RAHS Subscriptions: Journals – Vol 111 Pt 2 December 2025 Editorial & Abstracts
Editorial:
Truth, memory, and the public work of history
Samuel White
Guarding against the guardian: Reassessing revisionism at the Australian War Memorial
Mark Clayton
Revision is a cornerstone of historical scholarship, the welcome consequence of open discussion typically supported by rigorously tested new evidence. This case study examines one such instance concerning the Australian War Memorial’s Wirraway aircraft, which famously shot down a Japanese Zero fighter aircraft in late 1942, the only one ever to do so. It presents a detailed analysis of the evidence for both the revision and status quo cases, finding overwhelmingly in favour of the latter.
‘One of the few international journalists in Australia’: Andrew Melville Pooley in Tokyo and Sydney
James Cotton
As Foreign Editor of Sydney’s Evening News from 1922 until 1931, Andrew Melville Pooley was instrumental in transforming the popular reporting of foreign news in Australia, while also lecturing to a wide variety of audiences, including the NSW chapter of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, of which he was a founding member. Drawing upon his extensive and continuing international travels, he continued to provide incisive contributions to debate on world affairs in publications and commentary in the 1930s. However, he first gained international notoriety as a correspondent in Japan, where his exposure of corrupt collusion between international arms manufacturers and the Navy led to the fall of the government in Tokyo.
AIF Padre, Captain Father Thomas Joseph O’Donnell: His court-martial – beyond all reasonable doubt
Des Lambley
Father Captain Thomas Joseph O’Donnell, an Irish Australian, led by Christian example. He was assertive, positive in his religion, pragmatic, and patriotic to the people of Australia. O’Donnell lectured to support the government’s call for enlistments and the conscription referendums. The newly appointed Archbishop of Melbourne, Dr Daniel Mannix, refused to grant him permission to join the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) as a chaplain until a frustrated O’Donnell defiantly joined up as a private soldier. Within the military, he preached and practised his faith with a dedication to humanity.
While visiting his relations and friends in Ireland post-war, his Irish accent and AIF uniform saw him arrested for using disloyal words about the Sovereign. It marked him as a person of interest to British military intelligence, who saw things in the context of suppressing the Irish Republican movement. A court-martial followed. The Irish Republican Army later murdered O’Donnell’s British accuser, Lieutenant Stewart Chambers. Australia was drawn into this sensational event at the highest level. There were tensions between the AIF and the War Office, the British and the Irish independence movement, and sectarianism. Captain O’Donnell’s voice and agency are captured in this paper.
Protesting the End of the World: The WA nuclear disarmament movement of the 1980s
Rhys Knapton-Lonsdale
In late 1981, in response to escalating Cold War tensions and the buildup of arms that accompanied it, Western Australian peace activists formed the People for Nuclear Disarmament (PND (WA)). PND (WA) was part of the broader Australian disarmament movement and brought together a wide range of disarmament groups while maintaining a commitment to grassroots organising. In 1984, WA disarmament activist and Nuclear Disarmament Party (NDP) senate candidate, Jo Vallentine, was elected. Shortly after its electoral victory, the NDP split, with Vallentine leaving the party to sit as an independent. In the aftermath of the NDP split, the WA disarmament movement rallied around Senator Vallentine, providing the groundwork for the emergence of the WA Greens.
Picturing Civilisation
Bruce Pennay and Yalmambirra
We argue that a picture titled ‘Civilisation’ by Yakaduna, better known as Tommy McRae, is a key piece of visual evidence that helps viewers glimpse something of the challenges faced by First Nations people and by colonists in negotiating coexistence. We explore some of the interpretive possibilities of the picture, drawing on surveys of the artist’s life and times and giving attention to representations of the Lake Moodemere encampment/reserve where McRae lived. We summarise scholarly appraisals made of his work and trace newspaper reports of his achievements. We draw on recent work by scholars to suggest the importance of visual storytelling and of McRae’s work to Wiradjuri people and to residents in the border district region. We argue the picture points to stories of resilience, survival, cultural resistance and present-day cultural resurgence. It triggers investigations of the reasons for the Lake Moodemere encampment/reserve and what the place means for First Nations people.
Book Reviews
Santilla Chingaipe, Black convicts: How slavery shaped Australia, Scribner, Sydney, NSW, 2024, xxiii + 308 pages; ISBN 9781761107238.
Kristen Alexander, Kriegies: The Australian airmen of Stalag Luft III, Ad Astra Press, Mawson, ACT, 2023, xvii + 220 pages; ISBN 9780645792515.
Peter Crowley, Townsend of the Ranges, National Library of Australia, Canberra, ACT, 2024, 352 pages; ISBN 9781922507693.
Peter Woodley, ‘We are a farming class’: Dubbo’s hinterland, 1870–1950, Australian National University Press, Canberra, ACT, 2025, xix + 346 pages; ISBN 9781760466756.
Megan Brown and Lucy Sussex, Outrageous Fortunes: The adventures of Mary Fortune, crime writer, and her criminal son, La Trobe University Press, Collingwood, Vic, 2025, 341 pages; ISBN 9781760645052.
Jacqueline Kent, Inconvenient Women: Australian radical writers 1900–1970, NewSouth Publishing, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, NSW, ix + 303 pages; ISBN 9781742237503.
Trish FitzSimons and Madelyn Shaw, Fleeced: Unraveling the history of wool and war, Rowman & Littlefield, New York, 2025, xiv + 246 pages; ISBN 9798881803803.
Stephen Gapps, Uprising: War in the colony of New South Wales, 1838–1844, NewSouth Publishing, Sydney, NSW, 2025, vi + 320 pages; ISBN 9781742238029.