History

The two local histories in this group are about utterly different places and are quite unalike in technique and form, yet they do share a common motivation. Both emanate from the researches and pens of local inhabitants, determined that the outside world should appreciate the qualities and problems of ‘our town’. However beyond this, they are linked only by ironies. One is the story of an environment and community being destroyed by an excess of wealth; the other is of a working-class suburb’s character and difficulties that spring from quite the reverse. The first is Nancy Cato’s very angry The Noosa Story: a Study in Unplanned Development; the second, In Those Days: Collingwood Remembered, is the fruits of the Collingwood History Committee.

Wrecks and the relics of wrecks have always fascinated. Their search and finding brings the excitement of the chase, their identification involves detective sleuthing, their background entails historical research; the very sight of them evokes the adventure of their days of sailing, and the drama of their night of death. Australian writing is rich in books about them, with earlier emphasis more on the adventure and the drama, less on the historical research and the archaeological interpretations. But with the coming of modern underwater techniques and sophisticated instruments, the haphazard sampling of maritime ruins has changed into the modern science of marine archaeology. The enlightened Maritime Archaeology Act (W.A.) and Historic Shipwrecks Act (Commonwealth) have made these relics a part of our national heritage, the Marine Archaeology course at the Western Australian Institute of Technology has formalized the new science, and the Western Australian Museum has built up a compendious catalogue of all the wrecks ever recorded on the Western Australian coast, together with all facts known about them.

In the closing years of the Napoleonic War, Edward Primrose Tregurtha saw active service in the navy for three years, and at the end of the war was honourably discharged – at the age of twelve years, after which he went back to school! He resumed his adventurous career as an officer in the East India Company, and saw further action in the Opium War in China, and in the troubles at Rangoon. Then followed five years of sea-faring and whaling until he finally settled at Launceston in 1836. His journal, which is reproduced in this book, covers first these early adventures and then a further sixteen years in Van Diemen’s Land and on the mainland.

For any who may suffer under the delusion that the production of good histories is easy, these three books offer some valuable lessons. The first, J.0. Randell’s Yaldwyn of the Golden Spurs, is the work of a Gentleman (i.e. amateur) historian, the other two are very much the labours of mere Players. William Henry Yaldwyn (1801–66) was a Sussex squire, (in Burke’s LandedGentry by the skin of his teeth), who turned Australian squatter to boost the family’s dwindling fortunes. He was certainly ‘in’ on some of the most significant historical action in midcentury Australia – pioneering Victorian squatter, a Port Phillip Gentleman and founder of the Melbourne Club, a visitor to the gold fields in 1852, and a few years later a pioneering squatter again, this time in Queensland. It was only Queensland that amply rewarded him, both financially and personally. He served two brief terms in the Legislative Council where, Mr Randell informs us, his ancestors’ Cromwellian sympathies encouraged him to propose a motion, finally passed by both houses in 1862, which established the elective nature of the upper house at the expense of the power of the Crown. As one of the few Queensland farmer politicians to have advanced the cause of Democracy, he is indeed a raraavis.

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.

This book is a useful acquisition for those anxious about Australia’s prospects in the 1980s and while it does not exude optimism it contains a generally hopeful outlook which, given the way things are going, could be a rare commodity in 1990. The topics covered are those thought the most complex and difficult which the policymakers are likely to confront this decade. The essays are of a variable quality and somewhat less than uniform in style but Professor Coral Bell gives this volume a focus and an overall perspective in her preface. Her excellent opening chapter and final remarks (arising from the debates at the ANU Seminar) make up for some of the deficiencies of her distinguished colleagues. As she observes, there is no great optimism to be found in these pages, but at least the prophets of doom have been held at bay. She writes that ‘anyone writing in 1979, and reasonably in touch with international opinion on matters like the possibility of a major depression, or an energy crisis, or Soviet­Chinese or Soviet-American confrontations in the early 1980’s must be bound to take a rather sober view of the prospect for mankind, including Australians’. She asserts that the issues confronting Australia in the 1980s are likely to be those that were evident in the 1970s and that there remain almost immutably the same preoccupations, namely the search for security and prosperity. She must be right.

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.