that America was no longer half a world away: it was on doorsteps, inside homes, influencing the ways Australians – particularly the younger generation, who were less inclined to cling to a British national identity – shopped, dressed, even spoke.[9] For the first time, women were now major consumers, with the popular Home magazine beginning publication in Sydney in 1920.

In fact, white women across the country were met with tantalising new freedoms unimaginable before the war – but not all were so quick to embrace the changes promised by modernity.

Women in the new world

The flapper is the ubiquitous image of the 1920s woman: she of the shimmering, dropped-waist dress, the knee-high hemline, and the feathered headband. Think Great Gatsby, or Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries: the glamorous, ‘modern’ woman stepping from the magazine page or silver screen. The Sydney Living Museums’ Underworld exhibition describes her perfectly:

The flapper was an alluring vision of sophistication and freedom for young women globally. She danced, drank to excess and smoked, drove cars, bobbed her hair and generally defied conventions of ‘modest’ feminine behaviour.[10]

Many Australian women embraced the flapper aesthetic and lifestyle – one only has to browse the Specials of the Sydney police from the 1920s to see them come alive. On the whole, these women were young, white, typically working-class and, in an Australia still devoted to the domestic image of woman as wife and mother, remarkably controversial figures.

The Flapper stye dress worn by Isabel McDonagh in the McDonagh sisters’ silent film The Cheaters 1929

THE FLAPPER-STYLE DRESS WORN BY ISABEL MCDONAGH IN THE MCDONAGH SISTERS’ SILENT FILM THE CHEATERS (1929), COURTESY NATIONAL FILM AND SOUND ARCHIVE 1245461

Edna May Lindsay 22 March 1929

EDNA MAY LINDSAY, 22 MARCH 1929, SPECIAL PHOTOGRAPH NUMBER 1765, COURTESY NSW FORENSIC PHOTOGRAPHY ARCHIVE, SYDNEY LIVING MUSEUMS

As argued by Lucinda Janson, Home magazine worked as a conservative force throughout the 1920s in its promotion of the domestic sphere as a woman’s ideal place in the world.[11] Though women made up over twenty per cent of the Australian workforce in 1921, they were paid considerably less than men and were mostly employed in domestic or suitably ‘feminine’ pursuits, all of which ended abruptly upon marriage. And although the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) was established in 1927, the union movement remained incredibly hostile toward working women.[12]

This is not to say many women did not continue to break ground. Edith Cowan became the first female parliamentarian when elected in Western Australia in 1921. Her Women’s Legal Status Bill made great strides towards rights for white women in the public sphere, laying the groundwork that is still visible in the Sex Discrimination Act today. Outside of politics, the McDonagh sisters – Isabel, Phyllis, and Paulette – made headway as the very first women to own and operate a film company in the country.[13]

It would take another World War for white Australian women to truly achieve many of the freedoms they dreamed of in the 1920s, and decades more for the same freedoms to be granted to First Nations peoples of any gender. However, despite conservative attempts to quash what they called ‘the flapper problem’, she remains the face of the decade, the glittering embodiment of the Jazz age: not only in Australia but around the Western world.

The Australian dream: Triumphs and challenges

As motorcar sales soared and hemlines rose higher, another change was taking place across society: that of the new Australian dream. It was paradoxically both urban and rural in nature, driven by returning soldiers and the post-war marriage boom.

In the cities, urban sprawl truly began. With the marriage boom came the building boom, and the dream of a suburban block of land for one’s own. The new Californian bungalow far outstripped the old Federation-style house in popularity, with its simple single-storey design, low-pitched gabled roof, front veranda, and airy interior. Aspiring homeowners even began adding garages from 1920.

A Californian Bungalow style home in Melbourne 1930

A CALIFORNIAN BUNGALOW STYLE HOME IN MELBOURNE, C. 1930. COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Industrial architecture matched suburban in ambition and abundance. The first sod was turned for the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 1923, commencing what would become a nine-year building project. Construction on the City Circle railway loop also began in the 1920s and would take thirty years to complete, while suburban railway lines reached Sutherland, Liverpool, Parramatta, Bankstown and Hornsby by 1929.[14]

But the new Australian dream did not stop at city limits: soldier settlers promised secure employment and prosperous futures flocked to the bush, where the true Australian character was believed to be forged. By 1924, more than 23,000 ex-soldiers were attempting to make a living on the land in a scheme the government hoped would both support its veterans and boost the rural economy.[15]

It was not to be. Many of the plots of land sold under the 1916 Soldier Settlement Scheme were poor and yielded little crop, especially for idealistic and inexperienced farmers. And as new suburbs flourished in the cities so, too, did crime, perhaps most famously in the ‘Razor gangs’ of Sydney’s Kings Cross and Darlinghurst – nicknamed ‘Razorhurst’ during the height of the 1920s underworld.

Yet the greatest challenge to this new dream of ‘Australia Unlimited’ was posed by those who had lived here for millennia. The country’s First Nations peoples, far from being swept up in the forward motion of this exciting new world, continued to face marginalisation and oppression from all levels of Australian society and government.

Between 1913 and 1927 Aboriginal reserve land in NSW alone halved, from 26,000 acres to 13,000. Forcible child removal continued to be a policy of the NSW Aboriginal Protection Board under legislation that would not be repealed until 1969. The Coniston Massacre of 1928, still within living memory, claimed the lives of more than 60 Aboriginal men, women, and children of the Warlpiri, Anmatyerre, and Kaytetye people. Many believe the number is much higher. Constable William George Murray, the leader of the perpetrators, was never convicted. He continued to work as a police constable in the Northern Territory until 1945.[16]

One notable milestone for the rights of First Nations peoples was the formation of the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA) in 1924, under the leadership of Fred Maynard. Excepting its secretary, Elizabeth McKenzie-Hatton, all office bearers were Aboriginal. The AAPA became the target of the Protection Board’s vitriol throughout the 1920s but never wavered in their goal:

Restore to us that share of our country of which we should never have been deprived …

Though the organisation disintegrated in 1927, its core values resurfaced time and again. It would be decades before their own Australian dream even began to be realised.[17]

Exciting new world?

For many Australians, the 1920s did indeed herald an exciting new world. The tragic legacies of the Great War and the Spanish flu pandemic were not, perhaps, so easy to forget, but innovation in art, aviation, and the Australian dream proved welcome distractions.

In October 1929, at the dizzying height of the so-called ‘Roaring Twenties’, the American stock market crashed. The United States and the rest of the world soon plummeted into the Great Depression that would last throughout the 1930s, until the world once again went to war. But, just for a moment, a shiny hope for the future had glimmered.

Blink, and you may have missed her: the knee-high hemline of her beaded dress, swaying to the unpredictable beat of jazz.


References:

[1] Ken Inglis assisted by Jan Brazier, Sacred Places: War Memorials in the Australian Landscape (Melbourne: Melbourne University Publishing, 2005), 91-92; ‘Influenza pandemic’, National Museum of Australia, accessed 28 September 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/influenza-pandemic.

[2] Lisa Featherstone, ‘Sex educating the modern girl: the formation of new knowledge in interwar Australia’, Journal of Australian Studies 34, no. 4 (2010): 459, DOI: 10.1080/14443058.2010.519103.

[3] ‘Mr Hughes at the Town Hall’, Sydney Morning Herald, 27 October 1916, p. 6, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/15683707.

[4] Frederick Howard, ‘Kingsford Smith, Sir Charles Edward (1897–1935)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1983, accessed online 21 September 2021, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kingsford-smith-sir-charles-edward-6964/text12095; R. A. Swan, ‘Wilkins, Sir George Hubert (1888–1958)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1990, accessed online 21 September 2021, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wilkins-sir-george-hubert-9099/text16045; Simon Nasht, The Last Explorer: Hubert Wilkins, Australia’s Unknown Hero (Sydney: Hodder Australia, 2005).

[5] Graeme Bucknall, ‘Flynn, John (1880–1951)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, published first in hardcopy 1981, accessed online 29 September 2021, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/flynn-john-6200/text10655Retroactive 2, chapter 3, ‘The 1920s – Roaring into Modern Australia’, 98; ‘Australia in the 1920s – Consumer choices’, My Place, accessed 16 September 2021, https://myplace.edu.au/decades_timeline/1920/decade_landing_8.html?tabRank=3&subTabRank=3.

[6] ‘Underworld – Joy Riders’, Sydney Living Museums, accessed 16 September 2021, https://sydneylivingmuseums.com.au/underworld/roaring-twenties/joyriders/; ‘Australia in the 1920s – The car revolution’, My Place, accessed 16 September 2021, https://myplace.edu.au/decades_timeline/1920/decade_landing_8.html?tabRank=4&subTabRank=1.

[7] ‘Australia in the 1920s – Radio’, My Place, accessed 16 September 2021, https://myplace.edu.au/decades_timeline/1920/decade_landing_8.html?tabRank=4&subTabRank=3; ‘Radio comes of age’, Museums Victoria, accessed 16 September 2021, https://collections.museumsvictoria.com.au/articles/12666.

[8] ‘Art Sets. 20th-century Australian art: Colour and light: early modernism in Sydney’, Art Gallery of NSW, accessed 21 September 2021, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/artsets/fl43me; ‘The History of Sydney: The Interwar Years’, PocketOz, Pocket Guide to Sydney, accessed 21 September 2021, http://www.visitsydneyaustralia.com.au/history-11-interwar.html.

[9] Robert Crawford, ‘Selling or buying American dreams?: Americanization and Australia’s interwar advertising industry’, Comparative American Studies: An International Journal 3, no. 2 (2005): 213-236, DOI: 10.1177/1477570005053908.

[10] ‘Underworld – Flappers’, Museums of History NSW, accessed 23 May 2023, <https://mhnsw.au/stories/underworld/flappers/>.

[11] Janson, ‘“Mostly Good and Always Modern”?’.

[12] Retroactive, ‘The 1920s’, 90-93.

[13] Graham Shirley, ‘The McDonagh Sisters: Australian filmmaking pioneers’, National Film and Sound Archive, accessed 7 October 2021, https://www.nfsa.gov.au/latest/mcdonagh-sisters-australian-filmmaking-pioneers.

[14] ‘The History of Sydney’, PocketOz.

[15] ‘Year Book Australia, 1925’, Australian Bureau of Statistics, https://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/featurearticlesbyCatalogue/72BB159FA215052FCA2569DE0020331D.

[16] John Maynard, ‘Fred Maynard and the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA): One God, One Aim, One destiny’, Aboriginal History 21 (1991): 1-13; Rona Glynn-McDonald, ‘Coniston Massacre’, Common Ground, 15 January 2021, https://www.commonground.org.au/learn/coniston-massacre; ‘Memories of the Coniston Massacre’, Australian War Memorial, accessed 16 September 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/AWM2020.771.1; ‘Remembering the Coniston Massacre’, SBS, 9 September 2013, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/remembering-the-coniston-massacre.

[17] Maynard, ‘Fred Maynard and the Australian Aboriginal Progressive Association (AAPA)’.

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Ninnis, Mertz, and Mawson

Ninnis, Mertz, and Mawson

Written by Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern

Xavier Mertz Swiss champion skier looks out over the boat harbour Cape Dension 1912 with drifting snow and wind makes the landscape look fuzzy.

CONTEMPLATION: XAVIER MERTZ LOOKS OUT OVER THE BOAT HARBOUR AT CAPE DENISON, 1912. DRIFTING SNOW MAKES THE LANDSCAPE LOOK FUZZY. PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK HURLEY. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

110 years ago in 1911, the Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE) set sail from Hobart, Tasmania, on the old whaling ship Aurora. Among the crew were a young Frank Hurley, soon-to-be war photographer; Frank Wild, English explorer and Antarctic veteran; Belgrave Ninnis, son of the Arctic explorer of the same name and lieutenant with the Royal Fusiliers; Xavier Mertz, Swiss champion skier; and Douglas Mawson, Australian geologist and leader of the expedition, six months shy of his thirtieth birthday on the day of the Aurora’s embarkation.

Over the course of their three-year journey, the AAE returned some of the most remarkable scientific finds of the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration, including the first meteorite discovered in Antarctica. The data from the expedition took thirty years to be published in its entirety. By the end of his Antarctic career, Mawson would claim forty-two percent of the continent for Australia—a figure which stands today. But Mawson and the AAE are best remembered for achievements of a different kind: those of endurance, and survival against all odds, in what has been called by some ‘the most terrible polar exploration ever’. [1]

Last month, on 25 May 2021, three new memorial plaques were unveiled at Mawson Place, Hobart Harbour, 150 metres from where the AAE first set sail. Dedicated to the lives lost on that fateful expedition, the ceremony was attended by British High Commissioner to Australia Victoria Treadell and Swiss Ambassador Pedro Zwahlen. ‘Recognition of the sacrifices of this expedition has been long overdue’, David Jensen, founder of the Mawson’s Hut Foundation, remarked in his opening speech. [2]

Previously, the only monument to honour the fallen polar heroes was a single wooden cross erected at Cape Denison, East Antarctica, the home base of the AAE and ‘at its worst … one of the most terrible environments on earth’. [3] Beset by brutal katabatic winds, hundreds of kilometres from the next outpost, very few people outside scientific circles make the trek to the memorial.

It is about time they were commemorated on Australian soil.

Mertz, second Engineer, Scond Officer Percy Gray and Ninnis on the deck of the Aurora 1911.

HAPPIER TIMES: FROM L TO R MERTZ, SECOND ENGINEER CORNER, SECOND OFFICER PERCY GRAY, AND NINNIS, EN ROUTE TO AUSTRALIA ON BOARD THE AURORA, 1911. PHOTOGRAPH BY AURORA’S CHIEF ENGINEER F. J. GILLIES. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

‘A man of character, generous and of noble parts’. ‘A fine fellow and a born soldier’. So Douglas Mawson described his companions Xavier Mertz and Belgrave Ninnis in his published account of the expedition, Home of the Blizzard. [4] The three men set out from Cape Denison on 10 November 1912 as the Far Eastern Party, one of several smaller expeditions to explore the uncharted polar territory. With them went seventeen sledging dogs. They made good pace for over a month, travelling 500 kilometres from base camp across glaciers pitted with hidden crevasses.

On 13 December the men made camp, and redistributed their supplies from three sledges to two. The next day began as normal, Mertz skiing ahead, Mawson following, standing on the runners of his sled, Ninnis jogging beside his and bringing up the rear. Mertz spotted a crevasse. He halted and raised his ski pole to alert the others. He and Mawson passed over without incident. Then Mertz halted again, alarmed. Mawson looked back. Ninnis was not behind them.

The two retraced their footsteps, frantic, hoping Ninnis was simply out of sight behind a rise in the snow. They found the crevasse instead, its snow cover fallen through. Crawling forward on his stomach, peering into the darkness, Mawson saw two dogs lying on a ledge far below: one dead, the other badly injured and whining. They had fallen through the snow bridge without a sound, along with the expedition’s other best dogs, most of the food and supplies, and their master, Lieutenant Belgrave Ninnis. [5]

Mawson and Mertz called for Ninnis for hours. The rope they carried was not long enough to reach the ledge where the dogs were, let alone deeper into the crevasse. Shock soon gave way to grief: ‘Our fellow, comrade, chum, in a woeful instant, buried in the bowels of that awful glacier’, Mawson later wrote. [6] In his diary, Mertz was numb: ‘We could do nothing, really nothing. We were standing, helplessly, next to a friend’s grave, my best friend of the whole expedition’. [7]

In redistributing the supplies the previous night, Mawson had thought the first sled would be the one to encounter any difficulty, so kept essential supplies to a minimum and hitched it to the weakest dogs. He and Mertz now faced a thirty-day return journey with ten days’ worth of food, minimal supplies, no dog food and no tent. Mawson’s diary captures the bleak situation: ‘May God help us’, he wrote. [8]

Belgrave Edward Sutton Ninnis was twenty-five when he died. Responding to an advertisement placed by Mawson about the expedition in London, Ninnis was hired as the minder of the fifty sledging dogs Mawson purchased from Greenland. Ninnis had no experience in dogs or polar exploration, but his military rank and family history—his father, also Belgrave Ninnis, was a prominent Arctic explorer—likely influenced Mawson’s decision to recruit the young lieutenant. [9]

Mertz also joined the expedition in London and was appointed to the dogs with Ninnis. Only five years older than the lieutenant, the two soon became close friends. Today the Mertz and Ninnis Glaciers sit side-by-side on the Antarctic coast.

PHOTOSHOOT: NINNIS AT THE DOG QUARANTINE STATION ON THE DERWENT RIVER, 1911, BEFORE THE EXPEDITION EMBARKED. PHOTOGRAPH BY HIS FRIEND XAVIER MERTZ. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

 

Men in winter clothing with snow shovels digging in snow in catacombs leading to The Cape Denison Hut

MEN AT WORK: NINNIS (FOREGROUND) IN THE CATACOMBS LEADING TO THE CAPE DENISON HUT, 1912. PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK HURLEY. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

Mawson and Mertz made the decision to retrace their steps across the glacier back to camp, rather than attempt a longer route via the coast. They returned to their camp from the previous night, where they cut poles from the abandoned sledge to create a makeshift canvas tent.

The two men travelled 320 kilometres of the 500 kilometre journey together. Their daily rations were a mere 400 grams, compared to the usual 960, even supplemented by the meat from their remaining dogs—a necessity that was likely traumatising for Mertz especially, who had been entrusted with their care. Already stricken with grief, both men soon fell sick as well. Their skin and hair began to fall off; they suffered abdominal pain, weight loss, and dizziness, alongside the snow-blindness Mawson was already experiencing. The last dog, Ginger, died on 28 December. In the new year, Mertz’s condition declined rapidly. He had fever, fits, and bouts of dysentery, and died ‘peacefully at about 2 am’ on 8 January 1913. [10]

Mawson was now alone, ‘on the wide shores of the world’. [11]

A man on skis with a seated dog on his left

MAN’S BEST FRIEND: MERTZ AND ONE OF HIS FAVOURITE DOGS, BASILISK, 1912. PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK HURLEY. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

Dr Xavier Mertz was twenty-eight when he joined the AAE. He had a doctorate in law, was a national ski champion in his native Switzerland, and an experienced mountaineer. On board the Aurora from London to Australia, he dabbled in his hobby of amateur photography, setting up a makeshift darkroom in the bowels of the ship.

The only non-British European to join Mawson’s expedition, Mertz was a novelty for many of the men. His imperfect English and habit of yodelling whenever the mood struck both amused and bemused his companions. In her paper on Mertz in Hobart, Anna Lucas wryly describes Mertz as ‘Ever the patriot, he also wrote that he was taking the Swiss flag with him, intending to raise it at several places on the Antarctic continent (which he did)’. [12]

Mawson did not expect to survive the final leg of the journey back to base. But he was determined to travel as far as he could so his body, and his and Mertz’s diaries, could be found. ‘How short a distance it would seem to the vigorous’, Mawson wrote, no doubt remembering the easy trek he, Mertz, and Ninnis had undertaken two months ago, ‘but what a lengthy journey for the weak and famished!’ [13]

The soles of his feet had peeled off completely. Mawson smothered them in lanolin and bandaged the skin back on, but the pain made the miles twice as hard, and twice as slow, to cover. On 17 January he fell into a crevasse, saved only from Ninnis’ fate by his sledge getting stuck in a snowdrift. Mawson, at this point weighing little more than fifty kilograms, pulled himself up by his rope, hand over bloodied hand.

On 29 January at approximately two p.m., twenty-one days after Mertz’s death, Mawson spotted a cairn with a store of food inside and a note, directing him to the supply cache thirty miles from base camp. The note had been written at eight a.m. that day: Mawson had missed his companions by mere hours.

Three days later he reached the cache of Aladdin’s Cave. Inside were three oranges and a pineapple: Mawson wept, ‘overcome, he later said, by the sight of something that was not white’. [14]

A blizzard kept Mawson inside the cave for the next five days. On 8 February, three months after setting out from Cape Denison with Ninnis and Mertz, Mawson made it back. In the distance of Commonwealth Bay he could make out the distinct shape of the Aurora, departing base camp at last after already delaying almost a month in the hope of the Far Eastern Party’s return.

But all, for Mawson, was not lost. Six men had stayed behind, willing to brave another Antarctic winter to search for their lost companions: Bob Bage, Francis Bickerton, Alfred Hodgeman, Sidney Jeffyres, Cecil Madigan, and Archibald McLean. Mawson could scarcely believe it: ‘They seemed almost unreal—I was in a dream’. [15]

The AAE was the first expedition in the world to establish long-term wireless radio contact with mainland Australia. Mawson used it to send a message to his fiancée, Paquita, in those long months before the Aurora could return through the ice: ‘Deeply regret delay. Only just managed to reach hut. Effects now gone but lost most of my hair. You are free to consider your contract but trust you will not abandon your second hand Douglas’.

Paquita replied: ‘Deeply thankful you are safe. Warmest welcome awaiting your hairless return’. [16]

Two men on board a ship looking at camera

ON DECK: NINNIS AND MAWSON ON BOARD THE AURORA, 1911. PHOTOGRAPH BY PERCY GRAY. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

A man leaning against a sledge, eyes closed

AT REST: MAWSON RESTING BY HIS SLEDGE, MARCH 1912. PHOTOGRAPH BY XAVIER MERTZ. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

Tramping over the plateau, where reigns the desolation of the outer worlds, in solitude at once ominous and weird, one is free to roam in imagination … One is in the midst of infinities—the infinity of the dazzling white plateau, the infinity of the dome above, the infinity of the time past since these things had birth, and the infinity of the time to come … [17]

So wrote Mawson in Home of the Blizzard. Despite the tragedy he had endured in the Antarctic, he was never in doubt, and remained forever in awe, of its beauty. He would return to Antarctica as leader of the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Research Expedition in 1929.

Most of the AAE went on to fight in World War I. Some, including Bage and McLean, lost their lives. Perhaps, had he survived Antarctica, Belgrave Ninnis would have joined them. Switzerland was a neutral country in the war, but Xavier Mertz had already proven himself an adventurer. What choices would he have made, given time?

We now know that the illness both Mawson and Mertz suffered from after the death of Ninnis was hypervitaminosis A, an excess of vitamin A in the body. Husky livers contain toxic levels of the vitamin, and were consumed by both men over several weeks. Mertz, used to eating less meat than Mawson, and especially once in a weakened state, may have been given the palatable liver over the rest of the ‘stringy’ dog meat, thus explaining his rapid decline. [18]

We also know that Ninnis’ habit of running alongside his sledge cost him his life. Mertz and Mawson passed over the snow cover of the crevasse without incident, their weight distributed on skis and sled runners respectively. Ninnis’ weight was concentrated in a very small area, enough to break through the snow entirely. Some historians have criticised Mawson, arguing that as leader he should have insisted on skis for his men. [19]

But hindsight is easy, especially from the warmth, comfort, and solid ground of our own homes.

British explorer Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova expedition of 1912 similarly ended in tragedy. Scott and his four companions set out to be the first to reach the South Pole but were beaten by a Norwegian team by little more than a month. All five men died on the return journey.

David Shearman, writing in 1978, compared the two terrible expeditions. ‘Scott’, he writes, ‘was defeated in his prime aim, which must have affected the high morale necessary to keep going. Mawson, on the other hand, was a scientist and he drove himself to deliver his wealth of scientific observations’. [20]

He succeeded. Yet it was not only scientific discovery Mawson brought back to Australia but a deeply tragic, and a deeply human, story of survival. Not only of himself, but of the memory of Ninnis and Mertz: two young, brave, adventurous, affable, devoted, capable men. Frozen in time, in photographs, in history, and forever on ice.

Three men leading a team of sledge dogs in the distance

FAREWELLS: THE FAR EASTERN PARTY DEPARTING, NOVEMBER 1912. IT IS THE LAST PHOTOGRAPH OF MAWSON, MERTZ, AND NINNIS TOGETHER. PHOTOGRAPH BY ARCHIBALD MCLEAN. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.

A memorial tablet erected to Mertz and Ninnis below the memorial cross at Cape Dension reads “Erected to commemorate the supreme sacrifice made by Lieut.B.E.S Ninnis, R.F. and Dr X. Mertz in the cause of Science A.A.E. 1913”.

IN MEMORIAM: INSCRIPTION ON THE TABLET BELOW THE MEMORIAL CROSS FOR MERTZ AND NINNIS AT CAPE DENISON. PHOTOGRAPH BY FRANK HURLEY. IMAGE COURTESY MITCHELL LIBRARY, SLNSW.


References:

[1] Mike Dash, ‘The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever: Douglas Mawson’s Antarctic Journey’, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 Jan 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-most-terrible-polar-exploration-ever-douglas-mawsons-antarctic-journey-82192685/; ‘Mawson in the Antarctic’, National Museum of Australia, accessed 24 May 2021, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/mawson-in-the-antarctic.

[2] Dr Michael Wenger, ‘Great honour for first Swiss in Antarctica’, Polar Journal, 26 May 2021, https://polarjournal.ch/en/2021/05/26/great-honour-for-the-first-swiss-in-antarctica/.

[3] Alexandra Alvaro, ‘Memorial to honour Mawson’s ill-fated Far Eastern Party’s Antarctic voyage’, Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 25 May 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-05-25/mawson-ill-fated-far-eastern-partys-antarctic-voyage-memorial/100161834; David Killick, ‘Life and death in the Home of the Blizzard’, Australian Antarctic Magazine, 23 May 2012, https://www.antarctica.gov.au/magazine/issue-22-2012/exploration/life-and-death-in-the-home-of-the-blizzard/.

[4] Sir Douglas Mawson, The Home of the Blizzard: Being the Story of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition, 1911-1914 (London: W. Heinemann, 1915).

[5] Dash, ‘Polar Exploration’; Killick, ‘Life and death’.

[6] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard.

[7] ‘Mawson in the Antarctic’, NMA.

[8] Dash, ‘Polar Exploration’; Killick, ‘Life and death’.

[9] Wenger, ‘Great honour’.

[10] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard; Dash, ‘Polar Exploration’; Killick, ‘Life and death’; Douglas Mawson, with Fred Jacka and Eleanor Jacka, eds., Mawson’s Antarctic diaries (North Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988); Elizabeth Leane and Helen Tiffin, ‘Dogs, Meat and Douglas Mawson’, Australian Humanities Review no. 51 (Nov 2011): 1; David J. C. Shearman, ‘Vitamin A and Sir Douglas Mawson’, British Medical Journal 1 (Feb 1978): 283-285.

[11] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard.

[12] Anna Lucas, ‘Mertz in Hobart: Impressions of one of Mawson’s men while preparing for Antarctic adventure’, Papers and Proceedings of the Royal Society of Tasmania 146 (2012): 37-44.

[13] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard; Killick, ‘Life and death’; Shearman, ‘Vitamin A’.

[14] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard; Dash, ‘Polar Exploration’; Killick, ‘Life and death’; Shearman, ‘Vitamin A’.

[15] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard.

[16] Killick, ‘Life and death’.

[17] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard.

[18] Dash, ‘Polar Exploration’; Shearman, ‘Vitamin A’.

[19] Mawson, Home of the Blizzard; Dash, ‘Polar Exploration’.

[20] Shearman, ‘Vitamin A’.

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Women’s Protests: Then and Now

Women’s Protests: Then and Now

By Elizabeth Heffernan, RAHS Intern

On Monday 15 March 2021, thousands of protestors attended more than forty ‘March 4 Justice’ events across the country. From Melbourne to Mullumbimby, participants rallied against the virulent culture of gendered violence, harassment, and discrimination that plagues even the highest offices of federal parliament. They wore black and carried placards denouncing misogyny, domestic violence, rape culture, and sexual abuse in the workplace. Their rallying cry was simple and became a trending hashtag: #EnoughIsEnough.

PROTESTER IN THE WOMEN AGAINST RAPE IN WAR DEMONSTRATION ON ANZAC PARADE DEMANDS TO KNOW THE NUMBER OF THE ARRESTING CONSTABLE, SYDNEY, 25 APRIL 1981. [IMAGE COURTESY GLEN MCDONALD, ACT HERITAGE LIBRARY, CANBERRA TIMES COLLECTION, 008867.]

Women’s protests have long been a vital and vibrant part of Australian history. From the turn-of-the-century suffragettes to the 2017 worldwide Women’s March, public demonstrations have proven their worth as agents of political, social, and cultural change.

It’s not just a small group of us anymore. People are educated, aware, and they’re determined. — Australian journalist Jess Hill in an interview with UTS Central News

Many protesters at the first International Women’s Day Rally in Melbourne 8 March 1975 and another of protesters from the Melbourne March for Justice 15 March 2021.

PROTESTORS AT THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY RALLY IN MELBOURNE, 8 MARCH 1975. [IMAGE COURTESY NATIONAL ARCHIVES OF AUSTRALIA, A6180, 19/3/75/5.]

Many protesters at the first International Women’s Day Rally in Melbourne 8 March 1975 and another of protesters from the Melbourne March for Justice 15 March 2021.

PROTESTORS AT THE MELBOURNE MARCH 4 JUSTICE, 15 MARCH 2021. [IMAGE COURTESY EDDIE JIM, SYDNEY MORNING HERALD.]

Women’s suffrage

The white, green, and violet-clad suffragette was a globally recognised icon from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. Typically a middle to upper-middle-class white woman, she campaigned tirelessly for the right to vote—a political privilege that had been reserved for white men for centuries.

In Australia, the first women’s suffrage society was established in 1884 in Victoria. Women travelled door to door across the colonies, trailing petitions and distributing pamphlets. They lobbied the government, held public debates, and marched through the streets to generate awareness and popularity for their cause. South Australia led the way, granting all women—including Aboriginal women—the right to vote and stand for election in 1894. The nation followed suit in 1902, though simultaneously barring Indigenous people of any gender from voting. The ban was lifted in 1962 after further hard-fought protests.

Australia was the second country in the world, after New Zealand, to grant women’s suffrage nation-wide. Despite these early victories, it took twenty years for the first woman to be elected to state parliament, and another twenty before women joined at the federal level. Only in 2016 did Linda Burney become the first Aboriginal woman elected to the House of Representatives.

It is difficult to imagine that 120 years ago, most women in Australia could not vote. Without the efforts of such Australian suffragettes as Vida Goldstein, Mary Lee, Catherine Helen Spence, and many more, that victory would have been even longer in the making.

Towards equality

Two women Rosalie Bogner and Merle Thornton changed themselves to the Bar of the Regatta Hotel in Brisbane in 1965 to protest Theban on Women drinking in men only public bars.

ROSALIE BOGNER (LEFT) AND MERLE THORNTON CHAINED THEMSELVES TO THE BAR OF THE REGATTA HOTEL IN BRISBANE IN 1965 TO PROTEST THE BAN ON WOMEN DRINKING IN MEN-ONLY PUBLIC BARS. [IMAGE COURTESY BRUCE POSTLE ARCHIVE, STATE LIBRARY OF VICTORIA.]

Gaining the vote was just the beginning. Australian women soon began campaigning for greater rights in both the public and private spheres, during what historian Marilyn Lake calls “the golden age” of Australian feminism.

Protests took the form of marches, sit-ins, rallies, and even street theatre performances. Issues included the gender pay gap—which still exists today—marriage, divorce, and reproductive rights; equality in the workplace; and the rights of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women. Support for the women’s movement only grew after the Second World War, as more and more women who had enlisted in the Women’s Land Army sought similar freedoms in their civilian lives.

The so-called ‘Marriage Bar’ that excluded married women from the workplace was lifted in the education sector in 1956 and for public servants in 1966. Initial access to the contraceptive pill—taxed at 27.5% as a ‘luxury’, only completely repealed in 2018—was granted in 1961, with conditional abortion rights following in 1969.

The 1970s was home to the United Nations International Women’s Year in 1975, and saw great strides in equal pay, maternity leave, childcare, and divorce and marriage rights. The 70s also heralded the first International Women’s Day rally in Australia, held in Melbourne on 8 March 1975, two years before the day was officially recognised by the UN. Australia ratified the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women in 1983.

During the 1960s and 1970s, women were also vocal voices in the anti-Vietnam War moratoriums and, from the 1980s, drew attention to the gendered silences surrounding the national commemoration of Anzac Day through the Women Against Rape in War campaign. Everywhere you turn in Australian history, a woman holds her protest sign high.

‘Shatter the silence, stop the violence’

A BANNER AT MELBOURNE’S MARCH 4 JUSTICE LISTING ALL AUSTRALIAN WOMEN KILLED BY GENDERED VIOLENCE SINCE 2008. [IMAGE COURTESY ANTOUN ISSA, @ANTISSA ON TWITTER.]

Banner at Melbourne March 4 Justice listing all Australian women killed by gendered violence since 2008.

More recently, women’s protests have centred on ending sexual and domestic violence. “This isn’t new,” one protestor from Sydney’s March 4 Justice informed the camera. “It’s all the way to the top.”

One woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner. One in six women has experienced sexual assault since the age of 15. One in two women has been sexually harassed since the age of 15. Two in five women have been sexually harassed in the workplace.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women in particular are disproportionately affected, not only by domestic and sexual violence but by institutional violence in police custody.

It is no wonder thousands of Australians marched to say enough is enough.

PROTESTOR AT THE PERTH MARCH 4 JUSTICE. [IMAGE COURTESY KATY THOMSON, @DMCKATEFACE ON TWITTER.]

Protests throughout Australian history have long been forces for powerful change. Women would not have the vote, and all our legal rights since, without them. These recent demonstrations are no different. It may be bleak to consider how much work still needs to be done to secure respect, safety, and equality for people of all genders, races, sexualities, and backgrounds. As one sign from Perth’s March 4 Justice put it:

Yet so long as there are protests, there are things worth protesting, and people worth protesting for.

SENATOR LIDIA THORPE (RIGHT) PROTESTING AT CANBERRA’S MARCH 4 JUSTICE. [IMAGE COURTESY LIDIA THORPE, @LIDIA__THORPE ON TWITTER.]


References:

‘Chained to the bar’, State Library of Victoria, accessed 23 March 2021.

‘Family, domestic and sexual violence in Australia: continuing the national story 2019’, 5 June 2019, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/domestic-violence/family-domestic-sexual-violence-australia-2019/contents/summary.

‘Gender Equality Timeline’, Victorian Women’s Trust, https://www.vwt.org.au/gender-equality-timeline-australia/, accessed 22 March 2021.

‘Sexual assault in Australia’, 28 August 2020, Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/domestic-violence/sexual-assault-in-australia/contents/summary.

‘The Suffragettes’, Rosie, https://rosie.org.au/our-world/womens-rights/the-suffragettes/, accessed 22 March 2021.

‘Thousands gather in the Sydney March 4 Justice 2021 | “Enough is enough!”’, Central News UTS, 15 March 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=siFFKYiPqJY.

‘Women’s Suffrage’, National Library of Australia, https://www.library.gov.au/learn/digital-classroom/feminism-australia/womens-suffrage, accessed 22 March 2021.

Barbara Caine, ‘Australian Feminism and the British Militant Suffragettes’, Papers on Parliament No. 41, June 2004, Parliament of Australia, https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Senate/Powers_practice_n_procedures/~/~/link.aspx?_id=3C44655A04494661A14BF77C89E93438&_z=z.

Helen Jones, ‘Lee, Mary (1821-1909)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lee-mary-7150, accessed 23 March 2021.

Janice N. Brownfoot, ‘Goldstein, Vida Jane (1869-1949)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/goldstein-vida-jane-6418, accessed 23 March 2021.

Marilyn Lake, Getting Equal: the History of Australian Feminism (St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1999).

Meredith Burgmann, ‘The forgotten Anzac Day protests of the ’80s’, Crikey, 24 April 2018, https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/04/24/the-forgotten-anzac-day-protests-of-the-80s/.

Susan Eade, ‘Spence, Catherine Helen (1825-1910)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/spence-catherine-helen-4627, accessed 23 March 2021.

Verity Burgmann and Sean Scalmer, ‘Protest!’, University of Melbourne, https://archives.unimelb.edu.au/explore/exhibitions/past-events/protest!-archives-from-the-university-of-melbourne/protest!, accessed 23 March 2021.

Wendy Squires, ‘These events are seared on my heart: Women, equality, and the long march to progress’, Sydney Morning Herald, 19 March 2021, https://www.smh.com.au/national/these-events-are-seared-on-my-heart-women-equality-and-the-long-march-to-progress-20210319-p57c6c.html.

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