Australian History

The planning history of our cities is one that has received surprisingly little attention. While the catalogue abounds in detailed studies – Adelaide and Canberra between them account for the bulk of this literature – national overviews, much less international contexts, are thin on the ground. In this rarefied atmosphere, Robert Freestone has been a generous contributor. His earlier Model Communities: The Garden City movement in Australia (1989) provided a comprehensive overview of urban planning in the period here under review (1900–30). Designing Australian Cities now provides a complementary overlay.

If you look carefully at a political cartoon, the most remarkable thing is the quantity of latent information it depends on. Opening Russ Radcliffe’s collection from the Howard years at random, I spot something from one of the nation’s less fabled cartoonists, Vince O’Farrell of the Illawarra Mercury. It is a picture of a military aircraft marked Labor, barrelling along the ground. The pilot has a pointy nose and broad girth, and the co-pilot’s voice bubble tells us, ‘I say skipper … That’s the end of the runway and we still haven’t taken off’. The whole story of Bomber Beazley’s last, tortured term as Opposition leader is there in an image and a couple of words that takes only seconds to assimilate.

The Torch and the Sword began life as Craig Stockings’s PhD thesis, and shows its origins on every page. He presents a hypothesis and refers to it often as he proceeds systematically through a chronological and thematic exposition of his subject.

From September 1958 until his capture in August 1963, Eric Edgar Cooke conducted a terrifying campaign of violent crime in greater Perth which left eight people dead and several others permanently injured. The damage did not stop with Cooke’s arrest. A young labourer, John Button, had previously been convicted of one of Cooke’s murders: the hit-and-run killing of Button’s girlfriend., Rosemary Anderson. Button was serving ten years’ imprisonment. Neither Cooke’s confession to the murder of Anderson nor subsequent police investigations were sufficient to convince authorities that the justice system had miscarried. All of Button’s legal appeals (including one to the High Court of Australia) were dismissed. Button steadfastly maintained his innocence, even after he had served his sentence, fruitlessly petitioning politicians for a reopening of his case. For many years the injustice remained, until a chance encounter in 1992 between Button’s brother and a journalist named Estelle Blackburn. With a reporter’s nose for a good story, Blackburn began an investigation of Button’s case that was to last six and a half years and create Australian legal history.

In the late twentieth century, museums throughout the world faced a number of challenges. Confronted with a plethora of flashy new technologies, they struggled to overcome a perception of irrelevance and fustiness. Bureaucrats demanded that museums pay their way, entertain the masses, and meet the growing expectations for instant gratification and information without effort.

The cover of Judith Godden’s biography of Lucy Osburn, the founder of modern nursing in Australia, is dominated by a ghostly white statuette of Florence Nightingale. Lucy herself appears in a bottom corner, photographed with a book in hand, an insignificant figure dressed in black silk, with a white cap over a severe hairstyle. At times, it seems as if Nightingale is going to overshadow the book, too. But despite her largely unsuccessful attempts to carry out the wishes of the ‘lady with the lamp’ in New South Wales, Osburn did succeed in creating conditions whereby scientific practices could be introduced into nursing in Australia, though she failed to convince the medical establishment that women could be trusted with medical knowledge or were capable of managing hospitals.

Canberra’s week of the two presidents – October 2003 – brought the unprecedented spectacle of George W. Bush and China’s President Hu Jintau speaking just a day apart to joint sittings of the Australian parliament. The coincidence elegantly dramatised the central questions for Australian foreign policy: how we manage our relationships with our superpower ally, how we live with our neighbours in Asia, and how we get the balance right between them. This has been the essential challenge for every Australian government since World War II. In his important new book, The Howard Paradox, Michael Wesley focuses on one side of that balance – relations with Asia – and on the Howard government.

Neville Wran was nothing if not sartorial. He represented the new generation of politicians – dapper, immaculately tailored, effortlessly elegant – and stood out from his Labor colleagues in their crumpled suits and gaudy ties. His dress sense was not merely a matter of personal taste but also a political statement. He once appeared on the podium of a Labor party conference perspiring uncomfortably in the glare of the arc lights. A colleague leaned over and urged him to take off his jacket. Wran retorted, ‘What! And look like a Labor politician.’ It was classic Nev.