Saving Boggo Road Gaol and the matter of history

The quadrangle of Boggo Road Gaol, photographed in 1912 (courtesy QldPics).

History is essential to the task of making sense of ourselves. It provides a narrative that helps us understand where we come from and guides us where we are going. I felt that strongly in Ireland, and am now feeling its pull as an Aussie of 25 years standing. It was Australia’s geography that attracted me in 1988 not its history. My earliest memories of Australia were the wonders of the Great Barrier Reef in a glossy table-book at my auntie’s place from relatives who moved to mysterious Sydney. I was also fascinated by a second memory, probably from some incorrect episode of Skippy, of a boomerang which thrown would mysteriously return to the thrower. The boomerang reminded me Australia was the home of Aboriginal people who lived there first. Aborigines were non-existent in Melbourne where I lived for nine years. They were visible when I moved to Brisbane, though not to be admired as the “Aborigines” there were drunks, beggars or both. Indigenous people were over-represented in jail.

Brisbane’s jail (or gaol to use the spelling here) for over a hundred years, was Boggo Road, an imposing and intimidating castle on a mound in Brisbane’s southside where prisoners had the best views around. The story of Boggo Road Gaol is essential to the story of Brisbane and the wider story of Australia and is a story under threat. Most prominently seen from Annerley Road I’d never been there until yesterday because as a northsider I’d never been down that far south Annerley Road.  I’d been thinking about visiting for over a year, but my desire was quickened by media reports suggesting developers are hovering. I believe it is essential the site is preserved by the State of Queensland, because part of its history was made here.

Annerley Road was always an important thoroughfare on the way to Ipswich (if neglected by us dreadful northsiders) but had a reputation for its terrible condition. Initially called Bolgo Road, it became by association “Boggo” to users continually frustrated by poor drainage along the road. When a penitentiary opened here in 1883 authorities called it Brisbane Jail but Boggo Road seemed to better capture the immobility of its inmates.

Transportation finished 40 years before Boggo Road was built but the jail had one link to Brisbane’s convict era. Its executioner’s bell was forged in 1838 in the Moreton Bay penal colony. The bell was a mournful reminder for convicts of every era and at Boggo it was rung three times before an execution and three times 15 minutes afterwards. Patrick Kenniff heard the bell as he went to his death in 1903. Kenniff was a cattle duffer hanged for the murder of a policeman out west. He was the first white man to be condemned to death on the word of an Aboriginal, police tracker Sam Johnson. Kenniff went to the gallows proclaiming innocence, and the crime may have been committed by his brother or father.

Ernest Austin was the last to be executed at Boggo, hanged in 1913 for the murder of a young girl. Doubts over the effectiveness of capital punishment led Queensland to become the first state in Australia to abolish it under the Labor government of EG Theodore in 1922. That Queensland was humanitarian in the 1920s may surprise, but Boggo was no place for a liberal. The prison was state of the art in the 1880s but showed its age in its golden years; filthy, overcrowded and with a fearful reputation. It held Queensland’s worst murderers but also held many people on lesser crimes, jailed for their sex, their colour or their poverty.

The worst cells were chicken wire sheds in the open. These small and exposed enclosures were home to recalcitrant prisoners or those the gaolers hated. They had no bed or blankets and their latrine buckets blew over in the wind. It was no more fitting than Changi and the gaolers denied its existence for years. Finally photos emerged forcing authorities to close it down. An underground dungeon continued for recidivist offenders.

Boggo Road was not a foolproof prison and many escaped, oddly all in daylight. The most notorious escapee was Arthur “Slim” Halliday who absconded twice by the same method. The irregular shape of the prison enabled blind spots on the wall guarders could not constantly observe. Halliday took advantage of one to escape in 1940. He was re-captured after two weeks and his gaolers increased the size of the guardhouse on the walls to guard against what inmates called “Halliday’s Leap”. It only moved the blind spot further down the wall. Halliday and two others found the new spot in 1946. Halliday was better at escaping than staying free and he was re-captured again after four days. But prison officers did not like being made to look like fools by “the Houdini of Boggo Road”. When Halliday was finally released he was framed for the murder of a taxi driver and he didn’t get out until the late 1970s.

By then the building was dating horribly. Care of prisoners was rarely the attention of hard-line Nationals leader Joh Bjelke-Petersen. His tough on crime approach was geared to filling prisons rather than changing conditions in them. While the government presented a forward-looking Queensland at the expo in 1988, Boggo Road gaol down the road remained a model of inhuman Victorian-era punishment.

The prisoners had the last laugh. The Nationals government booted Joh out of office amid corruption controversies. Five prisoners took to the roof of Boggo Road. For two days prisoners smuggled up food to the five. After they were stopped, it became a hunger strike. Three days later there were protests outside the prison in favour of the prisoners. A rock band plugged their speakers into a nearby house and played their songs at full blast. An Aboriginal flag flew from the top of the prison, reminding the world in from of news cameras their people were among the worst affected by incarceration.

The UN hammered Australia on the atrocious treatment of prisoners in Queensland and the state government finally agreed to close Boggo Road. The rooftop protesters came down in victory, with one additional condition they had got from their jailers: a bucketload of Kentucky Fried Chicken.

In 1988 remaining prisoners moved to Wacol and the most notorious place in Queensland was empty. In the 1990s the women’s prison was demolished to make way for an Ecosciences Precinct and park (freeing up the view) leaving the remaining blocks for private tours. The Boggo Road Gaol Historical Society is unhappy about the tours which it is says are expensive (I paid $25 for a 90 minute tour yesterday). The Society says the gaol is a public asset and they welcomed Leighton Properties plans to redevelop the site retaining the oldest buildings which date from 1903. But tour operator Jack Sim says his business is on the line.

The remaining buildings are heritage-listed but that may not be enough to save them. I don’t trust Leighton Properties to do the right thing by Boggo Road. Like most developers they are capable of killing the goose that lays their golden egg while “honouring” history (think Oaks Festival Towers).  Boggo Road must remain recognisable as a place of state internment, and its history faithfully recorded. Its ghosts and memories must not be demolished for financial gain. Our history and our sense of self as Queenslanders and Australians demands nothing less.

Joining in the party on Irish history 1912-1923

THERE may be no such thing as a free lunch but there may be such a thing as an free online course in history. Irish Central told me today Trinity College Dublin started a class in Irish history called “Irish lives in war and revolution: Exploring Ireland’s history 1912-1923.” There’s no diploma at the end of it (though you can buy a certificate) but if nothing else it could be useful learning and a possibly stimulating discussion on the most tumultuous era in Ireland since Napoleonic times.

It might be a large discussion. Trinity are expecting 17,000 people to sign up for this Massive Open Online Course. Though it began eight days ago, it’s not too late to join and I became student #17001 today. The course is expected to take six weeks, at five hours a week, with little expectation of prior knowledge of the history (though some knowledge will speed up the process). The 12 years chosen are watershed years. After 112 years of political union with Westminster, 1912 was the year Irish Home Rule was finally passed by the House of Commons (at that stage a bill covering the 32 counties) and 1923 was the end of the undeclared civil war that ensured a Treaty government in Dublin had a lot more power than home rule, but at the cost of six counties ceded to Britain. These events were framed by the modernism that was shaking the world and the Great War that almost tore that world asunder.

I did my catch up week today, and with the aid of fictional characters speaking real words, it introduced the three great main strands of early 20^th century Irish political history: parliamentary reform, revolution, and unionism. The unionism is this context is the political union with Britain, not the Trade Unions, who were active but never organised as well in Ireland as they were across the water. The Unionist is the first character and she is a working class Protestant woman in Belfast dedicated to her family, her religion and her culture. Their proud shipbuilding tradition had just taken a huge hit with the sinking of the Titanic. Allied to the catastrophic news that London might approve a parliament in Dublin, it led to a deep sense of troubled times among northern Protestants. Home Rule was Rome Rule to these people, who feared a Catholic parliament would discriminate against them, destroying their industrial base in the process. Led by firebrand lawyer Sir Edward Carson (a nemesis of Oscar Wilde), the Unionists raised a volunteer force of 100,000 men at arms dedicated to stopping Home Rule by force.

The second voice was a moderate Catholic Dubliner. This man was a Redmondite, a follower of Irish Parliamentary Party leader John Redmond, who seemed ready to succeed where the great Parnell had failed and convince London to vote for Home Rule. The Third Home Rule bill was being introduced to Westminster and the hostile Lords could only defer it for two years, meaning that by mid 1914 Ireland would have a parliament again. The Dubliner’s biggest worry was that huge volunteer army massing to the north in opposition. But he had a second worry and that was radicals in the south who were not satisfied with Redmond’s rapprochement with London. They wanted nothing less than full independence.

These radicals are represented by the third voice, a nationalist youth from Cork. This voice was much younger than the other two, a schoolboy influenced by a teacher spreading his own nationalist zeal. These people were frustrated by the delays in handing over power and wanted to speed up the process. They poured their energies into Irish cultural pursuits like Na Fianna and Gaelic games.

The year 1913 was all about escalating tensions. The Home Rule bill was passed three times by the House and rejected three times by the Lords. Unwilling to wait for a solution from London, the Unionists prepared for civil war with the south. The south copied the Unionists and organised their own large-scale paramilitary force.

When 1914 came, there was more frustration for the Nationalists. Instead of the long promised Home Rule, there was a Great War erupting on the continent. The Unionists, determined to show their loyalty, immediately deployed their entire force to this new conflict. Redmond too had no choice but to support the war. Like most people he believed it would be over in a matter of months and he encouraged service for the King in Flanders to help the Irish cause after the war. The Nationalists were more suspicious. Though never a large number, they believed England’s difficulty was Ireland’s opportunity. They formed a breakaway volunteer movement dedicated to complete rupture from Britain.

Reading the course notes, this Week 1 material aims to introduce the broad themes of the era as well as grappling with the chronology. It also looks at more broad questions of history such as what voices and what perspectives tell the story and why they are selected over others. I look forward to the next few weeks and providing my own perspective on turbulent times.

Australia in the First World War: Gallipoli

Australian Light Horse troopers defend Quinn’s Post at Gallipoli.

The death of an Austrian Archduke in Sarajevo in the northern hemisphere summer of 1914 must have seemed an impossibly distant and unimportant event to people in faraway Australia. Yet within weeks Britain declared war on Germany and its Allies and that meant Australia was committed too.

As in Europe there was a wild wave of enthusiasm and patriotism. A new volunteer army of 20,000 soldiers sprung up called the Australian Imperial Force. The AIF assembled on 26 troopships at Albany, Western Australia joined by ten troopships from New Zealand. They set sail on November 1, 1914 but not to Europe as most aboard assumed. Turkey had entered the war on Germany’s side and the troops were needed to defend the vital Suez Canal.

In Egypt the Anzacs (as they quickly became known) were placed under Englishman Sir William Birdwood who trained them for First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill’s ambitious plan to knock Turkey out of the war. It involved an invasion of Turkey’s Gallipoli peninsula which guarded the Dardanelles and the approaches to the Ottoman capital of Constantinople (now Istanbul).  The invasion was planned to start at dawn on Sunday, April 25, 1915.

That morning, the men left the convoy of big ships and were rowed ashore in boats. In the confusion of darkness the boats landed at the wrong spot on a beach facing high cliff and ravines. By 8am 8000 men were ashore despite heavy fire from Turkish defenders but the thick prickly scrub of the hills prevented easy advance. Some Anzacs penetrated high in the hills only to be cut off, surrounded or forced back. Their frustration was matched by British failures landing at Cape Helles on Gallipoli’s southern tip.

By mid-morning Turkish reinforcements arrived with orders to fight to the death. In fierce hand-to-hand combat they held the commanding heights while the Anzacs dug in on the strip of hills overlooking the beach they called Anzac Cove. British commander Sir Ian Hamilton refused a dismayed Birdwood permission to withdraw. Birdwood told his men to “dig, dig, dig” and the Anzac line was formed. It would not change for eight months.

At least 650 Australians died that first day with 2000 wounded. The weeks that followed took a further bloody toll. The Turkish assault of May 19 was so brutal both sides agreed on an armistice to allow burial of the decomposing dead in no-mans-land. The newspaper reports to Australia spoke of a great success and the number of casualties was hushed up. Slowly but surely the scale of the slaughter made it across the world. In a country of five million people, there were few communities not touched by tragedy.

British commanders refused to acknowledge failure. They launched a fresh offensive in August to capture the high ground and landed an invasion force north of Gallipoli at Suvla Bay. This operation failed like all the others. Australians began to hear the names of places such as Lone Pine, the Nek and Chunuk Bair as sites where thousands died.

The August failure doomed the rest of the mission and Hamilton was sacked in October. His replacement General Munro recommended the peninsula be abandoned. When war secretary Lord Kitchener finally visited Gallipoli he accepted Munro’s advice and by early December the War Cabinet ordered immediate withdrawal ahead of winter. This was the one successful aspect of the campaign with thousands evacuating under the noses of the unsuspecting Turks. The last boats departed before dawn on December 20.

The Australians suffered 28,000 casualties including 8700 dead. They returned to Egypt and were joined in early 1916 by reinforcements from Australia. This huge force doubled the AIF size from two to four divisions. By March 1916 they were on their way to the Western Front. Many more years of bloody battles awaited before those that survived would see home again.

James Dalton: a tale of Green, White and Orange

Seeing as it is St Patrick’s Day I thought I would tell a story about an Australian Green albeit one with a strong Orange taint. The green is an emigrant Irishman named James Dalton and the Orange is the beautiful and prosperous city in NSW three hours west of Sydney. I had passed through this city once before, but last week was the first time I’ve stopped to check it out properly.

The view of Summer St Orange from inside the Hotel Orange

James Dalton, the merchant of Orange.

The purpose of my visit was to research James Dalton. Dalton’s story is an extraordinary microcosm of Irish-Australia. Born in County Limerick, Ireland in 1834, he was just one year old when his father was transported to Australia and still a young boy when his mother died. He survived the worst of the Famine as a child orphan. Aged 15, James moved to Australia to follow his father (also James) who had finally obtained his ticket-of-leave in Bathurst and was now starting afresh at Orange. Within two years, gold was discovered at nearby Ophir, and having struck out alone as a shopkeeper, James became one of the wealthiest men in New South Wales and a leading Irish Australian whose family ended up inter-marrying with the Redmonds, one of Ireland’s great political dynasties.

I knew John Redmond since I was very young as he was Waterford’s MP and they named the town’s only bridge after him. But I’d never heard of James Dalton. Then last year a friend who edits the Irish Dictionary of Biography asked me would I do an entry on Dalton for the biography. I have until September to do it.

Dalton already had an entry in the Australian Dictionary of Biography which is a great starting point. Written 40 years ago the dictionary’s editor Martha Rutledge (who sadly died last year) covers the key moments of his life. Dalton was born on a farm at Duntryleague, Co Limerick near Tipperary, the third son of James and Eleanor Dalton. Eleanor was a Ryan and her father and her brother joined her husband in the crime of kidnapping a woman. Presumably Eleanor – then pregnant with James, her third child – gave her blessing for the crime as the intention was to secure a wife for her brother. But the plan came unstuck and the three men were caught and handed seven years of transportation to Australia in punishment.  Perhaps the increasing opportunities Australia was affording, was in the back of their minds making the risks of punishment palatable.

James the Elder was on a different ship than the two Ryans who ended serving their time in the Illawarra. James nearly didn’t make it at all. His ship the Hive was shipwrecked in 1835 off the south-coast of NSW but Dalton and nearly everyone aboard made it to shore. After finally arriving in Sydney, Dalton was sent to Bathurst to work his time with a pastoralist.

Meanwhile the hard life of bringing three children up alone in a poor part of Ireland, got to Eleanor and she died early in young James’ life. He was deemed too young to travel, so while elder brother Thomas and their sister Margaret were packed off to America, James remained behind as the Irish watched in horror as the potato crop failed three times between 1845 and 1848. The cumulative effect can only be imagined, but James took the earliest opportunity in 1848, aged 14, to join his life-long absent father, who had finally called for him. Whatever Australia and a new parent threw at him, it had to be better than starving in Ireland.

James senior had been released over six years by then. When it came to freedom in 1842 after his seven-year sentence ended, he decided not to come back to Ireland, and took his chances west of Bathurst.

James junior arrived in 1849, aged 15 and joined his father who was now at Summerhill, outside what would become the town of Orange. The pair were in the right place at the right time. Nearby at Ophir and then at Lucknow, miners would find gold in large commercial quantities in the next two years, the first such finds in Australia.

The gold mine at Lucknow, outside Orange.

The Daltons’ business did well as prospectors poured into the region. A township grew up at nearby Blackman’s Swamp (named for a Constable Blackman of Bathurst not the Aboriginal people displaced from the district by white settlers). The burghers preferred to give it a name that Thomas Mitchell called the area when he came through exploring in 1830. Mitchell honoured the name of a Dutchman named William, Prince of Orange who he served with in the Peninsular Wars against Napoleon in 1812. He was a descendant of the famous William of Orange, the scourge of Catholics in the glorious revolution in the 1690s, an irony surely not lost on the Irishman Dalton. Not that young James had too much time to ponder. He set himself up in business alone in a small shop near the post office. It would become the grandest department store in all of western NSW.

Now the site of Myer department store in Orange, the only sign this was once James Dalton’s store is the text “founded in 1849” above the main entrance.

Dalton’s mill (now demolished) on Summer St, Orange.

At his store Dalton would accept gold and other items in barter. Much of the gold mined at Ophir ended up in the pockets of Orange merchants. Dalton had a particularly useful reputation for being able to source miners’ needs and he established a good import network from Britain and America. A young man in a hurry, Dalton would take a break from building his huge store to serve customers when they arrived. By the late 1850s he was secure enough to court another merchant’s daughter and his wealth attracted his elder brother Thomas from America. Together they called their stores the Dalton Bros and they expanded to create Orange’s first flour mill. They shipped flour to England where it fetched a premium price and they also handled wool.

The magnificent Duntryleague home was built in 1876 and now houses Orange Golf Club.

Dalton and wife Margaret had 12 children and he set about becoming a patriarch to the town as well as his family. He became a local magistrate and councillor. In 1865 he was the deputy captain of Orange’s first volunteer fire service and in 1869 he became mayor of Orange. He built several lavish town and country houses, most like Emly, Knocklong and Bruff named for places in Limerick and Tipperary of his youth. The most impressive Duntryleague, (1876) was named for his birthplace in Limerick, a townland near the village of Galbally, and now the home of the Orange golf club.

In 1883 Dalton and Duntryleague hosted the Irish political figures, the brothers John and Willie Redmond. The Redmonds were Westminster MPs. John Redmond was the member for New Ross and later Waterford, while Willie was elected to the seat of Wexford while he was in Australia. They were both followers of Charles Stewart Parnell and they were on a world tour to drum up support for home rule for Ireland. This is was controversial in Empire-supporting Australia, especially in the wake of the Phoenix Park murder of Ireland’s top British officials a year earlier. When the Redmonds came to Orange, they spoke at Duntryleague because the town’s Protestant establishment would not supply a hall. Dalton gave the welcome speech to the Redmonds and he was attacked in the Sydney press for disloyalty and sedition. Dalton was forced to resign his magistracy as were other prominent Catholic businessmen in Orange. Unabashed, Dalton built the Theatre Royal in Orange so never again would officials stop them from hosting a public meeting. Though the Redmonds moved on, the link became permanent with John Redmond marrying the brothers’ half-sister Johanna in 1883 and Willie Redmond later marrying James’ daughter Eleanor. The young emigrant Dalton was now part of Ireland’s political royalty.

St Joseph’s Catholic Church, Orange where Dalton was a prominent member. One of his houses, Emly, was just across the road. Eleven of Dalton’s 12 children were born at Emly, the last at Duntryleague.

James and Thomas Dalton would later split their business with Thomas looking after its Sydney export interests. He also followed James as Mayor of Orange and served as an MP for New South Wales. James preferred to stay in Orange where he was a leading light in the Catholic community. James’s proudest moment was to be a mitre bearer as Sydney’s Irish Cardinal Patrick Moran unveiled the foundation stone on the extensions to St Joseph’s Church. His beloved wife died in 1904 aged 64 and James died on St Patrick’s Day 1919 aged 84. The value of his estate was £73,154. Eldest son Thomas Garrett (Gatty) married an Irish girl and succeeded his father managing the store, and becoming mayor of Orange 1903-06. The Dalton family were feted in 2013 with an exhibition at Duntryleague marking 160 years of contribution to the town.

Photo: The 2013 Dalton exhibition at Duntryleague, Orange (photo courtesy Euan Greer, Orange Historical Society).

Australia: a country in desperate need of a climate change policy

Before someone puts Tony Abbott out of our misery, the Liberal Party should take a long moment to think about climate change and what its next leader should do about it. It is a process it needs to complete by December because its government will be representing Australia at the Paris Climate Change conference. That conference has the goal of containing “climate disruption” within a two degree upper limit and the adoption of an international agreement to move the world towards a low-carbon economy by 2020. Australia hasn’t the slightest hope of meeting any such commitment based on its current policies.

The working document for this conference is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2014 Synthesis Report (or whatever will supersede it this year).The climate change science in this report is telling us we are in bad shape. Each of the last three decades has been warmer than any decade since the 1850s. The last 30 years are likely to be the warmest 30 years of the last 1400 years. The upper ocean temperature is warming and ocean acidification has increased by a quarter in the industrial era. Arctic sea ice is decreasingly by 4% a decade and the sea level rose 0.2% in the 20^th century. This has resulted in large increases in carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide, particularly in the last 40 years.

The future the report is predicting is more rising sea levels, more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and more extreme weather events including cyclones, droughts and floods across the world. This is a dire scenario and if inter-generational theft means anything at all, then surely this is it. What then, is the government of Australia doing about it?

It’s actually hard to tell it is doing anything at all. While it is unsurprising to note Tony Abbott hasn’t mentioned climate change in a speech in over three months, it’s more surprising to note a search of the Liberal Party policies page has no official policy on climate change. That is, unless you think scrapping the carbon price, removing government oversight mechanisms, building highways and tunnels, and supporting the coal industry amount to addressing climate disruption.

The closest thing the Liberals have to an official environment policy is a $2 billion green army aimed at heritage and agriculture protection as much as the environment. The Green Army is a John Howard-style militia inspired by the motherhood vision for Australia where “individually and collectively, we can more often be our best selves” so they can “do the right things by those around them.” This army lacks the artillery to deal with bigger environmental problems especially in two industries Australia is vulnerable in: manufacturing and mining.

Then there’s “direct action”. Seen by almost everyone outside the government as a hopelessly ineffective solution, it does not even merit its own policy page on the Liberal website.  There is blurb on the Emissions Reduction Fund (the centrepiece of the policy) on the environment department website but is lacking in detail. Its reliance on big government intervention to meet targets is also stark contrast to the laissez-faire attitude the Coalition has in other areas of the economy. A market-based cap-and-trade approach seems a more logical approach but that would admit its opposition to Labor policy for the last four years was wrong.

This extraordinary inaction to the world’s biggest problem can only be explained one way. This government has been captured by those who do not believe the climate change science. When the government repealed the carbon price legislation last July, Liberal Senator Ian McDonald said what many in his party room would agree with. “If there is global warming, notwithstanding that in Brisbane on Saturday morning we had the coldest day in 113 years – but I have always indicated,” McDonald said, “I have an open mind on this.”  McDonald was incoherent but what he meant is he has a closed mind on this. Climate change is bunkum, he believes, or “crap” as his party leader once offered. Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce, who was instrumental in wrecking bi-partisan agreement on carbon pricing, takes a similar view.

Joyce doesn’t have a vote on who should be the next party leader but he will be active behind the scenes. He is a fan of Tony Abbott because he knows Abbott will continue the ‘do nothing’ approach. But even Abbott’s one and only speech on climate change in the last three months admits that is no longer an option. On December 14, 2014, Abbott was dragged kicking and screaming into pledging $200m over four years to UN’s Green Climate Fund, despite it being what he called “socialism masquerading as environmentalism”. Abbott did this not only because he was friendless on the issue but because he knows Paris is looming. Abbott admitted he needed a taskforce “to propose possible new post-2020 targets for Australia to take to the Paris Conference of the UNCCC in December 2015.”

That taskforce is yet to materialise leaving Australia no closer to effective action. “Direct Action” may or may not fluke its way to achieving Australia’s miserly 2020 target but is utterly useless beyond that. Abbott and his supporters can doubt the science all they like, but the world is moving on anyway. Australia needs a climate change policy before December. This is the problem Malcolm Turnbull, Julie Bishop and anyone else who would be prime minister needs to grapple with urgently.

How Isaac Isaacs pipped Baron Birdwood to Australia’s Governor-General

James Scullin (Australian Prime Minister 1929-1932)

As the 100^th anniversary of Gallipoli approaches, Baron William Birdwood will be one of many names feted. It was General Birdwood’s decision as the head of the A and NZ Army Corps to approve the acronym Anzac. Though not Australian he became known as the ‘Soul of Anzac’ and he risked shelling in his own headquarters at Gallipoli. This Indian-born officer was a true servant of Empire and served king and country in the Boer War, then in Turkey and France in the First World War, before returning to his native India where he was army commander in chief in difficult pre-independence times.

He was also an aide-de-camp to King George V and a favourite of His Majesty when he visited Sandringham in 1930. An important sinecure was becoming available and George had Birdwood in mind for the job. The British conservative politician Viscount Stonehaven’s term as Governor-General of Australia was expiring that year and George thought Birdwood was a perfect fit. Not only was there the Anzac link but Birdwood’s daughter had married a WA grazier.

But newly elected Labor prime minister of Australia James Scullin had other ideas. The working class son of Irish emigrants from Derry, Scullin was feted by Irish Free State leaders on a visit to Europe in 1930. Having emerged from civil war, Ireland was trying to distinguish itself from the British Commonwealth and Scullin supported her right to govern itself. It mirrored, he said, what was happening in Australia where they “were building up their own national ideals and to place Australia as the first nation in their hearts.”

Birdwood would pay for Scullin’s ideals and the prime minister advised King George to appoint Australian-born Isaac Isaacs as the next governor-general. The Jewish Isaacs had the calibre for the role as the chief justice of the High Court, but Scullin’s recommendation was an affront to the King who normally picked from a list of choices, of which Birdwood would surely have made the short list. Instead Scullin presented a take-it-or-leave it choice. The idea of an Australian-born king’s representative was most unwelcome.

The unhappy King cut short Scullin’s visit to Ireland with a summons to the palace. Scullin told George he was determined to appoint Isaacs and would hold an election on issue of an Australian governor-general. There was also recent precedents of native-born Governors-General in Scullin’s own Ireland. The King was appalled but not prepared to risk a constitutional crisis. Isaacs, aged 75, was appointed despite Australian opposition leader John Latham saying the appointment would diminish the “sentiment of attachment and loyalty to the Crown”. The socialist newspaper Labor Call had no such worries. Scullin, they said, had shown the world “Australians are equal, if not superior, to any imported pooh-bah.”

Whether Labor Call had Birdwood in mind with that insult is not known, but the “soul of Anzac” had to make do with becoming the master of Peterhouse College, Cambridge. With the depression in full swing, Isaacs was a frugal Governor-General and agreed to a pay cut. He was also the first to live permanently at Yarralumla. On retirement in 1936, the new conservative government went back to the British aristocracy in the Earl of Gowrie. Only one of the next six was Australian, William McKell, appointed by another Irish-heritage prime minister Ben Chifley. Since 1965 all Governors-General have been Australian born. It shouldn’t be a necessity – as the birthplace of two of the last three prime ministers can attest -but the idea an Australian-born leader was inferior to a foreigner is now a laughable oddity. Birdwood, the hero of Anzac, would probably have made a good governor-general but Scullin was right to stand firm.

Faith, hope and charity: Blackbirding Bandler

The death of Faith Bandler last week has thrown light on two reasons how Australia got wealthy and why it is selective about remembering its past.

Bandler was a key figure in the 1967 referendum which allowed Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders be counted in the census and also gave the Commonwealth power to legislate over Indigenous issues. These items seem small but the referendum passed with around 90% support. Bandler and others tapped into white guilt to get a rare successful change to the Australian constitution.

The fact that Australia had stolen the land, killed the natives, used the survivors as sex slaves and cheap labour and then stole even those meagre wages was not openly spoken by those promoting the change. But it was an undercurrent to Australia’s sense of self-satisfaction behind the white picket fences of the 1960s.

Bandler’s own non-whiteness added to her stature as a spokesperson but she was neither Aboriginal nor Torres Strait Islander. She got her skin colour from her Melanesian dad but her feistiness was in no small part due to her Scottish-Indian mother. This pot-pourri of cultures made Bandler a true Australian of the later part of the 20^th century. It was a time Australia “unforgot” its Indigenous people and quietly cast away the White Australia Policy, a policy capital and labour supported for 60 years.

Bandler’s Melanesian background was a reminder of another shameful part of Australian colonial capitalist history, ironically blown away by the White Australian Policy. Her father Wacvie Mussingkon was from Ambrym Island in Vanuatu, an island chain affected by its brush with British and French colonial history.

After “claiming” New South Wales for Britain, Captain Cook was on his second tour of the South Pacific when he arrived at Vanuatu and named it New Hebrides. France also had designs on the region but it was the venture capitalism unleashed by the American Civil War that saw a carpetbagging Irishman named J.C. Byrne think of sending Pacific islander indentured labour to the farms of Peru.

In 1862 Byrne convinced one group of desperate and hungry New Hebridean farmers to go to South America. His success gave profiteers from other settler parts of the world the incentive to “convince” islanders to sign up to such ventures, using coercion and trickery.

By the 1870s northern Australian canegrowers, unable to attract southern white labour, got in on the act. The practice was called blackbirding, from the “blackbirds” Europeans agents caught in the wild. The growers eagerly took these blackbirds from many islands across the western Pacific, including New Hebrides, as indentured labour. Indenturing was a contract for three years and despite several laws designed to clean up the industry, the labourers were housed in primitive conditions, forced to work long hours and received little or no pay. One in five died during their contract.

About 60,000 south sea islanders came to Australia during 40 years of blackbirding, tricked into slavery to keep the Queensland economy pumping. The 1880 Pacific island Labourers Act (Queensland) gave some improvement by licensing the process but restricted Melanesians to menial jobs. The end of the century was dominated by the Federation debate and the need to create a white Australia. The sugar industry fought to continue to import cheap labour but were thwarted by one of the first laws passed by the new Commonwealth, the 1901 Pacific Island Labourers Act. The 10,000 islanders in Australia were ordered to leave and 70% were deported. About 10% were granted residency on compassionate grounds and another 20% stayed on illegally.

Wacvie Mussingkon was among that latter group, who like Stockholm Syndrome sufferers, grew to love Australia despite its inhumane ways. The Federal Government stopped blackbirding not because of the humanitarian need of Ambrym Islanders but because they didn’t want people from Ambrym in the country at all.

Yet people like Mussingkon survived and his offspring thrived. Faith’s politics were shaped by injustice. She married another outsider, Jewish refugee Hans Bandler. Hans left Vienna to escape the Nazis and shared Faith’s radical ideas about society. Faith suffered discrimination of her own due to her darker skin. Together they fought for civil rights and economic justice. Faith Bandler’s fight ended when she died last week aged 97.  Prime Minister Tony Abbott said Bandler had spent her life “pointing the way to a better and fairer Australia”. It’s something Abbott himself should aspire to.