Governor Lachlan Macquarie expressed the opinion that Lieutenant Charles Jeffreys was totally unfit for command of the armed Colonial Brig Kangaroo. Earlier scholarly work has not challenged that opinion. This article examines previously unpublished records, mainly from the British Transport Commission, and some aspects of the voyage to New South Wales to determine whether Macquarie’s harsh opinion was justified.
Riotous drinking and hard physical labour have been synonymous with the labouring workforce who provided the raw muscle for constructing public infrastructure during the nineteenth century. As a highly mobile workforce, navvies were difficult to control and the subject of widespread angst by middle-class observers. During the 1880s, in New South Wales, problems arising from heavy alcohol consumption by railway navvies inspired changes to Crown Lands legislation. Generally focused on managing the leasing and alienation of land, Crown Land administration was not aimed at policing public morality. Yet, the need to control access to alcohol for railway navvies initiated changes in Crown Land policy and administration with that objective.
The inspiration for this paper was a rare book, Mer – Four Gospels, a translation of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John into the Meriam language of the island of Mer in the Torres Strait. The book was published in 1902, after the introduction of Christianity to the Torres Strait in 1871. However, while researching the provenance of Four Gospels, a different book – Drums of Mer by Ion Idriess – became prominent. Drums of Mer purports to describe the pre-Christian Meriam culture of war, violence and head-hunting. Both books are discussed within the context of the island of Mer.
Many people are aware of the canvas and tin shacks that were erected by desperate people on the sandhills of La Perouse and Sans Souci during the throes of the Great Depression in the 1930s. Shanty towns such as these have a long history in Australia, particularly in pioneer and gold-mining towns in Victoria and New South Wales during the Gold Rush. These makeshift settlements often housed men in country areas where both jobs and housing were in short supply and times were tough. However, few will have heard of a NSW State Government scheme to house families in a purpose-built tent town during World War I. Canvas Town, sometimes referred to as Calico Town or Tin Town, and later known as Stannumville, was built 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from Sydney, about a mile south of Daceyville. It was constructed just off the western side of Bunnerong Road, between Gardiners Road and Maroubra Bay Road. Oddly enough, it does not appear on maps of the period, which were either printed before its construction or after its demolition. This made its precise location subject to speculation until the discovery of a hand-drawn addition to an existing Parish Map of Botany. This article examines why the government initiated the project, the living conditions in the town, and the reasons for its demise.
A crude ink-sketch of Merriman, a Waywurru man, shackled around the neck, handcuffed and being dragged forward over uneven ground by an armed mounted policeman, is a graphic representation of the shortcomings of frontier justice in the early 1840s. This ‘Interpreting an Image’ untangles two stories of frontier justice with which the picture is intertwined in the journals of George Augustus Robinson, the Chief Protector of the Aborigines of the Port Phillip district of New South Wales. In doing so, it explains that the road between Yass and Port Phillip was a key part of a new ‘in-between’ frontier opened with the inland pastoral invasion.
Bruce Short, Fever: the mysterious medicine from a mystical art to the scourge of the 18th century, North Bank Institute, Bellingen, NSW, 2023, 355 pages; ISBN 9780645773101.
Mark Hearn, The Fin de Siècle Imagination in Australia, 1890–1914, Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2022, 237 pages; ISBN 9781350291393.
Shauna Bostock, Reaching Through Time: finding my family’s stories, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, NSW, 2023, 334 pages; ISBN9781761067983.
Craig Wilcox, Australia’s Tasman Wars – Colonial Australia and Conflict in New Zealand, 1800–1850, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, Vic, 2022, xi + 286 pages; ISBN 9781922669452.
Dr J.M. Bennett AO and Dr John K. McLaughlin AM (eds), Cases for Opinion: A Bicentennial Miscellany, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2023, viii + 118 pages; ISBN 9781922952998.
Alecia Simmonds, Courting: an intimate history of love and the law, La Trobe University Press, Collingwood, Vic, 2023, 440 pages; ISBN 9781760642143.
David Marr, Killing for Country, Black Inc, Collingwood, 2023; xi + 468 pages; 38 illustrations; ISBN 978760642730.
Phillip Deery, Spies and Sparrows: ASIO and the Cold War, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, Vic, 2022, x + 270 pages; IBSN 9780522878301.
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This article revisits the trials of those accused of taking part in the Myall Creek massacre of 1838, in which at least 28 Wirrayaraay people, mostly women and children, were murdered. It closely examines the third trial, which involved four of those accused who took part in the massacre and explains why they escaped conviction, notwithstanding that seven of their fellow accused had been convicted and hanged following an earlier trial. The article also considers what became of Davey, a young Kamilaroi man, who was to be the main witness for the Crown in the third trial.
This article will look at the experiences of Mei Quong Tart (1850–1903) after he moved into the affluent Sydney suburb of Ashfield. While much has been written about his successes as a businessman, philanthropist, social advocate and Chinese community representative, there is little research relating to the social obstacles he encountered in his immediate neighbourhood and personal life. In the late 1800s, Sydney’s minority Chinese communities found themselves at the receiving end of political campaigns promoting their exclusion and the curtailing of their rights. In response, the Sydney-based Chinese community instigated campaigns and attempted to counter these negative initiatives. This paper will also look at Quong Tart’s use of popular sport to influence anti-Chinese public opinion in the late 19th century in light of the rise of anti-Chinese sentiment and movements to restrict their immigration and residency.
Angus Mackay (1830–1910) was a Highland Scot who came to the Australian colonies in the 1860s and spent nearly two decades in Brisbane. Arriving in Sydney in 1881 as an agricultural journalist, he was appointed to the Board of Technical Education and then as an instructor in agriculture at the Sydney Technical College, a position he held until 1897. He wrote books on bees, sugar cane, agricultural chemistry, and guides to agriculture in Australian settings, delivered public lectures and made professional conference presentations, making his career from informal advice to farmers to the inclusion of agricultural education in the state education system.
Sir Frederic Eggleston’s pioneering mission to Chungking (Chongqing) in 1941, accomplishing the opening of diplomatic relations with China, has received considerable scholarly attention. The main cast of characters is well known, Eggleston being assisted by Keith Waller and Charles Lee. This study shows that the contribution of other individuals made a significant impact on the Legation story, though their roles have been either neglected or overlooked. They included a former Shanghai policeman, a habitual criminal and confidence trickster, and a Russian-born linguist and secretary. In particular, in the early days of the mission — under dangerous wartime conditions — the role of Shanghai-born Edmund Burgoyne is shown to have been crucial for its establishment and initial diplomatic achievements. A review of their biographies leads to reassessment of the dynamics of the Legation in its founding phase.
Ian Hodges, He Belonged to Wagga: The Great War, the AIF and returned soldiers in an Australian country town, Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, Vic, 2022, 310 pages; ISBN 9781922669636.
Paul Ashton and Paula Hamilton (eds), The Australian History Industry, Australian Scholarly Publishing, Melbourne, 2022, viii + 361 pages, ISBN 9781922669605.
Jane Carey, Taking to the field: A history of Australian women in science, Monash University Publishing, Clayton, Vic, 2023, viii + 309 pages; ISBN 9781925835410.
Ross McMullin, A Life So Full of Promise; further biographies of Australia’s lost generation, Scribe, Melbourne, 2023, xiv + 626 pages; ISBN 9781922585820.
Ann McGrath, Laura Rademaker and Jakelin Troy (eds), Everywhen: Australia and the language of deep history, NewSouth Publishing, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, NSW, 2022, x + 311 pages; ISBN 9781742237329.
Meg Foster, Boundary Crossers: The hidden history of Australia’s other bushrangers, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, NSW, 2022, 256 pages; ISBN 9781742237527.
Angela Wanhalla, Lyndall Ryan and Camille Nurka (eds), Aftermaths: Colonialism, violence and memory in Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Otago University Press, Dunedin, New Zealand, 2023, 312 pages; ISBN 9781990048449.
Charles Stitz and Gary Kent, The Country Surgeon: The life and times of Arthur Andrews of Albury (1848–1925), Arcadia/Australian Scholarly Publishing, North Melbourne, 2023; xx + 572 pages; 70 illustrations; ISBN 9781922669834.
Australians make pilgrimages to Gallipoli for the dawn service and distant battlefields on Anzac Day or Armistice Day to commune with Anzacs. They often ignore evidence directly associated with Anzacs all around us, in capital cities, suburbs and country towns in the form of dwellings constructed by the War Service Homes Commission in the 1920s. This paper aims to provide a more balanced assessment of the work of the Commission than has been the case to date.
In 1848, William Beaumont, with the assistance of his business partner, James Waller, began to transform the gardens and grounds surrounding the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel at Botany Bay into a pleasure resort. The resort, named Beaumont & Waller’s Botanical and Zoological Gardens, would be quickly established as one of Sydney’s favourite outlets for public leisure and recreation. This article outlines its origins and development until its demise in 1861 in the context of early Sydney’s social and civic developments. The article concludes by identifying the resort’s three major legacies.
The mysterious past of Ingleside Powder Works has never been fully explained due to conflicting interpretations about the motives of its 1880s designer and superintendent, Carl von Bieren. What brought him to Australia from the USA, and why did the works fail to produce gunpowder? This article contends the works were ostensibly built to produce explosives, but in reality, to facilitate an affluent lifestyle for the man who purported to be ‘Carl von Bieren’ and his supposed wife, Anna. Evident is a remarkable web of deceit spun by a 19th-century confidence man.
Thomas Wilson Esq, a Londoner, was the driving force behind the publication of three of the most important early Australian books, especially in terms of natural history: First Fleet surgeon John White’s Journal (1790), James Edward Smith’s Botany of New Holland (1793) and George Shaw’s Zoology of New Holland (1794). Although known to have joined the Linnean Society and to have employed the artists Sarah Stone and James Sowerby, Wilson has long been an enigmatic figure. This essay discusses the remarkable breadth of White’s collections on his behalf and reveals that Wilson was, in fact, a wealthy apothecary, not only a patron of White but an important supporter of Matthew Flinders, as well as being tangentially connected to two other surgeons associated with New South Wales, John Lowes and George Bass. Wilson was the central figure in an important professional network that was openly competing with the socially grander and far better-recorded coterie of Sir Joseph Banks.
Robert Cox, Broken Spear: the untold story of Black Tom Birch, the man who sparked Australia’s bloodiest war, Wakefield Press, Mile End, SA, 2021, xxi + 299 pages; ISBN 9781743058671.
Anthony Webster, The Foundation of Australia’s Capital Cities: Geology, Landscape, and Urban Character, Lexington Books, Maryland, USA, 2022, xii + 327 pages; ISBN 9781498597951.
Heather Goodall, Georges River Blues: Swamps, Mangroves and Resident Action, 1945–1980, ANU Press, World Forest History Series, Canberra, 2022, 305 pages; ISBN 9781760464622.
Brendan Atkins, The Naturalist: the remarkable life of Allan Riverstone McCulloch, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, 2022, viii + 190 pages; ISBN 9781742237756.
Alan Atkinson, Elizabeth & John: The Macarthurs of Elizabeth Farm, UNSW Press, Sydney, 2022, xi + 500 pages; ISBN 9781742237565.
June Factor, Soldiers and Aliens: Men in the Australian Army’s Employment Companies during World War II, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2022, xvi + 327 pages; ISBN 9780522878585.
Joan Beaumont, Australia’s Great Depression: How a nation shattered by the Great War survived the worst economic crisis it has ever faced, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW, 2022, ix + 565 pages; ISBN 9781760293987.
Joel Stephen Birnie, My People’s Songs: How an Indigenous Family Survived Colonial Tasmania, Monash University Publishing, Clayton, Vic, 2022, xxi + 231 pages; ISBN 9781922633187.
Patricia Clarke, Bold Types: how Australia’s first women journalists blazed a trail, National Library of Australia Publishing, Canberra, 2022, xv + 256 pages; ISBN 9781922507372.