Tag: Australian History

Read A Waltz for Matilda

In 1894, twelve-year-old Matilda flees the city slums to find her unknown father and his farm.

But drought grips the land, and the shearers are on strike. Her father has turned swaggie and he’s wanted by the troopers. In front of his terrified daughter, he makes a stand against them, defiant to the last. ‘You’ll never catch me alive, said he…’

Set against a backdrop of bushfire, flood, war and jubilation, this is the story of one girl’s journey towards independence. It is also the story of others who had no vote and very little but their dreams. Drawing on the well-known poem by A.B. Paterson and from events rooted in actual history, this is the untold story behind Australia’s early years as an emerging nation.

Source: A Waltz for Matilda | Jackie French

Jackie French’s A Waltz for Matilda builds out a story of life in rural Australia based on the ballad Waltzing Matilda. It captures various facets, whether it be the role of Chinese gardeners, indigenous relations, federation, droughts, floods and fires.

A Waltz for Matilda was meant to be a short book, but it became a saga, an adventure, a tale of rags to riches. A story of indomitable women and extraordinary men, set against a sweeping background that ranges from factories where children sweated for almost no wages and rarely saw the sun, to the farms of the western plains; the Boer War; Federation; and ending as the first letters trickle home from Gallipoli. It is a love story, but not just about a girl and boy, and an old man and a woman. It is a love song to Australia. It is the story of how – and why – we became a nation. And – more than any other book – it’s a story from my heart.

Source: A Waltz for Matilda | Jackie French

One of the interesting commentaries was the impact of drought:

‘If there had been no drought there’d have been no shearers’ strike, no union. If times had been better no one would have worried about tariffs between the states or kanakas coming in to take white men’s jobs. Without all of that we’d still be a collection of states, bumbling along side by side. The drought gave us Australia.’

Source: A Waltz for Matilda by Jackie French

This reminded me of Scott Reynolds Nelson’s new book, Oceans of Grain, and the way in which nature impacts so much of life.

The style of the novel, with the joining of the dots of history reminded me of James A. Michener.

via BorrowBox

Read Captain Cook’s Epic Voyage by Geoffrey Blainey

The story of the astonishing voyage of Captain James Cook and the Endeavour, to mark the 250th anniversary of that voyage, and Cook’s claim to sovereignty.

I was looking through the books available via the BorrowBox app and stumbled upon Geoffrey Blainey’s Captain Cook’s Epic Voyage. After reading Stan Grant’s conflicted thoughts on James Cook and often passing Cook’s relocated cottage in Fitzroy Gardens, I thought it would be interesting to actually read about his journey in detail, rather than live with the myth.

Blainey’s book provides a glimpse into the miracle of the journey, as well as the luck involved, especially regarding scurvy and fresh food. He manages to tie various voices together, whether it be different diaries and the snippets of stories that had been picked up through journeys. What was intriguing was the way in which information that we take for granted these days was often kept secret, such as Torres Strait, due to the strategic benefits.

In the conclusion, Blainey discusses the theory that the Chinese actually discovered Australia prior to Europeans. He argues that whether this is true or not, ‘discovery’ is more that finding a place, it is actually doing something with the place.

Read A Shorter History of Australia by Geoffrey Blainey

A broad, concise and inclusive vision of Australia and Australians by one our most renowned historians

I stumbled upon Geoffrey Blainey’s A Shorter History of Australia via BorrowBox. It does what it says, provides a short history of Australia. One of the things that intrigued me was Blainey’s ability to tie so many desperate stories together into a coherent narrative.

I think it would be an interesting exercise to do something of a meta analysis, reading different histories, such as Manning Clark and Stuart McIntyre, and doing a comparison.

Read The Australian Dream by Stan Grant

In a landmark essay, Stan Grant writes Indigenous people back into the economic and multicultural history of Australia. This is the fascinating story of how fringe dwellers fought not just to survive, but to prosper. Their legacy is the extraordinary flowering of Indigenous success – cultural, sporting, intellectual and social – that we see today.

Yet this flourishing co-exists with the boys of Don Dale, and the many others like them who live in the shadows of the nation. Grant examines how such Australians have been denied the possibilities of life, and argues eloquently that history is not destiny; that culture is not static. In doing so, he makes the case for a more capacious Australian Dream.

‘The idea that I am Australian hits me with a thud. It is a blinding self-realisation that collides with the comfortable notion of who I am. To be honest, for an Indigenous person, it can feel like a betrayal somehow – at the very least, a capitulation. We are so used to telling ourselves that Australia is a white country: am I now white? The reality is more ambiguous … To borrow from Franz Kafka, identity is a cage in search of a bird.’ —Stan Grant, The Australian Dream

Stan Grant’s Quartarly Essay extends on his speech on racism in Australia at the IQ2 stage in 2015.

Now, you will hear things tonight. You will hear people say, “But you’ve done well.” Yes, I have and I’m proud of it and why have I done well? I’ve done well because of who has come before me. My father who lost the tips of three fingers working in saw mills to put food on our table because he was denied an education. My grandfather who served to fight wars for this country when he was not yet a citizen and came back to a segregated land where he couldn’t even share a drink with his digger mates in the pub because he was black.

My great grandfather, who was jailed for speaking his language to his grandson (my father). Jailed for it! My grandfather on my mother’s side who married a white woman who reached out to Australia, lived on the fringes of town until the police came, put a gun to his head, bulldozed his tin humpy and ran over the graves of the three children he buried there.

That’s the Australian Dream. I have succeeded in spite of the Australian Dream, not because of it, and I’ve succeeded because of those people.

Grant elaborates on the challenges associated with his personal history, the idea of indigenous people as ‘migrants’, and the layered nature of identity. I found it a fascinating book to read, especially in light of discussion around the referendum for a voice in parliament. For me, it highlights that there are no quick answers, instead it is always complicated.

Listened Why Alan Tudge is now on the history warpath from EduResearch Matters

This points to education tactically being used to further the Federal Government’s re-election campaign, rather than a strategic move to save the soul of the nation. Tactics are localised responses to circumstances, whereas strategies are more stabilised and long term. So in other words, the federal cabinet ministers are finding issues to associate with the word “optimism” and putting it in front of as many voters as possible. For education, the History Wars have a history of going viral, even before the internet. And if you look at Tudge’s comments on Friday, the History curriculum is nestled in with the other two big viral topics – literacy and numeracy test scores.

Reading Naomi Barnes’ discussion of Alan Tudge’s challenge to the history curriculum had me going back and listening to The Fauves Celebrate the Failure.
Liked The bravery, tragedy, and mystery of Captain Smirnov’s secret diamond delivery by Mike Ladd (ABC News)

There’s gunfire in the distance as a famed Dutch pilot takes off in a desperate bid to reach Australia. He’s unaware that in the plane’s safe are millions of dollars worth of diamonds — most of which have never been found.

I love the closing statement of this WWII story:

After the war Palmer never really has to work again.

“He always said he loved to sit down and smoke, put his feet up for the rest of his life,” author and historian John Thompson-Gray says.

He buys a house in Broome, a blue Chevrolet, a boat and a business, and always has plenty of cash.

Bookmarked ‘Better for Her Majesty not to know’: palace letters reveal Queen’s role in sacking of Australian PM Whitlam (theguardian.com)

Governor general John Kerr canvassed Queen and her personal secretary about his powers to dismiss Gough Whitlam but did not forewarn them

Christopher Knaus and Caroline Davies report on the release of the papers associated with John Kerr’s communications. Bridget Judd and Leigh Tonkin discuss some of the other topics uncovered in the papers.
Liked Book reviews: The Road to Botany Bay by Paul Carter. Susan Sheridan. (Transnational Literature Vol. 3 no. 1, November 2010.)

There is no denying the innovative importance of this book’s detailed and engaging demonstration that place names signify histories – that they do not make
hitherto meaningless places meaningful, as commonsense would suggest, but rather construct historical landscapes. Or to put it another way, the country was not simply already there, waiting to be discovered, but the act of journeying in and around it, mapping it, naming it, is what renders it meaningful. Landscape is, therefore, ‘not a physical object: it is an object of desire, a figure of speech outlining the writer’s
exploratory impulse’ (81). The originality of Carter’s argument was especially timely, arriving as it did on the Australian intellectual scene in 1987, as a prelude to the celebration of the bicentenary of white settlement. He made a major contribution to the ‘de-colonising’ of thought which accompanied the bicentenary, even if he did not convince all his readers that ‘spatial history’ was an entirely new way of writing history.

Bookmarked Australia is built on lies, so why would we be surprised about lies about climate change? | Luke Pearson for IndigenousX (the Guardian)

If we don’t have a conversation on climate now, the windows for any conversation, ‘in between fires’, will become increasingly shorter

Luke Pearson discusses the current crisis and the lies that are told.

Early within the bushfire season we saw efforts to pretend it wasn’t really that bad, and that it was just those damn inner-city elites complaining, as they always do (it wasn’t). As things got worse, we were told it still really wasn’t that bad and that it definitely had nothing to do with climate change (it does). Then we were told it is that bad, but it was all the Greens’ fault (it wasn’t). Then we were told the government is giving everything the fire services have requested (they haven’t).

Then finally we have been told the Coalition government has never denied climate change and its links to fires (they have, and do), just as various Coalition members went on air telling us that there was no such thing as climate change.

He continues the call for further conversation and change. He argues that this is a part of a longer history of lies associated with colonialisation.

Australia was founded on the lie that this country was terra nullius. It was founded on the lie that white men are the superior species. It was founded on the lie that the country was previously “unsettled” and that importing animals, plants, pests and unsustainable farming practices was how best to “settle” this “wild” land. It was founded on the lie that this is a “lucky country” and the land of a “fair go for all”.

Pearson argues that it is time to change the nation and everything that it is built upon.

Liked Tonnes of sand along this Melbourne beach are hiding a dark chapter of Victoria’s history (ABC News)

It’s a tale that has everything: ghastly crimes, executions, exhumations, grave robbery, publicly-funded Great Depression-era mass-employment construction schemes and, of course, Ned Kelly.

Liked A native plant is exposing the clash between traditional knowledge and Western conventions (The Sydney Morning Herald)

The fight is part of a broader debate about how to value and protect traditional knowledge and ensure Indigenous people benefit from and retain access to their heritage.

Bookmarked Bruce Pascoe teaches Australians about the rich Indigenous history of their country (education.abc.net.au)

ABC Education has launched a new resource for Australian students to learn more about their country’s Indigenous history.

The ABC has produced a new digibook with Bruce Pascoe to support students in learning about the history of Aboriginal agriculture and technology and celebrate the ingenuity of the First Australians. Pascoe is also releasing a children’s version of his award winning book Dark Emu.