Australian History

It is ironic and, perhaps, happy for him that the most vainglorious of Australian Labor Party leaders has so quickly become the subject of more books than any Australian Prime Minister. Your ‘1975’ library now contains many instant histories, polemics, laments, critical academic studies, eulogies, and edited highlights, but not yet a comprehensive biography of Gough Whitlam.

More serious works have been written on the life and times of W.M. Hughes than on any other Australian prime minister and, probably, any Australian at all. The little man got off to a flying start with his own books about himself and his amazing adventures, then Farmer Whyte among others came along and, to cap it off, there has emerged the very lengthy two-volume study of Hughes by L.F. Fitzhardinge, among the best and certainly the most elegant of our political biographies.

Inland explorers and their discoveries form a vital part of Australia’s historical consciousness and the tracks they made on maps of exploration and settlement are part of the learning process of every Australian schoolchild. All too often, though, the image of the explorer is two-dimensional and the men and their motives seem less interesting than the patterns of dotted lines in the huge expanse of the Australian continent in schoolbook maps.

One notable exception has been the Prussian explorer and naturalist, Ludwig Leichhardt, who came to Sydney in 1842 to study the land and to collect geological and botanical specimens, and who became the leader of expeditions in Northern Australia, to explore the inland rivers for new lands and routes across the vast territory to the north and west of the settled eastern coast.

Until recently I had found that the most useful book on the history of shipping in the Australian area was the two-volume work Pageant of the Pacific by Captain F. Rhodes, published in 1936. During the last few years we have had several books devoted to single companies, such as the E. & A. Line, the AUSN, Adelaide Steamship, and smaller companies, each of which showed the difficulty of condensing a lot of ships histories into one volume. To deal with all the coastal companies, some of which extended overseas, in one volume, requires ruthless editing and carries the danger of the story being stripped of its flesh, to leave us with the dry bare bones. Two years ago there appeared the very complete work by Dr John Bach, A Maritime History of Australia in nearly 500 pages. The work under review is briefer and easier to read, being about 330 pages with 115 photographs and line drawings. A strange omission in both these books is that their bibliographies give no mention to Rhodes’ great work.

Sir Samuel Griffith was chief justice of the High Court of Australia for sixteen years, from October 1903 to October 1919; but he had effectively retired in July 1919. Sir John Latham was chief justice for sixteen and a half years, from October 1935 to April 1952; but he had effectively retired in May 1951. Thus, Sir Garfield Barwick, who last month completed his sixteenth year as chief justice, has already established a record for active service in the position; if he remains in office until 24 October this year, he will have broken even Lathams formal record.

The holder of such a record term of office as chief justice would, on that ground alone, be assured of a unique place in Australian legal history; but in Barwick’s case, the years as chief justice are only a climax – perhaps even an anti-climax – to an extraordinary career.

Anyone interested in quickly assessing the scope, direction and lacunae of urban history in Australia would be well advised to read this attractively priced and presented anthology. Although only two of the ten contributions have been specially commissioned, the rest are recent pieces, mostly from out-of-print, expensive or turgid larger works. These are two general essays, an article on each of the capitals (with the exception of Perth), and three specialised pieces on aspects of city growth (sub-division of Paddington 1875-90, essential services and Melbourne in the 1880s, and East Perth 1884-1904).

This is the jubilee history of a unique Australian institution. Legacy, initially a club of World War I veterans, aiming to help each other re-establish themselves in civilian life, quickly became an organization concerned to assist the dependents of dead or incapacitated servicemen. Though the age of legatees is rising, the number of elderly widows increasing, and the number of dependent children declining, this remains its raison d’être. Forty-seven Legacy clubs today spend nearly $3,000,000 annually on some 100,000 widows and children in addition, personal assistance – leading youth groups, acting as advisers to bereaved families – continues the paramount part of Legacy’s service.

Perhaps no other social attitude has changed so markedly in this century as the prevailing public reaction towards the question of the limitation of population growth and the use of birth control devices.