Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia (Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism) 3031317882, 9783031317880

Citation preview

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN LITERARY JOURNALISM

Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia Willa McDonald

Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism

Series Editors Sue Joseph, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia Willa McDonald, Department of MMCCS, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Matthew Ricketson, Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University, Burwood, VIC, Australia

Literary journalism is a vibrant and fast growing field, increasingly attracting international academic attention due to the unique way narrative journalism communicates matters of national and international importance to readers. Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism provides a pioneering home to scholarship about the field in the first series of its kind. The book series is organised under the multi-disciplinary umbrella of literary journalism studies into four recognisable types: theoretical monographs, historical monographs, edited collections, monographs about practice and pedagogy.

Willa McDonald

Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia

Willa McDonald Department of Media, Communications, Creative Arts, Language and Literature (MCCALL) Macquarie University Sydney, NSW, Australia

ISSN 2731-9539 ISSN 2731-9547 (electronic) Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism ISBN 978-3-031-31788-0 ISBN 978-3-031-31789-7 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: “A cheap Melbourne restaurant - waiting for breakfast”, Illustrated Australian News, 21 December, 1881, p. 237. Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

This book was written on Gadigal land violently taken by the British and never ceded. I pay my respects to the First Nations peoples who have been custodians of Country across this continent for over 65,000 years— from long before the “killing times” to the present.

For Lois — a friend indeed.

Foreword

At the heart of Willa McDonald’s new text is an enthralling debate about what constitutes literary journalism. Definitional disputes and epistemological haggles have for long engaged conference attenders, academic journal paper writers and journalist theorists. New terms have emerged— creative non-fiction, narrative non-fiction, literary non-fiction, narrative journalism, long-form journalism, book-length journalism and even, more recently, slow journalism—reflecting the complexity of the issues. Throughout the book, McDonald dips into this debate—exploring the distinctions between subjectivity and objectivity, fact and fiction, the public and private spheres, literature and journalism, immersion and detachment, truth and myth. But she is careful always to place this debate (incorporating such theorists as Paul Belgrade, Roy Peter Clarke, Tom Connery, Nancy Fraser, John C Hartsock, Mark Kramer, Nancy Roberts, John Tulloch, Norman Sims, Dale Spender and Tom Wolfe) in its historical context—after all definitions can change over time. This allows her to broaden the boundaries of literary journalism beyond the professional/ non-professional binary to incorporate, for instance, letters and journals written by convicts and women during the early years of settlement. Letters by women such as Elizabeth Macarthur, the Bussell sisters and Mary Thomas were written not simply for private viewing but to be circulated back home in England among friends and family if not further afield and thus can be said to fall within the Habermasian “public sphere.” Other texts considered as precursors of literary journalism are Ellen

ix

x

FOREWORD

Clacy’s memoir of her experiences in the goldfields and Carl Lumholz’s ethnographic studies of indigenous people in Queensland. Later on, she takes in the character sketches of Henry Savery and the landscape and travel sketches of writers such as James Martin, Richard Rowe, Louisa Anne Meredith, Louisa Atkinson, Henry Lawson, Marcus Clarke and AB “Banjo” Paterson, whose bush ballad of the 1890s, “Waltzing Matilda,” persists as Australia’s unofficial national anthem. Collectively, she says, these sketches “reveal the connections the early settlers were developing with their new country, while laying the foundations of later travel, nature and eco-writing up to the present day.” With the emergence of a free press from the 1820s onwards and the later stress on notions of professionalism, a modern form of literary journalism took root with journalists reporting on all aspects of colonial life: from the plight of the homeless in Melbourne slums to the “blackbirding” trade in Pacific Island labour for the Queensland sugar plantations to overseas conflicts, such as the Boer War, where Australian soldiers saw action. Alongside the historical narrative goes an impressive attention to specific events and characters. For instance, Margaret Catchpole, described as “one of the few true convict chroniclers,” wrote letters from 1802 to 1811, inadvertently describing the worlds of colonial Australian women, the countryside and the wildlife, the local First Nations people, and “the savagery and immorality of the inhabitants of the colony,” the first convict coalminers at Coal River (Newcastle) and unique, eyewitness accounts of the Hawkesbury River floods of 1806 and 1809. McDonald comments: “Over time, her letters became more readable, but her grammar, syntax and spelling would always remain idiosyncratic.” She goes on to question the importance of correct punctuation and grammar to “quality” literary journalism. In Catchpole’s defence, McDonald argues that she did not have access to expert editorial assistance that could have improved her copy. In any case, the American New Journalists of the 1960s and 1970s deliberately escaped the straitjacket of objectivity by experimenting with literary forms and sometimes even breaking punctuation, grammar and syntax rules. While, in the end, McDonald rejects Catchpole’s work as literary journalism because of her lack of precision with written language, she concludes that her example draws attention to a quality that many commentators argue lies at the heart of literary journalism—“the ability of the writer to convey the ‘feel’ of the facts of the

FOREWORD

xi

story and to communicate those feelings to persuade the reader at least to empathy if not action.” McDonald is also able to blend an attention to broad literary trends with, at times, an impressive, critical analysis of specific texts. For instance, from discussing how sketches “helped to create a canon of artists, writers and performers that was pivotal in moulding and reflecting the emerging national culture,” she moves on elegantly to exploring, in some depth, the ways interviews were added to the character sketch, allowing the voices of the subjects to be included in the articles. Then, when covering the work of John Stanley James, sent in 1878 by the Sydney Morning Herald to report on the Great Revolt by the New Caledonians against the French colonists, her comments on a particular feature are insightful and extremely detailed, displaying an awareness of the complex historical, political and journalistic issues involved. She writes that James (under the nom de plume Julian Thomas) provides an interesting contrast to most Australian colonial war reporting as he felt no particular loyalty to the French or their military with whom he was embedded. She continues: “While James’s writing never shakes the coarse racism common to the language of colonialism, as the piece progresses he finds ways to connect with the humanity of the Kanaks [the local indigenous tribe]. His stance shifts, moving towards a genuinely empathic position, and he begins to repatriate the Kanaks as people, despite the looming execution that strips them of their humanity. … At the same time, he uses the literary techniques common to literary journalism—scenes, detail and characterization—to deepen his story, and in turn his and the readers’ connection with the Kanaks.” Journalist John Pilger described Australia as the “secret country” given its dark, hidden past of slaughtering of Aboriginal people. Here, McDonald constantly reminds her readers of “the silence” that so often shrouded acknowledgement of the indigenous tribes by colonial commentators. Two somewhat contradictory visions, she says, competed for public dominance: one that Aboriginal people were insensible, stupid savages who would soon die out; the other vision represented them as educable and adaptable people capable and in need of being civilised to Christian society. “Both perspectives brought cultural and physical violence in their wake. With frontier violence unacknowledged as a war … a silence developed in public, and particularly in the press, about the realities of the occupation by the British.”

xii

FOREWORD

But there were exceptions. For instance, Christina (Mrs James) Smith, the first white woman to settle at Rivoli Bay, South Australia, published in 1880, a memoir based on her experiences over the previous thirtyfive years as teacher, lay missionary and wife of the Methodist minister and postmaster, called The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends and Language. According to McDonald, Smith writes of her Booandik subjects as individuals, reflecting the many and varied associations she had, ranging from some of intimacy and fondness to others based on fear or dislike, “demonstrating that despite the inescapable inequities of the colonial context, her relationships with the Booandik were genuine.” The notorious bushranger, outlaw and gang leader Ned Kelly, who was captured after a gun battle with the police at Glenrowan in 1880 and subsequently tried, convicted and hanged at Old Melbourne Gaol, has become an iconic, national figure—represented in films, novels and paintings. McDonald highlights the importance of the journalism associated with the Kelly saga early on in her study, celebrating Thomas Carrington’s work for the weekly journal, the Australasian Sketcher in Pen and Pencil, for combining the facts of the event with the narrative techniques usually associated with fiction. “The result was a long article that reads like a short story, replete with dialogue, characterisation, description and atmosphere. It transports readers to the siege of Glenrowan in language that conveys the exciting moments and turbulent emotions of the unfolding scene with the immediacy of the eyewitness.” Later, she devotes a chapter to a more detailed dissection of both the reporting and the journalism strategies adopted at what became known in the press as the “Kelly Outbreak.” The four reporters were deeply embedded with the police, even being armed with rifles. During the battle, they took over logistics, sorting police ammunition, provided a bodyguard for two women who came up on the train, and helped the police interview a mother with her young baby who escaped from the hotel and could provide vital information about the situation inside. Once Kelly was wounded, George Allen, of Melbourne’s Daily Telegraph, took a rifle providing cover for the police who attended Kelly. Such immersion on the side of the police would be considered unacceptable today—but, as McDonald stresses, such scruples did not apply to journalists towards the end of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the reporters did not hesitate to criticise the police: for instance, Carrington, while praising the “rank and file” for their “great coolness and pluck,” said they lacked effective

FOREWORD

xiii

leadership; they should have occupied the hotel once the hostages were released, and he complained there were inadequate supplies of armaments at the start of the siege for the journalists to protect themselves. Following the siege, allegations of police incompetence and cowardice continued in the press and at the Royal Commission of Inquiry. “However, there is no evidence of criticism of the Glenrowan journalists’ involvement in the police action at the siege in either the records of the Royal Commission or the letters to the editors of the major papers.” McDonald uses her chapter on the “blackbirding” trade to highlight what she calls “the unavoidable limits of journalistic subjectivity”—in this case that of the coloniser. In the reporting of Henry Britton, George “Chinese” Morrison and John Stanley James, she highlights the way in which they largely avoided the question of the treatment of the Islanders on the plantations, instead focusing on the practices of the trading ships. She writes: “Despite their best intentions, and their confidence in their own ability to report fairly and accurately, the journalists were part of the colonial enterprise. They were unable to shed the filter of British superiority or the entitlement of empire building.” The section on war reporting is equally perceptive—and nuanced. Major campaigns fought by the British—beginning in the 1860s with the New Zealand Wars, then in the Sudan, South Africa and China—were covered by celebrated literary journalists such as Howard Willoughby, AB “Banjo” Paterson, Frank Wilkinson, Harry “Breaker” Morant, DA Macdonald, WT Reay, Edith Dickenson and HH Spooner. Moreover, while racism and jingoistic overstatement were rife, compassion for the enemy—at least, discomfort with the actions of the imperial forces towards them—was not uncommon in the reporting of the Boer War. At the same time, McDonald stresses that, in contrast, an “overriding press culture of silence” shrouded the battles on the home front since war was never formally declared against the First Nations Peoples. Running through the book is McDonald’s awareness of the important role literary journalism has played in forging the Australian identity— in revealing the country’s social and cultural dynamism and hiding its secrets and the shame of its destruction of the Aboriginal people. Moreover, as Australians struggled to see the growth of their cities as a source of national identity, urban-based newspapers and journals provided the crucial “public sphere” in which social, cultural and political issues could be articulated. She ends on a reflective note for her country: there are no simple answers to what does or does not constitute the field of literary

xiv

FOREWORD

journalism. “It continues to evolve, not in isolation but in a globalised environment, just as our nation does, challenging us to understand who we are as a people and how we relate to the world around us.” Richard Lance Keeble University of Lincoln Lincoln, UK Liverpool Hope University Liverpool, UK

Acknowledgements

Many people have helped in the production of this book. The idea for it grew from work done under a generous seeding grant from Macquarie University. The MQ Re-Start grant allowed two researchers to work parttime with me for the better part of a year, collecting information about Australia’s early literary journalism. Bunty Avieson and Kerrie Davies deserve special thanks; they provided excellent research for many of the sections, resulting not only in the chapters to be found here but also the Australian Colonial Narrative Journalism project (now housed at Austlit), the online database from which the project sprang (auslitjourn.info), and a number of articles published along the way by academic presses, many of which they co-authored. I would also like to thank colleagues at Macquarie University, particularly Bridget Griffen-Foley and later Joseph Pugliese who were my research mentors; members of the Arts Faculty Research Office, especially Jan Zwar and Christine Boman, and Hsu-Ming Teo and Nicole Anderson who, as Heads of Department, supported the work at critical stages. The staff at the publisher, Palgrave Macmillan, have been unfailingly helpful as this book has developed from the short “Pivot” volume that was originally pitched to them several years ago to the much lengthier monograph it is now. Special thanks go to Lucy Batrouney, Mala Sanghera-Warren, Emily Wood, Imogen Higgins, Poppy Hull, Lauriane Piette and Alice Carter.

xv

xvi

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Without the comprehensive collection of early Australian newspapers and journals available on Trove, this book would never have been completed. The library closures and other issues brought by the COVID19 pandemic were alleviated to a significant degree by the availability of digitised material on Trove. I am grateful to the staff at the National Library of Australia and the state libraries of Victoria and Queensland for their assistance. Most of the in-person research was done at the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales where the staff went out of their way to be of help. I also owe a special debt of gratitude to the enduringly patient people at the Macquarie University Library (especially for forgiving a number of hefty fines for overdue books!) These libraries, as well as the Rare Books and Special Collections Library at the University of Sydney, the National Library of Australia and the Museums of History, NSW (State Archives), provided the images used in these pages. I am indebted to Professor Richard Keeble for writing his wonderful foreword to this book. He and Dr. Fiona Giles also gave me expert advice and encouraging feedback for revisions of a “final” draft version of the manuscript before submission. Patricia Clarke, Michael Cannon, Jeannine Baker, Jennifer Martin and Robert G Flippen lent their expertise based on their own extensive research that provided the groundwork for several chapters. My thanks also go to senior colleagues in the International Association of Literary Journalism Studies (IALJS), including friend and collaborator Robert Alexander, David Abrahamson, John Bak, Bill Reynolds, John Hartsock and the many colleagues in the IALJS who provided encouragement and support for the work at the annual conferences. Sue Joseph and Matthew Ricketson deserve their own special paragraph. My research “partners in crime” who share my passion for Australian literary journalism, they have been inspiring colleagues. I so enjoy the friendship and fun they bring to this work—regularly on Zoom, but also at the far-flung IALJS conferences where we finally get to catch up in person. Beate Josephi also merits special mention. Her excellent and generous work on Günter Wallraff went unintentionally unacknowledged a while back when it—and she—should have been praised profusely. Lastly, I would like to thank some very special friends and family including Lois Harris, Nicole Matthews, Aimay Wong, Adele Elliott, Gail Boserio, the Bondi Girls (Amanda Wilson, Debra Jopson, Deborah Smith, Caroline Falls, Sheryle Bagwell and Ann Arnold), the members of

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

xvii

the Interiors research cluster at Macquarie University, and my “Sunday Night” siblings—Marg, Robyn, Tein, Pete (and Baz). My biggest thanks go to Tian and Ming who have put up with an overly busy mum for the last few years and, more so, her endless stories about colonial Australia.

Contents

1

Writing Reality: Constructing a Nation Reaching for a Definition In the Beginning was the Word Laying the Foundations Bibliography

1 2 7 8 11

2

True Beginnings The Printer Arrives Towards a Free Press Picking Up the Pace: The Press After 1850 Popularising the Papers Colonial Journals and Magazines: The Creation of a Literary Culture Irreverence and Tantrums: The Emergence of The Bulletin Unheard: First Nation Voices Women and Journalism: A Man’s Game Bibliography

13 14 16 19 22

Journals, Letters and Unexpected Forms “Discovering” the Land: The Explorers Writing Home: Letters and Journals Reclaiming Unheard Voices Broadening the Public Sphere Literary Poetics and Their Impacts Bibliography

43 44 48 50 53 56 63

3

24 25 27 29 38

xix

xx

CONTENTS

4

Captured Lives and Settler Memoir Pioneering Lives: Katherine Kirkland Farming Van Diemen’s Land: James Ross Women as Political Commentators: Caroline Chisholm and Ada Cambridge Memoir, Subjectivity and the Fact or Fiction Debate Historical Reliability: Ellen Clacy on the Goldfields Where to Draw the Line? Martin Cash Does the End Justify the Means? Arthur James Vogan Scientific and Institutional Reliability: Carl Lumholtz and Edward M. Curr Bibliography

67 68 70

The Sketch: Colonial Characters Savery’s Satire Resurgence of the Sketch Poking Fun, Revealing Hypocrisy: Thomas Revel Johnson’s Social Commentary “The Devil in Sydney”: Theodore Emile Argles (Harold Grey) Satire and the “Gentler Sex”: Caroline Dexter Forerunners of the Profile: The Illustrated Interview Annie Bright and Cosmos Magazine Who Are We? William Baker’s Heads of the People Christina Smith and the Booandick Bibliography

93 94 96

5

6

Sketches of Place, Landscape and Travel Master of All He Surveys: James Martin Taming the Harsh Environment: Robert Harrison and May Vivienne Negotiating the Highways and Byways: Richard Rose (Peter Possum) Chronicling Nature: Louisa Meredith Observing with the Eye of the Locally Born: Louisa Atkinson Literary Journalist as Science Reporter: Henry Britton Landscape and What It Meant to Be Australian: Lawson and Paterson Bibliography

71 73 76 77 78 82 90

99 101 102 103 104 105 106 114 117 118 121 122 124 126 127 128 135

CONTENTS

7

8

9

10

Reporting on City Life: The Highs and Lows of “Marvellous Melbourne” Female Flâneuse: Mary Fortune Exploring the Slums: Marcus Clarke Empathetic Responses Investigating the Institutions: John Stanley James A Woman’s Perspective: Catherine Hay Thomson Bibliography

xxi

139 140 142 148 149 155 163

Literary Journalism and Ned Kelly’s “Last Stand” Before the Siege: Anti-Irish Catholic Sentiment Unbounded Immersion Press Freedom or Press Bias? The Glenrowan “Press Conference” and the Inclusion of Interviews The Reach of the Legend Laying the Foundation for a Cultural Industry The Result of a Flexible Form Bibliography

167 169 170 172

“Blackbirding”, Subjectivity and the Unseeing “I” An Uneasy Trade Replacing Cotton: The “Sugaropolis” In the Wake of the Carl: Henry Britton British Superiority and Social Darwinism “A Well-Fed Kitten”: Women, Children and Britton’s Orientalism “It’s the Way We Always Speak of the Trade”: George “Chinese” Morrison “Happy Participants”: John Stanley James An Enviable Fate: J.D. Melvin A Rite of Passage Bibliography

189 191 192 193 195

Life in the Trenches: The Challenges of Reporting War First Overseas Conflict: War with the Maoris The Great Australian Silence Impact of the Telegraph Repatriating the “Kanaks” as Humans Covering the Sudan

217 218 220 221 222 225

175 177 178 181 185

197 199 205 209 210 214

xxii

11

12

CONTENTS

Connecting with the Enemy: The Boer War The Poetic Response: A.B. (Banjo) Paterson Censorship by the British: Donald Macdonald Bibliography

227 229 232 238

Boer War Journalism: Sentimentality or the “Feel of the Facts” “From a Woman’s Standpoint”: Edith Dickenson Refugee Camps or Concentration Camps? Censorship of Mismanagement News from the Field Hospital: Agnes Macready Sentimentality and War: W.T. Reay The Difficulties of Writing About Emotions Emotional Engagement or Sentimentality? Bibliography

241 243 245 247 248 251 252 253 258

Conclusion Bibliography

261 268

Index

269

About the Author

Dr. Willa McDonald, B.A./LL.B., Ph.D. (Australian Studies), is Senior Lecturer in Media and Creative Writing at Macquarie University where she teaches and researches creative non-fiction writing and narrative journalism. A former journalist, she has worked in print, television and radio, including for the Sydney Morning Herald, The Bulletin, the Times on Sunday, ABC TV and ABC Radio National. She is the chief author of the databases Australian Colonial Narrative Journalism (available on Australia’s national online resource AustLit) and Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia (available at auslitinfo.com). She is the co-editor of the Palgrave Macmillan international book series on Literary Journalism and is Vice President of the International Association of Literary Journalism Studies. Willa’s previous books are: Literary Journalism and Social Justice (with Robert Alexander, Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Warrior for Peace: Dorothy Auchterlonie Green (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2009) and The Writer’s Reader: Understanding Journalism and Non-fiction (with Susie Eisenhuth, Cambridge University Press, 2007).

xxiii

CHAPTER 1

Writing Reality: Constructing a Nation

Convicts Embarking to Botany Bay, ca. 1790. Drawing by Thomas Rowlandson. Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_1

1

2

W. MCDONALD

28 June, 1880—Four pressmen sheltered in the Glenrowan railway station, in rural Victoria, opposite Anne Jones’s hotel. They arrived around 3 a.m., along with a posse of police and black trackers, on a train specially organised from Melbourne. From the safety of their hideaway, the journalists could see the front of the pub whenever gunfire exploded across the night sky, as it did spasmodically over the next few hours. They had been invited to the small country town to observe the capture of the notorious bushranger Ned Kelly and his gang, who had entertained readers with their daring robberies across north-eastern Victoria over the previous two years. Thomas Carrington, the only press artist in the group, was there to provide illustrations for the weekly journal the Australasian Sketcher in Pen and Pencil . Despite not being hired as a wordsmith, his account, published nearly a week later, shines as exemplary literary journalism. Unconstrained by the need to speedily file news, or the clumsy restrictions of filing via telegraph, he combined the facts of the event with the narrative techniques usually associated with fiction. The result was a long article that reads like a short story, with dialogue, characterisation, description and atmosphere. It transports readers to the siege of Glenrowan in language that conveys the exciting moments and turbulent emotions of the unfolding scene with the immediacy of the eyewitness. The literary journalism produced in the colonial era tells us a great deal about Australia’s modern beginnings, the issues tackled by the early journalists often continuing to resonate in current media debates. Carrington’s article—above those of the other newsmen present at the siege1 —has given us the first draft of this pivotal event in Australian cultural history. Ned Kelly has become a folk hero in modern Australia, a powerful symbol of rebellion and freedom, lauded for his audacious crimes, aid to the poor, subversive political agitation and, not least, his ability to frequently outwit the police. Carrington’s depiction of his capture underpins the legend. It is the version that has been reproduced in numerous movies, television series, artworks, books and comics that continue to be produced in a thriving cultural industry that speaks to the way Australia defines and represents itself nearly 150 years later.2

Reaching for a Definition In this book, I use the term “literary journalism” to mean journalism that stands as literature, not journalism about literature. It is a vibrant form that Carrington’s piece demonstrates was alive and well in Australia’s

1

WRITING REALITY: CONSTRUCTING A NATION

3

colonial years.3 Interest has been growing in literary journalism over the last few decades as scholars have attempted to arrive at a definition of this type of writing that occupies the space between conventional reporting at one end and fiction at the other. What has become evident is that there is no final definition of literary journalism that applies globally across time and culture. Instead, there has been a steady refining of a broad description of it emerging from discussions among academics of what makes literary journalism special, distinguishing it from news and formulaic magazine features in an evolving media world. John Tulloch and Richard Keeble,4 picking up on the looseness of literary journalism’s boundaries, argue that rather than trying to narrow it down, we should think about literary journalism as a field that incorporates different traditions and practices of writing from around the world—“among them the journalistic column, the memoir, the sketch, the essay, travel narratives, life writing, “true crime” narratives, “popular” history, cultural reflection and other modes of writing … The work of the life and travel writer, the contemporary historian, the sports writer, the essayist and long-form columnist, meet here”.5 It is a wide list, but there are some key qualities of literary journalism linking these forms that have emerged from the definitional analysis that has been done over the last fifty years, beginning with the assertion that literary journalists aim to capture “the real”—real people and real events. For this reason, the boundary between fact and fiction in literary journalism has been a contested one, particularly as some of the most highly regarded texts for study have sometimes taken a relaxed approach to accuracy, prioritising emotional truthfulness and the demands of reader engagement over the facts. Books in the United States such as Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood (1966) and Norman Mailer’s Armies of the Night (1967) are well-known examples, but others can be found elsewhere. In Australia, Helen Garner’s The First Stone (1995) raised ire among readers, in part because she made factual changes to her book at the behest of her publishers who were trying to avoid a possible defamation suit. The book explores a sexual harassment case against the master of Ormond College at Melbourne University, but structurally revolves around Garner’s attempts to interview two students at the centre of the case who refused to speak with her. Garner split Jenna Mead, an academic at the university who was advising the young women, into half a dozen invented characters, inadvertently suggesting a feminist academic conspiracy working to prevent her writing. The resulting controversy over

4

W. MCDONALD

this and Garner’s views on feminism triggered a vitriolic and long-lasting controversy in Australian literary and academic circles.6 Views in Australia and around the world continue to vary on the strictness of the requirement of factual accuracy in literary journalism with journalism scholars and literature scholars sometimes disagreeing, demonstrating the tension inevitably involved when a form straddles two fields as this one does. As John C Hartsock once mused when discussing the work of the Nobel Prize winning author Svetlana Alexievich, those who study journalism are not necessarily steeped in the rich offerings of their literary traditions, while those who study literature may not appreciate “the obligations, philosophy and methods of journalism”.7 This helps to explain why changes that do not substantially affect the work’s message are acceptable to some writers,8 while for others who prioritise reader trust in the accuracy of non-fiction (myself included) no playing with the facts is permissible, at least without clear indication to the reader.9 Literary journalism usually tackles complex and more difficult stories that take time, resources and the support of a sympathetic editor or proprietor. Immersion is fundamental to the way information is collected, allowing writers to get to know their subjects in ways not possible for shorter pieces written at speed.10 Literary journalists delve into their stories as eyewitnesses, unobtrusively spending time with the “characters” to observe first-hand their parts in an unfolding drama. The facts collected are not just those of conventional reporting; literary journalists include in their reports what they see, hear and feel as they attempt to achieve and convey to readers their understanding of the events they are covering.11 The relationships that result from their immersion allow a greater understanding of those events because the journalists’ raw data is a combination not only of their subjects’ thoughts, emotions and understandings, but also their own.12 Facial expressions, body language, behaviour and speech become as important to the story as background statistics and expert interviews. Literary journalism is aimed at the readers’ emotions and intellect. Journalists strive to write in such a way that readers “feel” the facts”,13 but without slipping into sensationalism or turning the “characters” into objects for the titillation of readers. Immersion, coupled with fresh ways of writing, discourages stereotyping, instead fostering a deeper knowledge of the subject and in the process treating its “characters” as human beings rather than mere objects of curiosity.14 The form’s aim is to comprehend and illuminate and possibly in the process explore larger, more

1

WRITING REALITY: CONSTRUCTING A NATION

5

universal truths.15 Literary journalism’s methods require close listening and observing on the part of journalists, something that is far more likely in immersive research than the quick once-over-lightly practices too often associated with news journalism. While standard reporting hides the writer’s voice, literary journalism allows it to enter the story, turning the writer’s subjectivity into an advantage. Voice is revealed not just through point of view, but also through the literary techniques chosen by the writer, including tone, rhythm, language and structure. These combine to reveal the writer’s personality, in Mark Kramer’s words, as “a whole person, intimate, frank, ironic, wry, puzzled, judgmental, even self-mocking”.16 The voice of the literary journalist is not the voice of the expert, bureaucrat or politician; there is no hiding behind distance or officialese. As Kramer concludes: “The genre’s power is the strength of this voice”.17 The subjective style of literary journalism has drawn critics who distrust its intimate voice and lack of distance.18 Yet, all journalists bring themselves to their stories, and all stories involve the application of imagination.19 Writers choose their subjects, the people they interview and the words they use, but that process is usually hidden in news journalism under the cover of objectivity. The subjective approach of the literary journalist can provide greater honesty, not only about the mind of the writer but also about their methods. The triangular relationship between the facts, and the writers’ and the characters’ subjective views of those facts, creates tensions but as Paul Belgrade argues, “By coming forward to present an event, admittedly from their own points of view, the literary journalists are not distorting the facts about those events but are providing a perspective that strengthens the accuracy of their reports”.20 Norman Sims observes that literary journalism at its best pays respect to ordinary lives.21 While celebrities and dignitaries are sometimes featured, literary journalists are more interested in the way the decisions of the rich and powerful, and the institutions they belong to, affect the everyday, such as the effects of war on the civilian, the ramifications of being committed to an asylum on the patient or the realities of life in a poor house on the homeless inmate. However, not all stories relate to such weighty issues. Topics can range across all fields from economics to astronomy with some appearing to have little news value, dealing with events as unremarkable as a visit to a school or a tennis match. What they all have in common, though, is they provide a window into the way

6

W. MCDONALD

society works, describing “this felt sense of the quality of life at a particular time and place”.22 As will be discussed further in these pages, these then are the main characteristics that have been used to identify literary journalism over the years: it is long-form non-fiction that captures the “real” and is accurate, immersive, subjective, empathetic, and uses storytelling techniques more usually associated with imaginative literature than reporting. But beyond those qualities, there are still many areas of contention in a definition that refuses, finally, to be pinned down, particularly as new studies exploring non-Anglophone literary journalism—from the Netherlands to Argentina—are added to the canon. Some examples of literary journalism are easy to identify, particularly the long, engaging stories of mainstream writers that make us pay attention, the sorts of stories we share, for example across social media, because they stand out in the quality of the writing and research, the stories that prompt a change in our understanding and attitudes. Yet there are others that are more elusive because of the inclusive nature of such a broad field. Recently scholars have begun to question whether the boundaries of literary journalism are being drawn too tightly by limiting its reach to mainstream newspapers, magazines, journals and books.23 It is no secret that the English-language press has favoured the writing of white men who have been better able to access publication. What if opening up the types and places of publication studied justified the inclusion of more voices? If other criteria could be met for determining if a piece of writing, or even work done in another medium, were literary journalism? The questions are relevant to this study. Australia had no press to speak of in the early days of the settlement. Could letters or journals or memoir be included in circumstances where the more usual forms of publication were unavailable to the writer? The work of the Glenrowan journalists who covered the capture of Ned Kelly is easily recognisable as literary journalism; they were employed as journalists, working for large newspaper organisations late in the history of the colonial era, almost a century after First Settlement and a mere twenty-one years before Australia federated as a nation. Their writing was done in the conduct of their employment for the big city publications following the journalistic standards of the time. This book argues the best place to start this project is to go back to the beginning, with an examination of the non-fiction writing produced from the earliest days of white settlement to trace our own history and definition of the form.

1

WRITING REALITY: CONSTRUCTING A NATION

7

In the Beginning was the Word This book begins at First Settlement in 1788 when some of the earliest writing came from the senior founders, the military men and explorers— not only the well-known works of Watkin Tench, but those of others including Matthew Flinders, Charles Sturt and Ernest Giles. Readers were keen to hear of their extraordinary journeys to and within Australia, a place as foreign to them as Mars. Many of their books are still in print, not just because of their historical value but because they are fascinating narratives that continue to hold the interest of modern readers. But what of the people—particularly the convicts and women—who were integral to the establishment of the colony. While many were literate, their stories were less likely to be heard in formal publishing; instead their experiences were most often found transcribed in letters and journals written to be circulated back home at least among friends and relatives if not further afield. The writing of Elizabeth Macarthur, the Bussell sisters and Mary Thomas falls into this category. In recent years, “feminist” theorists, building on the work of Nancy Fraser, have broadened the boundaries of the public sphere to include women’s writing in forms that traditionally have been excluded from mainstream publication.24 Could letters and journal entries be considered literary journalism? Or as forerunners of the form? The colony’s founders were quickly followed by the migrants who explored and settled the emerging cities and surrounding bush, often recording their observations in memoir and ethnography, as well as sketches for the newspapers and journals that began to proliferate once government censorship was lifted in the 1820s. Among the texts considered in these pages, at least as precursors of literary journalism, are Ellen Clacy’s memoir of her experiences in the goldfields, Carl Lumholz’s ethnographic studies of indigenous people in Queensland and Arthur Vogan’s semi-fictionalised account of the brutality of the Queensland colonial system towards First Nations peoples. Australian character sketches began with the satirist, Henry Savery whose biting portraits of Hobart Town’s leading figures paved the way for later character sketches and profiles published in the pages of William Baker’s Heads of the People, JF Archibald and John Haynes’s The Bulletin, and Annie Bright’s Cosmos. Christina Smith wrote groundbreaking profiles of Aboriginal Australians in her ethnographic memoir The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines. Landscape and travel

8

W. MCDONALD

sketches were also popular with writers as diverse as James Martin, Richard Rowe, Louisa Anne Meredith, Louisa Atkinson, Henry Lawson, Marcus Clarke and AB “Banjo” Paterson, revealing the relationships settlers were developing with this ancient country and paving the way for later travel, nature and eco-writing. The latter part of this book concentrates on the writing that is more clearly recognisable to modern readers as literary journalism. It began to appear after 1850, once a thriving free press was established, built on the development of the railways, telegraph, and rotary press, linking the towns and cities that developed around the arable fringes of the continent. Journalists, particularly those employed by the established metropolitan newspapers, reported on all aspects of life in the colonies from the homeless in the slums of Melbourne to the “blackbirding” trade in Pacific Island labour for the Queensland sugar plantations to overseas conflicts, such as the Boer War, where Australian soldiers saw action. The world of letters was small in Australia, with many writers of novels, poetry and plays earning their living as editors and journalists.25 Besides Clarke and Paterson, the best-known literary journalists of the day included John Stanley James (Julian Thomas), JD Melvin and George “Chinese” Morrison. Women made few inroads into the press; for a woman to work in journalism in the colonial years was the exception. Nevertheless, there were some who were employed to write literary journalism for newspapers and magazines despite the odds against them, including Catherine Hay Thompson, Annie Bright, Agnes Macready and Edith Dickenson. The voices of First Nation Australians were sadly absent. The settlement of the Australian continent by the British was built on the legal fallacy that it was empty—in the Latin favoured by the legal system, terra nullius . While the existence of Aboriginal people pervades the colonial press, usually as an intractable problem the settlers must deal with, their first-hand perspectives were neither acknowledged nor given the space to be heard.

Laying the Foundations The literary journalism of the colonial era was central to the way in which the colony, and eventually the nation, defined itself. As each of the colonies developed metropolitan, suburban and rural newspapers and magazines, their distribution helped to unite people who were otherwise divided by geographical distance, social standing, wealth, occupation, gender and ethnicity—people who would otherwise have found it difficult to imagine themselves as part of the same national community. While the

1

WRITING REALITY: CONSTRUCTING A NATION

9

names of only a handful are remembered, by describing how it felt “to live and act in a particular period of human history”,26 the literary journalists laid the foundations of the Australian culture that thrives today. Their work fostered debates about who belonged and the values to which the nation should aspire, with many of the issues they raised still resonating. In tracing the beginnings of literary journalism in Australia, this book contributes to a definition of the country’s unique take on this emerging form and provides a glimpse into our early press history and ongoing development as a nation. This book does not pretend to be a comprehensive history of Australia’s version of literary journalism. Instead, it is a cultural history within the context of a modern theoretical framework, investigating the way literary journalism was produced across the timeframe of the colony. It raises questions about the nature of literary journalism as it began here, hopefully telling some interesting stories along the way while asking such questions as: Where did Australia’s literary journalism begin? What did it look like? Who wrote it? And how has it evolved over the past two hundred and forty years?

Notes 1. Including the well-known journalist JD Melvin who covered the siege for the Argus. 2. Willa McDonald and Kerrie Davies, “Creating history: Literary journalism and Ned Kelly’s last stand,” Australian Journalism Review 37, no. 2 (2015). 3. Despite a claim by the North American journalist Tom Wolfe that he and his colleagues invented the form: Tom Wolfe, “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe,” New York Magazine, 14 February, 1972, https://nymag.com/news/media/47353/. 4. See also the comment concerning the difficulty of drawing a distinction between some travel narratives and literary journalism by John Hartsock in his A History of American Literary Journalism, 13. 5. Richard Keeble and John Tulloch, Global literary journalism: exploring the journalistic imagination, Mass communication and journalism, v. 10, (New York: Peter Lang, 2012), 6. 6. Willa McDonald, “Creditable or Reprehensible? The Literary Journalism of Helen Garner,” in Literary Journalism across the Globe: Journalistic Traditions and Transnational Influences, ed. John S. and Reynolds Bak, William (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011).

10

W. MCDONALD

7. John C. Hartsock, “Svetlana Alexievich and the Nobel Prize for Literature: A musing on why the first full-time journalist to win the Prize is certainly deserving,” Literary Journalism: The Newsletter of the IALJS, 2016, https://s35767.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/ Literary_Journalism_v10n2_Spring_2016.pdf. 8. See, for example, the discussion of this topic in Geoff Dyer, et al., “‘Based on a true story’: the fine line between fact and fiction,” Guardian Australia, 6 December 2015, https://www.theguardian. com/books/2015/dec/06/based-on-a-true-story--geoff-dyer-fine-linebetween-fact-and-fiction-nonfiction. 9. Norman Sims, “Degrees of Forgiveness: Why I’ve Changed My Mind,” Literary Journalism: The Newsletter of the IALJS, https://s35767.pcdn. co/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1910_IALJS_Newsletter-1.pdf. 10. For an extensive discussion of immersion as a tool of journalism, see Ted Conover, Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep, vol. 202, Chicago guides to writing, editing, and publishing, (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016). 11. See Gay Talese’s description of his methodology in his Author’s Note, Gay Talese, Fame and Obscurity: Portraits (New York: New York World, 1970). 12. Talese, Fame and Obscurity: Portraits. 13. Thomas B. Connery, Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism: Representative Writers in an Emerging Genre (New York: Greenwood, 1992). 14. Jonathan Mahler, “When ‘Long-Form’ is Bad Form,” New York Times, 24 January 2014, https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/opinion/whenlong-form-is-bad-form.html. 15. Mahler, “Long-Form.” 16. Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists,” in Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction, ed. Mark; Sims Kramer, Norman (New York: Ballantyne, 1995). Reproduced in Neiman Storyboard, 1 January, 1995, https://niemanstoryboard.org/sto ries/breakable-rules-for-literary-journalists/. 17. Kramer, “Breakable Rules.” 18. See, for example, the early criticisms by these authors: Dwight Macdonald, “Parajournalism or Tom Wolfe and his Magic Writiing Machine,” in The Reporter as Artist, ed. Ronald Weber (New York: Hastings House, 1974); Deborah McGill, “The New Journalism Revisited,” The Atlantic, 1980; Michael J Arlen, “Notes on the New Journalism,” in The Reporter as Artist, ed. Ronald Weber (New York: Hastings House, 1974). 19. Lindsay Morton, “The Role of Imagination in Literary Journalism,” Literary Journalism Studies 10, no. 1 (2018). 20. Paul S. Belgrade, “The Literary Journalism as Illuminator of Subjectivity” (Ph.D. University of Maryland, 1990), 47.

1

WRITING REALITY: CONSTRUCTING A NATION

11

21. Norman Sims and Mark Kramer, Literary Journalism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-fiction (New York: Ballantine, 1995), 3. 22. Thomas Connery quoted in Sims and Kramer, New Collection, 4. 23. Nancy L. Roberts, “Firing the Canon: the historical search for literary journalism’s missing links,” Literary Journalism Studies 4, no. 2 (2012). 24. Roberts, “Firing the Canon.”; Dale Spender, Writing a New World: Two centuries of Australian women writers (London: Pandora, 1988). 25. David Conley, “Birth of a Novelist: Death of a Journalist,” Australian Studies in Journalism 7 (1998). 26. Sims and Kramer, New Collection, 4.

Bibliography Arlen, Michael J. “Notes on the New Journalism.” In The Reporter as Artist, edited by Ronald Weber, 247–54. New York: Hastings House, 1974. Belgrade, Paul S. “The Literary Journalism as Illuminator of Subjectivity.” Ph.D., University of Maryland, 1990. Conley, David. “Birth of a Novelist: Death of a Journalist.” Australian Studies in Journalism 7 (1998): 46–73. Connery, Thomas B. Sourcebook of American Literary Journalism: Representative Writers in an Emerging Genre. New York: Greenwood, 1992. Conover, Ted. Immersion: A Writer’s Guide to Going Deep. Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing. Vol. 202. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. Dyer, Geoff, et al. “‘Based on a True Story’: The Fine Line between Fact and Fiction.” Guardian Australia, 6 December 2015. https://www.theguardian. com/books/2015/dec/06/based-on-a-true-story-geoff-dyer-fine-line-bet ween-fact-and-fiction-nonfiction. Hartsock, John C. “Svetlana Alexievich and the Nobel Prize for Literature: A Musing on Why the First Full-Time Journalist to Win the Prize Is Certainly Deserving.” Literary Journalism: The Newsletter of the IALJS, 2016, 26–27. https://s35767.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/Lit erary_Journalism_v10n2_Spring_2016.pdf. Keeble, Richard, and John Tulloch. Global Literary Journalism: Exploring the Journalistic Imagination. Mass Communication and Journalism, V. 10. New York: Peter Lang, 2012. Kramer, Mark. “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists.” Chap. Preface In Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction, edited by Mark, Sims Kramer, Norman. New York: Ballantyne, 1995. Macdonald, Dwight. “Parajournalism or Tom Wolfe and His Magic Writiing Machine.” In The Reporter as Artist, edited by Ronald Weber, 223–33. New York: Hastings House, 1974.

12

W. MCDONALD

Mahler, Jonathan. “When ‘Long-Form’ Is Bad Form.” New York Times, 24 January 2014. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/25/opinion/whenlong-form-is-bad-form.html. McDonald, Willa. “Creditable or Reprehensible? The Literary Journalism of Helen Garner.” In Literary Journalism across the Globe: Journalistic Traditions and Transnational Influences, edited by John S. and Reynolds Bak, William, 260–275. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2011. McDonald, Willa, and Kerrie Davies. “Creating History: Literary Journalism and Ned Kelly’s Last Stand.” Australian Journalism Review 37, no. 2 (2015): 33–49. McGill, Deborah. “The New Journalism Revisited.” The Atlantic, 1980, 91–96. Morton, Lindsay. “The Role of Imagination in Literary Journalism.” Literary Journalism Studies 10, no. 1 (2018): 92–111. Roberts, Nancy L. “Firing the Canon: The Historical Search for Literary Journalism’s Missing Links.” Literary Journalism Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 81–93. Sims, Norman, and Mark Kramer. Literary Journalism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction. New York: Ballantine, 1995. Sims, Norman. “Degrees of Forgiveness: Why I’ve Changed My Mind.” Literary Journalism: The Newsletter of the IALJS, 5,10. https://s35767.pcdn.co/wpcontent/uploads/2019/10/1910_IALJS_Newsletter-1.pdf. Spender, Dale. Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers. London: Pandora, 1988. Talese, Gay. Fame and Obscurity: Portraits. New York: New York World, 1970. Wolfe, Tom. “The Birth of ‘The New Journalism’; Eyewitness Report by Tom Wolfe.” New York Magazine, 14 February, 1972. https://nymag.com/news/ media/47353/.

CHAPTER 2

True Beginnings

John Feltham Archibald and John Haynes, founding editors of The Bulletin, in Darlinghurst, ca. 1882 (Unknown photographer). Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_2

13

14

W. MCDONALD

When the eleven ships of the British First Fleet landed on 26 January 1788 at a place the local Gadigal1 people called Warrane, they carried not only a human cargo of more than 750 convicts,2 but also Australia’s first printing press. Among the farming tools, medical supplies, woollen stockings, leg irons3 and other items necessary to establish, the new penal and agricultural settlement was a small wooden screw press. The problem was there was no-one on the First Fleet who knew how to use it. It would be some years before the convict George Hughes arrived at the fledgling settlement that would become Sydney.4 He taught himself to use the press, setting it up in a lean-to attached to Government House where he used it to print proclamations, notices and orders at the direction of the governor. These were essential for outlining the rules of the new settlement which had been created from a simple camp set up on the harbour shore by a largely recalcitrant convict workforce. Broadsides were used by the military government to convey to the residents of the embryonic penal colony how they should and should not behave. These were large single sheets of paper printed on only one side that were pasted on church doors, the walls of taverns, and sometimes trees. They carried the force of law and outlawed certain activities from loitering on the wharves to reminding goat owners to keep them fenced in lest they be “forfeited to the use of the orphan school”.5 The proclamations doubled as news sheets, revealing the behaviour of the residents, miscreants or otherwise, as well as providing news of threats from bushrangers or the native population, and events such as the convict rebellion at Castle Hill in 1804.6

The Printer Arrives The press really began when the convict George Howe disembarked at Sydney Cove in 1800, but it would be decades before it carried literary journalism like that written by the Glenrowan journalists. Unlike Hughes, Howe was a trained printer. He hailed originally from the West Indies where he learned his trade from his father, the government printer on St Christopher’s Island. After completing a classical education and a printing apprenticeship, he travelled to England to hone his skills on newspapers including The Times . In 1799, he was tried for shoplifting and sentenced to death, but instead of facing the noose was transported to the colonies for life. His wife died on the long voyage out, but he arrived with his son Robert who would later play his own role in the birth of the Australian

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

15

press, not least by succeeding his father as government printer and publishing Australia’s first periodical in 1821, The Australian Magazine; or, Compendium of Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Intelligence.7 Nevertheless, Howe, the elder, was responsible for Australia’s first book. He applied to Governor Philip Gidley King, for permission to produce the hefty New South Wales General Standing Orders in 1802 which contained many of the government orders his predecessor had printed as broadsides. A year later, Howe published the first newspaper— the Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser—which became the government’s main method of issuing its policies and rules. It was essential to the development of business and trade in the colony. The first issue of the Sydney Gazette came out on 5 March 1803 with a news story of the violent raid of two homes by a group of Irish prisoners. By that time, the colony had been taking free settlers for over a decade.8 It had grown to 7,000 inhabitants, but still fewer than a thousand were free and government control remained strict.9 Howe received no payment for his work until 1811, forcing him to call for advertisements from the first edition of the four-page weekly. His was a difficult business to be in. The press was strictly controlled with the governors acting as the colonies’ first publishers.10 Ink and paper were always in short supply, exacerbated by the authorities withholding these basic resources from time to time as a tool of censorship. Sometimes paper was so scarce Howe turned to his readers for help, advertising for any that might have been “by any accident from damp or slight mildew rendered unfit for writing”.11 It is likely he resorted to a recipe for home-made ink favoured by Hughes that combined charcoal and whale or shark oil, as well as resins extracted from trees.12 As a ticket-of-leave convict under the scrutiny of the authorities, Howe had very little freedom in what he could publish. He was always deferential in his approach to the colony’s governors whose control over the newspaper was total. Any journalism he ran had to be officially approved with copy often, … so corrected that frequently [he] could scarcely recognise his own sentences, or detect a shadow of their original meaning. Paragraphs, essential to the proper understanding of the subjects…were mercilessly erased; and sometimes whole columns were annihilated at a blow.13

16

W. MCDONALD

After he died in 1821, George Howe’s son Robert took over the business. Robert, who had experienced a spiritual awakening the year before, brought to it his own brand of religious fervour and under his editorship the Gazette became “moral to the point of priggishness, patriotic to the point of servility…”,14 very different from the noisy, energetic, rough-and-tumble Sydney town the newspaper served.15

Towards a Free Press Unsurprisingly, there was no room for home-grown and locally published literary journalism to emerge in these early years. Besides the restrictions placed on colonial publications, survival was uppermost in the minds of the very early colonists. While many fared better than they would have in England’s jails or the prison hulks moored on the Thames, the early years brought hunger and hardship. The colonists tended to be young, adventurous, sometimes lawless and all too often brutalised, if not by the consequences of poverty, then by the penal system itself. Food and shelter were the immediate concerns, but even later, as quickly growing settlements spread around the perimeter of the continent, the focus was generally on ensuring life was materially better in this new land than in the old. The “higher born” came to Australia to make their mark in terms of wealth and positions of importance, while the poorer immigrants and emancipated convicts saw an opportunity free from the oppressive class strictures of the motherland to improve their lot.16 Up until 1824, when the first Legislative Council was formed, the military governors were absolute rulers; the British parliament at Westminster was the only power above them. With England eight months sail away, the governors often exercised wider powers than they were given. This went largely unchallenged.17 Around the time the first issues of the Sydney Gazette were being printed, a penal colony was also being established on Van Dieman’s Land, the island off the southern tip of Australia now known as Tasmania. Its first newspaper was the Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer which was launched as the new year began in 1810. Not only was censorship as strict in Hobart as it was in Sydney, there were also the same chronic shortages of paper and ink. The newspaper did not last long. It was quickly followed by others, culminating in the Hobart Town Gazette in 1825.18 The earliest newspapers in other Australian colonies that were settled later were just as controlled. The Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal which came out in

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

17

1833 and the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register were both considered to be mouthpieces of their colonial governors. The South Australian Gazette was initially printed in London before the colony of South Australia was proclaimed in 1836. It came out on the same ship as the first official European settlers of South Australia and would later be edited by the governor’s private secretary.19 Although the earliest papers in the colony were run by or deferential to the authorities, the next generation of newspaper proprietors was very different.20 They were men like the Australian-born William Charles Wentworth and the London journalist Robert Wardell who chafed against the censorship imposed on their presses. They daringly launched their Australian newspaper in 1824 without permission of the governor. The Monitor, which began in Sydney in 1826, was also an outlet for the passionate concerns of its proprietors Edward Smith Hall and Arthur Hill. Hall was deeply religious and used it to champion the causes of the convicts and the poor, alongside such issues as representative government and trial by jury.21 As Sally Young notes, this new generation of newspaper proprietors was made up of commercially minded businessmen, ambitious and standing for an emerging middle class that was struggling under the constraints imposed by a military government. These papers were willing to challenge authority but unlike the British radical newspapers that were struggling to be free from oppressive government restrictions and taxes, they were “not calling for universal suffrage, nor were they agitating against royalty, religion or private property”.22 Instead, they wanted a society free from the oppressions of military rule and the ability to pursue their own commercial and political aspirations. These aspirations from the beginning set the tone for the Australian press23 which grew in size and sophistication in tandem with the development of the colonies and the introduction of new technologies including the railways, the telegraph and the rotary press. The first half of the nineteenth century saw huge increases in population, commerce and revenue across the continent. The gold rushes brought even more growth; over the three decades of 1861–1891, Australia’s population almost tripled from 1.15 million people to 3.17 million.24 As the settlements grew, so did a push for the colonies to begin to move beyond their convict beginnings. Throughout the 1830s, attitudes towards transportation as an acceptable system for punishing criminals had been changing with

18

W. MCDONALD

humanitarian and liberal viewpoints instead coming to the fore. Eventually, apart from the political prisoners, only the most hardened and dangerous convicts were being transported, creating a deepening gulf between the convicts who were arriving and the people already residing in the colonies. By 1840, transportation to Australia’s east coast was prohibited, although there were unpopular attempts to revive it. Finally, after almost a decade of no arrivals, a last shipment of convicts disembarked to an unwilling reception at Sydney in 1850, although it would be another eighteen years before the very last convicts arrived, in Western Australia.25 These social and economic changes influenced the development of Australia’s press in these early years. While records are incomplete and exact figures are impossible to ascertain, the literary historian HM Green26 estimates around 170 newspapers were launched in Australia by the beginning of the 1850s. As he observed, the interests of the colonial world were practical in line with the harsh demands of creating new lives. At first, most readers were interested only in news that might directly affect their material prospects, providing no audience for locally produced literary journalism. The papers operated as fora for readers’ inquiries and complaints against the imperial authorities, the various colonial governors, and institutions or people who they thought might be inimical to their interests. Even the educated were constrained by their circumstances—there was little room in the more difficult years up to 1850 for the expression of intellectual or aesthetic aspirations—but those who were interested could access the dated overseas newspapers and journals that arrived with each ship. Rival local papers would send out reporters in rowboats to meet the ships, vying to republish extracts of both nonfiction and fiction from the four-month-old publications they carried with them. The first newspaper launched in Victoria was the Melbourne Advertiser in 1838, only three years after the city was settled, while Australia’s longest-running newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, began in 1831 as a weekly called the Sydney Herald. Other important titles that emerged were Melbourne’s Argus (1846) and the Age (1854); Hobart’s Mercury (1854); the South Australian Advertiser (1858); Brisbane’s Telegraph (1872); Sydney’s Daily Telegraph (1879); the Sunday paper the Truth (1890); the Adelaide Express (1863) and Brisbane’s The Worker (1890). By 1892, around 600 metropolitan daily and weekly, suburban and country newspapers and magazines were being published. By 1900, there were more than 200 newspapers published in New South Wales alone.27

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

19

Only the financially fittest newspapers survived in the colonies; most publications were short-lived, rarely extending beyond a couple of issues in the small and straightened colonial markets. Yet, shortly after Federation, Australia had three times as many separate daily newspapers as the United Kingdom in relation to population.28 Of the major publications, the Sydney Morning Herald, the Age and the Argus dominated the market, with the latter two most often the sites of the sketches and literary journalism discussed in these pages.

Picking Up the Pace: The Press After 1850 As the second half of the nineteenth century dawned, Australia had grown from two small convict towns to an advanced democracy with settlements around the continent.29 Van Diemen’s Land was declared a separate colony in 1825; Western Australia in 1831; South Australia in 1836; Victoria in 1851; and Queensland in 1859. More people were emigrating from Britain, especially during the gold rushes to Victoria and New South Wales. The new migrants were largely middle class, bringing the seeds of a radical liberal tradition, that together with the economic boom that followed, led to democratic political reforms and responsible government. Australia, a socially fluid country with a relatively high standard of living, was becoming a leading democracy worldwide.30 The secret ballot was introduced in 1856 and, while it would take some decades to flow through to all the Australian colonies, so too was the right of white men to vote. Suffrage for white women was achieved from 1894, beginning in South Australia. When the Commonwealth Franchise Act took effect in 1902, Australia became the first country in the modern world to allow white women to both vote and stand for election to parliament.31 Newspapers were seen as playing a crucial role in those democratic developments. It would be hard to exaggerate their importance; they were the main point of connection between colonists around the sparsely settled continent, ostensibly disseminating news and encouraging literacy, but also providing information from “home” and maintaining British values and aspirations. They were shared and read aloud in pubs and taverns and provided in reading rooms of the Mechanics’ Institutes, the forerunners of public libraries that began springing up around the country.32 Technological innovations brought striking changes to Australia’s newspaper environment in the second half of the nineteenth century. The

20

W. MCDONALD

development of the railways in the 1850s between Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide enabled the papers to increase their circulations, with people from rural and regional communities gaining access to the large city dailies for their news where previously they had been restricted to weekly summaries. The railways also provided new reading spaces. It was far easier to read in a locomotive than a bumpy horse-drawn carriage.33 The introduction of the rotary press, firstly at the Sydney Morning Herald but soon across the industry, dramatically increased the papers’ printing capacity. For example, when the Sydney Morning Herald began, it was a four-page weekly produced on a small hand press, reaching 750 subscribers. As demand for it grew, it appeared more frequently with a corresponding need for a better press. After trying a locally made hand press, it followed the example of the London Times and introduced steam printing in 1853. This increased the number of copies it could produce to 2,000 per hour, a 16-fold increase in its printing capacity. Many more press upgrades followed. When the paper began using a rotary press in 1875, of the type used by major papers in the United States from the late 1840s and London papers from the mid-1850s, production increased to 14,000 copies per hour.34 Generous government subsidies provided a fillip to the reach and circulation of the papers which, combined with the technological developments, delivered the funds and staff to write immersive literary journalism. Among the financial advantages available were free postage, free special trains to deliver morning newspapers to regional areas, and low import duties on ink and paper. There were also government contracts and government advertising.35 The introduction of the telegraph was equally transformative. The first city telegraph cable was laid between Adelaide and Melbourne in July 1858, resulting in so much interstate news coming down the line that a second one was soon constructed. The line was extended to Sydney in 1861, with all the major cities connected by 1872. In that year, the Overland Telegraph Line was laid that directly linked Adelaide with London via a submarine cable between Darwin and Java.36 Telegraphic news soon earned its own column in most newspapers, but it was expensive to procure. Newspaper alliances were formed to fund it, well in advance of the British press where the telegraph networks were privately owned and telegraphed news was even more expensive to receive.37 The government allowed newspapers to become among the largest users of both the telegraph and later telephone services at exceptionally low rates. The growth in circulation of papers that these subsidies

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

21

helped support was staggering. By the end of the 1840s, around 1.3 million papers were distributed free by post in New South Wales, constituting around 90% of all the colony’s mail. By 1890, this figure had grown to 31 million papers.38 As Young shows, the idea of newspapers as a vital part of the Australian democracy was used to justify the large and varied government financial aid that was provided. The papers were seen to guard the public interest by keeping an eye on the parliament, government and the courts. To this end, many of the long-lived newspapers affected political independence claiming in their mottos and mastheads to be neutral spectators of the political process, distancing themselves from the history of partisanship or association with government displayed not only by newspapers in Britain and the United States, but also by earlier Australian publications. The Hobart Mercury, for example, told readers it was “the servant of one master…the public”. The Sydney Morning Herald adopted the motto, “In moderation placing all my glory, while Tories call me Whig—and Whigs a Tory” while over its inside editorial was written, “Sworn to no master, of no sect am I”. Despite their assertions of independence, the papers were deeply entwined with politics and had clear political preferences.39 While the long-surviving newspapers, such as the Melbourne Argus and the Sydney Morning Herald tended to begin as liberal, their politics generally shifted to conservatism once they became established and profitable.40 The founders of the major dailies were not only businessmen, most were also politicians or had political aspirations. They funded election campaigns, provided preferred candidates with the services of their staff and gave them valuable positive publicity. The Argus , for example, began as a radical journal in 1846 under William Kerr, but after he was bankrupted by libel actions, continued under Edward Wilson. Both these owners wanted social and political reforms and spoke out loudly against the colonial government. When Wilson was the sole owner, the Argus opened its columns “to any radical group or charitable movement”, with the paper adopting a “propagandist tone … not untypical of the English press of the day, even of The Times which was Wilson’s ultimate model”.41 He was initially fiercely independent, exposing government scandals while “shunning personal contact with politicians and government officers”.42 Wilson wanted to break the squatters’ monopoly over the land and argued against the excesses of the officials overseeing the miners and the goldfields. But in 1852 Lauchlan Mackinnon, a minister of parliament, became co-owner with Wilson, taking over the business side of the paper.43 After

22

W. MCDONALD

the miners rebelled in the Eureka Stockade two years later, the paper became much more conservative. Within twenty years, it was so reactionary that it was seen as the organ of the establishment, particularly businessmen and pastoralists.44 An exception to the trend to conservatism was the Age led by David Syme.45 He never held public office but was nonetheless known as “King David” because of his influence over Victorian politicians and the colony’s public and trade policies. He was a zealous advocate of trade tariffs to protect local manufacturing and employment and his paper was unusual, in that it vigorously supported the progressive causes of the day from free and compulsory secular education to the eight-hour work day, the abolition of child labour and sweatshops, and universal male suffrage. The difference in outlook between the Argus and the Age in the latter part of the nineteenth century is evident in the literary journalism they produced, for example, concerning the “blackbirding” trade that brought Pacific Islanders to Queensland to work on the sugar plantations. The men who wrote for the more conservative Argus never questioned the importance of the trade for the colonial economy, while the Age’s George Morrison equated it with slavery.46

Popularising the Papers Advances in technology enabled the newspapers to build large circulations at an affordable price which changed the way newspapers were distributed and consequently their readerships. No longer did they have to aim exclusively at a more affluent audience who could afford to take out an expensive subscription. The move to cheaper cover prices and mass circulation meant a change in newspaper content to make it more readable and to appeal to more diverse audiences, including working class and female readers.47 “Penny papers” that cost only a cent had been available in the United States since the 1830s, and low-priced weeklies in Britain from the 1840s. Penny papers only began in Australia in the early 1860s. Possibly the first penny daily evening paper was the Telegraph in Adelaide which was launched in 1862; the first morning paper to follow suit was the Melbourne Herald a year later but it proved to be such a threat to the morning Age that David Syme bought it and turned it into an afternoon paper in 1869.48 The overseas penny papers and their equivalents introduced local news, court reports, human interest stories and scandalous tales,49 although the latter usually with a moral purpose.50 Like

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

23

the movement that would emerge in the United States a hundred years later, it also was labelled “new journalism”, although in Australia it was termed “American-style journalism”.51 Among the stylistic innovations it brought were a shift from opinion to news, headlines, celebrity features, interviews, human interest stories, a more conversational tone overall and “snippets” rather than lengthy columns. This move to popularism favoured literary journalism with its facility to convey factual reporting to readers in engaging ways. The popularist approach in journalism would become even more pronounced towards the end of the century with the advent of “Yellow Journalism”,52 a trend that would have a lasting impact on media style and content. It arose from an intense battle for market share between two New York City newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. In the fierce competition for readers that followed, both papers increased the emphasis on people-oriented stories. Banner headlines, illustrations and a strong sense of narrative followed. So too did gossip, speculation and exaggeration. Journalists frequently resorted to sensationalism, rushing to publication to scoop their opponents and sometimes inventing information to meet their deadlines or make their stories more interesting.53 Not all the changes were negative; Pulitzer and Hearst reached audiences overlooked by more traditional newspapers, while also launching important investigations into government corruption and advocating for needed social reforms. A similar path was followed in Britain by WT Stead who transformed the traditionally conservative Pall Mall Gazette by introducing sensational investigations and political campaigns, as well as stylistic changes such as the incorporation of illustrations and interviews. He established the monthly Review of Reviews in 1890. Alfred Harmsworth (later Lord Northcliffe) was another pioneer of popular journalism in Britain, launching the Daily Mail in 1896 with entertainments including book serials, women’s sections and society columns.54 Some of the Australian penny papers, particularly Melbourne’s Herald and Sun that were launched in the early 1860s, adopted features of this “American-style journalism” to broaden their reach, particularly among less affluent and less educated readers. The more traditional dailies, while sometimes experimenting with penny evening papers and eventually moving to lower prices,55 resisted the move to greatly popularising their content. The Sydney Morning Herald, for example, prided itself on its serious, encyclopaedic reporting, which meant it did not favour literary journalism in the same way that the Melbourne newspapers did.

24

W. MCDONALD

Described in at least one quarter as having a “fatal odour of respectable dullness”,56 it had no intention of changing to a racier, lighter style. By comparison, the Age and the Argus , published sketches and pieces of literary journalism that were beacons of informative, interesting and lively writing. Henry Britton, George Ernest Morrison, John Stanley James (writing as the Vagabond or Julian Thomas), Thomas Carrington and Catherine Hay Thomson are just a few of the writers whose reporting, as shown in later chapters, could never be dismissed as respectably dull.

Colonial Journals and Magazines: The Creation of a Literary Culture Nor were the newspapers the only publications in the colony to feature amusing and entertaining articles to attract readers. A number of small journals and magazines had been launched that focused on crime, gossip and satire and aimed to attract a wide readership, sometimes concentrating particularly on the convicts and lower classes. In 1832, Alfred Hill, Edward Smith Hall’s partner on the Monitor, began a Sunday paper Hill’s Life, modelled on the English Bell’s Weekly.57 It was light and humorous, running police reports and sporting news that found an audience among convicts and ticket-of-leavers. The weekly journal The Currency Lad began the same year and championed the interests of the native-born children of the British settlers and convicts, focusing on crime as entertainment. The Satirist ran gossip as news from 1843; it was the first of several satirical publications that were launched across the century, although few survived for long including Marcus Clarke’s Humbug: A Weekly Illustrated Journal of Satire that lasted only five months.58 It was a similar story for most of the small publications—nearly six hundred journals and magazines were published over the hundred years following the appearance of Australia’s first journal, Robert Howe’s Australian Magazine.59 They often included a broad mixture of content ranging from science, religion, agriculture and business to fiction, with the initial aim of reaching a wide readership, although the long-lasting ones soon found their own niche audiences. At least thirty publications used “Australian” in their titles in an attempt to widen their appeal between 1820 and 1900.60 This was in marked contrast to the newspapers, none of which attempted to be national. Only about half of all the periodicals published survived their first year. Howe’s Australian Magazine, whose purpose was “to disseminate useful knowledge, religious

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

25

principles and moral habits”,61 set the pattern. It ran for sixteen months, closing in September 1822. Some of the journals did thrive with a number managing to stay in publication well into the twentieth century, providing reliable outlets for literary journalism. For example, several of the colonial weeklies, which had the advantage of being launched by the metropolitan dailies with the purpose of reaching rural markets, were long-staying publications, including the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sydney Mail and the Evening Mail’s Australian Town and Country Journal , the Argus ’s Australasian, the Age’s Leader and the Brisbane Courier’s Queenslander. The weeklies were sometimes the site of the best and most innovative examples of literary journalism written in the colonies. Among the overseas periodicals that were influential and available through the century were Harper’s New Monthly Magazine, Scribner’s Magazine (which launched an Australian edition in the 1890s), Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine and Cornhill Magazine.62 Until the 1890s, Australian book publishing was prohibitively expensive and not firmly established, which meant that periodicals and journals were the main outlets for the publication of poetry, short stories and serialised novels, increasingly by local authors. While so many periodicals were mere flashes of fluorescence in the colonial markets, they nevertheless played a critical role in mapping out Australian literature. As Ken Gelder and Rachael Weaver observed, “many of the colonial journals were obliged to balance the temptation to reprint cheap, popular content from overseas with an ideological investment in the development of a distinctively local literary culture”.63 Not only did the journals publish local content, “They debated, analysed and evaluated it, creating genealogies and traditions recalling pasts and imagining possible futures”.64

Irreverence and Tantrums: The Emergence of The Bulletin Best known and most influential of Australia’s weeklies was one that was independent of the newspapers, the Sydney Bulletin. The depression that hit Melbourne in the early 1890s saw the centre of Australian journalism shift to Sydney, with The Bulletin becoming a major attraction for talented journalists needing work.65 A daring, irreverent journal, it nurtured many of Australia’s best known early writers, including Henry Lawson and AB Paterson, both of whose literary journalism was published

26

W. MCDONALD

in its pages alongside their poetry and short stories. The Bulletin was named after the San Francisco Bulletin.66 It adopted some of the aspects of both yellow journalism and new journalism, emphasising political reporting and incorporating satirical cartoons.67 While there were models to build on in the United States, there had been nothing like it in Australia. It was famed for its larrikinism and few areas were safe from its barbed humour. It regularly lampooned politicians, businessmen, feminists and prohibitionists, with particular scorn reserved for Asians and Aboriginal people. Although it was cynical, it was also idealistic and appealed to the rebellious, youthful spirit that marked the turn of the century and Australia’s transition into a nation in its own right.68 Described as “racist, isolationist, protectionist and ‘masculine’”,69 The Bulletin focused on supporting Australia’s republican movement, Federation (not as popular a cause in New South Wales as it was in the other colonies), Home Rule for Ireland, liberal democracy, protectionism, the labour movement and White Australia. It opposed the Boer War, public borrowing, private ownership of land and interstate rivalry. Its masthead until the 1960s was “Australia for the White Man”.70 John Docker describes it as, “replete with discords as much as harmonies, telling stories in differing rhythms and voices, never in a single tone or single voice”.71 D. H. Lawrence, who spent three months in Australia in 1922, would describe it as a “lively creature” that was “made up all of bits, and had neither head nor tail nor feet nor wings”. He “liked its straightforwardness and the kick in some of its tantrums”, even though it “tried a dowdy bit of swagger sometimes, especially on the pink page”.72 Compared with “the horrible stuffiness of English newspapers”, it was “the only periodical in the world that really amused him”.73 H. M. Green, writing in the 1960s, would compare it in some respects to the New Yorker, which first appeared on newsstands in 1925.74 The Bulletin was committed to building an Australian perspective rather than the view from Britain that pervaded the daily newspapers.75 Launched by John Haynes and JF Archibald, it aimed to be a journal of political and business commentary with some literary content. Haynes was to handle the advertising and distribution, while Archibald would write and edit the copy. Archibald, who had been christened John Feltham but called himself Jules François because of his admiration for all things French, was the one who gave the magazine its character—“concise, pithy, ‘pointed’, epigrammatic at times, self-conscious, rather artificial and full of mannerisms; disjointed but remarkably effective and entertaining”.76

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

27

The first issue, published on 31 January 1880, carried a striking piece of literary journalism on the hangings of the Wantabadgery bushrangers, Captain Moonlite and Thomas Rogan, at Darlinghurst Gaol, most likely written by Archibald. The issue cost four pence and the 3,000 copies that were printed quickly sold out signalling a successful future for The Bulletin. It became Australia’s longest-running magazine, only closing in 2008.77

Unheard: First Nation Voices The voices of First Nations people went unheard in The Bulletin or any other arm of the colonial press. Without an alphabetised, written language, Aboriginal people could not speak for themselves, at least not in a way that could breach effectively the “deafness” of the settlers. Aboriginal cultures simply did not exist to colonial society, except as re-inscribed through modes of knowledge of Europeans.78 Although there was a rich diversity of First Nations peoples, cultures and languages,79 they were homogenised by the press into a single amorphous group and labelled “the problem”.80 When the violence did surface in the newspapers, it was often in a section simply called “The Blacks”, with the stories running under headlines such as “Outrage by the Natives” or “Affray with the Natives”. The articles would detail the crimes of First Nations people that resulted in “reprisals” by the settlers, but never refer to any inciting acts by the settlers as they forcibly dispossessed the indigenous peoples from their lands. As a result, the newspapers worked to entrench the belief that the settlers were justified in their behaviour. They sometimes gave overt support to policies such as the “dispersal” of Aboriginal people from squatters’ runs and towns—a euphemism for violence and murder—but just as often stayed quiet, providing no opposition.81 The silence in the colonial press regarding the treatment of the First Nations people was exacerbated by the consequences of the Myall Creek massacre in 1838. It was not the only massacre—the killing of Aboriginal people by British settlers and convicts was accepted as a “cruel necessity” and occurred across the continent82 —but in the undeclared war against the First Nations, it was one of the few times white men were brought to court and punished for their actions.83 The massacre, at the hands of a group of convict stockmen, involved the murder of twenty-eight unarmed Wirrayaraay people, including women and children. Despite the

28

W. MCDONALD

shocking savagery of the killings, which were mostly done from horseback with swords, many people in the colony were outraged that settlers and convicts could even be brought to trial for the killing of Aboriginal people.84 In the first of two trials against the convict stockmen, the accused men gave no evidence on legal advice, while their barristers argued that the bodies of the victims were so charred they could not be accurately identified. The tactic of silence was successful with the jury taking less than twenty minutes to return a verdict of not guilty.85 Undeterred, two days after the first trial, the prosecution served a fresh indictment against seven of the men, this time on the accusation of killing a Wirrayaraay child. Although only half of the citizens called to serve on the jury showed up, sufficient attended for the trial to run. After lengthy deliberation, the seven men were found guilty of the crime and were hanged.86 They were the first British subjects to be executed in Australia for massacring First Nations people.87 Rebecca Wood argues that the reporting of the massacre and trial in the Sydney Herald 88 demonstrates a pivotal shift in the colony’s identity towards an Australian, rather than British, identity. Although the Sydney Herald would dominate the New South Wales press from the 1840s, at the time of the Myall Creek massacre, it was still competing with the more established papers, the Sydney Gazette and the Colonist . Both those newspapers took a moral stance against the accused men, using lofty language to look down on them as disreputable and undesirable elements in the colony. The Sydney Herald was alone in taking their side, cleverly tapping into a general feeling of support for the men that existed among the colonists.89 The Sydney Herald had become the mouthpiece of the squatters, a group growing increasingly wealthy and powerful, but one which felt progressively beleaguered in the face of political opposition from established landowners, the working class and a growing urban middle class. Among the threats the squatters were encountering were severe drought, possible recession and the insistence by the colonial government that they only be granted grazing rights and leases rather than legal ownership of the lands they occupied.90 The Sydney Herald strategically seized on the situation, representing the Myall Creek killers as innocent victims— “settlers” living in hardship, isolation and under constant threat from murderous blacks—unsupported by the British, the colonial government, church leaders or humanitarians.91

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

29

In impassioned and accessible prose, it portrayed this new version of “settler” as rational, decent, practical and manly, including itself and its readers in the same unified vision that sidestepped the usual class and political divisions of the day. As Wood notes, “As a strategy it was good for sales, but it was also politically astute”.92 The tactic fed into a widespread feeling the men should never have been tried nor sentenced to death for doing “what any real men would have done: defended and protected their families, servants and property”.93 Wood posits the Sydney Herald’s approach reflected a growing sense of egalitarianism and distance from the British government that would form part of the colony’s future national identity.94 Perhaps more importantly, the possibility that whites could be hanged for killing Aboriginal people embedded a distrust of the administration, and a secrecy about frontier violence, that would persist in Australia, and its press, throughout the next century.95 Despite the challenges, an Aboriginal newspaper was produced in the nineteenth century, The Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle in 1836– 7, edited by Thomas Brune and Walter George Arthur. The two young men had been educated at the Hobart Orphan School and sent to Flinders Island, along with other Tasmanian Aborigines following the violent conflict of the 1820s and ‘30s that nearly wiped out the local Aboriginal populations. The Chronicle was a mission project with the editors forced to adopt the religious language encouraged by their patron, the Protector of Aborigines in Van Diemen’s Land. Yet, even in these restrictive circumstances, Gregory D Smithers argues, the editors managed to express some resistance.96 For example, in the issue published on 28 September 1837, they wrote: “Give praise to God, for it is good for us to look out for [H]im now … always [singing] in heaven no [hunger], no thirst, we will have everything that is good in heaven”, signalling some of the colonial injustice they were enduring in their earthly lives. The paper ran for twenty-nine issues, but it was a lone voice. After its closure, it would be another century, well after Federation, before the next Aboriginal newspapers and magazines appeared.97

Women and Journalism: A Man’s Game Journalism in nineteenth-century Australia was largely the province of men. While there were women editors and journalists before the 1880s, they were few in number. Journalism was one way an educated woman

30

W. MCDONALD

could earn an income but it was barely respectable; it had about it the whiff of loose morals. The women who did write for the papers mostly worked as casual penny-a-liners, publishing their articles anonymously, sometimes using pseudonyms or the names of men they were close to. The advantage these women had was that they could pitch to editors to write on any subject. Caroline Chisholm wrote regularly for Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper in London on life in the colony in the 1840s, while twenty years later Mary Helena Fortune wrote sketches for the Australian Journal , Louisa Atkinson wrote about the flora and fauna in the Blue Mountains for the Sydney Morning Herald and Catherine Hay Thomson contributed a series of investigative literary journalism pieces into the conditions for women in Melbourne’s residential institutions to the Argus . Catherine Spence, an exception to the freelance rule, initially wrote for most of the main newspapers and journals in the colonies, but by 1878 was employed on staff as a leader writer on the South Australian Register. Among the prominent women editors of the day were Louisa Lawson (Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women), Caroline Dexter and Harriet Clisby (Interpreter), Cora Anna Weekes (Spectator), Maybanke Susannah Wolstenholme (Woman’s Voice) and Vida Goldstein (Woman’s Sphere). These women all included political pieces in their publications, particularly advocating for the causes of women in the lead up to women’s suffrage. When women began to be employed as journalists in the latter part of the century, it was ironically for most a backward step. While they could write under their own names, they were co-opted to work on the women’s columns and pages designed by male editors to attract readers and marketing focused on the domestic sphere. This meant women were restricted to “the deadly, dreary ruck of long dress reports and the lists of those who ‘also ran’ at miscellaneous functions”.98 As Patricia Clarke writes, it was to the detriment of wider Australia as the women’s sections operated “to reinforce complacency in their women readers and to shield them from issues of some significance”.99 The women’s sections were surrounded by, and were sometimes made up solely of, advertisements, women having been identified as being in charge of the household budgets.100 Among the many women’s sections that sprang up in the period, a regular section appeared in the Australian Town and Country Journal from 1870; the Sydney Mail from 1871; the Melbourne Australasian from 1878; the Sydney Morning Herald from 1888 and the Argus from 1898. True to its irreverent form, The Bulletin

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

31

satirised the women’s pages in Alexina Wildman’s column written under the pseudonym “Sappho Smith”, first published in 1888.101 Because of the difficulties women faced getting published throughout the nineteenth century, there are very few examples of literary journalism by women in the mainstream press of the time that are as recognisable as the articles written by the men, for example, those who covered the Siege at Glenrowan. Yet, women were writing—and they were writing non-fiction in engaging ways. They were reporting on their surroundings, and apart from a few exceptions, getting published in the forms allowed to them—letters, memoir and sketches. For this reason, it is important to start this consideration of the beginnings of literary journalism in Australia with an examination of these forms.

Notes 1. While the correct names are still disputed of the estimated 29 language groups that existed in Sydney in 1788, most sources tend to agree that the Gadigal (or Cadigal) clan of the Eora nation lived in the Sydney Cove area. The land of the Gadigal people stretched along the southern side of Sydney Harbour (Port Jackson) from South Head to Petersham, with the southern boundary the Alexandria Canal and the Cooks River. City of Sydney, “Aboriginal Histories,” 2017, https://www.cityofsyd ney.nsw.gov.au/history/aboriginal-histories#:~:text=The%20’Eora%20p eople’%20was%20the,and%20bays%20of%20Port%20Jackson. 2. It also carried 550 crew, soldiers and family members. Social problems in eighteenth century Britain, signified by the vast inequalities in wealth between its economic classes, led to the overcrowding of its jails, largely with people driven to petty crime to survive. Australia was seen as a possibility for a new colony following the War of Independence and America’s refusal to take any more convicts. Its location beneath Asia may also have added to its attractiveness. James H. Thomas, “Close Encounters of a Different Kind: Arthur Phillip and the Early Opening of Australia,” Terrae Incognitae 44, no. 1 (2012): 43, https://doi.org/10.1179/0082288412Z.0000000001. Tim (ed) Flannery, The Birth of Sydney (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2000). 3. Anonymous, “Equipment of the First Fleet, Reprinted from the Dublin Evening Herald of 4 December, 1786,” in Early News from a New Colony: British Museum Papers (London: 1893). 4. Historians still cannot say with certainty when he arrived in New South Wales (it was probably 1792) nor when he ceased being government

32

W. MCDONALD

5. 6. 7.

8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14. 15.

16.

17. 18.

19.

printer or left the colony. Rod Kirkpatrick, Dailies in the Colonial Capitals: A Short History (Newmarket, QLD: Rod Kirkpatrick, 2016), 6. New South Wales General Standing Orders, (1802), Tuesday, February 17, p. 35. Kirkpatrick, Dailies. Byrnes, “Howe, Robert (1795–1829),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Australian Centre of Biography: Australian National University, 1966). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/howerobert-2252/text2851. The first free settlers, five single men and two families, arrived in 1793. Parliament of New South Wales, “1788 to 1810—Early European Settlement,” n.d. https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/ Pages/1788-to-1810-Early-European-Settlement.aspx. In New South Wales, convicts made up 63 per cent of the population in 1828, 39 per cent in 1841 and not quite 16 per cent in 1851. Kirkpatrick, Dailies, 8. Sally Young, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires (Sydney, New South Wales: UNSW Press, NewSouth Publishing, 2019). George Howe, “Wanted to Purchase,” Sydney Gazette, 13 January 1805. Henry William Hemsworth Huntingdon, Early History of Printing in Australia (Sydney: Government Printer, circa 1911), 13. http://nla.gov. au/nla.obj-52787727. Huntingdon, Early History of Printing in Australia, 2. Ibid., 98. See the fascinating descriptions of the early colony in Grace Karskens, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010). H. M. Green, A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published After the Arrival of the First Fleet until 1950, ed. Dorothy Green (London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984), Vol. 1. Parliament of New South Wales, “1788 to 1810—Early European Settlement.” Until 1824—there were only four newspapers in Australia, The Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser (1803–42), the (1810), the Van Diemen’s Land Gazette and General Advertiser (1814) and the Hobart Town Gazette and Southern Reporter (1816–21) (this last one became the Hobart Town Gazette and Van Diemen’s Land Advertiser in 1921, then the Hobart Town Gazette in 1825 and then stopped publication from 1827). Green, A History of Australian Literature, 67. Young, Paper Emperors, 19.

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

33

20. Ibid., 19–23. 21. Rachel Franks, “Edward Smith Hall and the Monitor,” in The Dictionary of Sydney, Blog (State Library of New South Wales, 2019). https://dic tionaryofsydney.org/blog/edward_smith_hall_and_the_monitor. 22. Young, Paper Emperors, 22. 23. Ibid., 10–43. 24. Peter Dowling, “1861–62: Seminal Years in the Publishing History of Illustrated Newspapers in Colonial Australia,” La Trobe Journal, no. 88 (December 2011), http://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/ issue/latrobe-88/t1-g-t3.html. 25. The last convicts disembarked in Western Australia in 1868. See: Lucy Turnbull, “The End of Transportation,” in The Dictionary of Sydney (2008). https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_end_of_tra nsportation. 26. Green, A History of Australian Literature. 27. Rhonda Jolly, “Media Ownership and Regulation: A Chronology,” (2016). https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_D epartments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/Media_ownership#_edn23. 28. Young, Paper Emperors, 51. 29. Ibid., 23. 30. Ibid., 23–4. 31. Universal suffrage would not be achieved in Australia until the Commonwealth Electoral Act 1962 received assent on 21 May 1962. It granted all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people the option to enrol and vote in federal elections. 32. Young, Paper Emperors, 24. 33. Dowling, “Illustrated Newspapers.” 34. Young, Paper Emperors. 35. Henry Mayer, The Press in Australia (Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1968), 17. 36. National Museum of Australia, “Overland Telegraph,” Defining https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/ Moments, overland-telegraph#:~:text=Australia’s%20first%20telegraph%20line%20b egan,Melbourne%20and%20Adelaide%20were%20connected. 37. State Library of South Australia, “A Short History of the Register Newspaper 1836–1931,” SA Newspapers: South Australian Press, 2013, https://www.samemory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c=2564. Ann Moyal, Clear Across Australia: A History of Telecommunications/Ann Moyal (Melbourne, VIC: Nelson, 1984). 38. Young, Paper Emperors, 31–2. 39. Ibid., 35. 40. Ibid., 23–9.

34

W. MCDONALD

41. Geoffrey Serle, “Wilson, Edward (1813–1878),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1976). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/wilson-edward4866. 42. Serle, “Wilson.” 43. Jacqueline Templeton, “Mackinnon, Lauchlan (1817–1888),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1974). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra phy/mackinnon-lauchlan-4116. 44. Young, Paper Emperors, 29. 45. Elizabeth Morrison, “David Syme’s Role in the Rise of the Age,” Victorian Historical Journal 84, no. 1 (June 2013). Elizabeth Morrison, David Syme: Man of The Age, Biography (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing in Association with the State Library of Victoria, 2014). Young, Paper Emperors, 41–43. 46. See the discussion of the newspapers’ reporting on the “blackbirding” trade later in this book. 47. Mark Hampton, “New Journalism, Nineteenth-Century,” in The International Encyclopedia of Communication (Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2008), 71–2. 48. Young, Paper Emperors, 71–2. 49. Illinois Library: History Philosophy and Newspaper Library, “American Newspapers, 1800–1860: City Newspapers,” n.d. https://www.library.ill inois.edu/hpnl/tutorials/antebellum-newspapers-city/. 50. John C. Nerone, “The Mythology of the Penny Press,” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4, no. 4 (1987), https://doi.org/10.1080/152 95038709360146. 51. Young, Paper Emperors, 78. 52. A term coined by Matthew Arnold in 1887 who commented that this new journalism “has much to recommend it; it is full of ability, novelty, variety, sensation, sympathy, generous instincts; its one great fault is that it is feather-brained”, 10 Arnold, “Up to Easter,” 638. 53. Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Yellow Journalism,” https://www.britannica. com/topic/yellow-journalism/additional-info#history. W Joseph Campbell, Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies (Westport: Praeger, 2001). 54. Young, Paper Emperors, 81. Also, Michael Duffy, “Who’s Who: Lord Northcliffe,” FirstWorldWar.Com: A Multimedia History of World War One, 2009. https://www.firstworldwar.com/bio/northcliffe.htm. 55. Eventually, all the dailies capitulated to the competition and by 1893 had permanently reduced their cover prices. 56. David Conley, “Birth of a Novelist: Death of a Journalist,” Australian Studies in Journalism 7 (1998): 49; R. E. N. Twopeny, Town life in Australia (London: Elliot Stock, 1883), 223.

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

35

57. Young, Paper Emperors, 77. Rod Kirkpatrick, Press Timeline: Select Chronology of Significant Australian Press Events 1802–2005 (Middle Park, QLD: Australian Newspaper History Group, 2006). 58. Humbug ran as a weekly from 8 September 1869 to 12 January 1870. Its rivals were Melbourne Punch and Touchstone (which outlasted it by 12 months). 59. Lurline Stuart, Australian Periodicals with Literary Content, 1821–1925: An Annotated Bibliography (Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003). See also, Kenneth Gelder and Rachael Weaver, The Colonial Journals and the Emergence of Australian Literary Culture (Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing, 2014). 60. Gelder and Weaver, Colonial Journals, 13. 61. “Preface”, 1 December 1821. 62. Gelder and Weaver, Colonial Journals, 9–18. 63. Gelder and Weaver, Colonial Journals, 11. 64. Gelder and Weaver, Colonial Journals, 17. 65. Maya V. Tucker, “Sources on Australian Women, 1880–1914,” La Trobe Journal, no. 15 (April 1975): 58, http://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/ latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-15/t1-g-t2.html. 66. Sylvia Lawson, “Archibald, Jules Francois (1856–1919),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1969). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/archib ald-jules-francois-2896. 67. Margaret Van Heekeren, “The Bulletin and the New Journalism from 1880 to 1918,” Australian Studies in Journalism 16 (2006): 4–20. 68. Gary Wotherspoon, “The Bulletin,” in The Dictionary of Sydney (2010). https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_bulletin. See also, Sylvia Lawson, The Archibald Paradox: A Strange Case of Authorship (Melbourne, VIC: Allen Lane, 1983). Green, A History of Australian Literature, Vol. 1. 69. Mark McKenna, The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788–1996, Studies in Australian History (Cambridge, UK; New York; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 153. 70. Lawson, “Archibald”; Lawson, Archibald Paradox; Wotherspoon, “The Bulletin.” 71. John Docker, The Nervous Nineties: Australian cultural life in the 1890s (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991), 28. 72. This refers to The Bulletin’s “Red Page”. Page 2 of the magazine, so named, was devoted to literary news, opinion and gossip, and had a strong following. 73. Green, A History of Australian Literature, 786–87. 74. Ibid., 789.

36

W. MCDONALD

75. Meg Tasker, “Two Versions of Colonial Nationalism: The Australasian ‘Review of Reviews’ v. the Sydney ‘Bulletin’,” Victorian periodicals review 37, no. 4 (2004). 76. Green, A History of Australian Literature, 786. 77. Wotherspoon, “The Bulletin.” 78. Stephen Muecke, Textual Spaces: Aboriginality and cultural studies (Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1992). 79. According to AIATSIS, there are approximately 250 First Nations languages still spoken in Australia and 800 dialects. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, “Living Languages,” https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/living-languages#:~:text=Many%20lang uages-,In%20Australia%20there%20are%20more%20than%20250%20Indi genous%20languages%20including,of%20one%20language%20are%20s poken. 80. When Mary Bennett wrote her biography of her father, a Queensland grazier and pioneer of the refrigerated meat industry, she devoted the heart of her book to the topic, “What to do about the Blacks?” This was a question that so underpinned colonial life, she said it “was canvassed when settlers met to fetch the mail”. Mary Montgomerie Bennett, Christison of Lammermoor (London: Alston Rivers, 1927), 82. 81. Michael Meadows, Voices in the Wilderness: images of Aboriginal people in the Australian media (Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 2001), 16, 39–40. 82. The University of Newcastle has instituted a colonial frontier massacre mapping project under the leadership of Lyndall Ryan: Lyndall Ryan et al., “Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia” (Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 2017–2020). https://c21ch.newcastle.edu.au/coloni almassacres/. It forms the basis of the Australian Museum’s “Map of Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia, 1788–1930”, available at: https://aus tralian.museum/learn/first-nations/unsettled/remembering-massacres/ map-of-colonial-frontier-massacres/. 83. Rebecca Wood, “Frontier Violence and the Bush Legend: The Sydney Herald’s Response to the Myall Creek Massacre Trials and the Creation of Colonial Identity,” History Australia 6, no. 3 (2009): 67.12, https:// doi.org/10.2104/ha090067. 84. The federal Department of Environment states on its Myall Creek Massacre and Memorial site that: “It was the first and last attempt by the colonial administration to use the law to control frontier conflict between settlers and Aboriginal people… [and] the last time the Colonial Administration intervened to ensure the laws of the colony were applied equally to Aboriginal people

2

85.

86.

87.

88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96.

97. 98.

99. 100.

101.

TRUE BEGINNINGS

37

and settlers involved in frontier killings”. http://www.environment.gov. au/heritage/places/national/myall-creek As non-citizens, First Nations people had few legal rights. Their evidence was often inadmissible or given no credence, their statements meaning little against the sworn oaths of settlers. Tom Griffiths, “The Frontier Fallen,” Eureka Street, no. 5, July https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the-frontier-fallen; (2006). John Connor, The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838 (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002); Bruce Elder, Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788 / Bruce Elder (Frenchs Forest, NSW: New Holland, 2003). National Museum of Australia, “Myall Creek Massacre,” Defining https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/ Moments, myall-creek-massacre. Later known as the Sydney Morning Herald. Wood, “Frontier Violence and the Bush Legend,” 67.5. Ibid., 67.3. Ibid., 67.7. Ibid., 67.7. Ibid., 67.10. Ibid., 67.15. Griffiths, “The Frontier Fallen.” Gregory D. Smithers, “‘Black Gentleman as Good as White’: A comparative analysis of African American and Australian Aboriginal political protests, 1830–1865,” The Journal of African American History 93, no. 3 (2008). Michael Rose, For the Record: 160 Years of Aboriginal Print Journalism (St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996), xxix–xxx. The Bulletin, 30 May, 1912, 22, quoted in Patricia Clarke, Pen Portraits: Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth Century Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 4. Clarke, Pen Portraits, 4. Jeannine Baker and Justine Lloyd, “Gendered Labour and Media: Histories and Continuities,” Media International Australia 161, no. 1 (2016). Justine Lloyd, “Women’s Pages in Australian Print Media from the 1850s,” Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy 150 (2014), https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1415000114.

38

W. MCDONALD

Bibliography Anonymous. “Equipment of the First Fleet, Reprinted from the Dublin Evening Herald of 4 December, 1786.” In Early News from a New Colony: British Museum Papers. London, 1893. Australia, State Library of South. “A Short History of the Register Newspaper 1836–1931.” SA Newspapers: South Australian Press, 2013. https://www.sam emory.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?c=2564. Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1976. Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies. “Living Languages.” https://aiatsis.gov.au/explore/living-languages#:~:text=Many% 20languages-,In%20Australia%20there%20are%20more%20than%20250%20I ndigenous%20languages%20including,of%20one%20language%20are%20s poken. Baker, Jeannine, and Justine Lloyd. “Gendered Labour and Media: Histories and Continuities.” Media International Australia 161, no. 1 (2016): 6–17. Bennett, Mary Montgomerie. Christison of Lammermoor. London: Alston Rivers, 1927. Byrnes. “Howe, Robert (1795–1829).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Australian Centre of Biography: Australian National University, 1966. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/howe-robert-2252/text2851. Campbell, W. Joseph. Yellow Journalism: Puncturing the Myths, Defining the Legacies. Westport: Praeger, 2001. City of Sydney. “Aboriginal Histories,” 2017, https://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov. au/history/aboriginal-histories#:~:text=The%20’Eora%20people’%20was%20t he,and%20bays%20of%20Port%20Jackson. Clarke, Patricia. Pen Portraits: Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth Century Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Conley, David. Birth of a Novelist: Death of a Journalist. Australian Studies in Journalism 7 (1998): 46–73. Connor, John. The Australian Frontier Wars, 1788–1838. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2002. Docker, John. The Nervous Nineties: Australian Cultural Life in the 1890s. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1991. Dowling, Peter. 1861–62: Seminal Years in the Publishing History of Illustrated Newspapers in Colonial Australia. La Trobe Journal 88 (December 2011). http://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejournal/issue/latrobe-88/ t1-g-t3.html. Duffy, Michael. Who’s Who: Lord Northcliffe. FirstWorldWar.Com: A Multimedia History of World War One, 2009. https://www.firstworldwar.com/ bio/northcliffe.htm.

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

39

Elder, Bruce. Blood on the Wattle: Massacres and Maltreatment of Aboriginal Australians since 1788/Bruce Elder. Frenchs Forest, NSW: New Holland, 2003. Encyclopaedia Britannica. Yellow Journalism. https://www.britannica.com/ topic/yellow-journalism/additional-info#history. Flannery, Tim (ed). The Birth of Sydney. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2000. Franks, Rachel. Edward Smith Hall and the Monitor. In The Dictionary of Sydney, Blog, State Library of New South Wales, 2019. https://dictionaryofsydney. org/blog/edward_smith_hall_and_the_monitor. Gelder, Kenneth, and Rachael Weaver. The Colonial Journals and the Emergence of Australian Literary Culture. Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing, 2014. Green, H. M. A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published after the Arrival of the First Fleet until 1950, edited by Dorothy Green. London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984. Griffiths, Tom. The Frontier Fallen. Eureka Street, no. 5 July, 2006. https:// www.eurekastreet.com.au/article/the-frontier-fallen. Hampton, Mark. “New Journalism, Nineteenth-Century.” In The International Encyclopedia of Communication, 3212–14. Chichester, UK: John Wiley & Sons, 2008. Howe, George. “Wanted to Purchase.” Sydney Gazette, 13 January 1805, 4. Huntingdon, Henry William Hemsworth. Early History of Printing in Australia. Sydney: Government Printer, circa 1911. http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-527 87727. Illinois Library: History Philosophy and Newspaper Library. “American Newspapers, 1800–1860: City Newspapers,” n.d. https://www.library.illinois.edu/ hpnl/tutorials/antebellum-newspapers-city/. Jolly, Rhonda. “Media Ownership and Regulation: A Chronology.” 2016. https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/ Parliamentary_Library/pubs/Media_ownership#_edn23. Karskens, Grace. The Colony: A History of Early Sydney. Crows Nest, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2010. Kirkpatrick, Rod. Dailies in the Colonial Capitals: A Short History. Newmarket, QLD: Rod Kirkpatrick, 2016. ———. Press Timeline: Select Chronology of Significant Australian Press Events 1802–2005. Middle Park, QLD: Australian Newspaper History Group, 2006. Lawson, Sylvia. “Archibald, Jules Francois (1856–1919).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1969. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/archibald-jules-francois-2896. ———. The Archibald Paradox: A Strange Case of Authorship. Melbourne, VIC: Allen Lane, 1983.

40

W. MCDONALD

Lloyd, Justine. “Women’s Pages in Australian Print Media from the 1850s.” Media International Australia incorporating Culture and Policy 150 (2014): 61–66. https://doi.org/10.1177/1329878X1415000114. Mayer, Henry. The Press in Australia. Melbourne: Lansdowne Press, 1968. McKenna, Mark. The Captive Republic: A History of Republicanism in Australia 1788–1996. Studies in Australian History. Cambridge, UK; New York; Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Meadows, Michael. Voices in the Wilderness: Images of Aboriginal People in the Australian Media. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2001. Morrison, Elizabeth. “David Syme’s Role in the Rise of the Age.” Victorian Historical Journal 84, no. 1 (June 2013): 16–33. ———. David Syme: Man of the Age. Biography. Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing in Association with the State Library of Victoria, 2014. Moyal, Ann. Clear across Australia : A History of Telecommunications/Ann Moyal. Melbourne, VIC: Nelson, 1984. Muecke, Stephen. Textual Spaces : Aboriginality and Cultural Studies. Kensington, NSW: New South Wales University Press, 1992. National Museum of Australia, “Myall Creek Massacre,” Defining Moments. https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/myall-creek-mas sacre. ———, “Overland Telegraph,” Defining Moments. https://www.nma.gov.au/ defining-moments/resources/overland-telegraph#:~:text=Australia’s%20first% 20telegraph%20line%20began,Melbourne%20and%20Adelaide%20were%20c onnected. Nerone, John C. “The Mythology of the Penny Press.” Critical Studies in Mass Communication 4, no. 4 (1987): 376–404. https://doi.org/10.1080/152 95038709360146. New South Wales General Standing Orders. 1802. Parliament of New South Wales, “1788 to 1810—Early European Settlement,” n.d. https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/1788-to-1810-EarlyEuropean-Settlement.aspx. Rose, Michael. For the Record: 160 Years of Aboriginal Print Journalism. St. Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin, 1996. Ryan, Lyndall, William Pascoe, Jennifer Debenham, Stephanie Gilbert, Jonathan Richards, Robyn Smith, Chris Owen, et al. “Colonial Frontier Massacres in Australia.” Newcastle: University of Newcastle, 2017–2020. https://c21ch. newcastle.edu.au/colonialmassacres/. Smithers, Gregory D. “‘Black Gentleman as Good as White’: A Comparative Analysis of African American and Australian Aboriginal Political Protests, 1830–1865.” The Journal of African American History 93, no. 3 (2008): 315–36.

2

TRUE BEGINNINGS

41

Stuart, Lurline. Australian Periodicals with Literary Content, 1821-1925 : An Annotated Bibliography. Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2003. Tasker, Meg. “Two Versions of Colonial Nationalism: The Australasian ‘Review of Reviews’ V. The Sydney ‘Bulletin’.” Victorian Periodicals Review 37, no. 4 (2004): 111–22. Templeton, Jacqueline. “Mackinnon, Lauchlan (1817–1888).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1974. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/mackinnon-lauchlan4116. Thomas, James H. “Close Encounters of a Different Kind: Arthur Phillip and the Early Opening of Australia.” Terrae Incognitae 44, no. 1 (2012): 43-67. https://doi.org/10.1179/0082288412Z.0000000001. Tucker, Maya V. “Sources on Australian Women, 1880–1914.” La Trobe Journal no. 15 (April 1975): 58–61. http://latrobejournal.slv.vic.gov.au/latrobejo urnal/issue/latrobe-15/t1-g-t2.html. Turnbull, Lucy. “The End of Transportation.” In The Dictionary of Sydney, 2008. https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_end_of_transportation. Twopeny, R. E. N. Town Life in Australia. London: Elliot Stock, 1883. Van Heekeren, Margaret. “The Bulletin and the New Journalism from 1880 to 1918.” Australian Studies in Journalism 16 (2006): 4–20. Wood, Rebecca. “Frontier Violence and the Bush Legend: The Sydney Herald’s Response to the Myall Creek Massacre Trials and the Creation of Colonial Identity.” History Australia 6, no. 3 (2009): 67.1–67.19. https://doi.org/ 10.2104/ha090067. Wotherspoon, Gary. “The Bulletin.” In The Dictionary of Sydney, 2010. https:// dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/the_bulletin. Young, Sally. Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires. Sydney, New South Wales : UNSW Press, NewSouth Publishing, 2019.

CHAPTER 3

Journals, Letters and Unexpected Forms

“Ernest Giles expedition, 1889—Attack at Ularring”. Artist unknown. From Giles’s book, Australia Twice Traversed. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1889. Courtesy of the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_3

43

44

W. MCDONALD

The earliest recognisable literary journalism about the new colony was written by the explorers and founders. Contained in books and articles commissioned by publishers mostly before they left England, it was based on journals they kept as they undertook their courageous journeys both to Australia and then into the hinterland looking for land suitable for cultivation or grazing. Written descriptively with dialogue and suspenseful detail, the explorers’ narratives are manifestly literary journalism. Yet, besides these published journals, there are other forms of colonial writing in which the settlers documented the astonishing sights they encountered for readers at home in Britain. These are not so clearly delineated. Letters for example were the main means of communication between the motherland and the colonies. Often accompanied by lengthy diaries, they were usually rawer documents than the published work of the explorers whose books benefited from the editorial support provided by publishers to correct wayward grammar and punctuation. Nevertheless, many conveyed gripping first-hand news of the founding of the settlement in lively and literary ways. Unlike modern letters and journals, the authors usually intended their writing to be read by wider circles of readers than immediate loved ones, knowing their tales would be passed around eagerly to people clamouring to hear first-hand stories from the Great Southern Land. While some of these letters and diaries found their way to publication, most stayed in private—although wide—circulation, providing a perspective of the beginnings of the Australian colonies that was otherwise largely invisible to readers of the British press. Given the particular obstacles to publication faced by convicts and women, are there grounds for considering these letters and diaries as early examples of Australian literary journalism? Or as valuable antecedents to the form? A consideration of the question is useful in helping to determine the parameters of the colonial field and whether its boundaries can be viewed flexibly to include more voices without sacrificing the consistency of the canon.

“Discovering” the Land: The Explorers Early Australia drew some exceptional storytellers. Watkin Tench was one. A British Marine Corps officer who signed up to come to Australia on the First Fleet, he organised with the publishing house Debrett’s before he left England to report on his journey and his impressions of the new settlement. Tench was an educated man, a talented writer with an interest

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

45

in the novel. His two resulting books are renowned for their humour, literary style and vivid descriptions and are still in print today: A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany (1789) and A Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, in New South Wales (1793). At the time of its publication, Tench’s first book was hugely popular and ran into three editions within a year of its publication. It was translated into French, German, Dutch and Swedish, with his second book also translated into German.1 Tench was not the only one to write formally about the beginnings of white settlement in Australia. Others included Governor Sir Arthur Phillip, the Deputy Judge Advocate and Lieutenant-Governor David Collins, and Naval Surgeon and naturalist John White—all of whom were more important historical figures than Tench. Yet, Tench’s books are the most memorable. His work was exceptional because it was factual, based on his first-hand observations, yet written with literary intention to inform and entertain an audience. He was a close observer who used carefully styled journal entries as scenes incorporating detail, dialogue and characterisation. The writing carried a strong narrative voice and demonstrated an unusually open, empathetic approach in its descriptions of the people he was observing, whether Aboriginal, convict or military. And as this excerpt from his second book shows, his writing demonstrated literary skill: Baneelon2 we judged to be about twenty-six years old, of good stature, and stoutly made, with a bold intrepid countenance, which bespoke defiance and revenge ... Love and war seemed his favourite pursuits; in both of which he had suffered severely. His head was disfigured by several scars; a spear had passed through his arm, and another through his leg; half of one of his thumbs was carried away; and the mark of a wound appeared on the back of his hand. The cause and attendant circumstances of all these disasters, except one, he related to us. “But the wound on the back of your hand, Baneelon! how did you get that?” He laughed, and owned that it was received in carrying off a lady of another tribe by force. “I was dragging her away: she cried aloud, and stuck her teeth in me …”3

When the 150th anniversary of British settlement in Australia was celebrated in 1938, Tench’s account was chosen for partial republication above other First Fleet journals.4 It was republished in full in 1961 by the Royal Australian Historical Society with his editor L. F. Fitzhardinge commenting Tench could be considered “the father of Australian literature, if not Australian history”:

46

W. MCDONALD

Less detailed than Collins, less matter-of-fact than Phillip or White, Tench is the first man to mould Australian experience into a work of conscious art … If we wish to know what it was like to be in Sydney through the famine, or to get the “feel” of the primeval bush as the first explorers saw it, we turn to Tench. Not only the externals, but the very atmosphere and moods of the settlement are reflected in his measured, smoothly flowing prose, which with its careful periods, its balanced rhythms and antitheses, and its precise choice of words might challenge comparison with Gibbon himself.5

After Tench came the published journals of other explorers who, like Tench, were gifted narrators who used scenes, characterisation and telling detail.6 Matthew Flinders spent over three years from 1795 charting the eastern Australian coastline with the surgeon and explorer George Bass. Together, they sailed through Bass Strait to prove Van Dieman’s Land (Tasmania) was separate from the mainland. After Bass disappeared en route to Chile on a separate voyage, Flinders continued exploring, becoming the first British person to circumnavigate Australia. In 1803, after war broke out between the English and the French, Flinders was imprisoned as a spy by the French governor of Mauritius. The explorer was unaware of the war and stopped for repairs to his ship on his way home to England. He was keen to rejoin his “bride”, Ann Chappell, whom Admiralty had insisted he leave behind on his voyages. Because of his long internment by the French, Flinders would be separated from his wife for nine years. During this time, he began working on the manuscript of A Voyage to Terra Australis . The book not only gave the factual stories of Flinders’ experiences, but also incorporated his own personality as narrator. The final version of the book was published on 18 July 1814, the day before Flinders died.7 Charles Sturt was noted for his storytelling abilities when reporting on his expeditions to explore the inland. He was sent with his army regiment to Sydney in 1827 in charge of a shipment of convicts. By that time, a series of rivers had been charted whose courses directed towards the centre of the continent, implying there was an undiscovered inland sea. At the end of 1828, Sturt set off with a small group of men on an official exploration and came across a mighty flowing river he called the Darling after the governor. He was also the first to chart the Murray River. The result of Sturt’s difficult and dangerous explorations contributed to the realisation that the centre of Australia was desert country. Sturt went

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

47

on to publish two books, Two Expeditions into the Interior of Southern Australia, (1833) and Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia, in (1849). He also sent home detailed letters which were keenly circulated by those who received them, including the governor of South Australia, and which were published by a number of the colonial newspapers. An inspirational leader to his men, Sturt’s writing demonstrates he was an intelligent and careful observer, as evidenced by this short passage which describes a day so hot that a thermometer hanging in a tree reached 127 degrees Fahrenheit and then burst: The blasts of heat were so terrific that I wondered the very grass did not take fire ... everything, both animate and inanimate, gave way before it; the horses stood with their backs to the wind, and their noses to the ground, without the muscular strength to raise their heads; the birds were mute, and the leaves of the trees, under which we were sitting, fell like a snow shower around us.8

Sir Thomas Livingstone Mitchell, who became Surveyor-General in 1828, undertook three major expeditions in northern New South Wales, along the Murray, Darling, Leichhardt and Murrumbidgee Rivers. His expressive accounts of these adventures are contained in Three Expeditions in the Interior of Eastern Australia: With Descriptions of the Recently Explored Region of Australia Felix and of the Present Colony of New South Wales, published in1838 in London by T & W Boone Publishers. Australian newspapers reviewed the two-volume work with the Hobart Town Courier on 22 February 1839, describing Mitchell’s writing as “exceedingly good” and that he was “an agreeable, entertaining, and most instructive companion”. A few weeks later, a review appeared in a special “Literature and Science” section of The Colonist , where he was praised as “a scientific and amiable author”.9 Besides the famous explorers were lesser-known adventurers who travelled to the remotest parts of Australia and wrote about their journeys. Ernest Giles was one. He undertook several arduous explorations of the western part of the continent between 1872 and 1876, initially traversing the desert on horseback but later using camels that were better suited to the dry terrain. Giles published accounts of his journeys as Geographic Travels in Central Australia from 1872 to 1874 (Melbourne, 1875), The Journal of a Forgotten Expedition (Adelaide, 1880) and the two-volume Australia Twice Traversed (London, 1889).

48

W. MCDONALD

Giles named Mount Olga and also the Gibson Desert, the latter in honour of one of his men. In 1874, his ill-fated expedition west of the overland telegraph line was failing for want of provisions. Several of the horses had died in the extreme conditions while the expeditioners had been forced to kill others for food. Giles sent Gibson ahead on their only remaining mount to fetch help, but the man was never seen again. Giles struggled on for a further nine days before reaching water. He recorded his extreme hunger and thirst, conveying how close he had come to death himself: I was in such a miserable state of mind and body, that I refrained from more vexatious speculations as to what had delayed [Gibson]: I stayed here, drinking and drinking, until about ten a.m., when I crawled away over the stones down from the water … Just as I got clear of the bank of the creek, I heard a faint squeak, and looking about I saw, and immediately caught, a small dying wallaby, whose marsupial mother had evidently thrown it from her pouch. It only weighed about two ounces, and was scarcely furnished yet with fur. The instant I saw it, like an eagle I pounced upon it and ate it, living, raw, dying—fur, skin, bones, skull, and all. The delicious taste of that creature I shall never forget. I only wished I had its mother and father to serve in the same way.10

Louis Green, writing for the Australian Dictionary of Biography, thought Giles’s journals made him one of the most interesting of the Australian explorers. “[They] display a fine descriptive ability and constitute a record of inner experience as well as outward observation. His culture, perception and imagination were no less marked than his skill and determination”.11 Surely, Giles’s work too counts as book-length literary journalism.

Writing Home: Letters and Journals Letters and journals were a crucial means of exchanging information between the colonies and Britain. Until a formal postal service was set up in 1809, letters were sent to and from Australia via the vagaries of the occasional visiting ships without guarantee they would reach their destination.12 Just as the settlers waited eagerly for news from home, those back in Britain were keen for news of Australia. Consequently, the letters frequently covered topics of public interest, sometimes finding their way to publication. Katrina J. Quinn has made a call for letters published

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

49

in nineteenth-century North American newspapers to be considered as literary journalism after finding examples in her research that would fit modern literary journalism definitions. Her justifications include the narrative purpose of the letters and her discovery in them of various literary tropes such as poetry, allegory and metaphor; a heightened and sometimes foregrounded subjectivity; the development of characters, as well as the use of a “stylised freedom with language”.13 There are Australian examples of published letters that would similarly fit her definition of epistolary literary journalism. The letters of the convict Thomas Watling are of note. He was transported to Australia for forgery in 1791 and wrote long letters to his aunt in Scotland who raised him with the instruction that if she found them interesting, she should have them revised “by an abler hand” and published.14 Watling depicts New South Wales as a “luxuriant museum”.15 He uses literary techniques to describe the flora and fauna, for example, he writes of fish “spangled with gold and silver, and stained with dyes transparent and brilliant as the arch of heaven”.16 His letters are subjective. He writes of the local Eora people at length, although disdainfully, and criticises various aspects of life in the colony, particularly the treatment of convicts. As Watling hoped, the letters were published in 1794 in Penrith, Scotland, under the title: Letters from an Exile at Botany-Bay, to His Aunt in Dumfries: Giving a Particular Account of the Settlement of New South Wales, with the Customs and Manners of the Inhabitants.17 Extracts from letters by women convicts sometimes found their way into the British papers, including a well-known letter by an anonymous woman printed in the London Morning Chronicle of 4 August 1791. It tells of the hardships in the earliest days of the colony when hunger was rife, the soil proved too poor to easily grow crops, supply ships were wrecked and the convicts were so malnourished they could not sustain the hard labour required for building and farming. The writer also touches on the scandalous treatment of the convicts on the Second Fleet. Unlike the First Fleet, it was run by contractors who were paid for the number of convicts leaving England rather than the number that arrived at Botany Bay. They mistreated the convicts, kept them below deck and failed to provide sufficient food. Sickness was rife, resulting in a quarter of the male convicts dying on route. Forty per cent of those who survived the voyage, did not make it through the first six months in the colony. With so many ill people to care for, and the failure of the fleet to bring expected supplies,

50

W. MCDONALD

the settlement was brought close to the point of starvation before the Third Fleet arrived in 1791.18 Oh! if you had but seen the shocking sight of the poor creatures that came out in the three ships it would make your heart bleed; they were almost dead, very few could stand, and they were obliged to fling them as you would goods, and hoist them out of the ships, they were so feeble; and they died ten or twelve of a day when they first landed; but some of them are getting better…They were not so long as we were in coming here, but they were confined, and had bad victuals and stinking water. The Governor was very angry, and scolded the captains a great deal, and, I heard, intended to write to London about it, for I heard him say it was murdering them. It, to be sure, was a melancholy sight.19

The words of the unknown female author are subjective, colloquial, direct and engaging, conveying in narrative form the distressing condition of the survivors of the Second Fleet’s voyage, as well as news of the governor’s angry reaction. Could this letter be an example of colonial literary journalism?

Reclaiming Unheard Voices Nancy L. Roberts,20 prompted by her concern that the accepted canon of North American literary journalism includes few women, suggests letters might be considered as literary journalism. She has asked scholars of the form to look further than articles published in mainstream newspapers, journals and magazines in recognition of the fact women had fewer paths to publication open to them but nevertheless wrote vivid factual reports in other forms. She also calls for an examination of unpublished letters, diaries and journals, encouraging researchers to include “devalued” media forms such as women’s magazines, religious tracts, African American periodicals, muckraking and travel writing. “[W]e shouldn’t overlook other, less elite sources … Who knows how our historical understanding of literary journalism might evolve, when we uncover such voices and study them?”21 Not everyone, however, agrees that letters are worthy of inclusion. John Tulloch, in a riposte to Roberts in the pages of Literary Journalism Studies , is concerned the inclusion of letters, particularly unpublished letters, risks “reducing the field to incoherence”.22 He questions whether including such a broad array of texts means there are any meaningful

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

51

criteria to give boundaries to the form. His specific concern regarding letters is his assumption that they are “primarily a form of one-to-one, or family-to-family, communication”, and so are not part of the public sphere.23 However, Elizabeth Webby has shown the letters from New South Wales in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries differed in many cases from the personal correspondence modern audiences might imagine. Frequently they were lengthy, detailed and informative, and written to convey news the writers knew was of intense public interest back home. In most cases, they were intended for circulation beyond family and friends. Many contained long journal entries in energetic prose, meticulously kept over previous months and copied into different letters to maximise their chances of arrival.24 The letters and accompanying journals of the Bussell sisters (Fanny and Bessie) are an example. In 1832, the sisters travelled to Western Australia to join four of their brothers who had already settled there. Wanting their family back in England to be included in their news—including their mother and siblings—the sisters kept journals recording their dayto-day thoughts and activities which they would then send home with visiting ships. While the letters were more intimate, the journals were for wider reading. For example, in her journal entry dated 26 January, Fanny wrote: “I fear I shall not have time to write other letters, but this is public property …”25,26 While the journals contained much detail about the women’s domestic lives, they also included news of public events that might not have reached the British papers, particularly where the letter writers were directly affected and they felt they could add to the public story. The Bussell’s included in their writing news of the loss of the Cumberland. The wreck was discovered by a fishing party along with packages addressed to the Bussells strewn along the beach. These were pillaged over a period of weeks, … until suspicion was roused by the appearance of … Mrs Keats a washer woman in a coral necklace a present from dear Capel to Bessie. In the subsequent search quantities of good linen with the names cut out, and damask table cloths sheets towels, and other articles were discovered. Jewellery broken and mutilated in every possible way has come to light but as yet no traces of plate has been found … This is all very disturbing is it not? The unfortunate owner of the vessel Capt. McDermott was found and the body of one of the sailors but neither the presence of death nor

52

W. MCDONALD

any feeling of future retribution could influence these infatuated men. They have been sentenced to 7 & 14 years transportation and the next trip of the colonial schooner will convey them to Hobart Town … This is but a slight sketch of the sad history … Mamma has just said that she will forward the Perth gazette to England of course you will see it and thus learn the particulars through a more easy medium than my unfortunate scribble.27

The case of Mary Thomas demonstrates women correspondents were often well aware of the public interest in their writing, while simultaneously downplaying its worth. Thomas, a well-educated woman, was the author of Serious Poems , published in London in 1831. She travelled with her family to South Australia in 1836 on the Africaine, one of the first ships to arrive in colony. Her husband Robert had been attracted by E. G. Wakefield’s ideas on colonisation which advocated for a British outpost to be set up in South Australia that avoided some of the problems in the other colonies. It would attract settlers, preferably young married couples, who would purchase land rather than be given it under grants, with the money earned going towards enabling poorer people to take part in the scheme and emigrate. Robert, a printer, stationer and bookseller, was key to the establishment of the colony. He had produced the first issue of the South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register while still in London, followed by the first colonial edition after they migrated. Mary Thomas’s diary and letters provide moving insight into the difficulties and achievements of the first settlers. Her journal entries for mid-November, for example, record the first landing of the family on a remote beach in Western Australia at the end of their long journey from Britain: November 11. This day Mr. Thomas and our two agricultural labourers went on shore with our tents, and the weather being rough they did not return. The next day they were occupied in receiving the luggage, as it was landed on the beach, and conveying what was necessary for present use to a site some distance away, where our tents were to be pitched. As everything had to be carried by hand, there being no other mode of conveyance, it was no trifling labour, especially through untrodden paths often full of holes, and with grass three or four feet high. November 13. This day the girls and I packed up our bedding and such things as remained in the cabin, and went on shore to the place of our present destination . . . We had two tents, the smaller of which the men

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

53

had erected, and of which we, with part of our family, that is, our three daughters and the young woman who came out with us as assistant, took possession, gladly enough, though everything was in the roughest fashion imaginable. The two men located themselves on the sandhills, making a circle with packages and furniture and sleeping in the middle. As for my two sons (for Robert had now joined us for the present) I made up a bed with a thick mattress on the ground in the open air, and as near as I could with safety to a large fire, and saw them asleep before I ventured to retire myself. My anxiety, however, would not suffer me to sleep much for that and many succeeding nights. Towards morning, however, I fell into a slumber out of which I was suddenly startled at about 5 o’clock by the loud crowing of a cock, which, with some hens we brought from the Cape of Good Hope, had roosted in a bush close at the back of our tent. I got up at the summons and hastily dressing myself went to see after my boys, both of whom I found fast asleep. The quilt that covered them was so saturated with dew that I could have wrung the water out of it.28

Some thirty years later, Thomas transcribed her journal. Her descendent, Evan Kyffin Thomas, published it in 1915 together with letters she wrote to her brother. The combined volume appeared under the title The Diary and Letters of Mary Thomas (1836–1866): being a record of the early days of South Australia.29

Broadening the Public Sphere Tulloch’s concerns raise interesting questions regarding the public sphere as it relates to literary journalism, particularly in the light of recent mobilizations of the idea to include people socially and politically marginalised for such reasons as gender, colour, class, ability or sexual orientation.30 Jürgen Habermas’s original notion of the “bourgeois public sphere”, although contested, has been an extremely useful one to critics and theorists alike. Its emergence in the eighteenth century was constituted by the social institutions—the journals, periodicals, clubs and coffee houses— where reasoned ideas and opinions were exchanged. It was driven by the ideology that participatory democracy needed the government and policymakers to be informed by such discussions within an imaginary social community that straddled the private realm of civil society.31 Since then, the public sphere has become a powerful concept for questioning norms

54

W. MCDONALD

and institutions. Feminists, in particular, have expanded Habermas’s original concept and used it to challenge the distinction between public and private which has often been used to hide and protect male privilege.32 Domestic violence and sexual harassment are cases in point. Both once dismissed as private issues and their related discourses hidden from the public sphere, they are now firmly on public policy agendas. Roberts is asking literary journalism scholars to consider non-fiction texts that lie outside mainstream publication precisely because she wants to broaden the notion of the public sphere as it relates to this field and make it more inclusive of the writing of women, people of colour and other marginalised groups who have had little or no access to the more usual means of acceptable, mainstream publication. Women and convicts were not part of the notional public in the nineteenth century in most of the English-speaking world, let alone in colonial Australia. The idea of categorising women’s letters as literature is not a new one. As Dale Spender notes in her book Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers, considerable pressure has been placed on women historically not to publish, causing a public and private strand to emerge within women’s literary heritage. The distinction between public and private became a flexible one precisely because women’s private writing often finds later publication as social mores change. She cites the example of the letters of Margaret Cavendish, the Duchess of Newcastle (1624–1674). Those letters are regarded by many commentators as “the beginning of the modern literary tradition of women”, including by Virginia Woolf whose essay A Room of One’s Own articulated the obstacles women face as writers. To go public has been unseemly and unsafe for women, yet Cavendish insisted on being taken seriously as a professional writer, using her letters as a vehicle for political commentary and having them printed for a public audience. She used the letter form because, like the early colonists, other avenues or fields were closed to her.33 Her actions were not without cost; she was labelled “Mad Madge” and was mocked even by other women who stood to gain from her work. A contemporary of Cavendish’s—Dorothy Osborne—also wrote letters but she kept them private while at the same time deriding Cavendish. Acknowledging the importance of Osborne’s letters, Spender argues, “this private strand of writing is as much a part of women’s world of letters as those epistles which were written with the aim of publication”.34 Patricia Clarke and Dale Spender demonstrate in their book Lifelines: Australian Women Letters and Diaries 1788 to 1840, that women, convict

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

55

and free, used letters and journals as literary forms to describe their lives, including not only their domestic situations of family and children, but also the hard labour required in building the new settlements. An example is Elizabeth Macarthur who founded the Australian wool industry with her husband John Macarthur. The Macarthurs came out on the unfortunate Second Fleet, travelling first on the Neptune and then on the Scarborough.35 The letters and diary Elizabeth wrote on the voyage are viewed as important sources of information about the Second Fleet journey.36 Unfortunately, her later letters, from the many years when she had sole responsibility for the family’s extensive farm holdings—the most important agricultural enterprise in the New South Wales colony—have not survived. A good number from other periods have since been transcribed and published, including her 1798 letter to her friend Bridget Kingdon, in which Elizabeth wrote an account of the beginnings of her family’s farming in Australia. It is an incomparable source of first-hand information about this moment in the birth of modern Australia’s agricultural industries, providing her unique perspective as an employer on the crude economic system in the colony and its use of convict labour: You will wonder how a return is made for the daily expense which it must appear to you we incur. In the first place some thousands of persons are fed from the public Stores—perhaps three & four thousand, all of whom were formerly supplied with flour from England to meet the demand for Bread. But since so many individuals have cleared Farms, & have thereby been enabled to raise a great quantity of grain in the Country, which at the present time is purchased by the Commissary at 10/- a bushel, & issued for what are termed rations—or the proportionate quantity due to each person instead of Flour. In payment for which the Commissary issues a receipt approved of by the Government. These receipts pass current here as Coin & are taken by Masters of Ships & other adventurers who come to these Ports with Merchandize for sale. When any number of these have been accumulated in the hands of individuals, they are returned to the Commissary who gives a Bill on the Treasury in England for them. These Bills amount to thirty or forty thousand Pounds annually. How long Govt may continue so expensive a plan it would be difficult to foresee …37

Another Elizabeth—Elizabeth Hawkins—was a talented writer who gave her sister a riveting account of her family’s journey crossing the Blue Mountains in 1822.38 The mountains were a formidable plateau that had barred the westward spread of Sydney since settlement. They had been breached only nine years earlier by the explorers Blaxland, Lawson and

56

W. MCDONALD

Wentworth. The family would take 18 days to make the trip to the new town of Bathurst where Thomas was to be the Commissariat Storekeeper (although he would soon leave the post to take up land in the area and become a successful farmer). Among their travel party were Hawkins’s elderly mother, a female servant, eight male convicts and her eight young children, the youngest of whom was twelve months old and the oldest twelve and a half years. Hawkins’s letter tells of the challenges the family faced, not only from the harsh landscape, but also from inclement weather, inadequate shelter, insufficient provisions and the irascible bullocks pulling the drays. In one section, she wrote of their experiences preparing to ascend a notoriously steep hill: Hawkins shot some birds the boys hunted a kangaroo rat we laughed and talked and went cheerfully on until we were within a mile of Mount York or more commonly called the Big Hill. I desired Tom to ride on and give us some account of it he soon came galloping back. “Oh Ma you will never get up I am sure you won’t I can’t see much of the road but I can see the valley you are to reach it is dreadful” our courage began to fail by the time we reached the top …

She also wrote of an incident when the dray overturned: “[N]othing saved the lives of the horses and our property but the stump of a tree by the roadside it was suspended over an immense precipice”. Three days later, they crossed a river, … with many fears we did the water nearly up to the horses belly and the bottom covered with large pieces of rock and stone enough to overturn the cart and jolt us to death. A man offered to carry little Neddy over in his arms with anxious eyes I watched him through fear his feet might slip and our darling boy have his head dashed against a stone with talking swearing beating our poor bullocks we got safe on the bank on the opposite side.39

Literary Poetics and Their Impacts Hawkins’s letters are not well punctuated, raising a question about whether fluency in literacy is one of the defining criteria of literary journalism. In this light, the letters of the convict Margaret Catchpole are worth mentioning. Described as “one of the few true convict

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

57

chroniclers”, Catchpole wrote letters from 1802 to 1811, inadvertently describing the worlds of colonial Australian women.40 Although a skilled horsewoman, her early life in England left her with little education. As an adult, she became a servant for various families, eventually finding work with the Cobbolds who treated her like a family member. It was there that she learned to write. While the Cobbolds were good to her, the story goes that they disapproved of her lover, William Laud, a sailor turned smuggler. She left them in mid-1795 and two years later, after a long period of illness and unemployment, stole one of their horses, apparently for Laud. She rode it seventy miles41 to London in ten hours to meet him. She was captured and sentenced to death, although this was commuted to transportation for seven years. Consequently, she was jailed at Ipswich. Intending to meet and marry Laud, she used a clothesline to scale the 22-foot42 prison wall and escaped. He was shot dead on the beach when she was recaptured. Again, she was sentenced to death and this time the sentence was commuted to transportation for life. Catchpole graphically portrayed in her letters home the countryside and the wildlife, the local First Nations people, and “the savagery and immorality of the inhabitants of the colony”.43 She described the first convict coalminers at Coal River (Newcastle), as well as providing the only eyewitness accounts of the Hawkesbury River floods of 1806 and 1809. Over time, her letters became more readable, but her grammar, syntax and spelling would always remain idiosyncratic, as shown in this extract from one of her earlier letters, written to the Cobbolds in 1804: At this present time i am housekeeper to a free sattler that had the miss fortin to Loos a Good Wife and left him with tow children - thay com over in the sam ship i did … Wee Begun to sow Wheat in March and aprell and harvest com on in november and as soon as that is of thay seet fieer to the stubbell and Burn it of and then put in Corn Dyrickely- not plow it nor how it … This is a very Daingres Countrey to Liv in for the natives … thay youst to kill the wight poopell very much But thay are Better … the Black Snakes is very Bad for thay will fly at you Lik a Dog and if thay Bit us wee dy at sundown ….44

When corrected for grammar and spelling, the letter is as engaging and informative as those by many others that were published in England: At this present time, I am housekeeper to a free settler who had the misfortune to lose a good wife who left him with two children. They came over

58

W. MCDONALD

on the same ship I did … We began to sow wheat in March and April and the harvest came on in November. As soon as it was gathered, they set fire to the stubble and burnt it off, and then planted corn directly without ploughing or hoeing the ground. This is a very dangerous country to live in because of the natives … They used to kill the white people but it is better now … the black snakes are very bad for they will fly at us like a dog and if they bite us we die at sundown…

The fact that Catchpole’s letters are clearly written by an uneducated hand raises questions about the importance of the quality of the writing in literary journalism, including conventions of form and style. Published writers have access to editorial staff whose expertise improves the final published copy. Such aid was unavailable to Catchpole. When the American New Journalists were experimenting with literary techniques in their reporting in the 1960s and ’70s, they broke literary conventions to escape the straightjacket of objectivity, playing with scenes, dialogue and point of view in highly literate ways. Tom Wolfe, for example, experimented with language in passages now famous for their unconventionality, such as this one from “The Girl of the Year”, published by Esquire in 1964: Bangs manes bouffants beehives Beatle caps butter face brush-on lashes decal eyes puffy sweaters French thrust bras flailing leather blue jeans stretch pants stretch jeans honeydew bottoms éclair shanks elf boots ballerinas Knight slippers, hundreds of them, these flaming little buds, bobbing and screaming, rocketing around inside the Academy of Music Theatre underneath that vast, old, moldering, cherub dome up there — aren’t they super-marvelous!

Are letters that are unintentionally ungrammatical such as Catchpole’s—rather than articles like Wolfe’s that deliberately play with literary norms—sufficiently writerly for them to be included as literary journalism? Or, as precursors? Is the question merely one of degree? Or education? Catchpole’s words provided news that was unreported elsewhere, while carrying a clear sense of immersion, a strong and intelligent narrative voice, a compelling narrative drive and details that paint colourful word pictures for her readers. While it would be a pity if Catchpole were precluded from the field merely for the lack of a good sub-editor, her example draws attention to a quality that, as we have seen, many commentators argue lies at the heart of literary journalism—the ability of the writer to convey the “feel” of

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

59

the facts of the story and to communicate those feelings to persuade the reader at least to empathy if not action.45 This does not lie so much in the author’s writing about feelings and emotions, but in the way the author communicates the facts of the story. An author struggling with literacy is unable to play with the music and meaning of words; in Catchpole’s case, is unable to access the rhetorical power of the writing.46 Whether or not a work has been published may not be the right question to ask when attempting to define literary journalism in the colonial era. The more important question may be whether or not the author has been able to not only observe the facts but manipulate the language skilfully enough to engage the reader affectively in the storytelling. It is a view that potentially opens up the field to a much wider range of authors than a strict adherence to commercial publication as a definitional criterion allows, particularly when publication in colonial Australia was out of the reach of so many—men and women, settlers and convicts, alike.

Notes 1. H. M. Green, A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published after the Arrival of the First Fleet Until 1950, ed. Dorothy Green (London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984), Vol. 1, 17, fn 17. An extract of his second book was in the four-page newspaper Perth Gazette and Western Australia Journal reprinted on 3 September 1836 (802). This was to demonstrate the successful development of the colony and to inspire those who were “impatient of returns from small beginnings”. Two-thirds of a page was devoted to the extract, with the editor explaining to readers the newspaper had provided so much of its limited space “as an incentive to exertion and steadiness of purpose, which, coupled with sobriety, is the main requisite to form a successful settler”. 2. Known now as Bennelong. He gave his name to the point on which the Sydney Opera House is built. 3. Watkin Tench, 1788: Comprising A Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and a Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson, ed. Tim Flannery (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1996), 127–32. 4. Isabelle Merle, “Watkin Tench’s Fieldwork: The Journal of an ‘Ethnographer’ in Port Jackson, 1788–1791,” in Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence, ed. Serge Tcherkézoff Margaret Jolly, Darrell Tryon (Canberra: ANU Press, 2009), 199. 5. L. F. Fitzhardinghe, “Tench, Watkin (1758–1833),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National

60

W. MCDONALD

6.

7.

8.

9. 10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15.

University), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tench-watkin-2719#:~: text=Tench%20was%20a%20keen%20explorer,as%20far%20as%20the%20R azorback. See Project Gutenberg Australia for a collection of e-books of these journals prepared by Sue Asscher. “I do love and hate the explorers: they kill anything that moves, turn turtles over, poke through graves, look up grass skirts, take things for further examination never to be returned, scoff at anything superstitious, etc. taking notes all the time…and then call, with a sneer, some native girls who come to take a look at them, the explorers, ‘the inquisitive sex,’” http://gutenberg.net.au/explorers-journals.html. Cooper describes Flinders’ work as: “[W]ritten by an intellectual man… [it is] an enlightening and fascinating story of brilliant navigation and discovery, achievement and tragedy, self-sacrifice and devotion. He pays noble tribute to his comrades suddenly swept away off the Unknown Coast; expresses spontaneous gratitude to the people of Mauritius who befriended him in the hour of need, and deep sympathy and understanding towards primitive Aboriginals. His moral character and devotion to duty were based on high ideals”. H. M. Cooper, “Flinders, Matthew (1774–1814),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University), https://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/flinders-matthew-2050. Charles Sturt, Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia … During the Years 1844, 5, and 6 Together with a Notice of the Province of South Australia in 1847 (London: T. & W. Boone, 1849), Vol. 2, 90–91. 1 May 1839. Ernest Giles, Geographic Travels in Central Australia from 1872 to 1874 (Melbourne: M’Carron, Bird & Co., 1875), 192. Louis Green, “Giles, Ernest (1835–1897),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1972), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/giles-ernest-3611. As R. B. Walker noted, when letters and fresh reading material arrived on a ship, colonial readers “gorged like a boa constrictor on one good feed and then fasted for weeks until the next repast was offered and swallowed whole”. Robin Berwick (R. B.) Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976), 200. Katrina J. Quinn, “Exploring an Early Version of Literary Journalism: Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Journalism,” Literary Journalism Studies 3, no. 1 (2011): 42, https://s35767.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/ 2011/06/032-051_Epistolary.pdf. Thomas Watling, Letters from an Exile at Botany-Bay, to His Aunt in Dumfries (Penrith, Scotland: Ann Bell, c.1794), 37. Watling, Letters, 26.

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

61

16. Watling, Letters, 26. 17. Watling, Letters. 18. Tench, 1788, 127–32. See also, Michael C. Flynn, The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790 (Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1993). 19. Anonymous, “Voyage of the Lady Juliana: From a Letter by One of the Female Convicts Transported in the Lady Juliana,” in News from a New Colony: British Museum Papers (London: 1790). 20. Nancy L. Roberts, “Firing the Canon: The Historical Search for Literary Journalism’s Missing Links,” Literary Journalism Studies 4, no. 2 (2012). 21. Roberts, “Firing the Canon,” 82. 22. John Tulloch, “Kicking the Canon in the Breeches,” LIterary Journalism Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 97. 23. Tulloch, “Kicking the Canon,” 97. 24. As she notes, letters and journals were the primary form of writing in the colony, with most accounts of the beginning of white settlement either based on them or published in those forms. Elizabeth Webby, Colonial Voices: Letters, Diaries, Journalism, and Other Accounts of NineteenthCentury Australia (St. Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 1989), xi–xxii. 25. Patricia Clarke and Dale Spender, eds., Life Lines: Australian Women’s Letters and Diaries 1788–1840 (St. Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin, 1996). 26. Clarke and Spender, eds., Life Lines. 27. Clarke and Spender, eds., Life Lines. 28. Clarke and Spender, eds., Life Lines. 29. Mary Thomas, The Diary and Letters of Mary Thomas (1836–1866): being a record of the early days of South Australia, ed. Evan Kyffin Thomas (Adelaide: Thomas, 1915). 30. María Pía Lara, “Habermas’s Concept of the Public Sphere and the New Feminist Agenda,” Los Angeles Review of Books (11 August 2019), https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/habermass-conceptpublic-sphere-new-feminist-agenda/. 31. Junger Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Cambridge, USA: MIT Press, 1962/1991). 32. Lara, “Habermas’s Concept.” See also, Nancy Fraser, “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy,” Social Text 25, no. 26 (1990). 33. Dale Spender, Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers (London: Pandora, 1988), 3–4. 34. Spender, Writing a New World, 4. 35. Clarke and Spender, eds., Life Lines, 21.

62

W. MCDONALD

36. Jill Conway, “Elizabeth Macarthur (1766–1850),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macarthur-elizab eth-2387. 37. Clarke spender pp. 25–26—10 E. Macarthur to Bridget Kingdon, 1 September 1795 (incorrectly dated; should be 1798), reproduced in Clarke and Spender, eds., Life Lines, 25–26. 38. Elizabeth Hawkins, Letter, Bathurst, 7 May 1822, Manuscript reference no.: MS 6663. Leaf 11 states the document was “Copied by C.L. Bowling 1884, recopied Oct. 1924, recopied 1956”. An undated transcription of the letter is held in the National Library of Australia Manuscript collection at MS 535. 39. Hawkins, Letter, Bathurst. 40. Joan Lynraven, “Catchpole, Margaret (1762–1819),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1966), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra phy/catchpole-margaret-1886. See also, David A Mitchell, Edited transcripts of the 11 known letters of Margaret Catchpole, written 1801– 1811, together with an audio cassette of the letters read by Joan Rix in Suffolk dialect, compiled and recorded 1996, 1801–1811, State Library of New South Wales, MLMSS 6241, MLOH 241; Joan Lynraven, “Catchpole, Margaret (1762–1819),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1966), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/catchpole-margaret-1886. 41. 113 kilometres. 42. 6.7 metres. 43. Joan Lynraven, “Catchpole, Margaret (1762–1819),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1966), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra phy/catchpole-margaret-1886. 44. Mitchell, Catchpole Letters. 45. John C. Hartsock, Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), https://muse.jhu. edu/book/48954; Norman Sims, True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2008). John C. Hartsock, A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Narrative form (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000); Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists,” in Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-fiction, ed. Norman Sims and Mark Kramer (New York: Ballantyne, 1995).

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

63

46. David F. Labaree, “The Aesthetic Pleasures of Scholarly Writing,” Inside Higher Ed (October 11, 2022), https://www.insidehighered.com/adv ice/2022/10/11/how-academic-writing-can-actually-offer-aesthetic-ple asure-opinion.

Bibliography Anonymous. “Voyage of the Lady Juliana: From a Letter by One of the Female Convicts Transported in the Lady Juliana.” In News from a New Colony: British Museum Papers. London, 1790. Clarke, Patricia, and Dale Spender, eds. Life Lines: Australian Women’s Letters and Diaries 1788–1840. Edited by Dale Spender. St. Leonards, N.S.W: Allen & Unwin, 1996. Conway, Jill. “Elizabeth Macarthur (1766–1850).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/macarthur-elizabeth-2387. Cooper, H. M. “Flinders, Matthew (1774–1814).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/flinders-matthew-2050. Fitzhardinghe, L. F. “Tench, Watkin (1758–1833).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/tench-watkin-2719#:~:text=Tench% 20was%20a%20keen%20explorer,as%20far%20as%20the%20Razorback. Flynn, Michael C. The Second Fleet: Britain’s Grim Convict Armada of 1790. Sydney: Library of Australian History, 1993. Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Social Text 25, no. 26 (1990): 56–80. Giles, Ernest. Geographic Travels in Central Australia from 1872 to 1874. Melbourne: M’Carron, Bird & Co., 1875. Giles, Ernest. Australia Twice Traversed. London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle and Rivington, 1889. Green, H. M. A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published after the Arrival of the First Fleet until 1950, edited by Dorothy Green. London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984. Green, Louis. “Giles, Ernest (1835–1897).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1972. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/giles-ernest-3611.

64

W. MCDONALD

Habermas, Junger. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere. Cambridge, USA: MIT Press, 1962/1991. Hartsock, John C. A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Narrative Form. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000. ———. Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/48954. Hawkins, Elizabeth. Letter, Bathurst. 7 May 1822. Manuscript reference no.: MS 6663. Kramer, Mark. “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists.” Chap. Preface In Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction, edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer. New York: Ballantyne, 1995. Labaree, David F. “The Aesthetic Pleasures of Scholarly Writing.” Inside Higher Ed, October 11, 2022. https://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2022/10/ 11/how-academic-writing-can-actually-offer-aesthetic-pleasure-opinion. Lara, María Pía. “Habermas’s Concept of the Public Sphere and the New Feminist Agenda.” Los Angeles Review of Books, August 11, 2019. https:// lareviewofbooks.org/article/habermass-concept-public-sphere-new-feministagenda/. Lynraven, Joan. “Catchpole, Margaret (1762–1819).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1966. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/catchpole-mar garet-1886. Merle, Isabelle. “Watkin Tench’s Fieldwork: The Journal of an ‘Ethnographer’ in Port Jackson, 1788–1791.” In Oceanic Encounters: Exchange, Desire, Violence, edited by Serge Tcherkézoff Margaret Jolly, Darrell Tryon. Canberra: ANU Press, 2009. Mitchell, David A. Edited Transcripts of the 11 Known Letters of Margaret Catchpole, Written 1801–1811, Together with an Audio Cassette of the Letters Read by Joan Rix in Suffolk Dialect, Compiled and Recorded 1996. MLMSS 6241, MLOH 241. Quinn, Katrina J. “Exploring an Early Version of Literary Journalism: Nineteenth-Century Epistolary Journalism.” Literary Journalism Studies 3, no. 1 (2011). https://s35767.pcdn.co/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/032051_Epistolary.pdf. Roberts, Nancy L. “Firing the Canon: The Historical Search for Literary Journalism’s Missing Links.” Literary Journalism Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 81–93. Sims, Norman. True Stories: A Century of Literary Journalism. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2008. Spender, Dale. Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers. London: Pandora, 1988.

3

JOURNALS, LETTERS AND UNEXPECTED FORMS

65

Sturt, Charles. Narrative of an Expedition into Central Australia ... During the Years 1844, 5, and 6 Together with a Notice of the Province of South Australia in 1847. London: T. & W. Boone, 1849. Tench, Watkin. 1788: Comprising a Narrative of the Expedition to Botany Bay and a Complete Account of the Settlement at Port Jackson. Edited by Tim Flannery. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 1996. Thomas, Mary. The Diary and Letters of Mary Thomas (1836–1866): Being a Record of the Early Days of South Australia. Edited by Evan Kyffin Thomas. Adelaide: Thomas, 1915. Tulloch, John. “Kicking the Canon in the Breeches.” LIterary Journalism Studies 4, no. 2 (2012): 95–99. Walker, Robin Berwick (R.B.). The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803– 1920. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976. Watling, Thomas. Letters from an Exile at Botany-Bay, to His Aunt in Dumfries. Penrith, Scotland: Ann Bell, c.1794. Webby, Elizabeth. Colonial Voices: Letters, Diaries, Journalism, and Other Accounts of Nineteenth-Century Australia. St. Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 1989.

CHAPTER 4

Captured Lives and Settler Memoir

Panning for gold, ca. 1855–1910. Unknown Photographer. Courtesy State Library of Victoria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_4

67

68

W. MCDONALD

Literary journalism and memoir have interiority in common, sharing the characteristics of subjectivity and the inflected voice of the writer. Where they overlap is when the focus of memoir shifts outwards from the author’s life to tell a larger story.1 In colonial Australia, there are many instances of memoir where the writers go further than merely detailing their personal experiences and evolving consciousness and provide useful first-hand accounts of the time and place in which they were living. There are fascinating autobiographical accounts published commercially in Britain that reveal as much or more about the circumstances of life in Australia as they do about the writers.

Pioneering Lives: Katherine Kirkland Katherine Kirkland’s memoir is an example. She was a Scottish woman who emigrated with her husband, infant daughter and brothers in 1838, initially settling at Trawalla, outside of Melbourne, where they established cattle and sheep grazing runs. Kirkland wrote about her journey through rugged bushland to her new home, as well as an account of the two years her family spent there. Her memoir Life in the Bush was based on letters she wrote to her mother. It was published initially as five articles serialised in volume XI of William and Robert Chambers’ penny weekly magazine, Chambers’s Edinburgh Journal, from 18 June to 16 July 1842. Three years later, the articles were collated and appeared as a complete text in Chambers’s Miscellany of Useful and Entertaining Tracts. Kirkland delighted in her life on their farm despite the land’s strange wildness, the rough conditions and hard work, the unreliability and dishonesty of the servants and farm workers and her fear of the First Nation’s people whose land her family was occupying. She was also conscious of her social standing back in Britain and the need to keep up appearances. Writing under the nom de plume of “A Lady”, she was careful to present herself as a respectable, middle-class housewife, astonished and sometimes disgusted at this new life she was experiencing. She describes her day-to-day activities in detail, providing an enlightening account of the early settlers’ farming methods and first contact with the local First Nations people. Besides running the house, garden and kitchen, Kirkland took over management of the dairy. She recounts tales of missing sheep taken by dingoes, but also by hungry people forced off their lands. As happened so

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

69

often in colonial accounts, the indigenous tribe remained unnamed, but in this instance they would have been the Moner Balug clan of the Wathaurong.2 As Barbara Dawson observes, the Kirklands settled at Trawalla at a transitional time, “in the period before Aborigines had established a position in colonial station life … when the emerging dichotomy of ‘wild blacks’ … and ‘station Aborigines’ was still being played out”.3 Even though the Kirklands tried to displace the Moner Balug from their land, the tribe kept returning, making camp near the homestead for longer and longer periods, ignoring the Kirklands’ attempts to make them work except in return for food. As an early female settler, possibly the first white woman in the area as she claimed, Kirkland had few precedents to look to who could guide her in ways to write about her and her families’ encounters and relationships with the Moner Balug.4 Yet, they are a constant presence in Kirkland’s text. She initially comments, it was “no easy matter to be on good terms”, but it is clear relationships of varying sorts were established and it became easier for the settlers over time. One way in which Kirkland attempted to preserve her gentility in her new rural life was by protecting the privacy of the space within her home, even though it was a roughly built slab hut with large gaps between the boards of the walls. Kirkland was greatly disturbed when some Moner Balug men from a large group of 100 came inside one day when she was alone. As Barbara Dawson comments: “That cultural boundary was not to be crossed”.5 They did her no harm, but were curious: [They] examined all they saw very attentively, especially the pictures we had hanging on the walls. They were much taken with a likeness of my mother and laughed heartily at some black profiles; they said they were “black leubras”. I told them to leave the hut, but they would not; and one, a very tall fellow, took the liberty of sitting down beside me on the sofa. I did not much like being alone with these gentry, so I rose to go to the door to call someone, but my tall friend took hold of my arm and made me sit down again; on which I cried out sufficiently loud to alarm my husband, who was building a hut behind. He came in and turned them out.6

Kirkland described the Moner Balug’s food: “muscles” from the freshwater ponds, fat white grubs from tree trunks and “manna” from the eucalypts which she writes “is very good and tastes like almond biscuits”.7 In contrast, she lists the menu she served on New Year’s Day. The family

70

W. MCDONALD

had visitors and she served a late lunch, in 100-degree heat (38 °C), comprising kangaroo-tail soup, boiled leg of mutton, parrot pie, potatoes and green peas, plum pudding, strawberry tart and cream. “What good things we had in the bush”, she comments.8 Later in her memoir, Kirkland evocatively describes the drama of a bushfire, followed by illness, that drove the family off the farm and to Melbourne, before continued ill health forced her to return to Scotland.

Farming Van Diemen’s Land: James Ross James Ross’s account The Settler in Van Diemen’s Land is also worth mentioning. It is one of the rarer early memoirs published locally rather than in Britain. It first appeared in its complete form in the 1836 issue of his own publication, the annual Hobart Town Almanack.9 Ross arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1822 and was granted 1,000 acres on the River Shannon. Faced by losses in establishing his farm, he set up a school near Hobart and began to tutor Lieutenant-Governor Arthur’s children. In 1825, he was appointed by Arthur as the co-editor of the Hobart Town Gazette with G.T. Howe, the government editor and printer. Two years later, Ross took over as the sole editor and printer of the Gazette which had by then become a weekly paper. In 1829, he launched his own publication, the annual Hobart Town Almanack.10 In the preface to his narrative of his experiences establishing a settlement on the Shannon River, Ross makes it clear that his primary intention in writing was to inform the public: “I have done my best to commemorate a period and a state of things in the formation of the Colony which are now fast fading away. In the articles which follow, much useful information to all connected with Van Diemen’s Land, will be found to be collected”. He uses dialogue, discursive asides, literary allusions and a light-hearted tone to describe his first impressions of Hobart Town and the difficult journey with his young family by bullock dray to the Shannon. The wide-ranging narrative gives a detailed picture of pioneer life, recounting with fondness the process of weaning his son while his wife was ill, his difficulties with an assigned convict who never reformed from being a hardened criminal, practical information for building a slab house, excursions into the surrounding countryside (usually in search of wandering cattle) and extensive lyrical passages describing in detail the local landscape. He recounts many friendly encounters with the local First Nations people who were eventually removed from the area and forced to

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

71

go to Flinder’s Island by G.A. Robinson.11 Taking issue with the phrenologists of the era who dismissed Aboriginal people as savages, limited in intelligence by the size of their skulls, he wrote of his admiration for them “as thinking men—as endured not only with much ingenuity and penetration, but with the tenderest sympathies of the heart, and all the nobler passions that elevate man in the scale of being”.12 Both Kirkland’s and Ross’s stories are listed in Kay Walsh and Joy Hooton’s comprehensive annotated bibliography Australian Autobiographical Narratives.13 Walsh and Hooton’s research demonstrates the variety of colonial memoir writers in terms of their gender, wealth, education and literary skill. It shows the male colonists usually wrote from the perspective of their occupations as “amateur explorers, clergymen, military officers, seamen, whalers, merchants, convicts, teachers, squatters, small settlers, commandants, naturalists, political exiles, itinerant workers, criminals, sportsmen, evangelists, politicians and missionaries”.14 The women they included more often wrote from the perspective of their relationships—as wives, mothers and daughters—although the hard work demanded of everyone in the colony is ever present in their pages.15

Women as Political Commentators: Caroline Chisholm and Ada Cambridge An exception to the rule is Caroline Chisholm who published her Female Immigration Considered in a Brief Account of the Immigrants’ Home in 1842. A humanitarian, she is renowned for the work she did to improve the lot of immigrants to Australia, particularly the women “who were tumbling into the colony, invited by bounties but unprepared, unprotected, often cheated and insulted on the ships that carried them …”16 Among the many people she helped during her time in Australia were 11,000 immigrants she assisted find jobs and homes. She later established the Family Colonisation Loan Society to enable poor people to pay their passages to Australia.17 Chisholm was invited in 1846 to write a regular column for Douglas Jerrold’s Weekly Newspaper in London, on life in the colony,18 but it is her memoir that comes closest to filling the brief of literary journalism. Written with humour and charm, it details the evils of the prevailing immigration system with the goal of improving it and securing funding to support the immigrant women she was trying to help. Ada Cambridge’s writing is also worth considering in this context. She arrived in Australia in 1870 with her husband George Cross who

72

W. MCDONALD

was a curate committed to colonial service. The family’s pastoral work took them to a number of Victorian rural towns, from Wangaratta to Williamstown, where Cambridge turned to writing and developed a reputation as a novelist and significant Australian poet. In 1903, she published her first memoir Thirty Years in Australia, based on her Victorian experiences and aimed at British audiences. Initially the memoir was serialised in The Empire Review over 1901–1902, before appearing in book form less than a year later. Both versions were based on her diaries but there were otherwise some significant differences between the two. Cambridge toned down some of her stronger and less flattering statements for the book, for example, about government or church policies, and gave less personal information there than in the journal articles.19 The reviews of the book at the time were positive with the reviewer for London’s Punch saying they had “not read anything that more vividly pictures daily life in Australia through the growing-period of thirty years than does this unpretentious volume”.20 The Morning Post noted Cambridge “holds some pronounced views regarding the social and political progress of Australia, and these are worth considering by those who would understand its conditions”.21 Cambridge described her work as a “chronicle” whose object was to “reflect in my trivial experiences the character of the country as modified by its circumstances from year to year”.22 While her work describes notable moments in her domestic life, it also sought to inform the English reader on economic and political subjects that were integral to the transformation of the Australian colonies into a nation. Individual chapters are devoted to the “boom and bust” years of the 1890s and the accompanying labour unrest that manifested in the maritime and shearers’ strikes. Describing the latter, she writes that no picture of her Australian life “can be made clear unless I sketch in a line or two to indicate surrounding social circumstances of the larger kind”.23 Cambridge, demonstrating the sensibility of a literary journalist, was distrustful of the completeness of official versions of history, believing they should “be mediated by reference to the material conditions of ordinary lives”. 24 She later commented to the publisher George Robertson that her memoir might be worth republishing one day to “fill out collected records”.25

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

73

Memoir, Subjectivity and the Fact or Fiction Debate One of the issues that repeatedly comes up in discussions of literary journalism, because of its subjective, narrativised form, is the role of imagination and where the line should be drawn between fact and fiction. Literary journalists arguably are held to a higher standard than both traditional news reporters or fiction writers because they have a responsibility to balance factual accuracy and “truth” in all its forms: cultural, political, emotional and aesthetic. The demands of narrative can place great temptations on a writer to change the text, for example, by introducing scenes or conversations that were not there or by manipulating the facts in some other way. But, as we have seen, literary journalism,26 in its modern form, is regarded as a branch of reporting. The generally accepted contemporary position is that the literary journalist must not play with the facts.27 All stories, including journalistic news reports, are constructed. They do not come fully formed and land neatly onto the page. The use of imagination is fundamental to every stage of the reporting and writing process. The writer’s apprehension of the “knowledge” of the story—the basic data underpinning the story—needs imagination to give it meaning.28 Imagination is equally essential in the creative and aesthetic decisions that must necessarily be made to bring a piece to life and make it engaging. Besides deciding on the focus of the story, the people to interview, the information to include or leave out, the writer must decide on the style to adopt to best convey meaning, atmosphere and feeling. Yet, when a story is labelled as factually true, then deceitful fabrications are not tolerated by readers or the industry, as a number of disgraced writers have discovered. James Frey, Mischa Defonseca, Stephen Glass and Norma Khouri are just some of the writers forced in recent decades to face the public consequences of their fabrications, at least to their reputations if not to their bank balances.29 To avoid such problems, a simple rule of thumb has been proposed by Roy Peter Clarke who, while acknowledging the role of imagination and creativity in writing non-fiction, and the need to omit and restructure material in the creative process of writing, is uncompromising about the need for factual accuracy. He recommends non-fiction writers refrain from adding material that wasn’t there or taking any other step that would deceive the reader.30 The justification for his stance is political:

74

W. MCDONALD

“These principles have meaning … in the light of a large idea, crucial to democratic life: that there is a world out there that is knowable”.31 Such clear rules are useful while reinforcing the need for factual accuracy in this digital, “post-truth” era when distrust in public facts abounds.32 But literary journalism is a complex form and it should also be recognised that a mere recounting of facts can be far from “truthful”. Some stories are so complex that traditional reporting techniques are inadequate for the job. As Michael Herr, the author of Dispatches, said on the reporting of the Vietnam War: “Conventional journalism could no more reveal this war than conventional firepower could win it”.33 The writer Geoff Dyer would agree with Herr’s approach. He argues for the category of the “non-fiction work of art”, writing that relies on aesthetics to convey truth, rather than strict factual accuracy. “All that matters is that the reader can’t see the joins, that there is no textural change between reliable fabric and fabrication”. At the same time, he acknowledges that “in some kinds of writing—history, reportage and some species of memoir or true adventure—there is zero room for manoeuvre. Everything must be rigorously fact-checked”.34 Some of the foundational texts of literary journalism from the twentieth century are better categorised as Dyer’s “non-fiction works of art” than literary journalism. Besides Herr’s Dispatches, the best-known examples would be Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood and the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson. These are famous instances where the writers blurred the line between fact and fiction to strengthen the narrative qualities of the stories they were writing. For this reason, some commentators have “grandfathered” the work of writers who came before literary journalism really developed as an academic field and the notions of journalistic responsibility became more firmly entrenched as a requirement. While some writers such as Norman Sims exclude such works as In Cold Blood and Dispatches from the field while at the same time recognising their importance as subjects of study,35 others such as Mark Kramer allow them to be considered foundational works of literary journalism. Kramer observing that twentieth-century writers like Truman Capote are more likely “to be exculpated by virtue of the earliness (and elegance) of their experimentation, and by the presumed lack of intention to deceive”, argues they could not have “violated readers’ expectations for the field, because there were not yet strong expectations—or much of a field, for that matter—to violate”.36

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

75

The notion of grandfathering is an interesting one and, it is argued, could be extended to the writers of colonial Australia who were working at a time when journalism and literature shared “the same parentage and DNA”37 —that is, before journalism was professionalised, its ethics were codified and theoretical consideration was given to its practice. Up until the end of the first half of the nineteenth century, the line between literature and journalism was very loosely drawn in the Anglophone world.38 Kathy Roberts Forde and Katherine A. Foss note that: While writers and readers certainly understood news and fiction to be different genres, they generally did not insist on a firm line of demarcation between the two as categories either of public communication or of authorship. In other words, distinctions between what constituted journalism and imaginative literature existed, but they had yet to ossify in the American consciousness.39

Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, also researching journalism history in the United States, goes so far as to describe the two fields as “synonymous”.40 As the century progressed, the two forms would be prised apart, most notably because of the development of objectivity as a journalistic principle, the rise of realism in literature and the simultaneous decline in sentimentality and romanticism in fiction.41 David Conley has demonstrated a similar marrying of the two fields in colonial Australia where the world of letters was a small one.42 Most writers were dabbling across the forms, crossing over between journalism and varieties of fiction, including plays, novels, short stories and poetry. In this era, before the professionalisation of journalism, writers shaped their storytelling to suit the platforms available to them. “Frequently, this involved equal measures of non-fiction and fiction—sometimes in the same narrative—at a time when the essay and sketch were central modes of expression”.43 While Conley focused his discussion on The Bulletin, many of the colonial newspapers and journals equally provided a “material link between news and novels and journalists and novelists”.44

76

W. MCDONALD

Historical Reliability: Ellen Clacy on the Goldfields An interesting memoir to examine in this light is Ellen Clacy’s A Lady’s Visit to the Gold Diggings of Australia in 1852–1853. It was described by the British press at the time it was published as the best written about the Australian goldfields up till that point.45 Taking the form of diary entries, it recounts her visit to Australia with her brother Frederick. While later valued for its historical detail, particularly with regard to the circumstances of the women on the diggings, doubt has been thrown on the veracity of Clacy’s account because of scepticism as to whether she personally witnessed the events she wrote about, or invented, or merely collected the stories of others pretending they were her own.46 This raises a question for scholars of memoir and literary journalism alike. Generally, in the English-speaking world, it is acceptable for modern literary journalists to recreate events from the testimony of others while being strictly accurate and acknowledging sources. This is not the case elsewhere, for example in Germany where, as Beate Josephi and Christine Müller note, literary journalists are required to report only what they can personally witness.47 Marjorie Theobold, dismissing Clacy’s book as inauthentic, alleged Clacy concocted her memoir from newspaper stories and other accounts.48 Susan Priestly, in response to Theobald, has demonstrated, however, that Clacy did indeed make the trip to the goldfields as she alleged, that the account is mostly factual and that she was likely an eyewitness to the events she cites.49 She raises another concern regarding the accuracy of the memoir: some of the dates given, as well as other minor information, she agrees have been fudged. While Clacy’s book suggests her trip spanned nearly two years, her sojourn on the goldfields was more likely a matter of months in 1852, the deception being used to cover-up her “illegitimate” pregnancy. Her daughter was born in 1853, the year before her recorded marriage.50 Do such changes prevent such a memoir being counted as literary journalism even if the rest of the book is correct? Has the writer crossed an unforgivable line? While theorising about the imagination was done by philosophers and writers before Ellen Clacy ever picked up her pen, modern-day expectations of journalistic accuracy had not been formulated at the time she was writing her goldfields memoir. Her motivations for changing the dates in her book were personal, but it is arguable they were done with good reason given the moral and religious contexts of the time and

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

77

the restrictions they placed on the lives of women. While Clacy was an Englishwoman who returned home after a short period to resume her life and publish her work, it is possible to make a case for her writing to be included as early Australian literary journalism despite the minor changes she made to the text.

Where to Draw the Line? Martin Cash In contrast, other works of memoir published from the colony are rollicking yarns whose authorship and levels of inaccuracy may still—even by nineteenth-century standards—exclude them from being described as literary journalism. One example is Martin Cash’s 1870 book, The adventures of Martin comprising a faithful account of his exploits, while a bushranger under arms in Tasmania, in company with Kavanagh and Jones, in the year 1843. It gives an account of his life in New South Wales after being transported in 1828 for shooting at a man who made approaches to a young woman with whom he was romantically involved. His story was told to and embellished by his co-author James Lester Burke who helped to create the legend of Cash as the daring, unjustly accused convict who escaped from Port Arthur, became a bushranger and ended up married and a superintendent of convicts on Norfolk Island. Besides building the sympathetic character of Cash and fashioning a dramatic narrative, Burke added literary touches including quotations from poets as chapter headings. At the same time, the story contains much detail based on Cash’s genuine experiences including precise information about places, people and events. The manuscript has been used by a number of writers as a source of real data about the workings of the penal system, from the power relations between the commandants, convicts and overseers, to the desperate living conditions, and punishments regularly inflicted on the convicts. Marcus Clarke, for example, drew extensively on Cash’s book when he wrote his convict novel For the Term of his Natural Life.51 It raises, however, the knotty question of how much fiction is allowable in a work of literary journalism if the strict rule that literary journalists must be entirely factual is relaxed. In Cash’s case, the line may have been crossed by the extensive addition of the embellishments merely to increase readership and popularity, making it harder to justify inclusion in the field.

78

W. MCDONALD

Does the End Justify the Means? Arthur James Vogan Similarly challenging, though perhaps published with more justifiable motivations, is the work of Arthur James Vogan. Although not a memoir, his “novel” The Black Police: A Story of Modern Australia (1890) raises some of the same questions about the breadth of the literary journalism field.52 Vogan fictionalised his work because he believed he had no other way of raising discussion in the colony of the violence and abuse being perpetrated against First Nations people on behalf of squatters and other settlers. Vogan, an explorer and journalist, wanted to expose the appalling abuses he had observed or investigated in 1888–1889, particularly in outback Queensland, where violence against First Nations people was institutionalised through the deployment of the Native Mounted Police.53 As the historian Henry Reynolds observes, modern Australia’s history is “complex and multifaceted”. First Nations Australians played a significant role in its settlement, initially as guides, escorts and diplomats for the explorations of the interior, but also as valuable stockmen and women and domestic labourers. In the tropics, they were the “backbone of the workforce”.54 Because of their fine bushcraft, they were also used in the native police forces, particularly in Queensland, in the drawn-out process of taking land and establishing settlements. Reynolds estimates hundreds, and possibly up to a thousand young men, served in the Native Police, killing more First Nations people than the settlers.55 Says Reynolds: The response of many people when this matter is raised is to express amazement that the troopers could shoot their own people and assume they must have been coerced into killing. But the critical point is that the idea that the First Nations were members of one race or one people was a European one and had little bearing on the situation on the ground … The young troopers were invariably campaigning far from their own homeland in country previously unknown among people foreign to them. And the locals were people to be feared. If the troopers were caught away from their detachment they would almost certainly have been killed, and this kept them together as much as the discipline imposed by white officers.56

Born in England in 1859, Vogan had migrated with his family to New Zealand where he later became a journalist and illustrator with the Auckland Star and the Bay of Plenty Times . In 1885, at the age

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

79

of twenty-six, he joined an expedition to New Guinea funded by the Geographical Society of Australasia. It was the first of many trips he would make to Queensland as a journalist for the Town and Country Journal, The Australian Mining Standard and the Illustrated London News , producing an illustrated series of accounts of outback life under the title “A Ride Across Australia”.57 In 1889, he wrote about a trip he made from Sydney, west through Bourke, then north through the Channel country to Queensland, where he was based at Sandringham Station near Boulia, before returning via Adelaide.58 As Mark Cryle has documented, Vogan was sickened by the violence against the First Nations that he witnessed on his journeys. He wrote an article for the Illustrated London News outlining some of these atrocities, but it was returned to him with the comment that it was “unsuitable for our columns”.59 Undeterred, he continued to write to various colonial newspapers to try to break the silence on the matter. His book The Black Police arose from a suggestion of the editor of the Auckland Star, when he was on a return trip to New Zealand, that he fictionalise his work to facilitate publication and gain a wide readership. He did so, and it was published by Hutchison in London in 1890.60 Advertised as a “novel with a purpose”, the book incorporates ethnographic details, words from local languages, letters, extracts from newspaper reports (some of which were his own published articles) and flashback techniques.61 While these are acceptable in literary journalism, Vogan went much further and invented characters around a melodramatic plot, including a thinly disguised white narrator, the “hero” of the story, named Claude Angland, who is introduced on the first page looking “the beau idéal of what an intelligent, active pioneer in a new country should be”. The resulting book is a rather heavy-handed polemic that was later accused by critics of being overdone and sensational. Vogan might have expected a better reception as he drew on popular stereotypes in the book that had well-known precedents in the writing of British and American abolitionists, including, for example, Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin or, Life Among the Lowly (1852). As Jane Lydon points out, the images he drew in words and pictures were part of a global language used in the anti-slavery movement.62 Vogan frequently referred to First Nations workers as slaves, spoke about their lives “in bondage”, and made reference to violent forms of discipline including flogging, handcuffs and leg irons, as well as the use of dogs

80

W. MCDONALD

to track them down. He includes quotations from the abolitionist American poet John Greenleaf Whitter, and also refers to the “slave countries” and “horrors” depicted by Harriet Beecher Stowe.63 Among his engraved illustrations, he included a “Slave Map of Australia”. Featured on the cover of the book was the lurid drawing of a young woman being whipped which was, as Jane Lydon notes, an immediately recognisable abolitionist symbol at the time, stemming from British editions of Stowe’s novel.64 Vogan had wanted to achieve change, not only in attitudes but also in government policy, but this was not to be. Although it proved popular, becoming the first Australian novel to reach a third edition, The Black Police was met with a mixed reception here and overseas, failing to stir any official response to improve the lives of the First Nations people on the frontier or elsewhere. Vogan claimed its publication effectively ended his career as a journalist and writer, and left him with a price on his head. He moved to Western Australia, finding work in the mining industry, then spent some time in South Africa, before eventually returning to Sydney where he joined the Association for the Protection of Native Races and continued to advocate for First Nations rights.65 Undoubtedly, the message of the book was unwelcome in the Australian colonies, particularly Queensland, but at least part of the reason for the critical reception of The Black Police lies in the sensationalist, clichéd tropes Vogan used to tell his story. In his own defence, Vogan insisted his novel was based on reality, and this was echoed in his introductory note stating it was largely based on true events: In the following story I have endeavoured to depict some of the obscurer portions of Australia’s shadow side. The scenes and main incidents employed are chiefly the result of my personal observations and experiences; the remainder are from perfectly reliable sources.

Vogan includes in his book an account and accompanying illustration of a massacre of around thirty people at the hands of the native police. He later said he based this on press reports and drawings of the Myall Creek massacre.66 Cryle has shown at least one incident portrayed by Vogan stemmed from something he personally witnessed—a scene where two Aboriginal servant girls are flogged by the character Wilson Giles. Cryle noted that Vogan later recalled having seen “a native girl tied to a verandah post at Sandringham Station (Acres & Field) and flogged with

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

81

fencing wire”,67 a woman he elsewhere described as “one of the squatter’s harem at Pitchuri Creek”.68 The manager of Sandringham Station at the time was W. G. Field who defended himself in later correspondence with the Geographical Society of Australasia, complaining that Vogan’s behaviour was “eccentric” and “objectionable” when he travelled through the area in 1889, and that he was now “biting the hand that fed him”.69 Cryle discovered in the Fryer Library at the University of Queensland, written in Vogan’s hand in the margin of one of their copies of The Black Police, besides a passage with Giles’s name, the words: “Field of Acres & Field, Sandringham Station, 500,000 acres, Pitchuri Creek”.70 In a response to the Anti-Slavery Reporter’s criticisms of his work, Vogan wrote: You evidently consider I have overdrawn my picture of the painful scenes I have endeavoured to depict … But I assure you sir that–putting my capabilities as a writer to one side–I have erred rather on the side of fearing to disgust my reader with a full account of what has come to my knowledge than on that of exaggeration. I boldly declare, and you can make what use of this letter you like, that I have not overdrawn my dreadful pictures at all; and that these scenes of devilish cruelty which have, for at least fifty years, disgraced their portion of Her Majesty’s dominion are rampant today.71

It is interesting to consider whether Vogan’s novel could be considered literary journalism. Can his use of fiction to convey his message be justified, given the difficulty of publishing at the time straight journalistic accounts of the violence directed at First Nation Australians? There are many instances of work accepted as literary journalism in modern times that nevertheless play with the divide between fact or fiction because of political restrictions placed on the authors. For example, some of the works of Ryszard Kapu´scinski ´ (Poland), Svetlana Alexievich (Belarus), Behrouz Boochani (Australia/Manus Island) and the Latin American crónica,72 use creative and fictionalising techniques to disguise information so facts and truth can be published, or to convey difficult information across cultural borders. Allowances are made in these instances when cultures of censorship and violence prevent the full disclosure of facts and identities. Certainly, Vogan was attempting to speak to a community that was unwilling to listen. Yet, despite the overriding press culture of silence regarding the true circumstances of the First Nations people, Henry

82

W. MCDONALD

Reynolds has shown there were dissident voices agitating for reform and recognition of their human rights in the nineteenth century.73 That Vogan failed to gain their support is telling. While Australian and British readers alike were clearly unready for a non-fiction book revealing the extent of the violence and cruelties being perpetrated to further the aims of the empire, Vogan’s novelised version may have been more successful if he had not erred on the side of the sensational. His attempt to speak on behalf of the First Nations peoples was undermined by constructing them as victims with no agency or real voices of their own. If empathy is a component of literary journalism, as John C. Hartsock suggests,74 then by positioning the First Nations peoples sensationally as “Other” to draw the reader’s pity and outrage, Vogan not only may have repelled otherwise sympathetic readers, but also may have placed his work outside the definitional boundaries of the literary journalism field.

Scientific and Institutional Reliability: Carl Lumholtz and Edward M. Curr Carl Lumholtz’s study, Among Cannibals, published in 1889, provides an interesting contrast. Lumholtz, a Norwegian anthropologist and naturalist, travelled to Australia in the early 1880s with the intention of collecting zoological specimens for the University of Christiania while researching “the customs and anthropology of the little known native tribes which inhabit that continent”.75 He travelled extensively through outback Queensland, before deciding to focus on the Herbert River area, where he travelled and camped with a number of different Aboriginal tribes, including one that had had no prior contact with white people. The book is a subjective account of his experiences and observations over his entire time in Australia but highlights his time in northern Queensland. As a scientist, Lumholtz avoided fictionalising and was careful to catalogue his ethnographic observations. But the book was written with a much boarder audience in mind than his professional colleagues. Presenting himself as an anthropologist-cum adventurer, Lumholtz writes subjectively, positioning himself as the narrator and hero. He partially frames his story as a search for the elusive creature, the boongary, which he suspected was a tree kangaroo. Tree kangaroos were known in New Guinea, but until his expedition none had yet been found on the Australian continent. The real purpose of the book, however, was

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

83

to document “the life, manners, and customs of the Australian aborigines … that within a generation or two will have disappeared from the face of the earth”.76 He describes them in detail, highlighting themes of sex, cannibalism and murder, ensuring a wide audience when it was released. Among Cannibals was published in four languages, with the English edition produced in London by John Murray in 1889, and a special Australian edition put out by E. A. Petherick and Co. by special arrangement with Murray.77 A glowing review in Nature magazine commended Lumholtz on his detailed ethnographic observations: [I]t would hardly be possible to praise too highly the manner in which he has recorded his experiences. In every part of his narrative he displays a remarkable power of keen and accurate observation, and he presents his facts in a style at once so fresh and so simple that from beginning to end the reader’s interest is maintained.78

Despite his pretension to scientific observation, Lumholtz was unable to leave behind the blinkers of European imperialism, and nor could his reviewer. Lumholtz made clear his biases in the Author’s Preface, where he is condescending and dismissive. He said his time in northern Queensland was spent “alone among a race of people whose culture—if indeed they can be said to have a culture whatever—must be characterised as the lowest to be found among the whole genus homo sapiens ”.79 Yet, while he never sufficiently respected or trusted the First Nations peoples he encountered to enable him to form genuine relationships with them, he was likewise never entirely on the side of the colonists. In the process of telling his story, he makes clear the cruelties practised on the First Nations peoples who, he notes, were crucial to the survival of the settlers who could not survive in the bush or run their stations without them. Lumholtz decries the use of the Native Police, using as an example of its iniquity his description of a visit to one of the massacre sites near Bledensbourne: I was shown a large number of skulls of natives who had been shot by the black police in the following circumstances: A couple of teams with provisions for the far west, conducted by two white men, had encamped near the blacks. The latter were lying in ambush, and meant to make an assault, as two black women had been ravished by the white men. Instead of defending themselves with their weapons, the white men were cowardly

84

W. MCDONALD

enough to take flight, leaving all their provisions, oxen, tent, and all their other things in the hands of the blacks. The fugitives reported to the police that they had been attacked, and so the ‘criminals’ a few weeks afterwards were pursued far into a narrow valley and shot. I visited the spot in company with the manager of Bledensbourne station, and saw seven or eight of the skulls. According to the statement made by several persons, nearly the whole tribe was killed, as there was no opportunity of flight … This is one of the many cruelties perpetrated by the native police against the natives, and the most thrilling stories could be told of their conduct. Their cruelties constitute the black page in the annals of Australian colonisation. This police force has become more and more unpopular, and voices have been raised for its entire abolition. The police inspector often left it to his men to do the murdering, ‘to disperse the blacks,’ as it is called, at their own risk. He thus shirked the responsibility and retained his post; for he does not dare kill the blacks openly, at least not at the present time. It is not strange that such an institution is hated by the blacks, or that they take every opportunity of revenge.80

Lumholtz had no intention of rousing opposition to the colonists’ actions. While he showed some empathy, he emphasised the savagery of the First Nations peoples towards each other, espousing social Darwinism and the false logic that they were weak and would inevitably die out. They were curious specimens to him, worthy of study on a par with the flora and fauna. In 1883, another text appeared that also raises interesting questions about whether memoir can satisfy the “reporting” requirement to qualify as literary journalism. The book, titled Recollections of Squatting in Victoria, Then Called the Port Phillip District (from 1841 to 1851), was written by Edward M Curr whose father had bought a sheep station, seventy miles from Melbourne, from a pastoralist who had paid the £10 fee to squat on land otherwise “unoccupied”. Curr was sent as a young man in the 1840s to run the station in his father’s absence. His book, written forty years later, relays the story of his transition to becoming a sheep farmer while describing his encounters with members of the “Bangerang Tribe”, ancestors of today’s Yorta Yorta people. Besides writing a whole chapter on the tribe’s customs, language and beliefs, Curr used literary techniques to convey in flowing prose the many and various incidents he observed from marriages to burials, and from corroborees to reprisal spearings.

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

85

Curr wrote other works, including the four-volume ethnology The Australian Race: Its Origin, Languages, Customs, Place of Landing in Australia, and the Routes by which it Spread Itself over that Continent, but his memoir remains his best-known and most influential book. It has been extensively used as a source of reliable historical information concerning Victoria’s colonial history, the lives of the squatters and the environmental and cultural practices of the Bangerang. So influential has it been that when the Yorta Yorta pressed a native title claim over the area, beginning in 1994, it was defeated on the basis that they had failed to maintain the traditions of their ancestors as described in Curr’s account.81 Justice Howard Olney, in the Federal Court, rejected the Yorta Yorta’s oral testimony in favour of Curr’s written word. Undeterred, the Yorta Yorta persisted with their claim to the High Court, but it was again rejected, with the original determination upheld that “the tide of history” had washed away the Yorta Yorta’s native title rights.82 Curr’s biographer Samuel Furphy argues that in the Curr case, the courts mistakenly privileged European writing above First Nation forms of knowledge and communication and points to the “chilling irony” of Curr’s writings being used to posthumously defeat the native title claims of the Yorta Yorta, given his earlier appropriation of the land for his sheep station.83 By elevating Curr’s book to the level of testimony, the courts rather curiously granted it a status equivalent to responsible journalism, despite oral testimony from members of the Yorta Yorta to the contrary. As this case demonstrates, factual inaccuracy in memoir can have farreaching and unjust consequences. Yet, if the facts can be relied on, memoir has the potential to be an important form of reporting that conveys much more information about the world of the writer than mere news reports or official records can provide. In such cases, memoir’s combination of subjectivity and facticity place it within the category of literary journalism. But memoir, along with journals and letters, was not the only form of personal reporting published in the colony. Just as important were the sketches—of people and landscapes—that appeared from the beginning in the emerging free press.

Notes 1. John C. Hartsock, Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 152–53, https:// muse.jhu.edu/book/48954.

86

W. MCDONALD

2. Barbara Dawson, In the Eye of the Beholder: What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity (Canberra: ANU Press, 2014), 74. 3. Dawson, Eye of the Beholder, 77. 4. Dawson, Eye of the Beholder, 75. 5. Dawson, Eye of the Beholder, 95. 6. Katherine Kirkland, Katherine Kirkland’s Life in the Bush: 1839–1841, ed. Hugh Anderson (North Melbourne, VIC: Red Rooster Press, 2012), 20. 7. Kirkland, Katherine Kirkland’s Life in the Bush: 1839–1841, 25. Kirkland may be referring to the tree Eucalyptus Viminalis, commonly known as the manna gum, which exudes an edible sap that dries and drops to the ground. 8. Kirkland, Katherine Kirkland’s Life in the Bush: 1839–1841, 28. 9. Although, it was also partially published in letter form in the Penny Magazine (London) on 5 May and 12 May 1832, as “An Emigrant’s Struggles”. A limited edition of 350 copies of the final version were published in book form in 1975 by Marsh Walsh, Melbourne. 10. Kay Walsh and Joy Hooton, Australian Autobiographical Narratives [Electronic Resource]: An Annotated Bibliography, vol. 1 (to 1850) (Canberra: Australian Scholarly Editions Centre ADFA and National Library of Australia, 1993), Entry 200, 132–33. 11. James Ross, The Settler in Van Diemen’s Land (Melbourne: Marsh Walsh, 1975), 94. 12. Ross, The Settler in Van Diemen’s Land, 64. 13. Noting that many of the narratives they include, “present themselves as accounts of Australia rather than accounts of the self” (p. 11), Walsh and Hooton further remark that the importance of colonial autobiographies is that they provide “an insight into the varieties of knowing nineteenthcentury Australia as its European settlers knew it. Autobiographies cast light on the time-bound perceptions of place, personalities, peoples and events; they initiate the reader into the actual, lived effects of structural features and structural change and into individual responses to those features and changes. They provide the reader with a more intimate, dramatic, detailed and emphatically more varied experience of early Australia than is accessible from contemporary documentary accounts or even historians’ histories, however well written” (p. 2). 14. Walsh and Hooton, Narratives, 3. 15. Walsh and Hooton, Narratives, 3. 16. Caroline Chisholm, Memoirs of Mrs Caroline Chisholm, ed. Eneas Mackenzie (London: Webb, Millington, and Co., 1852), 43. 17. H. M. Green, A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published after the Arrival of the First Fleet Until 1950, ed.

4

18.

19.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29.

30.

31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36.

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

87

Dorothy Green (London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984), Vol. 1, 61–62. Barbara Lemon, “Women Journalists in Australian History,” in The Women’s Pages: Australian women and journalism since 1850 (c 2008), http://www.womenaustralia.info/exhib/cal/intro.html. Ada Cambridge, Thirty Years in Australia, ed. Margaret Bradstock and Louise Wakeling (Camperdown: University of Sydney Press, 1903/1989), xiii. Cambridge, Thirty Years, ix. 10 March, 1903. Cambridge, Thirty Years, xix. Cambridge, Thirty Years, xx. Cambridge, Thirty Years, xxiii. Cambridge, Thirty Years, ix. Rather than the broader category of “creative non-fiction writing”. For a discussion of some of the principles in the debate see, Norman Sims, “Degrees of Forgiveness: Why I’ve Changed My Mind,” Literary Journalism: The Newsletter of the IALJS, 2019, https://s35767.pcdn.co/ wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1910_IALJS_Newsletter-1.pdf. Lindsay Morton, “The Role of Imagination in Literary Journalism,” Literary Journalism Studies 10, no. 1 (2018). Natalie Robehmed, “From James Frey to Jonah Lehrer: How Scandal Impacts Book Sales,” Forbes, August 3, 2016, https://www.forbes.com/ sites/natalierobehmed/2016/08/03/from-james-frey-to-jonah-lehrerhow-scandal-impacts-book-sales/?sh=5ca1b87675c0. Roy Peter Clark, “The Line Between Fact and Fiction,” Creative Nonfiction: True Stories, Well Told, no. 16 (2001), https://creativenonfiction. org/writing/the-line-between-fact-and-fiction/. Clark, “Fact or Fiction.” Michiko Kakutani, The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump (New York: Tim Duggan Books); Praveen Abraham and Raisun Matthew, eds., The Post-Truth Era: Literature and Media (New Delhi: Authorspress, 2021). Michael Herr, Dispatches (New York: Knopf, 1977), 175. Geoff Dyer, et al., “‘Based on a True Story’: The Fine Line between Fact and Fiction,” Guardian Australia, December 6, 2015, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/dec/06/based-on-atrue-story--geoff-dyer-fine-line-between-fact-and-fiction-nonfiction. Sims, “Forgiveness,” 10. Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists,” in Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-fiction, ed. Norman Sims and Mark Kramer (New York: Ballantyne, 1995).

88

W. MCDONALD

37. Kathy Roberts Forde and Katherine A. Foss, “The Facts—The Color!— The Facts: The Idea of a Report in American Print Culture, 1885–1910,” Book History 15, no. 1 (2012): 129. 38. John C. Hartsock, A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Narrative Form (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000). See also, Jonathan D. Fitzgerald, “Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Sentimental Roots of Literary Journalism,” Literary Journalism Studies 9, no. 2, Fall (2017). 39. Forde and Foss, “The Facts,” 7–8. 40. Fitzgerald, “Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Sentimental Roots of Literary Journalism,” 10. 41. Fitzgerald, “Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Sentimental Roots of Literary Journalism,” 10. 42. David Conley, “A Telling Story: Five Journalist-Novelists and Australia’s Writing Culture” (PhD University of Queensland, 2003). 43. Conley, “A Telling Story”, 26. 44. Conley, “A Telling Story”, 53. 45. Susan Priestly, “Identifying Ellen Clacy: A Cautionary Tale,” Victorian Historical Journal 85, no. 1 (June 2014): 119. 46. Marjorie Theobald, “Lies, Damned Lies and Travel Writers: Women’s Narratives of the Castlemaine Goldfields, 1852–54,” Victorian Historical Journal 84, no. 2 (2013). 47. That journalists restrict themselves to eyewitness reports is the major criterion for literary journalism in Germany. See, Beate U. Josephi and Christine Muller, “Differently Drawn Boundaires of the Permissible in German and Australian Literary Journalism,” Literary Journalism Studies 1, no. 1 (2009): 70. 48. Theobald, “Lies, Damned Lies and Travel Writers: Women’s Narratives of the Castlemaine Goldfields, 1852–54.” 49. Priestly, “Identifying Ellen Clacy: A Cautionary Tale.” 50. Priestly, “Identifying Ellen Clacy: A Cautionary Tale,” 124. 51. Walsh and Hooton, Narratives, 35. 52. Arthur James Vogan, The Black Police: A Story of Modern Australia (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1890). See also, Mark Cryle, “‘Australia’s Shadow Side’: Arthur Vogan and the Black Police,” Fryer Folios 4, no. 3 (2009). 53. Cryle, “Vogan.” 54. Henry Reynolds, “Friday Essay: It’s Time for a New Museum Dedicated to the Fighters of the Frontier Wars,” The Conversation (February 19, 2021), https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-newmuseum-dedicated-to-the-fighters-of-the-frontier-wars-155299. 55. Reynolds, “Museum.” 56. Reynolds, “Museum.”

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

89

57. Arthur James Vogan, “A Ride Across Australia,” The Illustrated London News, January 18, 1890. 58. Arthur James Vogan, Brisbane Courier, April 30, 1889. Cited in Cryle, “Vogan.” 59. Cryle, “Vogan,” fn. 8. 60. Cryle, “Vogan.” 61. On the topic of writing techniques, also see Cryle, “Vogan.” And Jane Lydon, “The Bloody Skirt of Settlement: Arthur Vogan and anti-slavery in 1890s Australia,” Australian Historical Studies 45, no. 1 (2014), https:// doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2013.877503. 62. Lydon, “Bloody Skirt.” 63. Lydon, “Bloody Skirt,” 56. 64. Lydon, “Bloody Skirt,” 56. 65. Lydon, “Bloody Skirt”; Cryle, “Vogan.” 66. Lydon, “Bloody Skirt,” fn. 45. 67. Cryle, “Vogan,” 14. 68. Cryle, “Vogan,” 15. 69. Cryle, “Vogan,” fn. 16. 70. Cryle, “Vogan,” 19. 71. Quoted in Lydon, “Bloody Skirt,” 67–68. 72. Crónica began in the nineteenth century and are short, informal, observational pieces published in newspapers or magazines. 73. Henry Reynolds, This Whispering in our Hearts Revisited, ed. Henry Reynolds (Sydney, NSW: NewSouth Publishing, 2018). 74. Hartsock, A History. 75. Carl Lumholtz, Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years’ Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland (London: J. Murray, 1889), Author’s Preface. 76. Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, Author’s Preface. 77. “A Norwegian Naturalist in Australia,” Argus, January 4, 1890. 78. “Among Cannibals,” Nature 41, no. 1053 (1890), https://doi.org/10. 1038/041200a0. 79. Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, Author’s Preface. 80. Lumholtz, Among Cannibals, 58–59. 81. Samuel Furphy, Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History (Canberra: ANU E Press, 2013), Chapter 12, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/ press/p223251/html/ch12.html?referer=&page=17#toc_marker-16. 82. Furphy, Tide of History, Chapter 12, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/ downloads/press/p223251/html/ch12.html?referer=&page=17#toc_mar ker-16. 83. Furphy, Tide of History, Chapter 12, https://press-files.anu.edu.au/ downloads/press/p223251/html/ch12.html?referer=&page=17#toc_mar ker-16.

90

W. MCDONALD

Bibliography “A Norwegian Naturalist in Australia.” Argus, January 4, 1890. Abraham, Praveen, and Raisun Matthew, eds. The Post-Truth Era: Literature and Media. New Delhi: Authorspress, 2021. “Among Cannibals.” Nature 41, no. 1053 (1890): 200–202. https://doi.org/ 10.1038/041200a0. Cambridge, Ada. Thirty Years in Australia. Edited by Margaret Bradstock and Louise Wakeling. Camperdown: University of Sydney Press, 1903/1989. Chisholm, Caroline. Memoirs of Mrs Caroline Chisholm. Edited by Eneas Mackenzie. London: Webb, Millington, and Co., 1852. Clark, Roy Peter. “The Line between Fact and Fiction.” Creative Nonfiction: True Stories, Well Told, no. 16 (2001). https://creativenonfiction.org/wri ting/the-line-between-fact-and-fiction/. Conley, David. “A Telling Story: Five Journalist-Novelists and Australia’s Writing Culture.” PhD, University of Queensland, 2003. Cryle, Mark. “‘Australia’s Shadow Side’: Arthur Vogan and the Black Police.” Fryer Folios 4, no. 3 (2009): 18–21. Dawson, Barbara. In the Eye of the Beholder: What Six Nineteenth-Century Women Tell Us About Indigenous Authority and Identity. Canberra: ANU Press, 2014. Dyer, Geoff, et al. “‘Based on a True Story’: The Fine Line between Fact and Fiction.” Guardian Australia, December 6, 2015. https://www.thegua rdian.com/books/2015/dec/06/based-on-a-true-story-geoff-dyer-fine-linebetween-fact-and-fiction-nonfiction. Fitzgerald, Jonathan D. “Nineteenth-Century Women Writers and the Sentimental Roots of Literary Journalism.” Literary Journalism Studies 9, no. 2, Fall (2017): 8–27. Forde, Kathy Roberts, and Katherine A. Foss. “The Facts—The Color!—The Facts: The Idea of a Report in American Print Culture, 1885–1910”. Book History 15, no. 1 (2012): 123–51. Furphy, Samuel. Edward M. Curr and the Tide of History. Canberra: ANU Press, 2013. Green, H. M. A History of Australian Literature Pure and Applied: A Critical Review of All Forms of Literature Produced in Australia from the First Books Published after the Arrival of the First Fleet until 1950. Edited by Dorothy Green. London and Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1984. Hartsock, John C. A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Narrative Form. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000. ———. Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/48954. Herr, Michael. Dispatches. New York: Knopf, 1977.

4

CAPTURED LIVES AND SETTLER MEMOIR

91

Josephi, Beate U., and Christine Muller. “Differently Drawn Boundaires of the Permissible in German and Australian Literary Journalism.” Literary Journalism Studies 1, no. 1 (2009): 67–78. Kakutani, Michiko. The Death of Truth: Notes on Falsehood in the Age of Trump. New York: Tim Duggan Books. Kirkland, Katherine. Katherine Kirkland’s Life in the Bush: 1839–1841. Edited by Hugh Anderson. North Melbourne, VIC: Red Rooster Press, 2012. Kramer, Mark. “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists.” Chap. Preface In Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-fiction, edited by Norman Sims and Mark Kramer. New York: Ballantyne, 1995. Lemon, Barbara. “Women Journalists in Australian History.” In The Women’s Pages: Australian Women and Journalism since 1850, c 2008. http://www. womenaustralia.info/exhib/cal/intro.html. Lumholtz, Carl. Among Cannibals: An Account of Four Years’ Travels in Australia and of Camp Life with the Aborigines of Queensland. London: J. Murray, 1889. Lydon, Jane. “The Bloody Skirt of Settlement: Arthur Vogan and Anti-Slavery in 1890s Australia.” Australian Historical Studies 45, no. 1 (2014): 46–70. https://doi.org/10.1080/1031461X.2013.877503. Morton, Lindsay. “The Role of Imagination in Literary Journalism.” Literary Journalism Studies 10, no. 1 (2018): 92–111. Priestly, Susan. “Identifying Ellen Clacy: A Cautionary Tale.” Victorian Historical Journal 85, no. 1 (June 2014): 119–28. Reynolds, Henry. “Friday Essay: It’s Time for a New Museum Dedicated to the Fighters of the Frontier Wars.” The Conversation, February 19, 2021. https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-new-museumdedicated-to-the-fighters-of-the-frontier-wars-155299. ———. This Whispering in Our Hearts Revisited. Edited by Henry Reynolds. Sydney, NSW: NewSouth Publishing, 2018. Robehmed, Natalie. “From James Frey to Jonah Lehrer: How Scandal Impacts Book Sales.” Forbes, August 3, 2016. https://www.forbes.com/sites/natali erobehmed/2016/08/03/from-james-frey-to-jonah-lehrer-how-scandal-imp acts-book-sales/?sh=5ca1b87675c0. Ross, James. The Settler in Van Diemen’s Land. Melbourne: Marsh Walsh, 1975. Sims, Norman. “Degrees of Forgiveness: Why I’ve Changed My Mind.” Literary Journalism: The Newsletter of the IALJS, 2019, 5, 10. https://s35767.pcdn. co/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1910_IALJS_Newsletter-1.pdf. Theobald, Marjorie. “Lies, Damned Lies and Travel Writers: Women’s Narratives of the Castlemaine Goldfields, 1852–54.” Victorian Historical Journal 84, no. 2 (2013): 191–213. Vogan, Arthur James. Brisbane Courier, April 30, 1889, 5.

92

W. MCDONALD

———. “A Ride across Australia.” The Illustrated London News, January 18, 1890, 84–86. ———. The Black Police: A Story of Modern Australia. London: Hutchinson & Co., 1890. Walsh, Kay, and Joy Hooton. Australian Autobiographical Narratives [Electronic Resource]: An Annotated Bibliography Vol. 1 (to 1850). Canberra: Australian Scholarly Editions Centre ADFA and National Library of Australia, 1993.

CHAPTER 5

The Sketch: Colonial Characters

Caroline Dexter: feminist editor and purveyor of the character sketch. From Art in Australia, third series, No. 36, Marcie Muir Collection of Australian Children’s books. February 15, 1931, p. 45. Courtesy National Library of Australia, CDC-10807465 © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_5

93

94

W. MCDONALD

There can be no discussion of the development of literary journalism in Australia without reference to the “sketch” as a literary and journalistic form. Briefly, the written sketch is a short narrative that is often used, like its equivalent the visual sketch, to catch the essence of a place, scene, moment or person. Characterised by its emphasis on informality, it relies on description for its effect, while allowing the author’s voice to come through in the writing.1 Sketches appeared in Australian periodicals and newspapers from the time blanket censorship were lifted in the 1820s and have underpinned not only the evolution of literary journalism, but also profile, nature and travel writing, with all these forms not infrequently overlapping.

Savery’s Satire The prose sketch has a long history in English literature and has been described as an exercise “of the artistic sensibility in the act of appreciation”.2 The first sketches published in Australia were bitingly satirical portraits of prominent Hobart townsfolk written by the convict forger Henry Savery.3 Although Hobart’s first newspaper had appeared in 1810,4 like its Sydney counterpart it was largely the mouthpiece of the colonial government. Savery’s sketches were published in Andrew Bent’s anti-establishment newspaper The Colonial Times . Bent had been fighting hard for freedom of the press in Hobart for more than a decade, and despite a law passed in 1828 forbidding convicts to write for the public, he took the risk to publish Savery’s work, although anonymously.5 The sketches appeared over the last six months of the following year under the pen name Simon Stukeley with the title “The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land”. A year later, they were collated and published in book form under the same title. Savery went on to write Australia’s first novel, also published anonymously in 1830, Quintus Servinton: A Tale founded upon Incidents of Real Occurrence. Savery’s satirical sketches caused a sensation on their publication.6 Covering the topics “Manners, Society and Public Characters”, they contained thinly-disguised descriptions of about 150 Hobart townspeople. Day-to-day incidents were relayed, along with snippets of conversations. No-one was actually named in them; instead, they were called

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

95

by descriptors such as the “Spunger”, the “Great Invisible” and “Doubtmuch”, leaving readers to relish the puzzle of identifying the real people behind the characters. Savery’s biographer Rod Howard found he was ruthlessly accurate in his depictions, leaving few readers unaware of their own representation.7 He exaggerated to the point of absurdity the mannerisms and physical features of the people he disliked, but gave those he feared or respected depth of character and only superficial unattractiveness.8 He saved his most derisive portrait for the lawyer, Gamaliel Butler, whom he called “Cocatrice” after the mythical serpent that could kill with a glance: [H]e had a shrewd, cunning look about the eye, which had rather a tendency to create repulsion on the part of strangers … Finding that the iron features I had been contemplating, were but the index of the heart, that like bits of ore upon the surface, they did but disclose the nature of the mine underneath, I determined to waste no more time in talking ...9

When Andrew Bent, the publisher of the Colonial Times , advertised that he was going to publish the book of sketches, Butler was far from amused. He successfully sued Bent who was forced to sell his paper to meet the costs of the judgement against him. He sold it to Henry Melville, who in turn became a prominent publisher in the colony. The identity of the author of the sketches remained a secret at the time as Savery’s name was never mentioned in the case, but guessing his identity and that of his targets became a favourite parlour game in Hobart.10 Savery died in 1842, possibly by his own hand while imprisoned at Port Arthur, still unknown as the author of the infamous sketches.11 His identity was only revealed many years later when a note dated 1869 was discovered slipped inside a copy of The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land kept in the British Museum. Written in Melville’s hand, the note named Savery as the author and provided a key to the true identity of each of the caricatures.12 Savery’s sketches share some of the characteristics of literary journalism as we recognise it today and demonstrate why sketches were foundational to the development of the literary journalism form. For example, his piece “The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land, No. 6”, which was published in the Colonial Times on 10 July 1829, is an extended scene utilising plot, character, dialogue, observation and description to describe a day

96

W. MCDONALD

in the Hobart courthouse. Savery’s literary approach is evident from the beginning of the piece, as this passage shows: Among those who were pressing towards the doorway, apparently in great haste, was a tall thin Gentleman dressed in black, tripping along on his toes in a pace somewhat between a walk and a run. He leant his body forward, the projection of his back, which was unusually long, forming a very considerable angle. In his hand, which I noticed as he passed, was larger than ordinary, he held a bundle of papers …

Later in the article, in a recounting of the hearing of a claim for a debt owed to a tailor for the making of a coat, he transcribes a section of the cross-examination to humorous effect, beginning: What are you?—What am I, Sir? A man. I did not ask you whether you were a man or a woman, I wish to know what is your trade. Witness.—A tailor. Lawyer.—Well now Mr Mantailor, do you know a coat when you see it?...

The major difference between Savery’s satirical sketches and literary journalism is that, while he had been fully immersed in Hobart life and knew well the circumstances and people he wrote about, the sketches were written while he was languishing in the Hobart Convict Penitentiary. Did he collect the information before he was imprisoned with the intention of writing and publishing the sketches? Or were they written as an afterthought, possibly with much invention, to fill in the long, boring hours of incarceration? The distinction is an important one when considering the “reporting” requirement of literary journalism.

Resurgence of the Sketch The sketch as a literary form was flourishing at the time Savery was writing. While it can trace its lineage back to ancient times, it was enjoying a renaissance in England, particularly in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was partly because the French Revolution had brought in its wake a new Romantic ideology and aesthetic.13 Based on individualism, it profoundly influenced many English writers who

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

97

favoured the social changes it wrought that rejected feudalism and aristocratic rule. The writing of the Romantic poets—including, for example, William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lord Byron and Percy Shelley—began to emphasise the importance of the individual, while favouring fresh subject matter, spontaneity of expression and a reverence for nature. This flowed across from poetry to other branches of literature as well, with the sketch proving a natural fit with this new focus.14 Joseph Addison and Richard Steele’s sketches published in The Spectator over 1711–12 were influential in bolstering the form’s popularity.15 They did not report news but rather events in London, presented as vignettes and narrated by fictional characters who represented different levels of English society. Mr. Spectator, Captain Sentry, Sir Roger de Coverley, Sir Andrew Freeport and the like were introduced as a way of humorously criticising the aristocracy and elites while commenting on the city’s morals and manners.16 Addison wrote in the tenth issue of The Spectator that the paper’s aim was to: … endeavour to enliven Morality with Wit, and to temper Wit with Morality … [to bring] … Philosophy out of Closets and Libraries, Schools and Colleges, to dwell in Clubs and Assemblies, at Tea-tables, and in Coffee houses.17

In this way, The Spectator and its sketches were instrumental in the emergence of Habermas’s liberal “public sphere”, educating and giving voice to a public in accepted forms of taste, argument and morality. Perhaps not surprisingly, the sketch would go on to profoundly influence English language literature, including journalism. Character sketches appeared in the works of many authors, including in the essays and letters of Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) and William Hazlitt (1778–1830), in The Book of Snobs (1846–1847) by William Makepeace Thackeray, in Hunting Sketches (1865) by Anthony Trollope and in George Eliot’s final book Impressions of Theophrastus Such (1879), to name a few.18 Within only a few years of Savery publishing his satirical pieces, Charles Dickens began publishing “Street Sketches” in the Morning Chronicle (1834), “Scenes and Characters” in Bells Life in London (1835) and “Sketches of London” in the Evening Chronicle (1835).19 He later wrote to the novelist Wilkie Collins acknowledging the importance of the newspaper sketch to his development as a writer:

98

W. MCDONALD

… my faculty for descriptive writing was seized upon the moment I joined The Morning Chronicle, and … I was liberally paid there and handsomely acknowledged and wrote the greater part of the short descriptive Sketches by Boz in that paper ...20

Thomas H. Pauly links the descriptive sketch to the pictorial sketches done by travellers through Europe on the “Grand Tour”, a popular form of education for young men of rank and means in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.21 Sketching of the great paintings of Europe was included to educate the young travellers and sharpen their taste in both landscape and art. According to Pauly, it was something that “activated and sharpened the discriminating eye”, with the pictorial sketch “celebrated for its conceptual rather than representational rendering of experience”.22 Washington Irving, remembered as the first American author to be published and win renown in both England and America, is credited with taking the written sketch form across the Atlantic in the nineteenth century with the publication of The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent, published in 1819–1820.23 His fictional narrator Crayon writes of his travels to England, with Irving including descriptions of everyday places and people alongside his own musings. Crayon is rendered as a selfconscious traveller giving rein to his emotions and reflections. Discussing his recounting of scenes in The Sketch Book, Irving writes: I cannot say that I have studied them with the eye of a philosopher, but rather with the sauntering gaze with which humble lovers of the picturesque stroll from the window of one print-shop to another; caught sometimes by the delineations of beauty, sometimes by the distortions of caricature, and sometimes by the loveliness of landscape.24

Savery acknowledged in the preface to his book of essays that his model had been Felix M’Donogh’s The Hermit in London; or, Sketches of English Manners (1821).25 That volume was just one of a rich trove of published sketches and essays available to Savery as an educated man in England before he was transported in 1825.26 And while access to newspapers and

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

99

journals was limited in early Hobart, each docking ship was keenly anticipated by the colonists, not only because of the food and other provisions it carried, but also because of the printed material it brought from home.

Poking Fun, Revealing Hypocrisy: Thomas Revel Johnson’s Social Commentary Satire and humour were popular tools of many nineteenth-century sketch writers. While Henry Savery may have been Australia’s first satirical sketch writer, he was far from the last. A look at some of the early satirists demonstrates the foundations of the partnership that would later develop between satire and some forms of literary journalism in social and cultural commentary. One of the earliest was Thomas Revel Johnson who published The Satirist and Sporting Chronicle (1843), Bell ’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer (1845)27 and the Sunday Times (1849). An Irish Catholic, Johnson arrived in New South Wales in 1841 from Ireland. Although a qualified surgeon, he may have found it difficult to find work in his profession as Irish Catholics generally were excluded from the colony’s elite. In any event, he was drawn to a life of letters at least as much if not more than to medicine. With tensions in the colony rising in the straightened economic circumstances of the early 1840s, he began The Satirist and Sporting Chronicle. Although it was one of Sydney’s earliest sports newspapers, its primary purpose was to keep Sydney honest.28 Johnson wanted to expose the hypocrisy and corruption he saw as rampant and the reason for many of the newly-won fortunes in the colony. Not surprisingly, he soon ran into trouble. His satires were thinly disguised and guaranteed to raise ire, while the timing of his enterprise was wrong.29 Sydney, at that time, was striving for respectability. Lobbying by residents had led to the cessation of convict transportation to New South Wales in 1840. Two years later, the town was formally declared a city—in the same year the British parliament passed New South Wales’ first Constitution Act. The Act granted greater self-government to the colony, calling for the establishment of a much expanded and representative Legislative Council, the first significant step towards responsible government.30 Letters of protest appearing in newspapers and journals showed the level of outrage The Satirist was triggering, with the Sydney Morning Herald complaining that its scandalous articles were attracting a wide and growing readership: “This is, in heart-sickening verity, the deepest stain

100

W. MCDONALD

ever cast upon our social character. This brands us more deeply than ever with the odium of Botany Bay depravity”.31 When attempts to suppress the paper through the Magistrate’s Court failed, a charge of obscene libel was brought in the Supreme Court, the first such action in the colony.32 Johnson was found guilty and given a two-year jail sentence. Undeterred, on his release he launched the weekly Bell ’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, which George Pickering joined in 1847. It published a mixture of gossipy sporting news and features, and unlike the very short-lived Satirist, ran for three years. It was sold in 1848 when Johnson was again sued for libel. A year later, he launched the Sunday Times, which is described by the National Library of Australian Newspaper Plan 1802– 1900 as the first designated Sunday newspaper in Australia. Like many colonial publications, it only ran for a few issues before closure.33 Johnson’s sketches of sporting events are of as much interest as his satire. Marked by their humour, they portray a colonial city thrumming with energy and full of dodgy characters and ripping yarns. A sketch called “The Ring” is typical.34 It portrays a fistfight in a paddock between two Irishmen—one Catholic and one Protestant—“demi-political in its character, tinctured with a dash of religious enthusiasm”. The first round of the fight had no clear result: Round 1- Ned opened his fist, lowered his head, and making a terrific rush at the southern, butted him in the bread basket, at the same time grasping O’Haran by either hip, he evidently intended making his cobra a pivot for the somewhat muscular corpus of his man. Amidst great disturbance in the outer ring, our reporter was unable to witness the finale to this exploded system of tactics; on order being restored, both were found embracing their mother earth. The presbyterian’s conk rather disfigured, and bleeding profusely.

Paddy went on to win the stoush, before being carried off to, ‘hear his battle o’er again’ in a neighbouring crib, while the unfortunate vanquished was left to console himself with the dust from which he sprung, and to which he seemed resolved to expedite his return.

An earlier journal, Hill ’s Life, published in 1832, also provided sports news but not with the liveliness of Johnson’s articles. Both stand as forerunners to the better-known literary journalism covering sport, from John Stanley James’ pieces for Melbourne’s Argus newspaper in the 1870s

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

101

when he wrote as “A Vagabond” (including the first known report of an Australian Rules football match35 ) to the prolific horse racing writing of A.B. (Banjo) Paterson at the turn of the century.

“The Devil in Sydney”: Theodore Emile Argles (Harold Grey) Colonial satirical sketches were also written by Theodore Emile Argles. A novelist, poet and journalist, he is best remembered for writing under the pen name “Harold Grey”, although he adopted a number of other pseudonyms. Using “the Moocher”, he published a short series of pamphlets called Scenes in Sydney by Day and Night: Social Sketches of Sydney. He included satirical character sketches of real people called “Burlesque Biographies”, the title echoing Mark Twain’s humorous autobiographical essay “A burlesque Autobiography” that had been published in 1871. The first of the “biographies” was of the actor Herbert Flemming, whom Argles called “Sherbet Hemming”. The following passage gives a flavour of the writer’s humorously caustic style: As an actor, Sherbet is chiefly remarkable for his suppressed intensity in emotional roles, he suppresses so strongly, that his audiences wait for something to be squeezed out of him – and they are waiting yet. In heroic parts – those requiring force, he forces with the strength of a centrifugal pump, and in ‘character’ parts, he shines with the lucidity of a limpet.36

Argles won some celebrity for his satires, but not always admiration. In 1878, he wrote satirical poems about local identities using the pen name the “Devil in Sydney”. John Haynes, a co-founder of The Bulletin with J. F. Archibald, later claimed, “half the populace, with clenched fist” was in search of the anonymous author.37 Argles also earned a reputation as a hard-hitting journalist for his attacks on the all-night cafés that flourished in Sydney in the 1870s.38 Argle’s friend and contemporary, the poet Victor Daley, later explained: “[S]inglehanded, because there was no other writer at the time either capable or courageous enough to help him, [he] succeeded in arousing the authorities, until they shut the café’s with ‘a violent, virtuous bang’”.39 Although Argles eventually succeeded in his campaign, he was by then in Maitland Gaol following an action, not for libel but for the theft of a gold watch and chain. The facts aren’t clear,

102

W. MCDONALD

but Daley says, “Those who had smarted most keenly under the lash of his satire laid a trap for him – and he was caught in it”.40 It was widely believed at the time that Argles wrote the article behind the Clontarf libel action brought against The Bulletin editors, Haynes and Archibald, that led to their arrest and jailing in Darlinghurst in 1881.41 In fact, on 8 January, the leader writer John Traill wrote “The Larrikin Residuum” for The Bulletin that described the behaviour at Clontarf the previous Boxing Day of “satyrs and bacchantes in soiled tweed suits and squalid finery”. Traill had not realised the picnic ground was privately owned; the proprietors claimed innocence, leading Haynes to write an irreverent response titled “Bulletin’s Home Thrusts” that triggered the libel action.42 Before the court handed down its decision, Haynes and Archibald, hoping to avoid penalty, transferred the running of the magazine to Traill, becoming salaried sub-editors. They then refused to pay legal costs, leading to their incarceration in March 1882.43 Argles was implicated in the affair. Nancy Keesing wrote seventy years later, “[I]t was said that the plaintiffs would have been in less haste to sue The Bulletin had they not believed the notorious [Argles] had written it…”44

Satire and the “Gentler Sex”: Caroline Dexter Not all the writers of satirical sketches were men, although there were far fewer opportunities for women to publish. The feminist Caroline Dexter, for example, writing as “Gum Leaf”, wrote the pamphlet Colonial Gems: or ‘The Ninety’ Foundation Stones of our Parliament Houses in 1885.45 A parody of four members of parliament, it was intended to be the first in a series that never continued. The men in question were labelled with the name of a stone to reflect their characters: Granite (Henry Miller), Turquoise (John Pascoe Fawkner), Ruby (John Thomas Smith) and Opal (possibly Patrick O’Brien). Dexter, who befriended the novelist George Sand when living in Paris, began the magazine The Interpreter with Harriet Clisby46 in Melbourne in 1861.47 It was the first all-female journal in Australia and, besides poetry and short stories, it contained character sketches of celebrities, such as the breathless description of “The Empress of the French” Lenorita Eugenie de Teba, or Mademoiselle de Montijo, the 34-year-old daughter of a “nobelement Spanish” that can be found in the first issue.48 The sketch writer admired Lenorita’s fluency in languages, her audacity

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

103

in living independently (after a recent 24-hour disappearance, telling her mother she had merely been on an errand) and her looks: Tall, graceful, of statuesque symmetry of person, with luxuriant auburn, or rather red hair, a pale complexion, which has latterly stood in need of a little rouge, great electrical eyes, of a brown so deep and radiant as to pass for black, rather long and aristocratic features, a large but exquisitely sculpted nose, a lovely mouth, and teeth of dazzling whiteness, she is a type of admirable beauty, which a languid and ‘blasé’ air hardly diminishes.49

The magazine only lasted two issues. While it is tempting to blame the florid prose, that was a common life-span of small magazines and newspapers in colonial Australia, as we have seen. Dexter’s pieces are a reminder that character sketches were important forerunners in the development of the profile in Australia.

Forerunners of the Profile: The Illustrated Interview The Bulletin magazine featured character sketches of politicians, sportsmen and the like on its covers right from its beginning in January 1880, with black and white ink drawings as illustration. It declared itself the “ne plus ultra of illustrated journalism in the colonies—the paper of reference, especially for all matters of interest connected with the musical and dramatic arts”.50 As a result, it also ran brief character sketches on the inside pages of touring celebrities in the arts, many of whom were women visiting from overseas. A month after it launched, it began a section called “The Bulletin portrait gallery of Australian celebrities”, starting with an illustrated character sketch of the “amateur pianist” Miss Maud Fitz-Stubbs.51 As the series unrolled, these sketches often gave brief biographical and professional information about the person described. Besides their marketing and entertainment purposes, the sketches helped to create a canon of artists, writers and performers that was pivotal in moulding and reflecting the emerging national culture. Before long, interviews were added to the character sketch, allowing the voices of the subjects to be included in the articles.52

104

W. MCDONALD

Annie Bright and Cosmos Magazine The “illustrated interview”—which in many cases is little different from the modern profile—dominated Annie Bright’s Cosmos: An Illustrated Australian Magazine, that ran from 1894 to 1899. If a profile aims— as David Remnick, the famed editor of The New Yorker, recently said—to render a life “through anecdote, incident, interview and description (or some ineffable combination thereof)”,53 then it can be argued that the addition of interviews to the nineteenth-century character sketch was the evolutionary leap that made it a fledgling form of the modern profile. A perusal of the pages of Cosmos reveals articles that satisfy the requirements of both profiles and literary journalism—they are informative, conversational in tone, carry the voice of the writer and use scenes and literary techniques with the result that they entertainingly portray fascinating colonial characters. With the strong stamp of its female editor, Cosmos carved a niche for itself as a promoter of Australian culture alongside The Bulletin.54 Bright published fiction and non-fiction with the intention of fostering the development of a national literature and literary sensibility, while promoting federation and the building of the nation. Among the contributors were her husband Charles, the writer Ethel Turner (who ran the women’s section for a time), the explorer Ernest Favenc, the journalist Louise Mack and the artist Percy Spence. Bright was unusual in the equal prominence she gave to acknowledging successful colonial women as well as men. Across the years she was editor—1894–1896—she wrote and published profiles containing interviews with a wide range of women including: Louisa MacDonald, principal of the Sydney Women’s College; Miss Gould, matron of Sydney Hospital; Louise Mack, the journalist and writer; actresses including Florence Young, Essie Jenyns and Mrs Robert Brough, formerly known as Florence Trevelyan; the pianist and composer Maud Fitz-Stubbs, the “brilliant juvenile violinist” Maud McCarthy, as well as many more. According to Rachael Weaver, it was “a cultivated and empowered colonial femininity” that Bright promoted “rather than a feminist identity”,55 and this is evident in the articles themselves, even those that are about successful men. For example, for her article on the journalist and politician Andrew Garran, Bright interviews his wife and comments:

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

105

To make the picture of Dr Garran complete I should have requested Mrs Garran to take her place beside her husband at the photographers for it is certain that but for her work for thirty years as amanuensis and general protector, Dr. Garran must have dropped by the way. So that a picture with Mrs Garran included would have been perfect …56

In an era when women were largely invisible in the press and excluded from public life, Bright provided a space in her lively magazine where their efforts and interests could be recognised. The “illustrated interview”—the natural evolution of the character sketch—was fundamental to her task.

Who Are We? William Baker’s Heads of the People “One people; one destiny” was the motto adopted when the Commonwealth of Australia was formed. The question of who constituted the Australian people was one that had been consistently debated in the press over the preceding decades. As the nineteenth century progressed, the colonial societies that emerged across the continent were remarkably diverse. As each new colony was established, it sought ways to distinguish itself from the others, while much energy was invested in imagining the political and cultural space that would become the nation as a whole. The journals and newspapers launched into the quest for a representative national character, as well as minor colonial types as this quest for identity unfolded.57 William Baker’s literary journal Heads of the People: An Illustrated Journal of Literature, Whims and Oddities provides a striking example of this reflective process in action. Taking its cue from the English magazine Heads of the People that appeared in 1840–1841 and after which it was named, the magazine’s goal was to publish character sketches as a way of determining who best represented Australian colonial society.58 Running for fifty issues from April 1847 to March 1848, it was similar in style to British publications such as The Town and (after 1841) Punch.59 It lightheartedly combined a mixture of gossip, jokes, woodcuts, songs, snippets from British papers and serialised excerpts from Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1848), as well as a weekly portrait of a Sydney personality by the artist William Nicholas. At its heart were character sketches called “heads”. In a tradition that dates back to Theophrastus,60 Baker offered his “heads”, “only … as the type or representative of a class”.61 Just as literary journalism tends to privilege the ordinary person over the celebrity, Baker was less interested in portraying the powerful and

106

W. MCDONALD

wealthy of the colony as the typical. His “heads” were chosen from his colonial contemporaries, with his choices based on merit rather than inherited position.62 In this way, the journal differed from some of its English antecedents—such as The Biographical and Imperial Magazine, of 1789, and Biographical and Political Sketches of Public Characters now Living (published in Oxford in 1814)—which glorified successful but deceased men for their achievements.63 It also differed from the journals that would follow, such as The Bulletin and Cosmos, that promoted successful local dignitaries and luminaries as exemplars of colonial aspiration. The bulk of Baker’s “heads” was comprised of the everyday types crucial to the colony’s running, such as the school master, the postman, the publican, the storekeeper, the magistrate, the baker and the verger. From a quick perusal of Heads of the People, one could be forgiven for assuming the new nation was built only by men. Baker omitted women from his types, only capitulating when one of his female readers protested, asking whether he was “so ungallant as to consider that some good heads were not to be met with amongst the individuals of the softer sex?”64 His response was to run a portrait of his wife in the 18th issue. No other woman appeared in Heads of the People except one, Lady Mary O’Connell, the wife of the commander of the British forces in Australia. She made it into the 42nd issue under the title “The Soldier’s Wife”. It is also clear from a perusal of Heads of the People that the public sphere at the time was decidedly white. The only person from the first nations ever represented was “King Boomerang”, chief of the Dungog area in the Hunter Valley, whose caricature appeared on the journal’s final endpaper.

Christina Smith and the Booandick Colonialist ideas of British supremacy infiltrated all spheres of Australian colonial life, including journalism and non-fiction writing. Right from the beginning, two visions competed for public dominance, often contradictorily co-existing—the view that Aboriginal people were insensible, stupid savages who would soon die out, or that they were educable and adaptable people capable and in need of being civilised to Christian society.65 Both perspectives brought cultural and physical violence in their wake. With frontier violence unacknowledged as a war, as will be discussed more fully later, a silence developed in public, and particularly in the press, about the realities of the occupation by the British.

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

107

As Bunty Avieson’s research revealed, Christina (Mrs James) Smith stands out as someone who not only recorded the lives of First Nations people but did so to arouse the consciences of her fellow settlers. Smith was the first white woman to settle at Rivoli Bay, South Australia. In 1880, she published a memoir based on her experiences over the previous thirtyfive years as teacher, lay missionary and wife of the Methodist minister and postmaster. Titled The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends and Language, it was part elegy, part ethnography, written out of a duty to record what she knew of the local people before they “withered” under the impact of colonialism.66 Smith’s primary purpose in writing the book was to show Aboriginal people were capable of being “Christianised and civilised”: True it is, they do not possess the mental strength and grasp of the average European, but they are capable of a high degree of culture; and their moral and religious nature is not too dead to be revivified by the warmth and elevating power of the religion of Jesus.67

The second half of the book consequently contains fourteen character sketches of Booandiks with whom Smith was closely acquainted and who converted to Christianity under her guidance. The sketches emphasise the positive “Christian” values of her subjects, their loyalty, honesty, generosity and kindness. They varied in length from a few hundred words to several thousand. The two longest were published twenty years earlier in the form of pamphlets. Indeed, a substantial portion of Smith’s book seems to have been based on earlier writings that were presumably contemporaneous to the events described. One of these long sketches was of Wergon (or Peter as her family later called him),68 who moved in with the Smiths after he was orphaned, ostensibly to tutor their son Duncan in the Booandik language.69 Originally published in 1864, the character sketch is likely the first ever to focus on a First Nations Australian. Similarly, the lengthy and telling sketch of “Caroline and her Family” was also published earlier as a pamphlet, in 1865.70 Smith’s narrative voice strongly characterises her writing, with the profiles conveying as much about her as they do about her subjects. She was a woman of her time. Her religious zeal and belief in European superiority are evident on every page. Smith cared for a number of Booandik children, most of whom were orphaned. Reflecting the beliefs of the Aborigines’ Protection Society, the Ethnological Society of London and

108

W. MCDONALD

the British Colonial Office “that without reform the natives would remain subjected to primitive tribal customs, warfare, and even cannibalism”.71 Smith believed in Protestant motherhood as the backbone of a moral society, with Christian education from childhood ensuring the eventual civilisation of “native” people, with the bonus of the easing of racial tensions. The character sketch “Caroline and her Family” flags the role such prejudiced convictions would play later in official government policy, resulting in the forced removal of Aboriginal children from their families to be raised in Church and government institutions.72 Smith describes in the sketch the disturbing lengths she went to to keep a young girl called Jane. While Jane’s father eventually granted permission for Jane to remain with the Smiths, her mother Wegearmin was devastated. She visited Smith to try to reclaim her daughter, but unsuccessfully. Smith writes: I sincerely sympathised with the poor mother, who undoubtedly loved Jane … but we were, of course, confident as to what our duty was, and could not think of undoing all that had been accomplished by relinquishing her.73

The unwitting cruelty of Smith’s actions, and unreflective arrogance in her own moral stance, is heartbreaking to read, but the story of Smith’s relationships with the Booandik is generally more nuanced. She writes of her Booandik subjects as individuals, reflecting the many and varied associations she had, ranging from some of intimacy and fondness to others based on fear or dislike, demonstrating that despite the inescapable inequities of the colonial context, her relationships with the Booandik were genuine. Life on the remote homestead, where Smith was often left on her own by her husband, was harsh and difficult. She was forced to rely on her own fortitude and the help of her “sable” friends and neighbours. In one anecdote, she tells of a visit to a neighbouring homestead, three days away. She asked a Booandik couple she knew to make the trip with her, a journey she recounts as full of laughter and teasing, although played out against the backdrop of colonial and racial tension. The pair stepped in to protect Smith at various points of the trip to and from the homestead, telling her they found her different from other white women they encountered who feared them, and urged Smith to call them brother and sister.74 The conversations they shared gave her a valuable glimpse into

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

109

the pair’s world and helped her to understand their perspective. “I trusted them and they would never forget it”, she said.75 Although blind to her own hypocrisies and inconsistencies—and to her own culpability in the breakdown of the Booandik culture—Smith frequently raged against the violence other settlers inflicted on the First Nations people. Part of her mission in writing the book was to reveal to her readers the evils being done in the name of settlement and empire. She was appalled when one stock-keeper, with whom she was, ironically, discussing the best way of “taming the natives”, recommended keeping dogs to “run them down, until they catch them by the flesh, and make them roar like calves”.76 She also inveighed against the 1848 massacre by station owner James Brown of a group of “Tanganekald” people in retaliation for an attack on his sheep. Wergon, having converted to Christianity, had travelled to “Wattatonga” country to evangelise and had brought back news of the killings together with an eyewitness. Wergon told Smith eleven people had been killed, saying, “the white men had shown no mercy to the grey-headed old man or to the helpless infant on its mother’s breast”.77 Brown was brought to trial, but the case was abandoned for lack of evidence. Key witnesses disappeared or refused to testify, while in South Australia the uncorroborated evidence of Aboriginal people could not be used to prosecute a crime attracting the death penalty. Outraged even thirty years later, Smith asserted that if the situation were reversed and whites had been murdered, the trial would have gone ahead. She quoted from a pamphlet she had published earlier, fulminating with all the fire and brimstone of a pulpit preacher: Let those who are concerned remember that a day of retribution is at hand, when impartial justice will be dealt to all, irrespective of rank or colour. At that day all the evidence required will be brought forth – the Judge will be an impartial one; and those eleven victims, whose bodies the flames consumed, will stand forth and witness against the real criminals, whose doom will be to endure the torments of the eternal fire…78

As Smith and the other colonial writers demonstrate, the sketch was a useful form to fulminate against injustice, raise ideas, argue identity or just capture a moment in the life of the colony. It was a form that appealed to the settlers because it could be fragmentary and brief with all the authenticity and energy of the immediate experience of the eyewitness.

110

W. MCDONALD

Notes 1. Thomas H. Pauly, “The Literary Sketch in Nineteenth-Century America,” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17, no. 2 (1975), http://www. jstor.org/stable/40754392. Pauly, “The Literary Sketch.” 2. Pauly, “The Literary Sketch,” 490. 3. Cecil Hadgraft, “Savery, Henry (1791–1842),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/saveryhenry-2632. 4. Van Diemen’s Land Gazette and General Advertiser. 5. Sally Bloomfield and Craig Collins, “The Hobart Town Gazette,” The Andrew Bent Project, https://andrew-bent.life/imprints/the-hobarttown-gazette/. 6. Heather Gaunt, “History and Memory in the Tasmanian Public Library,” History Australia 6, no. 1 (2009): 10.3. 7. Rod Howard, A Forger’s Tale: The Extraordinary Story of Henry Savery, Australia’s First Novelist (Melbourne, Vic.: Arcade Publications, 2011). 8. Howard, A Forger’s Tale, 149. 9. Henry Savery, The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land, ed. (and biographical introduction) by Cecil Hadgraft with notes on the persons by Magriet Roe (St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 1964), 94. 10. Gaunt, “Public Library,” 10.4. 11. Savery, The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land, 36–38. 12. Savery, The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land, 28. 13. With thanks to Professor Richard Keeble, University of Lincoln, for this reminder. 14. Tim Killick, “The Rise of the Tale: a preliminary checklilst of collections of short fiction published 1820–29 in the Corvey Collection,” Cardif Covey: Reading the Romantic Text 7, no. 4 (2001), http://sites.cardiff.ac. uk/romtextv2/files/2013/01/cc07_n04.pdf; Encyclopaedia Britannica, “English Literature: The Romantic Period.” https://www.britannica. com/art/English-literature/The-Romantic-period. Tim Killick, British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Rise of the Tale (London: Routledge, 2016). Tim Killick, British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Rise of the Tale (London: Routledge, 2016). 15. David F. Venturo, “The Satiric Character Sketch,” (Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007). Sarah Fay, “The American Tradition of the Literary Interview, 1840–1956: A Cultural History” (PhD University of Iowa, 2013), 30–39. 16. Fay, “American Literary Interview”, 31. Venturo, “The Satiric Character Sketch,” 565.

5

17. 18. 19. 20.

21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31. 32. 33.

34.

35. 36. 37.

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

111

Joseph Addison, Spectator (London), 12 March 1711. Venturo, “The Satiric Character Sketch,” 566. Fay, “American Literary Interview”, 31–32. Charles Dickens, “Letter to Wilkie Collins”, June 6 1854. Letters II, Nonesuch Edition, 777–8. Quoted in Fay, “American Literary Interview”, 32. Pauly, “The Literary Sketch,” 490. Pauly, “The Literary Sketch,” 490. Killick, British Short Fiction, 39. Washington Irving, The Sketch Book (London; New York: G. Routledge, 1886), 3. Savery, The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land, 29. Killick, “Rise of the Tale.” Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer was published from 1845 to 1860 and continued as Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Chronicle from 1860 to 1870. Anonymous, “The Late Mr Thomas Revel Johnson,” Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Chronicle, Saturday, 1 August 1863. Kirsten McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820– 1850 (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2004), 153–63. Parliament of New South Wales, “1822 to 1842 - The First Legislature,” https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/1822-to-1842The-First-Legislature.aspx. Anonymous, “The Obscene Publications,” Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, 19 April 1843. McKenzie, Scandal in the Colonies, 159. I am grateful to Rod Kirkpatrick for his confirmation that the Colonial Times, Hobart, reported a new weekly journal called the Sunday Times had been started at Sydney (6 July 1849, p. 2). According to R. B. Walker, the publisher was Thomas Revel Johnson—Robin Berwick (R. B.) Walker, The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803–1920 (Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976), 115. See, Rod Kirkpatrick, “Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter,” no. 85 (December 2015). Thomas Revel Johnson, “The Ring: Mill between Paddy O’Haran and Ned Shea,” Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer 1845. Mislabelled “The King” in Trove. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, “Manly Sports,” Argus, 30 September 1876. Theodore Emile (The Moocher) Argles, “Sherbert Hemming,” Scenes in Sydney by Day and Night: Social sketches of Sydney, no. 1 (1878). Sylvia Lawson, The Archibald Paradox: A Strange Case of Authorship (Melbourne, Vic.: Allen Lane, 1983), 71.

112

W. MCDONALD

38. Nancy Keesing, “Imprisoned Pressmen,” The Bulletin 75, Christmas Edition, no. 3905 (15 December 1954): 30, 41. 39. Quoted in Keesing, “Imprisoned Pressmen,” 30. See also, Veronica Kelly, “‘Un Sans Culotte’: The Bulletin’s Early Theatre Criticism and the Masculine Bohemian Masquerade,” Australian Literary Studies 19 (3 May 2000). 40. Quoted in Keesing, “Imprisoned Pressmen.” See also, Kelly, “Un Sans Culotte.” 41. Lawson, Archibald Paradox, 93. 42. B. G. Andrews, “Traill, William Henry (1843–1902),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1976). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra phy/traill-william-henry-4744/text7879. 43. Andrews, “Traill, William Henry (1843–1902),” 92–98; Lawson, Archibald Paradox, 92–98. 44. Keesing, “Imprisoned Pressmen,” 30. 45. Michael Watson, “Caroline Dexter (1819–1884): Some Previously Unrecognised Works,” La Trobe Journal 32 (December 1983). 46. In 1873, Clisby wrote a series of travel sketches in the American, reform-oriented Woman’s Journal. According to Ana Stevenson, these explored “geography, culture, class, labour, ethnicity, race, and gender, often embracing popular scientific discourses about race and universalist visions of women’s rights … Clisby also portrayed Australia as a multiracial nation of immigrants rather than as a collection of white settler colonies. By making colonial Australia accessible for a specifically American readership, the ‘Sketches’ … established a sense of a budding international relationship between Australia and the United States prior to the twentieth century”. Ana Stevenson, “Harriet Clisby’s ‘Sketches of Australia’: travel writing and colonial refigurations in Boston’s Woman’s Journal,” Women’s History Review 27, no. 5 (2018). 47. J. S. Ryan, “Dexter, Caroline (1819–1884),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1972). 48. 36–40. 49. 37. 50. Anonymous, “‘La Diva’ Patti,” The Bulletin, 21 February, 1880. 51. 28 February, 1880. 52. The exact date of the first published press interview is unclear, although most agree it was an American invention. Sarah Fay traces the first newspaper interview to one by James Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald Tribune. He interviewed Rosina Townsend, an eyewitness in a murder case, in 1836 and published her responses in question-and-answer format.

5

53. 54. 55. 56. 57.

58. 59.

60.

61. 62. 63. 64.

65.

66.

67.

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

113

He was later accused of inventing the interview to attract readers. Fay, “American Literary Interview”, 19–21. Christopher Silvester, on the other hand, traces the press interview to one done by Horace Greely, editor of The New York Tribune, in 1859 with Brigham Young, head of the Mormon Church. Silvester credits JB McCullagh (editor of the St Louis Globe Democrat ) with popularising the interview in the United States in the period after the Civil War, while WT Stead of the Pall Mall Gazette was responsible for popularising it in Britain in the early 1880s. Christopher Sylvester, The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day (London: Viking, 1993). David Remnick, ed., Life Stories: Profiles from The New Yorker (New York: Random House, 2000), ix. Rachael Weaver, “Cosmos Magazine and Colonial Femininity,” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 12, no. 1 (2012). Weaver, “Cosmos Magazine,” 8. Annie Bright, “The Hon. Dr Garran, MLC,” Cosmos Magazine, no. 9 (May 1895): 444. For a fuller discussion of this process, see Kenneth Gelder and Rachael Weaver, The Colonial Journals and the Emergence of Australian Literary Culture (Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing, 2014), 268–47. Gelder and Weaver, Colonial Journals, 269. Michael Rosenthal, “Decapitating the Swells,” in Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, ed. Tim Bonyhady and Andrew Sayers (Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2000), 139–41. Theophrastus (Tyrtamus of Lesbos, c.370–285 BCE) wrote thirty brief outlines of moral types in his book Characters (χαρακτÁρες) Venturo, “The Satiric Character Sketch,” 550. William Baker, Heads of the People: An iIlustrated Journal of Literature, Whims, and Oddities (Sydney: W. Baker, 1847), 9 October, Preface. Rosenthal, “Decapitating,” 43. Rosenthal, “Decapitating,” 43. Tim Bonyhardy, “Introduction,” in Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, ed. Tim Bonyhady and Andrew Sayers (Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2000), 4. Gregory D. Smithers, “Black Gentleman as Good as White”: A Comparative Analysis of African American and Australian Aboriginal Political Protests, 1830–1865,” The Journal of African American History 93, no. 3 (2008): 327. Christina (Mrs James) Smith, The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language (Adelaide: E. Spiller, Government Printer, 1880), iii. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 33.

114

W. MCDONALD

68. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 47–75. 69. Duncan became so proficient that at age 14, he was acting as an interpreter for First Nations people in legal matters. At age 19, he was appointed by the government as native interpreter for the district, acting officially to represent Booandik in the Criminal Court. (Smith, Booandik Tribe, 39). He provided a glossary of Booandik terms for Smith’s book. 70. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 85–107. 71. Smithers, “Black Gentlemen,” 318. 72. In 2008, the then Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a formal apology on behalf of the parliament to members of the Stolen Generations who were forcibly taken from their First Nations families based on assimilation policies which falsely claimed their lives would be improved if they became part of white society. 73. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 106. 74. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 40. 75. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 41. 76. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 62–63. 77. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 62. 78. Smith, Booandik Tribe, 62.

Bibliography Addison, Joseph. Spectator (London), 12 March 1711. Andrews, B. G. “Traill, William Henry (1843–1902).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1976. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/traill-williamhenry-4744/text7879. Anonymous. “‘La Diva’ Patti.” The Bulletin, 21 February, 1880. ———. “The Late Mr Thomas Revel Johnson.” Bell ’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Chronicle, Saturday, 1 August 1863, 3. ———. “The Obscene Publications.” Editorial, Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, 19 April 1843. Argles, Theodore Emile (The Moocher). “Sherbert Hemming.” Scenes in Sydney by Day and Night: Social Sketches of Sydney, no. 1 (1878). Art in Australia, third series, No. 36, Marcie Muir Collection of Australian Children’s books. February 15, 1931. Baker, William. Heads of the People: An Illustrated Journal of Literature, Whims, and Oddities. Sydney: W. Baker, 1847. Bloomfield, Sally, and Craig Collins, “The Hobart Town Gazette,” The Andrew Bent Project, https://andrew-bent.life/imprints/the-hobart-town-gazette/.

5

THE SKETCH: COLONIAL CHARACTERS

115

Bonyhady, Tim. “Introduction.” In Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, edited by Tim Bonyhady and Andrew Sayers, 1–12. Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2000. Bright, Annie. “The Hon. Dr Garran, Mlc.” Cosmos Magazine, no. 9 (May 1895): 444. Encyclopaedia Britannica. “English Literature: The Romantic Period.” https:// www.britannica.com/art/English-literature/The-Romantic-period. Fay, Sarah. “The American Tradition of the Literary Interview, 1840-1956: A Cultural History.” Ph.D., University of Iowa, 2013. Gaunt, Heather. “History and Memory in the Tasmanian Public Library.” History Australia 6, no. 1 (2009): 10.1–10.12. Gelder, Kenneth, and Rachael Weaver. The Colonial Journals and the Emergence of Australian Literary Culture. Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing, 2014. Hadgraft, Cecil. “Savery, Henry (1791–1842).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1967. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/savery-henry-2632. Howard, Rod. A Forger’s Tale: The Extraordinary Story of Henry Savery, Australia’s First Novelist. Melbourne, Vic.: Arcade Publications, 2011. Irving, Washington. The Sketch Book. London; New York: G. Routledge, 1886. James, John Stanley (Julian Thomas). “Manly Sports.” Argus, 30 September 1876, 9. Johnson, Thomas Revel. “The Ring: Mill between Paddy O’haran and Ned Shea.” Bell ’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 1845, 2. Keesing, Nancy. “Imprisoned Pressmen.” The Bulletin 75, Christmas Edition, no. 3905 (15 December 1954): 30, 41. Kelly, Veronica. “‘Un Sans Culotte’: The Bulletin’s Early Theatre Criticism and the Masculine Bohemian Masquerade.” Australian Literary Studies 19 (3 May 2000): 254–68. Killick, Tim. “The Rise of the Tale: A Preliminary Checklist of Collections of Short Fiction Published 1820–29 in the Corvey Collection.” Cardif Covey: Reading the Romantic Text 7, no. 4 (2001): 1–37. http://sites.cardiff.ac. uk/romtextv2/files/2013/01/cc07_n04.pdf. Killick, Tim. British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century: The Rise of the Tale. London: Routledge, 2016. Kirkpatrick, Rod. “Australian Newspaper History Group Newsletter.” no. 85 (December 2015). Lawson, Sylvia. The Archibald Paradox: A Strange Case of Authorship. Melbourne, Vic.: Allen Lane, 1983. McKenzie, Kirsten. Scandal in the Colonies: Sydney and Cape Town, 1820–1850. Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 2004.

116

W. MCDONALD

Parliament of New South Wales, “1822 to 1842 - the First Legislature,” https:/ /www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/about/Pages/1822-to-1842-The-First-Legisl ature.aspx. Pauly, Thomas H. “The Literary Sketch in Nineteenth-Century America.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 17, no. 2 (1975): 489–503. http://www. jstor.org/stable/40754392. Remnick, David ed. Life Stories: Profiles from the New Yorker. New York: Random House, 2000. Rosenthal, Michael. “Decapitating the Swells.” In Heads of the People: A Portrait of Colonial Australia, edited by Tim Bonyhady and Andrew Sayers, 39–53. Canberra: National Portrait Gallery, 2000. Ryan, J. S. “Dexter, Caroline (1819–1884).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1972. Savery, Henry. The Hermit in Van Diemen’s Land. Edited by (and biographical introduction) by Cecil Hadgraft with notes on the persons by Magriet Roe. St. Lucia, Qld.: University of Queensland Press, 1964. Silvester, Christopher. The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day. London: Viking, 1993. Smith, Christina (Mrs James). The Booandik Tribe of South Australian Aborigines: A Sketch of Their Habits, Customs, Legends, and Language. Adelaide: E. Spiller, Government Printer, 1880. Smithers, Gregory D. “Black Gentleman as Good as White”: A Comparative Analysis of African American and Australian Aboriginal Political Protests, 1830–1865. The Journal of African American History 93, no. 3 (2008): 315–36. Stevenson, Ana. “Harriet Clisby’s ‘Sketches of Australia’: Travel Writing and Colonial Refigurations in Boston’s Woman’s Journal.” Women’s History Review 27, no. 5 (2018): 837–57. Venturo, David F. “The Satiric Character Sketch.” 550–567. Malden, MA, USA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. Walker, Robin Berwick (R.B.). The Newspaper Press in New South Wales, 1803– 1920. Sydney: Sydney University Press, 1976. Watson, Michael. “Caroline Dexter (1819–1884): Some Previously Unrecognised Works.” La Trobe Journal 32 (December 1983): 84–85. Weaver, Rachael. “Cosmos Magazine and Colonial Femininity.” Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature 12, no. 1 (2012).

CHAPTER 6

Sketches of Place, Landscape and Travel

Native Police looking over country, 1860: From the collection of Jonathan Richards © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_6

117

118

W. MCDONALD

As convicts and then migrants arrived in increasing numbers over the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they were claiming their stake in a place the imperial project told them was empty and ripe for “discovery”; they believed their back-breaking, and sometimes heartbreaking, efforts would trace civilisation onto the land and enable history to begin in this part of the world. The First Nation peoples were assumed to be without history. To the European eye, they had left no permanent mark on the landscape by which civilisation could be measured.1 There were no obvious monuments or architecture the explorers were willing to recognise, no alphabetical writing, no recognisable social or political institutions. The British, in their self-interest, rationalised the continent was empty, leaving the way clear for its occupation.2 Language and writing were crucial to the imperial project, providing the vehicle through which the settlers could reflect and define themselves, including through their relationships with the landscapes they encountered.3 Particularly in the first half of the nineteenth century, the colonists delighted in using the sketch form to write word pictures of their geographical surroundings for relatives and friends at home. Sketches were accessible, not only because they tended to be short, but because they eschewed seriousness and narrative continuity in favour of authenticity and immediacy.4 The early landscape and travel sketches of writers including James Martin, Richard Rowe, Louisa Anne Meredith, Louisa Atkinson, Henry Lawson and Andrew “Banjo” Paterson reveal the connections the early settlers were developing with their new country, while laying the foundations of later travel, nature and eco-writing up to the present day.

Master of All He Surveys: James Martin While geological forms may be given, perception is a cultural action. As Pierre Bourdieu writes: “The relation to the world is a relation of presence in the world, of being in the world, in the sense of belonging to the world”.5 We cannot remove ourselves from the place we are experiencing to describe it. We cannot separate from our physical reactions and how we interpret those, nor our desires, our feelings, our cultural background

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

119

and language. The way the land was experienced and written about by the colonists emerged from their Europeanness, and more particularly their social standing, class, education and gender. At the same time, there are a number of common aspects to the colonists’ landscape writing: a presumption the settlers were entitled to the land, a belief in the goals of the empire and the need for the land to provide economic potential, a shared understanding of the importance of science and progress, and a literary aesthetic imported from Britain that encouraged the use of imagery and metaphors to evoke an emotional and sometimes spiritual response to the land.6 The Australian Sketch Book, published in 1838, is one of the earliest books of sketches published in the colony. Written by (Sir) James Martin when he was only eighteen, it was influenced by Washington Irving’s Sketch Book, about which he writes: “I perused it with the most intense delight and conceived at once a high opinion of the talents of that amiable and distinguished author”.7 Educated at Sydney College, Martin claimed his collection of sketches was “the first literary production that has ever emanated from the pen of an individual educated in Australia [which] ought to be a powerful recommendation”.8 Not long after he left school, he began placing articles with W.C. Wentworth’s Australian where he became a writer and sub-editor under the mentorship of the editor G.R. (Bob) Nichols. Both Wentworth and Nichols had been born in Australia and used the paper to promote the rights of the “currency lads and lasses”9 who were judged as lesser in the colony compared to those who were “sterling” or British-born.10 Martin, who arrived in Australia as an infant from Ireland, was strongly influenced by Nichols and his time on the Australian. He became committed to the aspirations of the nativeborn movement and championed the right for all colonists to have the opportunity to rise to the top of Australian society, free from discrimination by the colonial aristocracy. Later, he would move into politics and the law, doing his legal articles with Nichols and eventually becoming both premier and chief justice of New South Wales. When the colonists wrote about the land, they necessarily fell back on aesthetic principles derived from Britain,11 and Martin’s work is no different in the way he expresses his appreciation for the landscape around him. As Judith Jensen points out, there was power in placing the landscape within the parameters of late nineteenth-century aesthetics, enabling the writer and the empire to stake their claim to it.12 Sometimes a nostalgic pastoralism led them to transform the landscapes into familiar

120

W. MCDONALD

terrain, to render the land as English countryside or to draw equivalencies with the park-like scenery of English estates. At other times, the influence of the picturesque and romantic movements drew writers to highlight the weird, melancholy or “sublime”.13 Martin was passionately drawn to the bush and his love of it runs strongly through the book’s fifteen essays that bear titles including: “The Sublime in Nature”; “The Thunder Storm”; “Botany Bay”; “Sunrise”; and “Sun-set”. This description of his trip to Bondi Beach betrays not only the romanticism that influenced his work but the imperialist character of much of the colonial writing: I had never before seen an object so eminently beautiful, as that which was then presented to my sight. The tide was out, and the long snowy beach appeared like a broad level pathway bordering the ocean. Not a rock, or stone was there to break its evenness – all seemed as smooth as though it had been levelled with the most assiduous care. Nature had indeed performed much for this enchanting spot, and it was questionable whether art could do anything to augment its charms … It was at the southern extremity of the beach that we emerged from the copse, and we had thence a fine view of the gigantic precipices, by which its northern boundary is terminated. The beach itself is nearly in the form of a half moon, and for the distance of a quarter of a mile, winds beautifully round, and ever and anon, receives the heaving billows, which come bounding on its surface.14

Martin’s scene overflows with sensory descriptions, glorifying “Nature”, but also portraying the beach like a park with a “broad, level pathway” and a tidal zone “levelled with the most assiduous care”. His figures of speech not only betray his own sense of beauty but have been chosen to most clearly convey, in language recognisable to readers, his responses to the view before him. Martin’s words contain the broad, wild beach within the aesthetics of parkland. The writer of Dark Emu, Bruce Pascoe, might argue the park-like appearance of the area was the result of landscape management by the Gadigal people who lived there, at least before it was the subject of a private land grant in 1809. Yet, Martin’s passage was written some thirty years later. Photographs at the end of the century often show Bondi as a windblown landscape of surf and shifting sand-dunes between rocky headlands. Martin’s description of the beach resounds as an example of the settler surveilling all he sees with the eye of the ruler. It fits Mary Louise Pratt’s description

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

121

of such writing as the means for the coloniser to assert mastery over a landscape—a rhetorical device she would describe as a “monarch-of-all-Isurvey scene”,15 where Martin appraises the broad panorama before him, implicitly reducing it from a wild stretch of coast to a manicured park, in the process controlling it and claiming it for the empire with the wonder and delight of the discoverer.16

Taming the Harsh Environment: Robert Harrison and May Vivienne Not all the colonists were as enamoured of the landscapes in which they found themselves as Martin. From the beginning, the bush and waterways were as much a threat as a solace, used as they were as natural prison boundaries by the authorities. The land had to provide shelter and sustenance, and for those who had grown up overseas, it was strange, unfamiliar, and for many unwelcoming, with the pioneering life often cruel in its hardship, austerity and loneliness. Statistics quoted in Robert Harrison’s 1862 volume, Colonial Sketches: or, Five Years in South Australia with Hints to Capitalists and Emigrants, are shocking even for Victorian times. He points out that nearly 60% of the 2336 deaths recorded in 1861 in South Australia were those of infants. Of the adults, only twelve “died of age”.17 Having written the book to provide practical information in a more interesting way than “the dry manner generally found in books professing to be guides to emigrants”,18 he had a dig at the recruiting spiels of the authorities who frequently praised the virtues of the clear weather: “I have little doubt that the plain English of this complaint, in many instances, would be ‘baked to death’, although this expression would be most obnoxious to the annals of progress, and the panegyrists of a fine climate”.19 It was thought the land needed to be tamed if the settlers were to survive, let alone flourish. While many colonists wrote about the land as if through the lens of the British countryside, most of the continent explored by the settlers bore little similarity to the landscapes of home. The nitrogen-poor soil and hot, dry climate frustratingly resisted European-style farming practices, while the settlers remained obstinately blind to the agricultural practices of the First Nations peoples who had lived sustainably here for thousands of years. Within a few decades of the landing of the First Fleet, the land began to degrade; the porous soils

122

W. MCDONALD

became compacted and eroded by the hard-hoofed sheep and cattle introduced by the settlers, while the cessation of fire-stick burning used by the Aboriginal peoples to manage the land, combined with the “hot burning” of forests, irrevocably changed the natural environment.20 By not engaging with Aboriginal ways of relating to the landscape, the colonists were forced even more emphatically onto Western ways of seeing, while working the land would become an increasingly difficult enterprise.21 With progress a paramount concern, the settlers often overlooked the dispiriting impacts of colonialism on the landscape, instead including in their writing descriptions of the ways in which agriculture, or even the formal planting of gardens, was “improving” the land. This confirmed the goal of development in the interests of the empire, as well as their ability to assert their authority and control over their surroundings.22 May Vivienne’s Travels in Western Australia, published at the end of the colonial era, is an example. Vivienne’s observations recorded on her trip through Western Australia’s goldfields in the late 1890s prioritised the agricultural achievements of the colonists over the natural environment.23 Vivienne wrote of Newcastle on the Avon River: It is a splendid farming district; the soil will grow almost everything. I saw some magnificent oranges and vegetables. The cattle are as fat and sleek as can be. Rain had been falling when I was there, and now the sun was shining and a beautiful rainbow arose over the hills. The pink everlasting flowers – acres of them – surrounded by the green grass, the pretty winding river, the white bridges and long good roads made up a very pleasant picture. There is plenty of good land around here waiting to be taken up and utilised.24

Negotiating the Highways and Byways: Richard Rose (Peter Possum) Many of Australia’s early sketches focused on travel. Many settlers wrote about their trips within Australia, both long and short, as they travelled to new residences, or to new occupations, or simply on excursions and vacations. While later a number of famous writers—including James Froude,25 Anthony Trollope26 and Mark Twain27 —would visit Australia and write about their travels, sketches by settlers that straddled the line between nature writing, travel writing and literary journalism were

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

123

appearing regularly in the colony’s newspapers and journals by midcentury.28 For example, Richard Rowe had a regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald in the late 1850s, which he used as an outlet for humorous sketches, often about his local travels. “Country Comments on Passing Events” appeared semi-regularly under his pen name Peter Possum. Rowe’s pieces were witty, world-weary and self-deprecating, incorporating scenes, dialogue and description in a way that was very popular with readers. In 1858, he published Peter ‘Possum’s Portfolio, a collection that included examples of his columns along with other bits and pieces of his writing including poetry and translations.29 The first two chapters of the book were comprised of a two-part column that had been published over two consecutive weeks in the Sydney Morning Herald the year before under the initials “R.R.”, titled “A Trip up the Hunter”.30 Like many who migrated rather than were born here, Rowe preferred town life to the Australian countryside. His columns are written through the eyes of the bored city dweller for whom the local landscapes would always compare unfavourably to the verdant and familiar scenes of home: Travelling over beaten tracks in Australia is sadly monotonous … The same everlasting gray, or red-rail, fences – the same wearisome gumtrees that haunt you everywhere … the same dingy scrub, with its dusty, metallic-looking foliage (the Australian Sylva seems to wear second-hand leaves) – the same, not grass, but graminaceous scurf, as though the earth were suffering from botanical ringworm – the same discoloured stumps, sticking up here and there like foul decaying teeth – the same charred trunks, prostrate, like blackfellows knocked down in a drunken squabble, rather than like Homeric heroes (as felled trees in other countries are), slain in noble combat – the same still-standing, but unbudding trunks, spreading out their white arms like oratorical skeletons – the same barkroofed slab huts, little better than gunyahs – the same roadside inns, with one inanimate water-trough, and clusters of animated beer and brandy troughs before the door – the same execrable roadway: in dry weather, a field abominably ploughed; in wet, a slough of despond, no modern “Christian” could be expected to get through …31

Rowe eventually returned to England, continuing his literary career overseas. He wrote mainly for the English press, submitting pieces to the Scotsman, Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal , Good Words for the Young , Cassell’s Magazine, Day of Rest , Leisure Hour, Sunday at Home, Sunday Magazine and Peep Show. On his death the Sydney Morning Herald

124

W. MCDONALD

reported he “never quite dropped his connection with the colonial journals to which he had been a contributor”.32 The obituary writer praised his “lively sketches of colonial life and manners” and singled out for praise some aspects of Rowe’s approach that help identify his writing as literary journalism, including “his powers of observation and description, and his command of language”. The writer attributes Rowe’s popularity to his literary skill: “… his contributions to the colonial journals were never skipped”.33

Chronicling Nature: Louisa Meredith The expansion of knowledge of nature in the nineteenth century, through the exploration and colonisation of new territories, resulted in natural history becoming a feature of Anglophone landscape and travel writing of the time. Detailed and often sumptuous illustrations could be found in the books of explorers and naturalists of the era,34 with the urge to observe, sort and classify spilling over into the writings that followed. Like Rowe, Louisa Meredith, a noted writer and illustrator, also had no great love of Australia when she arrived from Birmingham with her husband in 1839. But while she struggled to fit in to Australian society, she increasingly took great pleasure in her natural surroundings. By the age of twentysix, Meredith had made a name for herself in Birmingham as the writer of five books of poetry, as well as many articles, reviews and poems, flower paintings and drawings.35 She was an independent, strong-minded woman who was used to mixing in a cultural milieu that was unavailable in the rural areas of Australia where she lived with her husband, often in disagreeable and impecunious circumstances. Despite the demands of pioneering life, she continued to write and sketch, producing three books of travel writing among her many publications. Her first travel book, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales During a Residence in that Colony from 1839 to 1845, was published in London and became one of the most popular books in the Murray’s Home and Colonial Library series.36 It was not as popular in Australia where her forthright views on colonial society caused some controversy: I soon found that Colonial ladies seldom speak of aught besides dress, and domestic events and troubles, ‘bad servants’ being the staple topic. And most gentlemen have their whole souls so felted up in wools, fleeces,

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

125

flocks, and stock, that I have often sat through a weary dinner and evening of incessant talking, without hearing a single syllable on any other subject …37

These and similar comments caused much resentment in Sydney, although she was described in the Melbourne Argus after her death as a “shrewd and cultivated observer”.38 After the family moved to Tasmania following her husband’s continuing financial difficulties, Meredith wrote and co-illustrated the twovolume My Home in Tasmania, During a Residence of Nine Years. It was published to much acclaim by John Murray in London in 1852 and in New York by Bunce and Brothers a year later. While Meredith found Australian social life lacking, it was at least in part compensated for by the beauty of the natural world around her which she captured in her detailed illustrations and writing, as this passage shows: The most interesting ornaments of Cambria belonging to the animal kingdom were, in my estimation, a pair of beautiful tame black swans, the first of these birds that I had seen in their native land. They seemed to live very happily in the creek below the house, and always came at a call to be fed with bread or corn … Their plumage of glossy raven-black, with a few snow-white feathers in the wings and tail, is as elegantly grave a dress as can be conceived, and the bright coral-red bill gives a gay air to the graceful and expressive head and eyes. In the long slender neck I at first missed the curve that looks so stately in the white swan, but soon got reconciled to it. Their note is very melodious and plaintive, with a kind of harp-tone in it, sounding very sweetly as they call to each other over the water, or fly high overhead at night, when it seems like an echo of music from the clouds … Their nests are generally made in some low bank or islet, and formed of a rude heap of water-weeds. The hen lays five or six large, long dingy-white eggs, and the cygnets are at first white, being clothed only in the soft thick white down which forms the inner garment of the swan at all ages, and to obtain which cruelty of the most brutal kind has been and is still practised towards the poor swans …39

A decade later, Meredith published her third and final volume of travel writing Over the Straits, a Visit to Victoria, which was also a success. In the Preface, she makes the connection between the use of sketches as the basis on which to write travel narratives when a more “serious” book is not

126

W. MCDONALD

justified, clearly showing the role sketches have played in the evolution of literary journalism as a form in Australia: A rapid glance over the surface was all that our few weeks in Victoria permitted me; and I venture to believe that I should be guilty of far greater presumption in building a serious book on so small a basis, than in offering to the public a slight one, with the frank avowal of its many inevitable shortcomings. The liberal welcome with which my former sketches of colonial life have been received, creates in me the grateful faith that this small addition to them will experience the same kind indulgence.

Observing with the Eye of the Locally Born: Louisa Atkinson Unlike Louisa Meredith, Louisa Atkinson was spared the struggle of adapting to Australia’s natural environment, having been born here in 1834. Patricia Clarke has identified Atkinson as the first Australian-born woman writer of note,40 although Atkinson’s mother, Charlotte Barton, was also a writer and illustrator whose writings gave local children the opportunity for the first time to read stories set in Australia and the local landscape.41 Atkinson inherited her mother’s love of the bush, and her artistic abilities, becoming a noted naturalist with a deep knowledge of Australia’s flora and fauna. According to Clarke, she became the first woman to “exploit the newspaper and periodical market”,42 leading the way for other professional approaches by women writers in the nineteenth century. Although known for her “true-to-life” novels43 that were regularly serialised, her real legacy has been her nature writings and illustrations which continue to be considered important records of scientific value. Atkinson’s first article, Nature Notes for the Month, was published in 1853 in the Illustrated Sydney News when she was nineteen.44 As her experience and confidence grew, she became a long-term contributor to Horticulture magazine and negotiated with the Sydney Morning Herald to publish a series of natural history sketches which appeared in both its pages and in its weekly edition the Sydney Mail . Titled “A Voice from the Country”, the Sydney Morning Herald series ran throughout the 1860s, featuring factually written observations of plants, birds, reptiles and insects native to the Blue Mountains and Berrima districts of New South Wales.

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

127

In this typical example, Atkinson discusses snakes she sees around her property: Of Ophidia we have several species, the largest of which is the diamond snake, Morelia Spilota, an innocuous reptile of great beauty particularly after the recent casting of the skin. They are not very common here, nor have I seen them of a large size. On the Upper Shoalhaven, where the diamond snake is numerous, it attains nine feet and upwards in length. The carpet snake, which is very similar, is found here; it also is believed to be harmless; but the black (Pseudechis porphyriacus), the deaf (sic) adder, and the small grey, are poisonous. A green tree-snake, of very active habits, is occasionally met with. That very useful bird the laughing jackass, as well as some of the other larger species of Dacelo, and hawks, are invaluable at destroying reptiles, and it may be that their presence in these mountains is the reason for the limited number of snakes. I am inclined to think that the snake is a very timid creature, and would willingly avoid collision. In my experience they never attack, but remain inert and rigid, probably pleasing themselves with the idea of being mistaken for a stick; as long as the eye is fixed upon them this rigidity continues – but look, away, and like a flash of electricity they vanish, their movements being so rapid. Indeed, I consider them ‘more sinned against than sinning,’ and never hesitate to stand and observe when encountering them in my walks.45

Literary Journalist as Science Reporter: Henry Britton Other aspects of the scientific project were also evident in the writing of the time. Henry Britton, for example, wrote a series of literary journalism articles under the name “Special Correspondent” on the Australian Eclipse Expedition which were published in the Argus in 1871–1872.46 Detailed not only regarding the conduct of the expedition but also the flora, fauna and geological formations the expedition team encountered, it was largely reprinted in the fifth issue of the scientific journal Nature.47 The expedition was successful on a number of grounds—not least for the specimens that were observed and collected by the naturalists and botanists—but it was a disappointment for the astronomers because of the unfavourable weather.48 Britton’s description of the eclipse is nevertheless riveting:

128

W. MCDONALD

A drizzling rain continued during the remainder of the afternoon. At the faintest indication of a break in the clouds, the astronomers ran out of their tents and endeavoured to take observations, but without any result Seven minutes before the commencement of totality there was a gleam of light from the sun, but the phase of the eclipse could not be discerned. We caught a momentary glimpse of the silver sickle of the sun at the top, just before the full obscuration. Then darkness fell suddenly like a pall on the surrounding objects, and we knew that totality had begun. It was a strange weird light at first The large billowy clouds assumed olive and purple tints, and than changed to an ashen hue. These colours were reflected in the sea with some variations of light, green and copper. Men looked livid in the light and everything around had a most unearthly appearance. The steamer at anchor showed with a wonderful distinctness; every line, spar, and bit of cordage stood out against the horizon with the sharpness of a highly magnified stereoscopic picture. There was no total darkness, owing, probably, to the amount of light diffused in the clouds. During totality, newspaper print could be read without much difficulty. Nor was there any perceptible diminution in the temperature. The three minutes and a half seemed exceedingly short. We saw nothing of the corona beyond a brief glimpse of a luminous mark shining faintly through the vapours. Some said they detected a decided red tinge. The clouds turned black, the tints disappeared from the sea, and utter darkness seemed coming upon us, when a few rays of light played upon the edges of a great bank of clouds in the N.W., some of the grey tints of dawn appeared, and daylight came back with a rush, as from the lifting of a veil.49

Landscape and What It Meant to Be Australian: Lawson and Paterson As Federation drew closer, the drive for a national identity grew stronger. The emotional meanings invested in the landscape by the colonists as they faced the challenges of exploring, working and living on such a dry continent eventually went to the very heart of what it meant to be Australian. As Don Watson observes, the bush became both an ecological and a social construct, adopting real and imaginary meanings, emerging as “the source of the nation’s idea of itself” and “the inspiration for the national character”.50 Two versions of what it meant to be truly Australian surfaced in competition with each other: the downtrodden survivor of the unforgiving environment as illustrated by Henry Lawson’s “realist” sketches of the hardships of the bush and the endurance of the ordinary people who

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

129

lived there, and the romanticised version of the bushman on whose noble shoulders the nation was built as so strongly portrayed in the poems and short stories of A.B. “Banjo” Paterson.51 The competition between these two national types was encouraged in poetry in the pages of The Bulletin by the editor J.F. Archibald, and it proved so popular with readers he bought Lawson a £5 rail ticket to drought-stricken Bourke in 1892.52 The journey remained a central influence on Lawson’s writings for years to come, and among other notable works produced the literary journalism “In a Dry Season”53 and “In a Wet Season”54 that were published by Archibald. In the first, Lawson paints a picture of drought, poverty and loneliness: Draw a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep running away from the train. Then you’ll have the bush all along the New South Wales western line from Bathurst on … The railway towns consist of a public house and a general store, with a square tank and a school-house on piles in the nearer distance. The tank stands at the end of the school and is not many times smaller than the building itself … A couple of patient, ungroomed hacks are probably standing outside the pub, while their masters are inside having a drink – several drinks … There is sometimes a small, oblong weather-board building – unpainted, and generally leaning in one of the eight possible directions, and perhaps with a twist in another – which, from its half-obliterated sign, seems to have started as a rival to the Railway Stores; but the shutters are up and the place empty … The only town I saw that differed much from the above consisted of a box-bark humpy with a clay chimney, and a woman standing at the door throwing out the wash-up water.

In Lawson’s eyes, rain brought no relief from the desolation of the rural scenery. As he writes in “In a Wet Season”, if anything, the misery of the unrelenting landscape only increased with the deluge: It was raining – “general rain” … The train left Bourke, and then there began the long, long agony of scrub and wire fence, with here and there a natural clearing, which seemed even more dismal than the funereal ‘timber’ itself. The only thing which might seem in keeping with one of these soddened flats would be the ghost of a funeral–a city funeral with plain hearse and string of cabs – going very slowly across from the scrub on one side to the scrub on the other. Sky like a wet, grey blanket; plains like dead seas, save for the tufts of coarse grass sticking up out of the water; scrub indescribably dismal – everything damp, dark, and unspeakably dreary.

130

W. MCDONALD

As Brian Matthews observes, “Though not a symbolist writer, Lawson had the capacity to endow accurately observed documentary detail with a significance beyond its physical reality”.55 Those sketches, together with other examples of his literary journalism characterised by their emphasis on character, dialogue and narrative, are included in Lawson’s best-known book, While The Billy Boils (1896). A.B. (Banjo) Paterson’s poetry published in the 1890s was also enormously popular, providing readers with heroic characters such as “Clancy” and “The Man from Snowy River” who featured in his famous poems.56 An accomplished sportsman, Paterson’s love of horses and riding imbued his work, contributing to the romantic mythology of the tough, Australian bushman that grew from his optimistic, much-loved poems. Describing the competition with Lawson in the pages of The Bulletin, Paterson wrote: Henry Lawson was a man of remarkable insight in some things and of extraordinary simplicity in others. We were both looking for the same reef, if you get what I mean; but I had done my prospecting on horseback with my meals cooked for me, while Lawson had done his prospecting on foot and had had to cook for himself. Nobody realised this better than Lawson; and one day he suggested that we should write against each other, he putting the bush from his point of view, and I putting it from mine. “We ought to do pretty well out of it,” he said. “We ought to be able to get in three or four sets of verses each before they stop us.” This suited me all right, for we were working on space, and the pay was very small – in fact, I remember getting exactly thirteen and sixpence for writing “Clancy of the Overflow” – so we slam-banged away at each other for weeks and weeks; not until they stopped us, but until we ran out of material. I think that Lawson put his case better than I did, but I had the better case, so that honours (or dishonours) were fairly equal. An undignified affair, but it was a case of “root hog or die.”57

That Australia’s writers and intellectuals were turning to the bush for a sense of identity was in large part because of the imperial pressure to impose a “Britishness” on the emerging coastal cities, forcing nationalists to look elsewhere for ideals that would unite the new nation.58 While the Australian landscape—as symbol, backdrop and even character—featured large in the literary journalism written during the colonial era, most of the settlers lived in the cities around the country’s southern shorelines. There they experienced all the complex issues that modernity and urbanisation

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

131

would bring as a result of industrialism, cosmopolitanism and class division,59 providing rich material, as we will see, for the pens of the urban literary journalists.

Notes 1. Although, see the recent work of Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 2018), 2–3. Pascoe documents sophisticated agricultural techniques of the First Nations people that were ignored or overlooked by the colonists. One of Pascoe’s examples is an 1829 journal entry of Charles Sturt which referred to the Brewarrina fish traps and nearby dwellings as evidence of permanent settlement and large-scale, organised food production. The book has been highly controversial for its research methods but also because it challenges non-Indigenous Australia’s view of First Nations people as hunter-gathers without the trappings of civilisation that the development of agriculture would have encouraged. 2. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 98–109. 3. For an extended reflection on British colonialism’s reliance on mythopoetics, see Paul Carter, The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History (London: Faber and Faber, 1987). 4. Wendelin Guentner, “The Sketch as Literary Metaphor: The British Romantic Travel Narrative,” European Romantic Review 7, no. 2 (1997). 5. Pierre Bourdieu, Pascalian Meditations, trans. Richard Nice (Oxford: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 2000), 114. 6. Judith Jensen, “Unpacking the Travel Writers’ Baggage: Imperial Rhetoric in Travel Literature of Australia 1813–1914” (PhD James Cook University, 2006). 7. James Martin, The Australian Sketch Book (Sydney: James Tegg, 1838), v. 8. Martin, The Australian Sketch Book, vii. 9. Peter Miller Cunningham explained the term: “Our colonial-born brethren are best known here by the name of Currency, in contradistinction to Sterling, for those born in the mother-country. The name was originally given by a facetious paymaster of the seventy-third regiment quartered here,—the pound currency being at that time inferior to the pound sterling. Our Currency lads and lasses are a fine interesting race, and do honour to the country whence they originated. The name is a sufficient passport to esteem with all the well-informed and right-feeling portion of our population; but it is most laughable to see the capers some of our drunken old Sterling madonnas will occasionally cut over their

132

10.

11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21.

22. 23.

24. 25. 26. 27. 28.

W. MCDONALD

Currency adversaries in a quarrel. It is then, ‘You saucy baggage, how dare you set up your Currency crest at me? I am Sterling, and I’ll let you know!’” Peter Miller Cunningham, Two Years in New South Wales: A Series of Letters, Comprising Sketches of the Actual State of Society in That Colony, of Its Peculiar Advantages to Emigrants, of Its Topography, Natural History, &c., &c (London, UK: Henry Colburn, 1827), 53–54. G. P. Walsh, “Nichols, George Robert (Bob) (1809–1857),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nic hols-george-robert-bob-4296/text6957. Jensen, “Travel Writers’ Baggage.” Jensen, “Travel Writers’ Baggage,” 81–142. See also, Guentner, “Sketch as Literary Metaphor.” Jensen, “Travel Writers’ Baggage,” 81–142. Martin, The Australian Sketch Book, 183–84. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York, NY: Routledge, 1992), 201. Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 205. Robert Harrison, Colonial Sketches: or, Five Years in South Australia with Hints to Capitalists and Emigrants (London and Newcastle-on-Tyne: Hall, Virtue & Co; William Kaye, 1862), 133. Harrison, Colonial Sketches, iii. Harrison, Colonial Sketches, 133. Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture., 161–76. See Michael Cronin’s comment in this context: “If you cannot speak, you can at least look.” Michael Cronin, Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation (Cork: Cork University Press, 2000), 82. Jensen, “Travel Writers’ Baggage,” 291. May Vivienne, Travels in Western Australia: Being a Description of the Various Cities and Towns, Goldfields, and Agricultural Districts of That State (London, UK: William Heinemann, 1901). Vivienne, Travels in Western Australia, 86. James Anthony Froude, Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1886). Anthony Trollope, Australia and New Zealand (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1873). Mark Twain, Mark Twain in Australia and New Zealand (Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books Australia, 1973). As Fiona Giles pointed out in personal discussion with the author, some of the earliest examples of Western journalism has been attributed to

6

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34.

35.

36.

37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44.

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

133

the travel writing of Herodotus, creating an historical link here between journalism, literary journalism and travel sketches. Richard Rowe, Peter ‘Possum’s Portfolio (Sydney: J.R. Clarke, 1858). Richard (Peter Possum) Rowe, “A Trip Up the Hunter, Part I: How I Started for Muswellbrook, and Only Got to Maitland,” Sydney Morning Herald, January 23, 1856; Richard (Peter Possum) Rowe, “A Trip up the Hunter, Part II: Pocketed at Last,” Sydney Morning Herald, February 5, 1856. Rowe, “A Trip Up the Hunter, Part II.” Republished as Anonymous, “Death of ‘Peter Possum’,” The Queenslander (Brisbane), Saturday, February 14, 1880. Anonymous, “Death of ‘Peter Possum’.” For example, see the work of Sydney Parkinson who contributed over 900 sketches of plants to illustrate Joseph Banks’s observations on the expedition with Captain Cook to Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti and South America; the illustrations by William Hodges for Cook’s A Voyage Towards the South Pole, and Round the World: Performed in His Majesty’s Ships the Resolution and Adventure, in the Years 1772, 1773, 1774, and 1775; and the naturalist Alexander von Humboldt’s drawings and paintings in the many books he produced as a result of his scientific expeditions and enquiries. Patricia Clarke, Pen Portraits: Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth Century Australia (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988), 35; Sally O’Neill, “Meredith, Louisa Ann (1812–1895),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1974). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/meredith-louisaann-4435. Louisa Anne Meredith, Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844 (London, UK: John Murray, 1849). Meredith, Notes and Sketches, 161. Anonymous, “Death of Mrs Charles Meredith,” Argus, October 22, 1895. Louisa Anne Meredith, My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years, vol. I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 97–98. Clarke, Pen Portraits, 3. Clarke, Pen Portraits, 20. Clarke, Pen Portraits, 2–3. Clarke, Pen Portraits, 2–3. Jessie Street National Women’s Library, “Caroline Louisa Waring Atkinson (1834–1872): Naturalist, Journalist, Novelist” (Sydney, 2004). https://web.archive.org/web/20070829173225/http://203.147.135. 214/forms/factfiles/caroline.pdf.

134

W. MCDONALD

45. Louisa Atkinson, “A Voice from the Country: Reptilia,” Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, May 1, 1861. 46. Henry Britton, “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. I,” Argus, December 1, 1871; Henry Britton, “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. II,” Argus, December 30, 1871; Henry Britton, “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. III,” Argus, January 1, 1872; Henry Britton, “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. IV,” Argus, January 4, 1872. 47. Britton but published as Anonymous, “The Australian Eclipse Expedition,” Nature 5, no. 122 (1872). 48. Nick Lomb, “Australian Solar Eclipse Expeditions: The Voyage to Cape York in 1871,” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 19, no. 1 (2016): 79. 49. Britton, “Eclipse III.” 50. Don Watson, The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia (London, UK: Hamish Hamilton, 2014), 66. 51. Eduardo Marks de Marques and Anelise Corseuil, “New Cultural Landscapes: Australian Narratives in Literature and film,” Ilha do Desterro 69 (2016). 52. Damien Murphy, “Henry Lawson,” in The Australian Media Hall of Fame (The Melbourne Press Club, n.d.). https://halloffame.melbournepressc lub.com/article/henry-lawson. 53. Henry Lawson, “In a Dry Season,” The Bulletin 12, no. 664 (November 5, 1892). 54. Henry Lawson, “In a Wet Season: Along the Line,” The Bulletin, December 2, 1893. 55. Brian Matthews, “Lawson, Henry (1867–1922),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1986). https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/lawsonhenry-7118. 56. The Man from Snowy River was first published in The Bulletin on 26 April 1890. 57. Andrew Barton (Banjo) Paterson, “‘Banjo’ Paterson Tells His Own Story—2. Giants of the Paddle, Pen, and Pencil,” Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, February 11, 1939. Paterson’s entertaining sketches about the Australian racing industry and rural life were also popular with readers, as were his tales of his travels in the 1890s that appeared in the Sydney Mail, the Pastoralists’ Review, the Australian Town and Country Journal, the Lone Hand and The Bulletin. However, Paterson’s most important literary journalism would not be written until he sailed in 1899 to cover the South African War for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Age. 58. Graeme Davison, “The View from the Palisade Hotel,” Meanjin 65, no. 2 (2006): 100–5.

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

135

59. Davison, “The View from the Palisade Hotel,” 103.

Bibliography Anonymous. “The Australian Eclipse Expedition.” Nature 5, no. 122 (1872): 351–54. ———. “Death of ‘Peter Possum’.” The Queenslander (Brisbane), Saturday, February 14, 1880. ———. “Death of Mrs Charles Meredith.” Argus, October 22, 1895. Atkinson, Louisa. “A Voice from the Country: Reptilia.” Sydney Morning Herald, Wednesday, May 1, 1861. Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1986. Bourdieu, Pierre. Pascalian Meditations. Translated by Richard Nice. Oxford: Polity Press in association with Blackwell, 2000. Britton, Henry. “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. I.” Argus, December 1, 1871, 5–6. ———. “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. Ii.” Argus, December 30, 1871, 5. ———. “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. Iii.” Argus, January 1, 1872, 6. ———. “The Australian Eclipse Expedition No. Iv.” Argus, January 4, 1872, 5–6. Carter, Paul. The Road to Botany Bay: An Essay in Spatial History. London: Faber and Faber, 1987. Clarke, Patricia. Pen Portraits: Women Writers and Journalists in Nineteenth Century Australia. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988. Cronin, Michael. Across the Lines: Travel, Language, Translation. Cork: Cork University Press, 2000. Cunningham, Peter Miller. Two Years in New South Wales: A Series of Letters, Comprising Sketches of the Actual State of Society in That Colony, of Its Peculiar Advantages to Emigrants, of Its Topography, Natural History, &C., &C. London, UK: Henry Colburn, 1827. Davison, Graeme. “The View from the Palisade Hotel.” Meanjin 65, no. 2 (2006): 96–107. Froude, James Anthony. Oceana, or, England and Her Colonies. London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1886. Guentner, Wendelin. “The Sketch as Literary Metaphor: The British Romantic Travel Narrative.” European Romantic Review 7, no. 2 (1997): 125–33. Harrison, Robert. Colonial Sketches: Or, Five Years in South Australia with Hints to Capitalists and Emigrants. London and Newcastle-on-Tyne: Hall, Virtue & Co; William Kaye, 1862.

136

W. MCDONALD

Jensen, Judith. “Unpacking the Travel Writers’ Baggage: Imperial Rhetoric in Travel Literature of Australia 1813–1914.” PhD, James Cook University, 2006. Lawson, Henry. “In a Dry Season.” The Bulletin 12, no. 664 (1892, November 5): 20. ———. “In a Wet Season: Along the Line.” The Bulletin, December 2, 1893, 20. Library, Jessie Street National Women’s. “Caroline Louisa Waring Atkinson (1834–1872): Naturalist, Journalist, Novelist.” Sydney, 2004. https://web. archive.org/web/20070829173225/http://203.147.135.214/forms/factfi les/caroline.pdf. Lomb, Nick. “Australian Solar Eclipse Expeditions: The Voyage to Cape York in 1871.” Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage 19, no. 1 (2016): 79–95. Marks de Marques, Eduardo, and Anelise Corseuil. “New Cultural Landscapes: Australian Narratives in Literature and Film.” Ilha do Desterro 69 (2016): 9–15. Martin, James. The Australian Sketch Book. Sydney: James Tegg, 1838. Meredith, Louisa Anne. Notes and Sketches of New South Wales, During a Residence in That Colony from 1839 to 1844. London, UK: John Murray, 1849. ———. My Home in Tasmania During a Residence of Nine Years. Vol. I. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Murphy, Damien. “Henry Lawson.” In The Australian Media Hall of Fame, The Melbourne Press Club, n.d. https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/art icle/henry-lawson. O’Neill, Sally. “Meredith, Louisa Ann (1812–1895).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1974. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/meredith-lou isa-ann-4435. Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture. Broome, WA: Magabala Books, 2018. Paterson, Andrew Barton (Banjo). “‘Banjo’ Paterson Tells His Own Story—2. Giants of the Paddle, Pen, and Pencil.” Sydney Morning Herald, Saturday, February 11, 1939, 21. Pratt, Mary Louise. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. New York, NY: Routledge, 1992. Rowe, Richard. Peter ‘Possum’s Portfolio. Sydney: J.R. Clarke, 1858. Rowe, Richard (Peter Possum). “A Trip up the Hunter, Part I: How I Started for Muswellbrook, and Only Got to Maitland.” Sydney Morning Herald, January 23, 1856, 8.

6

SKETCHES OF PLACE, LANDSCAPE AND TRAVEL

137

———. “A Trip up the Hunter, Part Ii: Pocketed at Last.” Sydney Morning Herald, February 5, 1856, 5. Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Trollope, Anthony. Australia and New Zealand. Melbourne: George Robertson, 1873. Twain, Mark. Mark Twain in Australia and New Zealand. Ringwood, VIC: Penguin Books Australia, 1973. Vivienne, May. Travels in Western Australia: Being a Description of the Various Cities and Towns, Goldfields, and Agricultural Districts of That State. London, UK: William Heinemann, 1901. Walsh, G. P. “Nichols, George Robert (Bob) (1809–1857).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/nichols-george-rob ert-bob-4296/text6957. Watson, Don. The Bush: Travels in the Heart of Australia. London, UK: Hamish Hamilton, 2014.

CHAPTER 7

Reporting on City Life: The Highs and Lows of “Marvellous Melbourne”

Relieving the wants of the unemployed. Melbourne Punch, 17 July 1890, p. 4. Artist unknown. Courtesy of Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_7

139

140

W. MCDONALD

Although the quest for a national identity was tied to “the bush”, Australia was highly urbanised from the beginning. Colonial Australians liked to think of themselves as frontier battlers, but by 1891 around onethird lived in cities with populations greater than 10,000, and a significant number also clustered in the smaller towns.1 In 1899, Adna Weber, an American statistician, calculated Australia was more urbanised than any other country despite its economic reliance on the primary production of exports such as wool and wheat.2 Migrants brought with them the Industrial Revolution leading to a manufacturing sector that needed a steady workforce, substantial infrastructure developments such as the railways and tramways, and large-scale agriculture that required fewer labourers.3 Suburbs sprang up around the urban centres where the work was available, with residents enjoying higher incomes, higher home ownership, and lower birth and death rates than other “modernised” societies. These were reasons to celebrate, but in the absence of a heritage of peasant culture, and any moment of revolutionary birth as occurred in the United States, Australians struggled to see the growth of their cities as a source of national identity. Rather, they were seen to be poor replicas of the Old World cities of Europe, and their low-density suburbs too dull to satisfy national pride.4 Yet, many writers and journalists did turn their attention to observing the growing towns and cities, first in sketches and later in articles easily recognisable as reporting written with all the skills of the storyteller, in other words, as literary journalism. Just as the consciousness and experiences of city dwellers were being explored in the literature of other major centres of the world,5 so too was it happening in the colonial cities that were springing up around Australia. Some writers were drawn to record the excitement of modernisation, but others dwelled on the unwelcome consequences of industrialisation, specifically the inner-city slums.

ˆ Female Flaneuse : Mary Fortune Mary Fortune was one of the former, recording the positive aspects of urban living. Best remembered for her short crime fiction and a serialised memoir of her time on the goldfields, she wrote a number of popular sketches in the late 1860s that appeared in the Australian Journal: A Weekly Record of Literature, Science and the Arts.6 Fortune’s first sketch for the magazine was a well-known account of her trip from Oxley to Melbourne by wagon titled “Fourteen Days on the Roads”.7 She

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

141

followed it in January 1869 with a long sketch recording the liveliness of Bourke Street, Melbourne, on a busy Saturday night. That “Marvellous Melbourne” by that date was a wealthy, rapidly expanding city was astounding in itself. Only established as an encampment with a few tents in 1835, it had become a bustling boomtown and financial centre, fuelled by the migrants and capital flowing in from the gold rushes.8 As Michael Wilding colourfully described it: “The young country was not a closed, provincial, parochial society, but part of the map of world-wide itinerants – men of fortune, buccaneers, confidence tricksters, the ceaseless tribe of the footloose ….”9 Bourke Street, in its turn, had become a lively entertainment hub, lined by shops with glass frontages and shopping arcades. It attracted crowds looking for relaxation and amusement, or wanting bargains from “Paddy’s Market” on the corner of Bourke and Stephen Streets.10 Mary Fortune’s article, which she published under the pen name Waif Wanderer, is full of wonder at the scene before her. The lead of her piece sets the tone as well as the scene: ‘Well, are you going down Bourke-street tonight?’ ‘Down Bourke-street? what for?’ ‘What for!’ with a wide, open stare, and the most plainly expressed disgust at my verdancy, ‘for a walk, to be sure, and to see ‘Paddy’s’ Market. Why everybody goes down Bourke Street of a Saturday night.’

In words notable for their rhythm and descriptiveness, Fortune goes on to describe the jostling crowds, the confectionary stalls, fruit pedlars and pie vendors, the bonnet shops and, her favourites, the jewellers’ windows. She revels in the shopfronts, the arcades, the stalls and the night-time crowds, but is particularly struck by the bright city lights: Light … glares from broad, colour-lined windows – light streaming out from narrow doorways, and up from barred areas – light, glowing strangely in great, round, red, and green, and blue, and golden balls through chemists’ windows – and light, sending vividly illuminated letters out into the gleaming darkness. Light, battling with night’s darkness in a hundred different forms, and gaining the victory down Bourke Street! Light, in squares – light, in balls – light, in circles – light, in stars! Light, streaming, glaring, glowing, flickering, blazing, for a long mile of a vista almost worth coming to the antipodes to see.11

142

W. MCDONALD

Fortune was popular with her editors, not only because she provided a good read, but also because she helped to make sense for her audience of their experiences of Melbourne’s rapidly developing urban spaces. Remarkably for the era, Fortune wrote her animated sketches travelling freely without a chaperone. Megan Brown, writing for Westerly, argues for the importance of Fortune’s voice as a flâneuse at a time when some feminist theorists contend such a role was unavailable to women because of the restrictions on their gender.12 As Brown observes, Fortune’s work was ground-breaking, for while it was always accepted that working-class women and prostitutes peopled the streets of the towns and cities in the nineteenth century as they moved to and from work, or shopped and socialised, it was unusual for it to be acknowledged that middle-class women—like Fortune—were also circulating in the public spaces. The need to preserve respectability and uphold the idea that there were separate social spheres for men and women meant middle-class women were not writing about their forays into the public realms.13 In this context, Fortune established herself as a writer with a fresh eye, “an impecunious but respectable woman, an experienced colonist and a woman unafraid to be critical of the ruling hierarchy”.14 Women of all kinds held equal place to men in Fortune’s description of Melbourne’s crowded Bourke Street: Little girls – growing girls – full grown girls and women – old and young. Pups of boys and fops of men – tall and short – young and old. Fat and lean; rich and poor. Flaunting in all the colours of a lighted prism, or hanging in dirty tatters of no colour; all bodies moving and talking, and all going down Bourke-street.15

Exploring the Slums: Marcus Clarke Around the same time as Fortune was writing, Marcus Clarke was also publishing descriptive sketches of Bourke Street, particularly in his article “Melbourne Streets at Midnight” that ran in the series “Night Scenes in Melbourne” in the Argus in 1868–1869. Unlike Fortune, he focused less on describing the material details of the scene before him and more on the types of people he could observe: A notable feature of Bourke-street, from nine to eleven, is the number of sewing girls and milliners’ apprentices that haunt its pavement. These girls, neatly and sometimes handsomely dressed, will pass and repass for

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

143

hours, either for amusement or for the purpose of making assignations.. Walking up the street we meet a knot of station-men from the Murray with cattle. They have just put up their horses preparatory to “gain’ on the bust,” and walk down the pavement four abreast all booted, breeched, and smoking violently. Reeling after them are some half-dozen sailors from a passenger ship now in harbour; these are evidently ‘on pleasure bent,’ and with vehement addresses as to everybody’s eyes, limbs, and internal anatomy, lurch into a convenient bar for drinks round … Presently we come upon a group of Celestials, pigtailed, blue-coated, and mandarincapped chattering in their teeth-breaking lingo …16

Bourke Street also featured in his sketch “Arcadia in the Colonies”, a satirical piece describing the behaviour of couples on the famous street on a Saturday night. It appeared in 1867 in his “Peripatetic Philosopher” column that he wrote for the Argus and its weekend edition the Australasian, using the pen name “Q” . It was one of the articles Clarke selected for his first book published in 1869, a very successful volume of collected sketches from the column also published under the title The Peripatetic Philosopher. Clarke, better known for his important convict novel For the Term of his Natural Life, began writing the column when he was twenty-one. It ran from 23 November 1867 to 11 June 1870 and provided a youthful, light-hearted and satirical take on contemporary Melbourne. With self-deprecating humour, he describes his sketches in his preface as a “miserable decoction of Thackeray, and Dickens, and Balzac, and George Sala, and Douglas Jerrold, and anybody else whose works are obtainable to be plagiarised”.17 Clarke created his own style, using humour and irony to satirise colonial materialism, parochialism and humbug, with topics ranging from the social pretensions surrounding the visit of the Duke of Edinburgh to the exposure of the seedier side of Melbourne and its poverty. The series was popular, proving Clarke, like Fortune, had found a niche that clicked with local readers, providing a fresh, local understanding of city life. Some of Clarke’s strongest journalism appears in his “Lower Bohemia” series that ran in the Australasian between 12 June and 21 August in 1869. It shows the cross-over between the sketch and literary journalism in colonial Australia, while challenging the reputation Clarke had for being a lightweight, more interested in vacuous frippery than investigations of substance.18 The series, which appeared in his “Peripatetic Philosopher” column, encompasses six articles that focus with empathy on the growing underclass of poor and disadvantaged who formed the

144

W. MCDONALD

human detritus of Melbourne’s rapid growth. When Clarke talks about “lower Bohemians”, he is not referring in a romantic way to the artists, musicians and literati who choose unconventional lifestyles to pursue their calling. Rather, he writes: [T]here is another Bohemia … where there are few suppers and no supper parties, where no songs are sung and no winecups circulate, where vice is vice without the tinsel, and vagabondage is stripped of its poetry. This is the real Bohemia; the other is but a fictitious and impossible place, which exists but in the dreams of the poet or the imagination of the romance writer.19

Clarke had been writing articles for over a year about the nightlife of Melbourne before he wrote the “Lower Bohemia” series. These culminated in a piece published in February 1869 called “A Melbourne Alsatia”. Unlike his later work, it was a sensationalist description of the alleyways running off Little Bourke Street, “but a stone’s throw from the most fashionable part of the city”.20 Clarke toured the area at night in the company of the police on their rounds, writing from their jaded point of view. He recounts the misery and filth he encounters—the alcoholism, violence and crime—showing little real sympathy for the people he observes. Yet his attitude was to change in the “Lower Bohemia” series written only a few months later, possibly because of the independent and immersive approach he adopted. For these stories, he entered the slums to experience them as far as he could on their own terms, without the police acting as guide. Clarke was an early member of a movement of social reformers, journalists and writers across the English-speaking world who reported at the turn of the century on poverty and the human cost of the Industrial Revolution. Well-known writers from both sides of the Atlantic—including Josiah Flynt, Nellie Bly, Stephen Crane, Jacob Riis, Walter Wyckoff, Jack London, and Bessie and Marie Van Vorst—reported on destitution and its consequences in the slums of Britain and North America to readers whose interest ranged from the merely curious to those who felt guilty, or were afraid of class violence, or worried they too might soon through some mischance slip into the ranks of the poor. While one of the main purposes of journalism is to achieve social benefit, not all the journalists writing about poverty were driven by

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

145

altruism or a sense of social justice. In his study The Invention of Journalism, Jean Chalaby uses the term “miserabilism” to describe much of the field. One of its first exponents was James Greenwood who wrote a series of sensationalist articles in January 1866, for the fledgling Pall Mall Gazette, a London journal aimed at “gentlemen” readers edited by his brother Frederick.21 Michael Ignatieff argues, “[S]entimental art, by definition, sacrifices nuance, ambivalence, and complexity in favor of strong emotion”.22 While Mayhew and Dickens had earlier traversed the streets of London’s slums to write about the poor, they had done so sympathetically, as outsiders. Greenwood went a further step, masquerading as a vagrant to experience first-hand what life was like in a ward for the homeless, and writing sensationally about his observations, feeding the fears and biases of his readers. Using the nom de plume “The Amateur Casual”, James Greenwood published his four articles under the title “A Night in a Workhouse”. He began the series with a warning that “no language with which I am acquainted is capable of conveying an adequate conception of the spectacle I then encountered”. His articles went on to describe “horrors with which [he] was surrounded” and from which there was no “escape”.23 While poverty at the time was not particularly newsworthy in itself, Chalaby points out that by humanising the issue and bringing it to the attention of “well-born” readers, the Greenwoods “had struck what would reveal itself to be a gold-mine”.24 The articles saved the Pall Mall Gazette from bankruptcy, doubling its readership in three days and demonstrating the economic advantages of lurid reporting. Clarke, and his successors including John Stanley James, would have been familiar with Greenwood’s articles; the colonies were awash at the time with British newspapers and journals brought in with each visiting ship. For editors and journalists like Clarke, the story of the financial success of the series for the Greenwoods would have been well known and very seductive. Clarke modelled the first of his pieces in the “Lower Bohemia” series directly on Greenwood’s, titling it “A Night at the Immigrants’ Home” (the Immigrants’ Home being Melbourne’s equivalent of a London workhouse). It is not clear whether Clarke stayed overnight in the Immigrants’ Home, where “the inmates with whom I conversed were utterly ignorant of my going amongst them”.25 Yet, he writes:

146

W. MCDONALD

The sleeping-place is as clean and sweet as a hospital ward … By and by the windows are put up, and the solitary gas jet over the wardman’s had only glimmers. Bohemia grunts and snorts away into dreaming.26

When describing “A Cheap Lodging House”, a far less salubrious accommodation for the poor, in the fifth article in the series, he writes: The place is hot, stifling, smelling like a shambles, reeking with human meat … Men – apparently not by any means scrupulous – have told me that they would rather sleep in the streets than in one of these places; and I believe them.27

But from there, Greenwood’s and Clarke’s approaches diverge as Clarke’s sensibilities and talents as a sketch writer and journalist come to the fore. Clarke immersed himself in the city’s backstreets and laneways, visiting the poorhouses, taverns, “gas pipes” and “stone heaps”, interviewing the people he encountered and closely observing their surroundings. Rather than clumping Melbourne’s poor into a single, formless group, Clarke writes with nuance, using the series to explore the various layers of the slums. He attempts to portray the people he encounters as more fully human than did Greenwood or many of the writers who came later, including their voices in captured quotes and dialogue. And he acknowledges that aspects of the life of the poor are to be envied; he devotes articles to their carefree entertainments and the twists and turns of their unique slang. As the series progresses, he moves from the relative comfort of the Immigrants’ Home and the better taverns to the miseries of unprotected life on the street and the rough drinking holes on the wharves where there is: “No jollity, no laughter; only dirt, and vice, and drunkenness”.28 He devotes his last article “In Outer Darkness” to “the absolute homeless”29 : Every now and then we come to a dip or hollow in the ground, which is full of vagabond humanity crouching on lee side of tempest … It lies under bushes, by the side of rotten palings, and in the gully by the fence. It is covered with tattered blankets, with rags, with coat turned up over head, with thickness of pasted advertisements torn down from the mouldering paling-boards, with cut-down and plucked-up bushes – with nothing. Here are the dwellers in the wilderness, huddled together indiscriminately – men, women, children.30

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

147

In his final anecdote, Clarke locates the hangman—one of the most hated figures in colonial society—living in a filthy hole down near the wharf, bolted against intruders. Clarke makes the point that the hangman is forced to live in such isolated misery even though he was only as guilty as the judge and jury; to attempt a normal life in society would have attracted violence and persecution. Without proselytising, and with the sensitivity of the novelist, Clarke uses his interaction with the hangman to bring home his point that we are all responsible for the conditions in the slums; that its residents are deserving of respect and intervention, at the least as fellow human beings. Laurie Hergenhan posits that underlying the “Lower Bohemia” series is a sense of abandonment and deprivation that resonated with Clarke’s own experiences, arousing his identification and “pity”. Clarke migrated to Australia from England in 1863, not long after his father died. His mother had passed away when he was a month shy of four years old, and from that time, he had been left in the care of his father, a barrister of comfortable means. According to Clarke, as he grew older, his father increasingly showed little care for him or his emotional well-being, instead concentrating on amassing wealth for Clarke’s inheritance. As his father retreated, becoming reclusive, Clarke was sent to Cholmeley School, Highgate. There he received a solid education in the classics and became close friends with Cyril Hopkins and his brother the poet Gerard Manly Hopkins. When Clarke was sixteen, his father suffered a serious physical and mental collapse. He was removed to an insane asylum where he would survive only for another year. When his affairs were checked, it was discovered he was penniless and had left Clarke nothing. Hergenhan argues that Clarke’s discovery at such a young age that he was to be catapulted from comfortable London society, with its suggestion of complete rejection by his father, left a deep wound that would resound through his major writing, not only his convict novel For the Term of his Natural Life, but also his more serious journalism, particularly his “Lower Bohemia” series.31 The notion of “pity” suggests some distance between Clarke and his subjects; some condescension on his part. While it is true that Clarke shows his own class origins in much of his journalism, his work in the “Lower Bohemia” series conveys empathy rather than pity. John Hartsock describes empathy as an essential characteristic of literary journalism, to the extent that it avoids “reinforcing difference and [shows] commonalities instead”.32 He frowns on sensationalism because it fails to “close

148

W. MCDONALD

the distance between [the writer’s] (and by implication [the] reader’s) subjectivity and the Other as object”.33 Sensationalism, in other words, intentionally blurs reality to provoke certain emotions in the reader while creating a comfortable distance from the subject matter. Clarke writes in the present tense, rejecting not only sentimentality, but also distance between the reader, the narrator and the subject. He emphasises his intention to portray the experiences of, “Our Bohemian, – in my person or yours, reader”.34

Empathetic Responses The term “empathy” has been defined in various ways by researchers over the last century in diverse fields from philosophy to literature and the visual arts, but it was not in use at the time Clarke was writing. It first appeared as a term in English in 1909, translated by Edward Bradford Titchener from the German Einfühlung .35 While the Oxford Dictionary today defines empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another”, empathy in literary journalism aims to go further.36 Its goal is not only to achieve connection by putting the reader emotionally into the shoes of the story’s subjects, but also to prompt action on the part of readers to improve the subject’s situation. For this to occur, three psychological processes are necessary. The first is “experience sharing”, where readers imagine themselves having the same experience as the characters. Literary journalism, when done well, crosses boundaries and depicts people as being similar to ourselves who would normally be seen as the “Other”. Research shows our empathy for characters on the page can be just as strong as it is for people in real life, but we need to feel that sense of similarity sufficiently that we intertwine our experiences with theirs.37 The second psychological process is “perspective taking”, where readers consciously reflect on the characters’ experiences. Literary journalism is more effective than news writing for achieving empathy because it is long-form, using detail and other literary techniques to “show rather than tell”. Human beings need sufficient information about another person before we sense similarities and can reflect on them, enabling us to share their perspective, if briefly. The third psychological process that encourages not only feeling for another person but action on their behalf is “transportation”. According to Transportation Theory, when readers are sufficiently engaged in a story they are transported into the same space and time inhabited by the characters and

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

149

experience similar reactions such as joy and sorrow.38 The more “transported” a reader feels, the more likely they are to change their beliefs and opinions and even alter their behaviour as a consequence. As Lene Bech Sillesen, et al., have noted: “We know that longer narratives with complex characters and strong storylines can have a deep impact on readers who take the time to read from start to finish”.39 Matthew Ricketson recognises the deeper political implications of encouraging empathy. He argues it is this potential for impact on a reader’s mind and behaviour that makes “the act of researching and writing true stories and of readers engaging with them … of profound importance in a democratic society”.40

Investigating the Institutions: John Stanley James That approach to arousing the reader’s empathy is evident not only in Clarke’s work, but also in the writing of another Melbourne journalist, John Stanley James. Not long after Clarke wrote his series on the slums of Melbourne, John Stanley James also took up the pen to champion the causes of the city’s impoverished and downtrodden in long, detailed articles for the Argus in the mid-1870s.41 His work is interesting for many reasons, not least because it illustrates the way empathy works in literary journalism. It provoked strong responses from readers and the authorities alike, causing changes in the way Melbourne treated its most vulnerable. To write his pieces, James went undercover, immersing himself in the workings of some of Melbourne’s harshest institutions—including Pentridge Gaol, the Immigrants’ Home, the Alfred Hospital, the Benevolent Asylum and the lunatic asylums. Pretending to be an inmate or low-level employee, James would sometimes spend months unobtrusively observing his surroundings, writing evocative exposés from what he called “the inside track”.42 The resulting articles prompted frequent public outcries, as well as several follow-up investigations including at least one public enquiry. James, known in Australia at the time as Julian Thomas, used the nom de plume “A Vagabond” to write his articles. He was a young journalist working in England when the Greenwoods were publishing their stories on London poverty. Like Clarke, he too was influenced by James’ Greenwood original series on the plight of homeless men. James’s first story for the Argus was titled “A Night in the Model Lodging House”. To

150

W. MCDONALD

execute it, he went undercover at a sixpenny-a-night labourer’s dormitory to write about the men who frequented it. The result was an article remarkably free of sensationalism as this excerpt shows: I see that many of the lodgers are old hands, and appear to have their regular beds, to which they make their way as to their home. There has been little talking up to this, those who have gone to bed early being evidently tired out, but now two men at the end of the room nearest me begin an argument … This is interrupted by the entrance of a decentlydressed youth, whom they tell not to keep them awake tonight. ‘I assure you, gentlemen,’ says the youth as he takes off his coat, ‘that I went to sleep last night with my finger between my teeth, and this morning it was quite sore, but I’d do anything rather than disturb you.’ I wonder with what strange malady he can be afflicted that involves such a curious mode of taking rest, till by the conversation I gather that before his time he has taken to gnash and grind his teeth, awakening all his neighbors … And now it was nearly twelve o’clock, and a natty little figure dressed in clothes of a fashionable cut, and swinging a cane, walked down to a bed nearly opposite mine. The walk was that of a gentleman, and of one accustomed to field sports, but the newcomer was evidently quite at home here, as he went straight to his bed – a sure sign that he was not a new hand.43

James, who was also a poet and playwright, used character, scenes, description and—most characteristically—humour to make the sometimes very grim content of his stories more palatable for readers. In “A Month in Pentridge”, he approaches an almost gonzo style when he is called on to pull out the tooth of a prisoner at Pentridge Gaol: ‘You can pull out teeth, I suppose?’ said the doctor, turning to me. I sort of hesitated. ‘Who was the man?’ I asked. ‘The hangman Gately, but they call him Balleyram here,’ was the reply. I accepted the doctor’s case of instruments with alacrity, and expressed my readiness to pull out every tooth in ‘Balleyram’s’ head. I have never had any practice in dentistry, and this was my maiden effort in that line. With any other subject I certainly should have hesitated, as I dislike giving needless pain; but Gately I had little sympathy for … “Now, then, old man, let’s have a look at this tooth.” He opened his foul jaws. Faugh! ‘Sit down.’ ‘Oh, doctor, don’t hurt me,’ he cried, as, with a professional air, I opened the pocket-case, and spread the forceps on the little table. ‘Oh!’ he cried, as the first pull broke off a piece of the tooth, the forceps slipping. ‘Just hold his head, and if he stirs

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

151

bang it against the wall,’ said I to one of the warders. There was a laugh – the new dispenser was ‘a queer sort,’ evidently. I took out the largest and strongest pair of forceps, which would pull a tooth out of a crocodile. One grip, a roar from Gately, a twist of the wrist, and out came the tusk. With the consciousness of talent, I wiped the instruments carefully, whilst the warders looked on admiringly. ‘I must get you to look at my teeth,’ said one of them. “Have it out now,’ said I. ‘If there’s one thing I can do better than another, it’s this – I’m – on teeth.’ The warder shuddered, and said he hadn’t time just then.44

James’s real subject was powerlessness rather than poverty. He advocated for those stranded in institutions—the residents of Melbourne who lacked status and self-determination—a position poverty generally accompanied but did not always cause. He saw nothing noble in being poor, but at the same time, he never judged a person for having an empty pocket; unlike Greenwood, he did not lump the poor together as a class for whom there was no hope. Nor did he, like Clarke, enter Melbourne’s institutions to understand what it was like to live in them. He already knew. His goal was to advocate for the people they mistreated. When James had first turned up sick and broke at the office of the Argus looking for work late one night in 1876, he was well versed in failure, homelessness and social exclusion. The son of a solicitor practising in Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, James came from a home that was respectable but lacked affection. As a young boy, he was sent to boarding school, but a fight with the school bully when he was twelve saw him climb out a window and take to the streets. The unsympathetic headmaster had foolishly threatened James, intimating the bully was badly injured, the police were involved, and if he died James would be hanged. A few days later, mistaking a handbill offering a reward for his return as proof he was now a criminal, James traded his school clothes for those of a tramp and stayed on the run for another six months, “frequenting threepenny and sixpenny lodging-houses used by hawkers, vagrants and beggars”.45 While there was an eventual reconciliation with his family, it was never an easy one. James fled to London after he completed his education and eventually began to freelance crime news for the London newspapers. In 1870, he travelled across the Channel, planning to write on the Paris riots, but instead, by his own account, was arrested and imprisoned as a spy, partly because of his sympathy for the French Secessionists who were

152

W. MCDONALD

plotting to depose Napoleon III, but also because of his acquaintance with Gustave Flourens who became one of the leading insurrectionists behind the Paris Commune.46 “In my callow days I was a rebel”, he later wrote, “and from Garibaldians to Fenians I have ever since had a sneaking fondness for those in arms against constituted authority”.47 Two years later, James again showed his anti-authoritarian streak and his sympathy for the oppressed, when he reported on Warwickshire farm labourers’ attempts to unionise. As was typical of James’s approach, he ignored the official statements of both sides, instead preferring to visit the farm labourers to find out for himself the truth about the circumstances of their lives. What he found was disturbing. They subsisted on starvationlevel wages in decrepit dwellings featuring cracked walls, leaking roofs and poor sanitation. As Hugh Anderson says, it was a form of reporting at which James shone: “[H]is style was direct and simple; he was sympathetic to the cause; and he possessed the ‘news nose’ of a hungry Fleet-Street ‘penny-a-liner.’”48 Attracted by the promise of a new life in America, James sailed steerage class to New York in around 1872. By 1875, he was living in Farmland, Virginia, married to a rich widow, Caroline. He had become the owner of 90 acres,49 a mansion called Stanley Park that he built as their home, and was extensively involved in the community, including through the establishment of a school and his directorship of the local branch of the English & American Bank.50 But it all fell apart very quickly. Robert G. Flippen recounts that over the course of a month in late 1875, James lost his reputation, his money, his bank directorship, his marriage, and his home (which he signed over to Caroline).51 Two years later, James would write that the cause of his misfortune was his inability to resist appeals from friends to approve their unsecured loans: “After losing a few thousand dollars at this game, I came to the conclusion that Nature never intended me for a usurer”.52 James’s experiences coloured his later journalism in Australia. They meant that he never saw poverty as a moral failing; he refused to condescend to his subjects, writing his articles as someone from among their ranks, rather than as a voyeur looking down in pity on their situation. James was not a religious man. And, he shared the racism and sexism typical of his day. Yet it infuriated him when he encountered religiosity and moral rigidity forcing young people to crime and violence just to survive. The opportunity for a fresh start was something he would go out of his way to secure for some of his subjects, particularly the young

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

153

people he encountered who were on track to a life of crime and destitution. Two stories illustrate the point. In “The Magdalen Asylum”, he describes meeting Annie, “a barmaid, [who] had been tempted and had gone ‘crooked’; the child was dead, but her mother, enraged by neighbours’ sneers, had turned her out of doors”.53 James described what transpired when he met with Annie’s mother: It is true they had a row, and she told Annie to clear out. She could not be disgraced with her in the house any longer. She had made her bed, and must lie in it. Thus said the mother. I spoke a few plain truths to that lady, which I am afraid only made her more bitter against her daughter. “I suppose you’re one of her gentlemen, come here to gammon me to keep her for you,” said the woman, firing up. Indignant, I left; but a few moments after I had a hearty laugh at my own foolishness, and I felt that I deserved all I got.54

Undeterred, James secured Annie a new job in a country pub, managing in the process to facilitate at least some sort of rapprochement between the girl and her mother. The latter was persuaded to give Annie a set of clothes and accompany her to the station to farewell her on her train journey. “Why spin this long tedious yarn?” he asks. “Well, only to show how the forces of society work against the weak, and as an example of how many stray ones there are who, with a little charitable feeling, may be kept from sinking lower, and, warned by the past, may be kept straight for the future”.55 Similarly, James took his role further than mere reporting for his story “The Waifs and Strays of Sydney” where he describes wanting to change the fate of a young match-seller: I persuaded Father Petre to accompany me to the Kelly-Cawmill home. He is as anxious as myself that something should be done to rescue this child from the degrading nocturnal life he is leading … Proceedings I trust will shortly be taken to rescue Baby Kelly from his present life, and to give him a chance for the future.56

James’s articles were immensely popular with readers and he managed to keep his identity secret for a year before eventually having to emerge as the journalist Julian Thomas. In the meantime, guessing the identity of “the Vagabond” became a popular parlour game. When it was rumoured the Vagabond regularly caught a particular train, crowds curious about his identity “almost to the point of frenzy” crammed the platform.57

154

W. MCDONALD

His work was satirised in Melbourne Punch which ran an article called, “Three weeks in a Nunnery in which the Vagabond Got a Job as a Cook to the Mother Superior in order to Discover Whether She Ate Meat on Fridays”.58 There was even a character called “The Vag” included in Melbourne’s 1877 Christmas pantomime.59 But beneath the excitement and curiosity simmered controversy. The administrators of Melbourne’s institutions quaked at the thought their establishments might appear in the Argus at any time. Because of his undercover methods, they never knew if James was already employed among their staff and how he might write about them if he was. His methods and his revelations provoked bitter controversies, eliciting many letters to the editor, some of which criticised him but many of which added information in support of his allegations.60 Inquiries, both public and private, also followed his stories. These included: • whether a doctor had performed lithotomy operations with a pocketknife rather than surgical instruments—the public inquiry found the doctor had merely boasted to patients he could do the job as well with a pen-knife; • whether the Benevolent Asylum starved elderly residents as a form of euthanasia—the Asylum authorities denied it to the committee of inquiry, but 114 residents wrote in confirming and adding to the Vagabond’s claims; • whether the bodies of children from poor families were interred without religious ceremony in a common grave at the Melbourne General Cemetery—the chaplain from the cemetery denied it, but an upstanding citizen, J. H. Stanton, gave evidence that he had observed a crying woman at the cemetery running behind a wagon carrying her child’s coffin; the coffin was slung into a grave without the services of the clergy.61 Despite allegations of exaggeration and falsity, the institutions James criticised were unable to silence him. When they could not prove his stories were wrong, they began to attack his undercover methods.62 Undercover reporting—particularly in a case like James’s where he masqueraded as someone else—raises a myriad of ethical concerns because of the deception that lies at its heart. James admitted to his readers that his “mode of writing, and of obtaining information, is considered highly

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

155

irregular, if not absolutely immoral”,63 but he claimed that as long as they and his editor wanted the stories, he would continue unbowed.

A Woman’s Perspective: Catherine Hay Thomson A decade later, Catherine Hay Thomson took up the mantle of advocating for the disadvantaged. In 1886, a year before Nellie Bly famously feigned hysteria to report on a New York madhouse, Thomson went undercover into many of the same Melbourne institutions as the Vagabond to report on the conditions the women endured.64 Usually in the role of a lowly-paid employee, she immersed herself in the wards of the Magdalene Asylum, the Infant Asylum, the Victorian Asylum and School for the Blind, the Kew Lunatic Asylum and the Melbourne Hospital. A feminist, Thomson had dedicated her life to the causes of education, social justice and suffrage for women. Not surprisingly, she carried these concerns into her journalism.65 The first story in her Argus series, and one of the most controversial, was “The Inner Life of the Melbourne Hospital”. It appeared in two parts on 12 and 18 March. She may have been drawn to write about the hospital by a public controversy at the time over the hospital’s high running costs and abnormally high patient mortality rate. To write the article, Thomson answered an advertisement for an assistant nurse in the hospital’s two women’s wards, including with her application an “influential recommendation”.66 Using literary techniques to enhance the storytelling, Thomson describes in her first article the conditions she observes on the wards. In the second, she writes about what it was like to be a hospital nurse. In both, she shows much empathy, not only for the patients but also for the staff, providing a feminist perspective that was unusual in the pages of the newspapers at the time. For example, she describes the situation of a woman lying on her deathbed in the hospital and her friendship with another who was her frequent visitor. The first, only twenty-one years old, had been married at seventeen and then abandoned by her husband two years later with a baby in tow. She had been reduced to living in wretched poverty; the baby died nine weeks before the article was written. Thomson commented: “[W]hen one thinks of these two women struggling to make a living out of the sewing machine, and of the drag the infant must have been on their resources, and of them clinging together through all fortunes, no man can say that friendship between women is an impossibility”.67

156

W. MCDONALD

Thomson used her article to make several allegations against the hospital. She decried the lack of training for assistant nurses who, she said, were really employed as cleaners. She criticised their living conditions in over-crowded dormitories, and their food, which she described in sickening detail. She claimed the hospital practices were unsanitary— that the linen was regularly returned from the laundry unclean, and that dinner tins and jugs were washed in the patients’ bathroom. She accused one doctor of failing to wash his hands as he did his ward rounds. And she said the doctors, with their brief, busy visits, were unaware of the real state of the wards. The hospital management was furious. At the time, the Argus was running regular reports of the monthly meetings of the hospital committee. These show that a rejoinder was tabled by the medical superintendent Dr. A.M. Lewellin, accusing Thomson of sensationalism and exaggeration.68 An exchange of letters between him and Thomson in the pages of the paper followed, with the Argus running her answers to Lewellin’s complaints in full, as well as an editorial in the same issue calling for a “ladies’ committee” to be set up to oversee the hospital’s cleaning and cooking.69 Thomson followed the series with another two-parter, also in March, on the workings of the Kew Lunatic Asylum.70 The articles were based on two weeks she spent undercover working as an attendant, an assignment she found difficult: I used to walk in a passion of loneliness, striving to throw off the weight of human misery that had oppressed me all day, endeavoring not to think of the young lives shattered at the beginning of the unrespected maturity, the unlovely old age, so nigh at hand; or of the ruined homes, desolate husbands, the little children in the outer world, vainly crying for their mother... the mind compelled to study the subject of insanity does not easily release itself.71

Thomson described many shortcomings in the operation of Kew, caused by understaffing, a lack of staff training and inadequate medical treatments for the inmates. She pointed out the need for female “physicians” and bemoaned the hard work the women were made to do from sewing and laundry to picking oakum. She took pains to humanise the issue of mental illness for her readers and wrote of often finding an arm slipped through hers as one of the women patients joined her on a walk through the gardens. She described “the girl with the lovely hair” who

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

157

suffered from chronic ear pain, but whose complaints were dismissed as imaginary, observing with sadness, “her pain is most probably real”.72 Thomson wrote of another patient: “She requires to be guarded – saved from herself; but at the same time, she requires treatment … I have no hesitation in saying that the kind of treatment she needs is unattainable in Kew Asylum”.73 She also believed not all of the women deserved to be at Kew, saying of another patient: “Whatever she may have been, she is now apparently quite sane, no delusions discoverable by me”.74 On the day her first story on Kew was published, Thomson was called before Victoria’s Royal Commission on Asylums for the Insane and Inebriate to give evidence about her findings. A report of the hearing published in the Tasmanian News shows that the Superintendent of Kew, Dr Thomas Thomson Dick, was outraged about her undercover activities, calling her “a spy”.75 The Argus backed her as it had with the Melbourne Hospital stories, while the Commission took her evidence seriously. In its final recommendations, and in line with Thomson’s advice, the Commission proposed: a new board to govern staff training and appointments, the training and employment of “lady physicians” for the women’s wards76 and training of the inmates in occupations and trades that would give them employment opportunities once they were well and could be discharged.77 In April, the Argus published Thomson’s companion article to her Kew piece titled “Yarra Bend Asylum – by a visitor from Kew”.78 She found Yarra Bend to be better run, commenting: “My thoughts fly to Miss M. in the refractory ward at Kew. She would think herself in Paradise with a share of one of these rooms”.79 She believed Yarra Bend’s cottages and gardens were more suited to helping the inmates heal than Kew’s stone walls. Yet, she still found much could be done to improve its offerings. For example, she lamented the fact that the children at Yarra Bend, as well as some of the more disabled women, were largely ignored and given no education: The spectacle of a dozen or two adults and children, idiotic or imbecile gathered together, with nothing to do but amuse themselves – the heaviest task that can fall to any human being – unconscious of the lapse of time, their life scarcely above the level of the vegetable – is a sight never to be forgotten. It haunts one in dreams.80

158

W. MCDONALD

Education for girls was an issue Thomson championed all her life. Before turning to journalism to make her living, she and her mother had run private colleges for girls in both Ballarat and Melbourne.81 Teaching was one of the few careers open to women in the nineteenth century, although they were excluded from tertiary study throughout much of that period. Thomson was one of the first female students to sit for the matriculation exam offered by Melbourne University which was the entry hurdle for students to study for the Bachelor of Arts.82 At the time she sat for the exam, women were still not admitted to study at the university and wouldn’t be till after policy changes were introduced in 1880. In 1876, Thomson was awarded the formal Matriculation Certificate having passed a total of six subjects.83 Her friend Bella Guerin became the first woman to graduate from Melbourne University, and indeed any Australian university, when she earned her degree in 1883.84 Thomson never studied for a degree, but no doubt used the Matriculation Certificate to her advantage in the running of her schools. That passion for education is observable in Thomson’s later article, “‘Among the Blind: Victorian Asylum and School’ by an assistant needlewoman”.85 Thomson traced the daily activities of the students as they took lessons in Braille and the Moon System of embossed reading. After noting the musical ability of many blind people, she advocated for the students who were studying music, asking that they be given opportunities to hear live performances, as well as to sit for exams for performing and teaching, neither of which were available to them at the time. By developing their musical abilities, Thomson argued, they would not only be given opportunities to blossom personally, but would be given the means to become independent and less in need of charity.86 Two more articles were published that described the lives of women in Melbourne’s institutions. On Saturday 8 May, the Argus ran her piece, “‘Infant Asylum’– by a visitor”. The Infant Asylum was a type of orphanage where women who bore children out of wedlock could live till their babies were weaned. They were then encouraged to find work, and half of their wages were garnisheed to enable their children to remain in the asylum’s dormitories. Once the children reached four, five or six, they would be placed in private homes. While Thomson praised the work of the asylum, she found it a sad place, describing the relinquishing mothers as: “[A]t best … an unhopeful, unhappy looking, seldom smiling group”.87 She did not judge them, writing, “These women … have to bear the burden unaided, all the weight of shame, remorse, and toil,

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

159

the other partner in the sin goes scot free ….”88 She did, though, feel deep concern for their children: “Happily unconscious now, soon the cold breath of the world will awaken them”.89 One final article followed, “‘A Penitent’s Life in the Magdalen Asylum, by an amateur in sociology”, which appeared on June 12. Although not religious herself, Thomson was supportive of the work done by the Catholic nuns who ran the asylum as an institution for women in need. To encourage the reader to side with the women, she began her piece with a literary conceit of an imaginary woman in search of help—a woman “without a home, without a crust, without a penny, her past full of evil, her future empty of hope”.90 Despite the purple prose, Thomson effectively lobbied for the women who were institutionalised, pointing out that most of the women in the Magdalen Asylum were not “fallen” but were there for a variety of reasons including destitution, old age and alcoholism. As Kerrie Davies observes, Thomson was able to write without being accused of “stunt” journalism as Nellie Bly and some of her fellow American journalists would be.91 This was partly because of the timing of her reports—a year before Bly’s Ten Days in a Madhouse—but also because she seems to have been primarily motivated by social justice concerns rather than an ambition to break through the opposition to women working in newsrooms. Her reports did attract some derision. The national periodical The Bulletin called Thomson “the female ‘Vagabond’ of Melbourne” in a snide reference to John Stanley James and his work a decade earlier.92 Yet, there was praise from other quarters. The Sydney Mail , for example, said: “It was a courageous proceeding on her part, and enabled her to give some acceptable evidence to the Lunacy Commission at its final sitting. The treatment of the patients by the nurses and warders is evidently anything but what it ought to be”.93 The literary journalism of the urban writers—from Fortune to Clarke, James and Thomson—demonstrates that the form lends itself well to stories that touch on issues of social justice. Its use of storytelling techniques enables writers to strive for empathetic responses in their readers that ideally result in action for the betterment of society. However, the value of literary journalism is not confined to worthy issues of social reform. It is sufficiently flexible to be used by writers across a range of genres where the goal is informative and lively journalism that touches readers’ hearts as well as minds.

160

W. MCDONALD

Notes 1. Adna Ferrer Weber, The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics (New York: Columbia University, 1899), 13. 2. Weber, Growth of Cities. 3. Graeme Davison, “Australian Urban History: A Progress Report,” Urban History Yearbook 6 (1979): 100. 4. Davison, “Australian Urban History: A Progress Report,” 100. 5. Megan Brown, “Wander Down Bourke Street,” Westerly, no. Online Special Issue 1: Walking with the Flâneur (2016), https://www.wester lymag.com.au/wp-content/uploads/edd/2016/05/Westerly-online-1fi nal.pdf. 6. The Australian Journal was modelled on the London Journal —see Brown, “Wander,” 31. 7. Published in 1868. 8. It would overtake Sydney as the premier Australian city until after the turn of the century. Rivalry between the two cities continues today. 9. Michael Wilding, Marcus Clarke (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1977), xvii. 10. Also known as the Eastern Market. Stephen Street later became Exhibition Street. 11. Mary (Waif Wanderer) Fortune, “Down Bourke Street,” Australian Journal, 16 January, 1869. 12. Brown, “Wander,” 34. 13. Brown, “Wander,” 34/36. 14. Brown, “Wander,” 38. 15. Fortune, “Down Bourke Street,” 330. 16. L.T. (Laurie) Hergenhan, A Colonial City, High and Low Life: Selected Journalism of Marcus Clarke (St. Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 1972), 102. 17. Hergenhan, Colonial City, preface, vi. 18. Hergenhan, Colonial City, preface, xv. 19. Marcus Clarke, “A Night at the Immigrants’ Home,” Australasian, 12 June 1869. 20. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 126. 21. For an interesting discussion of the work of the Greenwoods, see Seth Koven, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004). 22. Michael Ignatieff, “The Stories We Tell: Television and Humanitarian Aid,” in Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention, ed. Jonathan Moore (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998), 293. 23. James Greenwood, “A Night in a Workhouse,” Pall Mall Gazette, January 12–13 1866.

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

161

24. Jean Chalaby, The Invention of Journalism (Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998), 157. 25. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 140. 26. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 137. 27. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 167. Interestingly, Clarke also writes about the ward where the women and children stay, but in brief, and without the immediacy of his time in the male dormitory. 28. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 145. 29. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 169. 30. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 172. 31. Hergenhan, Colonial City, preface. 32. John C. Hartsock, A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Narrative Form (Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000), 151. 33. Hartsock, A History, 142. 34. Hergenhan, Colonial City, 135. 35. Rae Greiner, “1909: The Introduction of the Word ‘Empathy’ into English,” in BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, ed. Dino Franco Felluga, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net (2012). https://branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=rae-greiner-1909the-introduction-of-the-word-empathy-into-english. 36. As Sue Joseph writes, empathy can “enhance the breadth and depth of long form journalism”. 37. Melanie C. Green, “Transportation into Narrative Worlds,” in Entertainment-Education Behind the Scenes: Case Studies for Theory and Practice, ed. Lauren B. Frank and Paul Falzone (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer International, 2021), 88. 38. Lene Bech Sillesen, Chris Ip, and David Uberti, “Journalism and the Power of Emotions,” Columbia Journalism Review May/ June (2015), https://www.cjr.org/analysis/journalism_and_the_power_ of_emotions.php. 39. Sillesen, Ip, and Uberti, “Emotions.” 40. Matthew Ricketson. Telling True Stories: Navigating the Challenges of Writing Narrative Non-fiction. Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London: Allen & Unwin, 2014. 41. James’s work, writing as the Vagabond, was also strongly influenced by the Greenwoods. See, Willa McDonald, “A Vagabond: The Literary Journalism of John Stanley James,” Literary Journalism Studies 6, no. 1 (2014). 42. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, The Vagabond Papers, vol. 1 (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1877), n.p. 43. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, The Vagabond Papers (Expanded Edition), ed. Michael Cannon, Expanded edition ed. (Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, 2016), 43.

162

W. MCDONALD

44. James, Vagabond (Expanded), 101–2. 45. Michael Cannon, “Introduction,” in The Vagabond Papers by John Stanley James (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016), 2. 46. Cannon, “Introduction.” 47. Hugh Anderson, “Vagabond Journalist,” Walkabout (February 1968): 16. 48. Anderson, “Vagabond,” 16. 49. 36 hectares. 50. Robert G. Flippen, “The Vagabond in Virginia, USA,” in The Vagabond Papers by John Stanley James, ed. Michael Cannon (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016). 51. Flippen, “Vagabond in Virginia.” 52. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, “A Peep at the Blacks,” in The Vagabond Papers (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1877), 57. Quoted in Flippen, “Vagabond in Virginia,” xxx. 53. James, Vagabond (expanded), 237. 54. James, Vagabond (expanded), 239. 55. James, Vagabond (expanded), 239. 56. James, Vagabond (expanded), 59. 57. Cannon, “Introduction,” 8. 58. Cannon, “Introduction,” 8. 59. Cannon, “Introduction,” 8. 60. Cannon, “Introduction,” 7. 61. Cannon, “Introduction,” 7. 62. Cannon, “Introduction,” 7–8. 63. Preface to The Vagabond Papers, 1877, Volume 3, quoted in Cannon, “Introduction,” 7. 64. With thanks to Kerrie M. Davies whose research on Catherine Hay Thomson’s work on the Kew Lunatic Asylum forms a substantial part of this section. 65. See also, Kerrie M. Davies and Willa McDonald, “Female ‘Vagabond’ or Stunt Reporter? The Undercover Literary Journalism of Australian Colonial Journalist Catherine Hay Thomson,” in The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism, ed. John S. Bak and Bill Reynolds (London: Routledge, 2022). 66. Catherine Hay Thomson, “The Inner Life of the Melbourne Hospital,” Argus, May 7, 1886, 9. 67. Hay Thomson, “Melbourne Hospital,” 9. 68. Anonymous, “The Melbourne Hospital,” Argus, May 5, 1886, 9. 69. Hay Thomson, “Melbourne Hospital,” 9. 70. Catherine Hay Thomson, “The Female Side of Kew Asylum, by an Attendant, 1,” Argus (March 26, 1886); Catherine Hay Thomson, “The Female Side of the Kew Asylum, by an Attendant, 2,” Argus 1886. 71. Hay Thomson, “Kew.”

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

163

72. Hay Thomson, “Kew.” 73. Hay Thomson, “The Female Side of the Kew Asylum, by an Attendant, 2.” 74. Hay Thomson, “Kew.” 75. Anonymous, “Victorian Lunacy Commission,” Tasmanian News, Saturday April 3, 1886. 76. Hay Thomson, “Kew.” 77. Jill Geise, The Maddest Place on Earth (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018), 78. 78. Friday, 16 April, 9. 79. Catherine Hay Thomson, “Yarra Bend Asylum—By a Visitor,” Argus, April 16, 1886. 80. Hay Thomson, “Yarra Bend.” 81. Susanne L. White, A History of Queen’s, Ballarat, 1876–1972 (Melbourne: Ashwood House, 1990). 82. The Rialto, Unpublished article prepared for The Rialto, Intercontinental Melbourne, 495 Collins Street and provided by Nga Nguyen, Marketing Manager, The Rialto, via email on 5 August 2019, n.d. 83. Rialto. 84. Hutchinson Debra, “Bella Guerin: First Female University Graduate in Australia,” State Library of Victoria, July 10, 2013, https://blogs.slv.vic. gov.au/such-was-life/bella-guerin-first-female-university-graduate-in-aus tralia. 85. Catherine Hay Thomson, “Among the Blind: Victorian Asylum and School—By an Assistant Needlewoman,” Argus, June 26, 1886. 86. Hay Thomson, “Blind.” 87. Catherine Hay Thomson, “Infant Asylum—By a Visitor,” Argus, May 8, 1886, 4. 88. Hay Thomson, “Infant Asylum.” 89. Hay Thomson, “Infant Asylum.” 90. Catherine Hay Thomson, “A Penitent’s Life in the Magdalen Asylum—By an Amateur in Sociology,” Argus, June 12, 1886, 13. 91. Davies and McDonald, “Catherine Thomson.” 92. Anonymous, “Woman Items,” The Bulletin, 1886, 18. 93. Anonymous, “Melbourne Gossip,” Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, 3 April 1886, 684.

Bibliography Anderson, Hugh. “Vagabond Journalist.” Walkabout (February 1968): 16. Anonymous. “Melbourne Gossip.” Sydney Mail and New South Wales Advertiser, April 3, 1886.

164

W. MCDONALD

———. “The Melbourne Hospital.” Argus, May 5, 1886, 9. ———. “Victorian Lunacy Commission.” Tasmanian News, Saturday April 3, 1886. ———. “Woman Items.” The Bulletin, 1886, 18. Brown, Megan. “Wander Down Bourke Street.” Westerly, no. Online Special Issue 1: Walking with the Flâneur (2016): 31–47. https://www.westerlymag. com.au/wp-content/uploads/edd/2016/05/Westerly-online-1final.pdf. Cannon, Michael. “Introduction.” In The Vagabond Papers by John Stanley James, 1–15. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016. Chalaby, Jean. The Invention of Journalism. Basingstoke, UK: Macmillan, 1998. Clarke, Marcus. “A Night at the Immigrants’ Home.” Australasian, June 12, 1869. Davies, Kerrie M., and Willa McDonald. “Female “Vagabond” or Stunt Reporter? The Undercover Literary Journalism of Australian Colonial Journalist Catherine Hay Thomson.” (Chap. 20). In The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism, edited by John S. Bak and Bill Reynolds. London: Routledge, 2022. Davison, Graeme. “Australian Urban History: A Progress Report.” Urban History Yearbook 6 (1979): 100–9. Debra, Hutchinson. “Bella Guerin: First Female University Graduate in Australia.” State Library of Victoria, July 10, 2013. https://blogs.slv.vic.gov. au/such-was-life/bella-guerin-first-female-university-graduate-in-australia. Flippen, Robert G. “The Vagabond in Virginia, USA.” In The Vagabond Papers by John Stanley James, edited by Michael Cannon, xv–xxxvii. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016. Fortune, Mary (Waif Wanderer). “Down Bourke Street.” Australian Journal (January 16, 1869): 330–33. Geise, Jill. The Maddest Place on Earth. North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2018. Green, Melanie C. “Transportation into Narrative Worlds.” In EntertainmentEducation Behind the Scenes: Case Studies for Theory and Practice, edited by Lauren B. Frank and Paul Falzone, 87–101. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer International, 2021. Greenwood, James. “A Night in a Workhouse.” Pall Mall Gazette, January 12– 13, 1866. Greiner, Rae. “1909: The Introduction of the Word ‘Empathy’ into English.” In BRANCH: Britain, Representation and Nineteenth-Century History, edited by Dino Franco Felluga, Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net, 2012. https://branchcollective.org/?ps_articles=rae-greiner-1909-the-introd uction-of-the-word-empathy-into-english. Hartsock, John C. A History of American Literary Journalism: The Emergence of a Narrative Form. Amherst: University of Massachusetts, 2000.

7

REPORTING ON CITY LIFE: THE HIGHS AND LOWS …

165

Hay Thomson, Catherine. “A Penitent’s Life in the Magdalen Asylum—By an Amateur in Sociology.” Argus, June 12, 1886, 13. ———. “Among the Blind: Victorian Asylum and School—By an Assistant Needlewoman.” Argus, June 26, 1886, 4. ———. “Infant Asylum—By a Visitor.” Argus, May 8, 1886, 4. ———. “The Female Side of Kew Asylum, by an Attendant, 1.” Argus, March 26, 1886, 6. ———. “The Female Side of the Kew Asylum, by an Attendant, 2.” Argus, 1886, 9. ———. “The Inner Life of the Melbourne Hospital.” Argus, May 7, 1886, 7. ———. “Yarra Bend Asylum—By a Visitor.” Argus, April 16, 1886, 9. Hergenhan, L.T. (Laurie). A Colonial City, High and Low Life: Selected Journalism of Marcus Clarke. St. Lucia, QLD: University of Queensland Press, 1972. Ignatieff, Michael. “The Stories We Tell: Television and Humanitarian Aid.” In Hard Choices: Moral Dilemmas in Humanitarian Intervention, edited by Jonathan Moore. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1998. James, John Stanley (Julian Thomas). “A Peep at the Blacks.” In The Vagabond Papers. Melbourne: George Robertson, 1877. ———. The Vagabond Papers. Vol. 1. Melbourne: George Robertson, 1877. ———. The Vagabond Papers (Expanded Edition). Edited by Michael Cannon. Expanded edition ed. Clayton, VIC: Monash University Publishing, 2016. Koven, Seth. Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2004. Matthew Ricketson. Telling True Stories: Navigating the Challenges of Writing Narrative Non-fiction. Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, London: Allen & Unwin, 2014. McDonald, Willa. “A Vagabond: The Literary Journalism of John Stanley James.” Literary Journalism Studies 6, no. 1 (2014): 65. Sillesen, Lene Bech, Chris Ip, and David Uberti. “Journalism and the Power of Emotions.” Columbia Journalism Review May/June (2015). https://www. cjr.org/analysis/journalism_and_the_power_of_emotions.php. Sue Joseph. “Interrogating Empathy in Two Long Form Texts: a comparative textual analysis of trauma affect.” Journalism, 23 no. 5 (2022): 1082–1096. https://doi.org/10.1177/1464884920949343 Weber, Adna Ferrer. The Growth of Cities in the Nineteenth Century: A Study in Statistics. New York: Columbia University, 1899. White, Susanne L. A History of Queen’s, Ballarat, 1876–1972. Melbourne: Ashwood House, 1990. Wilding, Michael. Marcus Clarke. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1977.

CHAPTER 8

Literary Journalism and Ned Kelly’s “Last Stand”

“A strange apparition—Ned Kelly’s flight and capture”, Illustrated Australian News, 17 July 1880, p. 120. Courtesy of State Library of Victoria © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_8

167

168

W. MCDONALD

Literary journalism is a useful form for telling memorable non-fiction stories across topics, from sport to entertainment to true crime. One of the most famous crime stories ever covered by the Australian press was the apprehension of the infamous bushranger Ned Kelly in 1880. For over two years, Kelly and his gang outwitted police and avoided capture as they robbed banks across north-eastern Victoria, distributing their illgotten gains among their supporters. Kelly finally met his end after a tense siege at a pub in Glenrowan, resulting in his arrest and, five months later, his death on the gallows. The other members of his gang died in the shoot-out on the night of the siege. As we saw in the introduction, we know about the details of Kelly’s “last stand” primarily because of the work of Thomas Carrington, the artist for the weekly journal the Australasian Sketcher in Pen and Pencil .1 Perhaps aided by his “artistic eye”, and the extra time he had to file his story for his weekly magazine, his eyewitness report for his magazine took the most writerly approach of all the stories written at the siege of Glenrowan, incorporating description, dialogue and reflection. The result is a piece that reads far more like an exciting short story than a news report. Although there were three other pressmen who covered the siege— J.D. Melvin2 of the Argus , John McWhirter of the Age and George Allen of Melbourne’s Daily Telegraph—it is Carrington’s evocative description of Ned Kelly that is best remembered. Giving credence to the expression, “Journalism is the first draft of history”,3 his iconic description of Kelly as a ghostly figure in homemade armour emerging from the morning mist lies at the heart of modern Australian mythology and cultural identity. It underpins all the artworks that have been developed around the Kelly tale, from the world’s first feature-length film The Story of the Kelly Gang (1906) to Sydney Nolan’s paintings (1946–7), Mick Jagger’s film portrayal of Kelly (1970) and Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel True History of the Kelly Gang (2000) and its recent Hollywood adaptation for the screen under the same title. At the same time, the journalism that emerged from Glenrowan provides a snapshot not only of the methods used by colonial journalists on the major metropolitan newspapers and journals, but also the impacts of the new technologies ushered in with the Industrial Revolution, specifically, the railways, high speed rotary presses and the telegraph. It also shows the relaxed attitudes of the colonists to immersion and subjectivity in this era before objectivity became a requirement, when journalism was

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

169

only beginning to be professionalised and ethics were yet to be formulated and codified.4

Before the Siege: Anti-Irish Catholic Sentiment The Glenrowan siege began on Sunday 27 June 1880, as a deliberate strategy to strike at the police—a desperate, last attempt that was the final in a series of events over which the bushrangers had increasingly lost control. The gang, to the delight of local newspaper audiences, had made fools of the police as often as not over the previous few years, committing armed robberies and then distributing the proceeds among their Irish Catholic supporters. The Kelly family had always drawn the police’s eye because they were Irish Catholic convicts, admittedly with an occasional business in horse rustling on the side.5 Discrimination was intense in the racialised society of colonial Australia.6 As Malcolm and Hall write, the Irish were “white but not white enough”, referring to a reputed comment by the historian Manning Clark: “There was nothing but the shade of a Catholic’s skin to distinguish him from an aborigine”.7 Anti-Irish racial tropes frequently appeared in the press. By 1848, the conservative Melbourne Argus 8 was warning against the “hordes” of “lawless savages” coming from the south and west of Ireland as free settlers who threatened to transform the colony into a “Province of Popedom”.9 Most of the robberies committed by Kelly and his gang were conducted without violence, but by the time of the gang’s last stand at Glenrowan, the bushrangers were using force against the police and their informers. Their last-ditch plan had begun the night before the siege with the murder of a friend who had turned police informer for a share of the substantial reward on offer for the capture of the bushrangers. Besides retribution, the immediate intention behind the murder was to draw out the police (who the gang correctly predicted would travel by train to capture them), derail the police train and kill all on board. The larger scheme—one which is a strong part of the Kelly mythology although disputed by some historians—was to enrol armed sympathisers in a fight for a republic in what became known as Kelly Country.10

170

W. MCDONALD

Unbounded Immersion The four journalists at Glenrowan were not only immersed in the events of the siege but were deeply involved in the police action. In modern parlance, they were “embedded”. Thomas Carrington described in his article receiving a handwritten invitation to join the special police train organised from Melbourne. I had enjoyed my friend’s hospitality for about the space of 15 minutes, in his comfortable armchair by the side of a blaring fire, listening to some of his interesting stories of India, illustrated by his own watercolour drawings, when the following letter was placed in my hands :– ‘Dear –,–A special train starts for Beechworth at 9 to-night.–Yours, –.’ There was no help for it. The invitation was too pressing to refuse, and in a few minutes I had left the cheerful fire and the hot toddy, and the comfortable armchair behind me, and was on my way to the Spencer Street station … it was three minutes to 10 when the train–consisting of engine, one carriage, and brake-van– passed out of the Melbourne yard on its most eventful journey.11

Carrington and the other three journalists appear to have been well chosen for an assignment that would test their courage and resourcefulness. The journalism shows all the men rose to the demands of that night, providing assistance as needed to the police in a mutually beneficial arrangement that ensured them access to information. Carrington describes J.D. Melvin’s bravery, evident even on the trip to Glenrowan. Realising the train was a likely target of the bushrangers, he climbed out of the window as it rattled along the country rail line at speed, extinguished the light on the outside of the carriage and climbed back in with it “in the pluckiest manner possible”.12 The moment is preserved in an illustration Carrington did for the Australasian Sketcher, as well as in his story. The picture caption reads, “Destruction of the Kelly Gang: Interior of the Press Carriage in the Special Train”, and shows the journalists huddled against the cold, seat cushions barricading the windows and the retrieved lamp discarded on the floor. Melvin, in dramatic silhouette, is on guard with drawn revolver in the foreground.13 Once the journalists arrived at Glenrowan, they took up positions on the railway platform, armed with rifles. As the night unfolded, they became more and more involved in the action. Early on, they helped the injured Superintendent Hare, binding his shot wrist and guiding him to

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

171

safety from the shot “whistling and pinging” about them.14 The journalists took over logistics, sorting police ammunition.15 They also provided a bodyguard for two women who came up on the train, and helped the police interview a mother with her young baby who escaped from the hotel and could provide vital information about the situation inside. “The poor woman was almost wild with excitement, and it was at first difficult to get any clear statement from her”, wrote Carrington.16 In return for the journalists’ aid, the police gave the pressmen details for their stories. For example, when a quilted skullcap and rifle were found near a large pool of blood outside the hotel, Carrington tells us the journalists were informed of the fact by the senior constable leading the police. They discovered later the items belonged to Ned Kelly who had been badly injured in an earlier round of fighting. The bushranger left the inn to warn armed sympathisers who were gathering nearby, drawn by signal rockets that had been misfired. When Kelly returned to the pub, he saw his friend, Joe Byrne, shot and killed by a bullet to the groin as he was reaching across the bar for a whiskey. Kelly managed to escape a second time, under the misapprehension that his brother Dan and friend Steve Hart were following. When he realised they were not behind him, he returned a final time to the pub, most likely to rescue them. It was a courageous but ultimately fatal step.17 Of all the journalists present at the scene, Carrington best described what happened next: Presently we noticed a very tall figure in white stalking slowly along in the direction of the hotel. There was no head visible, and in the dim light of morning, with the steam rising from the ground, it looked for all the world like the ghost of Hamlet’s father with no head only a very long thick neck … The figure continued gradually to advance, stopping every now and then, and moving what looked like its headless neck slowly and mechanically round, and then raising one foot on to a log, and aiming and firing a revolver. Shot after shot was fired at it, but without effect, the figure generally replying by tapping the butt end of his revolver against its neck, the blows ringing out with the clearness and distinctness of a bell in the morning air. It was the most extraordinary sight I ever saw or read of in my life, and I felt fairly spell-bound with wonder, and I could not stir or speak. Presently the figure moved towards a dip in the ground near to some white dead timber, and, more men coming up, the firing got warmer. Still the figure kept erect, tapping its neck and using its weapon on its assailants. At this moment I noticed a man in a small round tweed

172

W. MCDONALD

hat stealing up on the left of the figure, and when within about 30 paces of it firing low two shots in quick succession. The figure staggered and reeled like a drunken man, and in a few moments afterwards fell near the dead timber. The spell was then broken, and we all rushed forward to see who and what our ghostly antagonist was.18

Once Kelly was wounded, the journalists continued to assist the police. One of the pressmen, George Allen of Melbourne’s Daily Telegraph, took a rifle and provided cover from behind a tree for the police attending to the bushranger. In a telling comment, he said: “I wanted to understand how the firing was going on”.19 Carrington, too, picked up a rifle. He raked the pub with bullets, alongside the police, once the final group of hostages were released and before the pub was set alight to flush out any remaining members of the gang.20 After the shooting stopped, the journalists took advantage of the quiet to conduct interviews with police and participants, including Ned Kelly, the only survivor of his gang.

Press Freedom or Press Bias? Given modern news journalism’s requirement of objectivity as both reporting method and goal, it is difficult to imagine today that the extent of the Glenrowan journalists’ immersion was acceptable to news organisations or the reading public. Objectivity and subjectivity are complex notions in journalism. The first, however, is broadly understood to involve separating values from the facts and to involve reporting those facts fairly, accurately, unemotionally and without alignment to any political, cultural, social or commercial movement or entity.21 Subjectivity in journalism is often misinterpreted as the converse of objectivity and associated with biased, unfair and “sloppy” reporting.22 In the sense used here in relation to literary journalism, subjectivity is not positioned in opposition to objectivity. Rather, as Steen Steensen observes, it is an aspect of it. Subjectivity in literary journalism is used in two ways: firstly, as a means for greater truthfulness by presenting the overt rather than hidden involvement of the reporter in the story as conscious observer, and, secondly, by using the experiences of individual people to illustrate larger stories and themes, and so encouraging more effective identification by the reader with the issues. As Steensen says:

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

173

Ignoring subjectivity by adopting an objective and, therefore, detached stance – untouched by emotion and values – means that you are missing important aspects of the reality you want to say something about. Ignoring the subjective simply makes it harder for the journalist to say something that is true.23

Confirming his observation, when Karen Wahl-Jørgensen analysed stories that won the Pulitzer Prize, she found they were “pervaded with subjective language”—words expressing emotion, judgement and appreciation—yet they all retained their claims to objectivity.24 In some ways, the discussion is immaterial when investigating literary journalism in colonial Australia. It was too early in the history of Western journalism in the 1880s for objectivity to be considered a requirement or convention in reporting.25 As James Carey has pointed out, journalism “was traditionally conceived as a literary genre rather than as a species of technical writing”.26 This is particularly evident in the literary journalism of the colonial era. The question of whether the Kelly gang were treated fairly in the press coverage is nevertheless worth exploring in a consideration of the way literary journalism was produced at the time. It would be understandable to assume bias on the part of the reporters against the bushrangers. We know the journalists were specifically chosen for the job. While it is unclear who sent the invitations, it was doubtless the police or government, neither of which were likely to have chosen reporters who were Kelly sympathisers. The journalists were Scottish and English free settlers, most likely of protestant background. Their lives were in constant and real danger throughout the siege, which would hardly have disposed them kindly towards the bushrangers and their cause. While one would expect these facts to influence the journalists to carry the police line, that did not occur in their stories. Editorial independence was hard won in colonial Australia. The siege occurred little more than half a century after the press faced absolute censorship; newspapers and journals valued their autonomy. Although they were stamped with the views of their proprietors, their interests were not necessarily in alignment with those of the government of the day.27 The Glenrowan journalists freely told in their articles of their necessary alliance with the police—their immersion added credibility and colour to their words—but this meant their stories carried facts they must have expected would reflect poorly on the constabulary later. For example, they noted the presence of the

174

W. MCDONALD

women who came up on the police train, the civilian casualties, the heavy police gunfire even though there were hostages in the hotel, the failure of the police to rush the pub when they had the opportunity and the burning of the hotel even though it was uncertain whether anyone was still alive inside. They also openly criticised the police. Carrington, while praising the “rank and file” for their “great coolness and pluck”, said they lacked effective leadership after Hare was injured. He thought the police should have occupied the hotel once the hostages were released, and he complained that there were insufficient armaments at the beginning of the siege for the journalists to protect themselves. He observed they were particularly vulnerable on the train to Glenrowan because they were left unarmed except for the solitary pistol that was taken up by Melvin.28 In the weeks following the siege, there were many allegations in the press of police incompetence and cowardice. These were echoed at the Royal Commission held later into the police handling of the entire “Kelly Outbreak” (as it was labelled by the press) that had begun two years earlier. However, there is no evidence of criticism of the Glenrowan journalists’ involvement in the police action at the siege in either the records of the royal commission or the letters to the editors of the major papers. It is worth mentioning here that the attitudes of the journalists to the bushrangers were always ambivalent—simultaneously admiring of their intelligence and courage and appalled at their criminality. For example, when the gang robbed the Euroa bank in 1878 at the beginning of the Kelly Outbreak, even the conservative Argus was critical of the police while grudgingly appreciative of the bushrangers’ boldness: The particulars to hand show not only that the offenders have performed a daring exploit, but also that they feel themselves masters of the situation. That they have outwitted the police is obvious, and until some explanation is given, the public cannot fail to hold the opinion that an outrage has been perpetrated which ought to have been prevented.29

The Victorian government, in its frustration at not being able to easily subdue the Kelly gang, and concerned at its growing support, passed the Outlawry Act that drew widespread condemnation from the press and the public. For example, the Melbourne Herald, in an article published on 20 January 1879, decried the act as an “exceptionally severe” piece of legislation that should only be considered as a temporary measure because it enabled police to persecute in an “arbitrary and tyrannical manner”

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

175

a number of unwarranted public arrests and imprison dozens of men without evidence. The passing of the act, together with the inability of the police to control the bushrangers, ensured no easy and automatic alignment of the police cause with that of the journalists.30

The Glenrowan “Press Conference” and the Inclusion of Interviews An interesting feature of the Glenrowan reporting is that the journalists gave space to the words of Ned Kelly in their copy. According to Christopher Silvester, the interview as a feature of the press began in America as early as 1859 when the Mormon leader Brigham Young was interviewed by Horace Greeley, the editor of the New York Tribune. It was popularised in daily journalism after the American Civil War by JB McCullagh who became editor of the St Louis Globe Democrat .31 WT Stead, the editor of the Pall Mall Gazette, is credited by Silvester with popularising the interview in Britain. His newspaper carried nearly 80 interviews in the first six months of 1884 alone.32 Stead was of the view that the interview could contribute to democratising the press by enabling the voices of more people to be heard, including those without an education: Many notable men are more or less inarticulate, especially with the pen, and to them the intervention of the interviewer is almost as indispensable as that of an interpreter is to an Englishman in China.33

It is hard to pinpoint when interviews began in the Australian press. Possibly, they were introduced by John Stanley James writing as the Vagabond in 1877. He seamlessly incorporated an interview with the bushranger Harry Power into two articles in his prison series “A Month in Pentridge” published in the Argus .34 James presented Power’s words in dialogue, anecdotes and paraphrased speech. By a strange coincidence, Power referred in the interview to the teenaged Ned Kelly, whom he mentored, accusing him of betraying him by selling him out to the authorities.35 In the case of the reporting on the Kelly Outbreak in the Australian press, the newspapers had been running “narratives” of eyewitnesses at least as far back as the 1878 bank robbery at Euroa. These were firstperson accounts taken from interviews with eyewitnesses that provided valuable details for the stories. However, they usually appeared as subsets

176

W. MCDONALD

of the main articles under their own sub-headings, almost as separate “chapters”. The Glenrowan journalists continued that practice, incorporating information from eyewitnesses and participants in their reports, including from Ned Kelly. They were given close access to the bushrangers after he was captured. Once in custody, he was stripped of his armour and taken to the stationmaster’s office. Carrington notes he was uncomplaining, although bleeding profusely from his gunshot wounds, fainting from pain and shock, and suffering from cold feet. John McWhirter of the Age cut away his boots, and Carrington and another of the reporters filled a kerosene tin with water to warm his feet. Once Kelly was assessed by a doctor, the police began their interrogation, allowing the reporters to join in. Ian Shaw likens the scene to a formal press conference. The journalists, with their readers in mind, asked the bushranger a greater variety of questions than the police.36 When Kelly’s sisters and a friend were allowed to visit him several hours later, the police stipulated it was on condition that the journalists be permitted to attend as well. Shaw writes: What followed was again more like a press conference than an intimate family gathering, with Ned speaking freely and at length to the reporters while also answering one or two of his sisters’ questions.37

Carrington had several conversations with the outlaw which he summarised for readers, weaving Kelly’s paraphrased words into his story. Despite calling the gang “cold-blooded murderers” and describing the bushranger as “the veritable bloodthirsty Ned Kelly himself”, he humanised Kelly. He allowed readers to hear the bushranger’s motivations for the siege from his own point of view and gave them a sense of the character of the man and the emotional stress in which he had been living. [He] told me that he was sick of his life, as he was hunted like a dog, and could get no rest; and didn’t care a d– what became of him.38

The copy filed by the other journalists on the day of the siege included statements taken from participants and eyewitnesses and shared among the press which were run separately to the main stories. Melvin’s copy, for example, ran at least eight “statements” and “narratives” that appeared either as dialogue (sometimes in “Question and Answer” format), or

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

177

as first-person accounts resembling police statements. The people interviewed by Melvin included police, hostages, volunteers and the priest who entered the burning building at the end of the siege.39 It is not clear why he makes a distinction between the two headings and the two forms, but the facts of the siege suggest the journalists collaborated with police to collect the statements which both parties could then use for their separate purposes. Melvin ran two interviews with Ned Kelly. The first “interview” begins with brief contextual information that explains it was with Kelly, his three sisters and a man named Tom Wright. Written informally as dialogue, it has details added in the manner of a short story that allow glimpses into Kelly’s frame of mind: “What on earth induced you to go to the hotel?” inquired a spectator. “We could not do it anywhere else,” replied Kelly, eyeing the spectators who were strangers to him suspiciously.40

Further down in the copy is “Ned Kelly’s Statement” which is written in the flat monotone of a police confession. It begins, “I was going down to meet the special train with some of my mates, and intended to rake it with shot; but it arrived before I expected…” The first-person narrative runs on uninterrupted by questions, commentary or any “colour” in style or detail.41

The Reach of the Legend The story of Ned Kelly’s last stand captured the public’s imagination in a way until then unrivalled in colonial Australia. Aware of the potential reader interest, the police and the press outlets capitalised on the latest technology available to facilitate production and distribution of the articles. For example, there was no telegraph station at Glenrowan; the main telegraph line ran to the north-east of the station. To solve the problem, the acting postmaster from Beechworth was recruited to travel to Glenrowan with police reinforcements. He spliced an extension into the main line and connected a small portable telegraph key, creating a temporary telegraph office at the Glenrowan station and establishing a direct link to Melbourne and Sydney. Once the railway line to the north of Glenrowan was repaired, having being torn up by the bushrangers before the siege,

178

W. MCDONALD

hundreds of people gathered at the scene, including policemen, journalists, artists, photographers and curious onlookers. By the afternoon, the crowd was estimated to be 1000-strong.42 The expanded press contingent sent around 90,000 words of copy to the Sydney newspapers, 8,500 of which went directly to the Evening News . It is estimated double that figure went to the Melbourne newspapers. Rotary presses allowed the Age and the Argus to run special editions to meet the demand for news of the siege. They each published five special editions of two to four pages. These presented the latest information that arrived over the telegraph, along with a summary of what had already happened. They appeared every two to three hours throughout the afternoon and into the night. At the time, the Age, which cost a penny, had a circulation of 30,000, while the Argus cost threepence and had a daily circulation of 20,000. Melbourne only had a total population of 250,000 people, yet public interest in the story was so great that over 100,000 copies of the special editions were sold in addition to the papers’ normal circulation.43 The bedlam created in Melbourne as people sought more information was described by that city’s Daily Telegraph: Immediately upon the news being posted, the footway and far into the street was the scene of a heaving, struggling mass of people, all clamorous for slips containing the news … The ordinary run of business was almost entirely suspended throughout the day … The city literally gave itself up to the discussion of the deeds and doings of the Kellys and the police … Nor did the excitement cease with dusk. Eager readers –those who had only just broke loose from the counting-house, the shop, or the factory – were to be seen in groups underneath the street lamps, and at shop windows, scanning the extras; and some men, still more anxious for news, were to be seen with lighted matches endeavouring to gather at a glance the slips posted in front of the newspaper offices …44

Laying the Foundation for a Cultural Industry Kerrie Davies’ research demonstrates the Glenrowan journalism—in particular, Carrington’s literary journalism—is the foundation on which the Ned Kelly cultural industry is built.45 As a cartoonist for Punch, Carrington played a major role in creating the public persona of Ned

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

179

Kelly, giving him credibility as a political leader.46 When the gang’s activities first hit the papers, they were operating against a background of an economic recession with high unemployment, poor growing seasons due to a prolonged drought and diminishing yields from the goldfields. Against these stressors, the colony was riven by conflict between conservatives and radicals, squatters and selectors. Carrington, described as “a fighting cartoonist with venom in his pen and an acute appreciation of the political vernacular of the day”,47 lampooned the politicians, especially the radical premier, Graham Berry. When Berry led an “embassy” to London to demand reform of Victoria’s constitution, Carrington’s cartoon showed Ned Kelly occupying the premier’s vacant chair. In another, he showed the bushranger admonishing the Irish Catholic attorney-general Bryan O’Loghlen. These and other cartoons depicted Kelly as a champion of the poor and of democracy, conveying to the public and the bushranger himself that he was a leader with the high moral ground.48 When cultural productions and artworks began to appear based on the Kelly story, Carrington’s influence was clear. The 1906 film The Story of the Kelly Gang premiered at the Athenaeum Hall in Melbourne. Advertised as the “sensation of the year”, it was an unprecedented hour long, making it the world’s first feature film as acknowledged by its entry on UNESCO’s International Memory of the World Register in 2007.49 The film triggered a bushranger genre that so disturbed the government that a ban was placed on the production of such movies from 1911 through to the 1930s, effectively calling a halt to the fledgling Australian film industry. A fragment of the film was discovered and restored by the Australian National Film and Sound Archive. True to the Glenrowan journalism, it shows Ned Kelly in his homemade armour firing at police, then collapsing by a fallen tree trunk. Such was the audience’s familiarity with the facts of the siege that errors in the film’s details were picked up by audiences. A reviewer commenting on the film for the Argus criticised it because Kelly was not dressed in the clothes described originally by Carrington. The reviewer noted the original Kelly wore “quite the dandy bushman style” with “yellow cord pants … slate crossed barred pattern cloth, very thinsoled high-heeled kangaroo skin riding boots, with spurs, white Crimean shirt, with large black spots, vest of the same material as the pants, and a long white mackintosh, closely buttoned, worn over all”. He complained: “These items could easily have been followed”.50 Audiences similarly

180

W. MCDONALD

panned the 1951 Kelly film, The Glenrowan Affair, starring the footballer Ben Chitty, because of its historical inaccuracies.51 These reactions, half a century apart, confirm the public’s continuing investment in the story. They also show the first draft of the Kelly history, written by the journalists in 1880, was the baseline against which later cultural productions would be compared for accuracy and authenticity. Ian Jones, who was so taken with Carrington’s version of the siege that he published it in a mini-book along with contextualising information and Carrington’s original illustrations,52 was directly involved in cultural productions around Kelly from the 1970s. He co-wrote the British film Ned Kelly, a full-colour semi-musical that starred Mick Jagger woodenly performing in the title role.53 Although the film was critically panned, and suffered from some historical inaccuracies, it showed a ghostly Kelly emerging from the mist as represented by Carrington. Ten years later, Jones also co-wrote a television miniseries The Last Outlaw. This time, it was meticulous in its accuracy.54 More films followed, including Yahoo Serious’s humorous take on the story, Reckless Kelly, in 1993. In 2003, Heath Ledger took the lead role in another film titled Ned Kelly. It includes scenes of the bushrangers reading about themselves in the Argus and discussing the articles. That version includes highlights from the original press stories including the journey of the police special train; the size of the police contingent, as well as Ned Kelly’s final shoot-out in his homemade armour. Cinema is not the only art form to deal with the Kelly story. Artist Sidney Nolan’s Kelly series has been described as among “the greatest sequences of Australian painting of the twentieth century”.55 He used the words of the Glenrowan journalists to trigger moments of visual art, using quotes from the newspapers of the day to display alongside his paintings. The Kelly mythology is also important in Australian literature. Peter Carey’s Booker Prize-winning novel True History of the Kelly Gang relies heavily on Carrington’s original story. The preface of the novel, attributed to a fictional “witness”, echoes the journalist’s words directly: By dawn at least half the members of the Kelly gang were badly wounded and it was then the creature appeared from behind police lines. It was nothing human, that much was evident. It had no head but a very long, thick neck and an immense chest and it walked with a slow, ungainly gait directly into a hail of bullets. Shot after shot was fired without effect and

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

181

the figure continued to advance on the police, stopping every now and again to move its headless neck slowly and mechanically around. I am the b––y Monitor, my boys. The police had modern Martini-Henry rifles yet the bullets bounced off the creature’s skin. It responded to this attack, sometimes with a pistol shot, but more often by hammering the butt of its revolver against its neck, the blows ringing with the clearness and distinctiveness of a blacksmith’s hammer in the morning air.56

In 2013, the popular writer Peter FitzSimons also fictionalised the siege as a novel, following the Glenrowan journalists’ accounts closely. He included J.D. Melvin as a character in his book and directly quoted Carrington. The latest Kelly film released in 2019 takes a different approach. Directed by Justin Kurzel, it is based on Peter Carey’s novel of the same name The True History of the Kelly Gang. The cast includes George MacKay starring as Ned Kelly and Russell Crowe as the bushranger Harry Power in a highly fictionalised and romanticised version of the Kelly story.

The Result of a Flexible Form The Ned Kelly story is important to Australians for a plethora of reasons. Tranter and Donoghue point out Kelly is one of Australia’s few national heroes, and certainly the best known.57 The reasons are complex. The nation was formed relatively recently, at the beginning of an era when the importance of nationalism would be questioned in the wake of devastating world wars, while widespread advances in transport and communication would foster increasingly rapid global interactions and trade. Unlike other countries, Australians have never had to fight for independence and have never acknowledged a war on their own shores. Modern Australia identified with Britain and the United States, modelling its government on their democratic systems and encouraging media from those nations to flood Australian homes. At the same time, the nation was built on migration, particularly post-World War II from southern Europe and most recently South-East Asia. The quest for a uniquely “white” Australian identity is

182

W. MCDONALD

based on shallow foundations, particularly given that the original “custodianship” of the land by the First Nations was ignored and the First Australians violently repressed. Against this backdrop, Ned Kelly has become an iconic figure. From the beginning, Kelly intrigued the public. Journalists responded to the ambiguities in his story that refused to be pinned down easily to moral certainties. The bushranger’s cause was as political as it was personal. He was brave and loyal to his family and followers, yet his small gang was at war with the government and the police. It was a war that reflected the divide felt across the colony at so many levels—Irish Catholics against British Protestants, squatters against selectors, rich against poor, egalitarian justice against class-driven oppression, democracy against autocracy—and beneath it all the schadenfreude of the police being outwitted in a country where absolute military rule was still in living memory. Literary journalism, particularly in the hands of Carrington, provided a form flexible enough to accommodate the complexities of a story that refused to be reduced to the simple truisms of traditional news.

Notes 1. There was also an enquiry into the police action at the siege which has provided much information for historians, artists and other enquirers. See, Parliament of Victoria, “Royal Commission on the Police Force of Victoria (1881–83),” 1881–83. Ian W. Shaw, Glenrowan: The Legend of Ned Kelly and the Siege That Shaped a Nation (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2012). 2. Joseph Delgarno. 3. Attributed to Philip L. Graham, publisher and later president of the Washington Post over nearly two decades until his death in 1963. 4. Journalism ethics were first codified in Australia in 1944. 5. Kelly’s father was a known rustler, while Ned was convicted and sentenced in 1871 to three years in gaol for receiving a stolen horse. See, State Library of Victoria, “Ned Kelly Information Sheet,” Search & Discover, https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/explore-collectionstheme/australian-history/ned-kelly/ned-kelly-fact-sheet. 6. Most of the Irish free settlers to Australia were rural poor and usually spoke only Gaelic. Of the convicts, around 30% of the men and 40% of the women were Irish. By 1901, nearly a quarter of the population was made of up the Irish and the descendants, of whom three-quarters were Catholic. See, Elizabeth Malcolm and Dianne Hall, A New History of the Irish in Australia (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2018).

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

183

7. Malcolm and Hall, Irish in Australia, 105. 8. Before it became simply the Argus in September 1848, it was known as the Melbourne Argus. 9. Anonymous, “Resumption of Immigration,” Melbourne Argus, February 18, 1848, 2. 10. Ian W. Shaw, Glenrowan: The Legend of Ned Kelly and the Siege That Shaped a Nation (Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2012); Ian MacFarlane, The Kelly Gang Unmasked (South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, 2012); Justin J. CORFIELD, The Ned Kelly Encyclopaedia (South Melbourne: Lothian, 2003); Ian Jones, Ned Kelly: A Short Life (South Melbourne, VIC: Lothian Books, 2003); Keith McMenomy, Ned Kelly: The Authentic Illustrated History (South Yarra, VIC: Hardie Grant Books, 2001). 11. Thomas Carrington, “Catching the Kellys: A Personal Narrative of One Who Went in the Special Train,” Australasian, July 3, 1880, 18–19. 12. Carrington, “Catching,” 18. 13. Carrington, “Catching,” 189. 14. Carrington, “Catching,” 18. 15. Shaw, Glenrowan, 173–74. Evidence to the Kelly Reward Board in C. MacMahon, Jas MacBain, and Robert Murray Smith, “Kelly Reward Board: Minutes of Evidence,” 1880–81, https://rest.neptune-prod.its. unimelb.edu.au/server/api/core/bitstreams/157cd36e-dedb-58cf-b9f68a5317584475/content. 16. Carrington, “Catching,” 18. 17. Jones, Ned Kelly: A Short Life; McMenomy, Ned Kelly; Shaw, Glenrowan. 18. Carrington, “Catching,” 18. 19. Allen, evidence to the Kelly Reward Board in MacMahon, MacBain, and Murray Smith, “Kelly Reward Board: Minutes of Evidence,” 7. 20. Carrington, “Catching,” 18. 21. Michael Schudson, “The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism,” Journalism 2, no. 2 (2001): 150, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/ pdf/10.1177/146488490100200201. 22. Liesbet van Zoonen, “A Professional, Unreliable, Heroic Marrionette (M/ F): Structure, Agency and Subjectivity in Contemporary Journalisms,” European Journal of Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 (1998): 128–29. See also, Karin Wahl-Jorgensen, “Subjectivity and Story-Telling in Journalism,” Journalism Studies 14, no. 3 (2013): 307. 23. Steen Steensen, “Subjectivity as a Journalistic Ideal,” in Putting a Face on It: Individual Exposure and Subjectivity in Journalism, ed. Fonn Birgitte Kjos et al. (Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2017), 41. 24. Wahl-Jorgensen, “Subjectivity and Story-Telling in Journalism,” 305. 25. For a discussion of the constraints to be observed in writing journalism history, see Michael Schudson, “Towards a Troubleshooting Manual for

184

26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34.

35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45.

46. 47.

W. MCDONALD

Journalism History,” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74, no. 3 (1998). The Code of Ethics was formulated 60 years later. See also, Steven Maras, Objectivity in Journalism, Key Concepts in Journalism, (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013), 221–4. Eve Stryker Munson and Catherine A. Warren, eds., James Carey: A Critical Reader (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 137. Sally Young, Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires (Sydney, New South Wales: UNSW Press, NewSouth Publishing, 2019), 1–50. Carrington, “Catching,” 19. Anonymous, “Re-Appearance of the Bushrangers, The Outrage at Euroa,” Argus, December 12, 1878, 5. Jones, Ned Kelly: A Short Life, 159–60. Anonymous, “The Outlawry Act and Its Effects,” The Herald (Melbourne), January 20, 1879, 2. Christopher Sylvester, The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day (London: Viking, 1993), 4. Sylvester, Interviews, 7. Sue Joseph and Richard Keeble, eds., Profile Pieces: Journalism and the “Human Interest” Bias (New York: Routledge, 2015), 4. Pall Mall Gazette, August 23, 1884, quoted in Sylvester, Interviews, 8. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, “A Month in Pentridge: by a Vagabond, No. II,” Argus, March 3, 1877, 9. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, “A Month in Pentridge, by a Vagabond, No. III,” Argus, March 10, 1877, 4. James, “A Month in Pentridge, III,” 4. Shaw, Glenrowan, 215–16. Shaw, Glenrowan, 256. Carrington, “Catching,” 18. Joseph Dalgarno Melvin, “Destruction of the Kelly Gang,” Argus, June 29, 1880, 5–6. Melvin, “Destruction of the Kelly Gang,” 5. Melvin, “Destruction of the Kelly Gang,” 5. Shaw, Glenrowan, 261–63. McMenomy, Ned Kelly, 218. Shaw, Glenrowan, 261–63. George Allen, “Destruction of the Kelly Gang,” Daily Telegraph, June 29, 1880, 3. Willa McDonald and Kerrie Davies, “Creating History: Literary Journalism and Ned Kelly’s Last Stand,” Australian Journalism Review 37, no. 2 (2015). Jones, Ned Kelly: A Short Life, 8–14. Margeurite Mahood, “Carrington, Francis Thomas Dean (Tom) (1843– 1918),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University). https://adb.anu.edu.au/ biography/carrington-francis-thomas-dean-tom-3170.

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

185

48. Jones, Ned Kelly: A Short Life, 8–14. 49. There is evidence of a contemporaneous 1906 film made in Western Australia which features Aaron Sherritt as the hero. William D. Routt, “The Kelly Films” (Still Riding On: the Kelly influence, State Library of Victoria in conjunction with the exhibition, Kelly Culture, 2003). 50. Anonymous, “Athenaeum Hall: The Kelly Gang,” Argus, December 27, 1906, 5. 51. Stephen Gaunson, “B for Bad, B for Bogus and B for Bold: Rupert Kathner, the Glenrowan affair and Ned Kelly,” Colloquay: Text, Theory, Critique, no. 18 (2009). 52. Ian Jones, Ned Kelly, the Last Stand: Written and Illustrated by an Eyewitness (South Melbourne: Lothian, 2003). 53. Corfield, The Ned Kelly Encyclopaedia, 157. 54. Corfield, The Ned Kelly Encyclopaedia, 159. 55. “Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly Series,” National Gallery of Australia, 2002, https://nga.gov.au/exhibitions/ned-kelly/. 56. Peter Carey, True History of the Kelly Gang (Sydney: Vintage, Random House, 2000/2008), n.p. 57. Tranter and Donoghue, “Icon.”

Bibliography Allen, George. “Destruction of the Kelly Gang.” Daily Telegraph, June 29, 1880. Anonymous. “Resumption of Immigration.” Melbourne Argus, February 18, 1848. ———. “Re-Appearance of the Bushrangers, the Outrage at Euroa.” Argus, December 12, 1878. ———. “The Outlawry Act and Its Effects.” The Herald (Melbourne), January 20, 1879, 2. ———. “Athenaeum Hall: The Kelly Gang.” Argus, December 27, 1906. Carey, Peter. True History of the Kelly Gang. Sydney: Vintage, Random House, 2000/2008. Carrington, Thomas. “Catching the Kellys: A Personal Narrative of One Who Went in the Special Train.” Australasian, July 3, 1880, 18–19. Corfield, Justin J. The Ned Kelly Encyclopaedia. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2003. Gaunson, Stephen “B for Bad, B for Bogus and B for Bold: Rupert Kathner, the Glenrowan Affair and Ned Kelly.” Colloquy: Text, Theory, Critique, no. 18 (2009): 193–207.

186

W. MCDONALD

Gruber, Fiona. “Imagining Ned: Exploring the Truth and Myth Behind Australia’s Che Guevara.” Guardian, Australia, April 1, 2015. https://www. theguardian.com/artanddesign/2015/apr/01/imagining-ned-exploring-thetruth-and-myth-behind-australias-che-guevara. James, John Stanley (Julian Thomas). “A Month in Pentridge: By a Vagabond, No. Ii.” Argus, March 3, 1877. ——–. “A Month in Pentridge, by a Vagabond, No. Iii.” Argus, March 10, 1877. Jones, Ian. Ned Kelly, the Last Stand: Written and Illustrated by an Eyewitness. South Melbourne: Lothian, 2003. ———. Ned Kelly: A Short Life. South Melbourne, VIC: Lothian Books, 2003. Joseph, Sue, and Richard Keeble, eds. Profile Pieces: Journalism and The “Human Interest” Bias. New York: Routledge, 2015. MacFarlane, Ian. The Kelly Gang Unmasked. South Melbourne, VIC: Oxford University Press, 2012. MacMahon, C., Jas MacBain, and Robert Murray Smith. “Kelly Reward Board: Minutes of Evidence,” 1880–81. https://rest.neptune-prod.its.unimelb.edu. au/server/api/core/bitstreams/157cd36e-dedb-58cf-b9f6-8a5317584475/ content. Mahood, Margeurite. “Carrington, Francis Thomas Dean (Tom) (1843–1918).” In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/car rington-francis-thomas-dean-tom-3170. Malcolm, Elizabeth, and Dianne Hall. A New History of the Irish in Australia. Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2018. Maras, Steven. Objectivity in Journalism. Key Concepts in Journalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2013. McDonald, Willa, and Kerrie Davies. “Creating History: Literary Journalism and Ned Kelly’s Last Stand.” Australian Journalism Review 37, no. 2 (2015): 33–49. McMenomy, Keith. Ned Kelly: The Authentic Illustrated History. South Yarra, VIC: Hardie Grant Books, 2001. Melvin, Joseph Dalgarno. “Destruction of the Kelly Gang.” Argus, June 29, 1880, 5–6. Munson, Eve Stryker, and Catherine A. Warren, eds. James Carey: A Critical Reader. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Routt, William D. “The Kelly Films.” Still Riding On: the Kelly influence, State Library of Victoria in conjunction with the exhibition, Kelly Culture, 2003. “Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly Series.” National Gallery of Australia, 2002. https:// nga.gov.au/exhibitions/ned-kelly/. Schudson, Michael. “Towards a Troubleshooting Manual for Journalism History.” Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly 74, no. 3 (1998): 458–665.

8

LITERARY JOURNALISM AND NED KELLY’S “LAST STAND”

187

———. “The Objectivity Norm in American Journalism.” Journalism 2, no. 2 (2001): 149–70. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/146488 490100200201. Shaw, Ian W. Glenrowan: The Legend of Ned Kelly and the Siege That Shaped a Nation. Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2012. ———. Glenrowan: The Legend of Ned Kelly and the Siege That Shaped a Nation. Sydney: Pan Macmillan Australia, 2012. Steensen, Steen. “Subjectivity as a Journalistic Ideal.” In Putting a Face on It: Individual Exposure and Subjectivity in Journalism, edited by Fonn Birgitte Kjos, Hornmoen Harald, Hyde-Clarke Nathalie, and Hagvar Yngve Benestad. Oslo: Cappelen Damm Akademisk, 2017. Silvester, Christopher. The Penguin Book of Interviews: An Anthology from 1859 to the Present Day. London: Viking, 1993. Tranter, Bruce, and Jed Donoghue. “Ned Kelly Armoured Icon.” Journal of Sociology 46 (2010): 187–205. van Zoonen, Liesbet. “A Professional, Unreliable, Heroic Marrionette (M/F): Structure, Agency and Subjectivity in Contemporary Journalisms.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 1, no. 1 (1998): 123–43. Victoria, Parliament of, “Royal Commission on the Police Force of Victoria (1881–83),” 1881–83. Victoria, State Library of, “Ned Kelly Information Sheet,” Search & Discover, https://www.slv.vic.gov.au/search-discover/explore-collections-theme/austra lian-history/ned-kelly/ned-kelly-fact-sheet. Wahl-Jorgensen, Karin. “Subjectivity and Story-Telling in Journalism.” Journalism Studies 14, no. 3 (2013). Young, Sally. Paper Emperors: The Rise of Australia’s Newspaper Empires. Sydney, New South Wales: UNSW Press, NewSouth Publishing, 2019.

CHAPTER 9

“Blackbirding”, Subjectivity and the Unseeing “I”

South Sea Islanders arriving by ship in Bundaberg, Queensland (Photograph by W Blaikie). Courtesy of the State Library of Queensland

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_9

189

190

W. MCDONALD

While literary journalism continued to be useful for providing information where direct knowledge was otherwise hard to come by, one area provides a particularly clear example of the unavoidable limits of a journalist’s subjectivity. The “blackbirding” trade, the euphemistic name for the highly lucrative market in human labour from the Pacific Islands, is a case in point. Around sixty thousand labourers were taken to Queensland between 1863 and 1904, mainly from the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu), the Solomons and later New Guinea.1 Rumours and reports of kidnappings, violence and abuse had filtered through to the southern states, triggering heated debates between those who argued cheap labour was essential to the economic growth of the colonies and those, like the missionaries, who decried what was happening to the Islander peoples. While silence had settled on the press about the Frontier Wars, the scandal-ridden blackbirding trade prompted several journalists on the leading papers, over a period of twenty years, to join trading ships to find out what was really happening. The first literary journalist to take to the seas was Henry Britton. He joined the Alacrity in 1873 as it sailed around the islands from Fiji, writing a long series for the Argus . While it’s unclear from his stories whether Britton reported undercover, the three journalists who followed did. Ten years after Britton’s voyage, a young George “Chinese” Morrison joined the Lavinia in 1872 to report for the Leader, the weekly newspaper of the Age. A year later, John Stanley James joined the Lizzie and sent dispatches back to the Argus , while a decade later again, J.D. Melvin took a position on the Helena, also for the Argus. In all cases, the men largely avoided the question of the treatment of the Islanders on the plantations, instead focusing on the practices of the trading ships, intending to answer once and for all the question of whether the way the Islanders were recruited for the Pacific labour trade amounted to slavery: Were the Islanders coming willingly? Or were they being forced into becoming indentured labourers against their will? The stories the journalists filed demonstrate the deep limits of reporting from a single point of view—in this case that of the coloniser. As David Spurr writes, “The sympathetic humanitarian eye is no less a product of deeply held colonialist values, and no less authoritative in the mastery of its object, than the surveying and policing eye”.2 Despite their best intentions, and their confidence in their own ability to report fairly and accurately, the journalists were part of the colonial enterprise.

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

191

They were unable to shed the filter of British superiority or the entitlement of empire building. There were insurmountable gulfs in language and culture and they rarely ventured beyond their own worlds to try to enter the experience of the Islanders’ or to access the island communities left behind. At most, the journalists found only minor transgressions by the traders—although, as we will see, Morrison later repudiated his own stories in a follow-up letter scathing of the trade. Yet, even he maintained the rightness of the empire as he protested against the cruelties he observed practised by the traders.

An Uneasy Trade The Queensland plantation owners were not the first to import Islander labour to the Australian colonies. “Blackbirding” had begun briefly in New South Wales in the 1840s. Ben Boyd, newly arrived but already one of the largest landholders and graziers in the colony, was having difficulty recruiting a suitable workforce to tend to his vast herds of sheep and cattle. The cessation of transportation to New South Wales meant an end to the ready supply of convict labour and Boyd turned to the Pacific Islands for a replacement.3 An audacious entrepreneur, he brought out the first group of workers in 1847 without waiting for government permission. Around 120 Melanesians were shipped in two lots to Eden on the south coast of New South Wales where Boyd had a whaling operation. According to the clerk of the local bench of magistrates concerning the first group: “… none of the natives could speak English, and all were naked … they all crowded around us looking at us with the utmost surprize, and feeling at the Texture of our clothes … they seemed wild and restless”.4 The kanakas (a generic term used for the Islanders that means “person” in Hawaiian)5 were to be indentured and had put their marks on contracts binding them to work for Boyd for five years at 26 shillings per annum, plus rations and clothing. When the local magistrate realised the first group clearly had no idea of what was happening to them, he refused to counter-sign the documents. Regardless, Boyd’s men began the long trek with them inland to the arid sheep and cattle stations. A number never made it. Some became ill, one died and a sizeable group refused to work, escaping back to the coast in an attempt to walk home. Unease at Boyd’s actions grew among the community, particularly in Sydney, where workers were also protesting against the introduction of

192

W. MCDONALD

coloured labour they feared would threaten their standard of living. As a result of the outcry, the Masters and Servants Act (9 Vic. no 27) was amended to ban the importation of “the Natives of any Savage or uncivilized tribe inhabiting any Island or Country in the Pacific”. Consequently, when Boyd’s second group of Melanesians arrived in Sydney, they could not be indentured as labourers. Boyd washed his hands of all of them, refusing to take further responsibility. The recruiters were accused of kidnapping, which they denied, and an inquiry by the attorney-general in Sydney found the charges were unsubstantiated. The Islanders were left to beg at the Sydney wharfs for passage back north. Some found other work and dropped from the record, but most eventually left on a French ship. While they may have reached the Pacific Islands, some may never have reached their own homes. No real attempt was made again to reintroduce a direct labour trade between the Islands and New South Wales, although later in the century, indentured labourers from Queensland were re-employed at the end of their contracts on the large plantations in northern New South Wales.6

Replacing Cotton: The “Sugaropolis” The “blackbirding” trade began in earnest in Queensland in 1863 with a shipment of Kanakas to a cotton plantation owned by Robert Towns.7 A new source of cotton was needed when supplies to the world’s cotton mills were disrupted by the outbreak of the American Civil War two years earlier. Queensland had only been declared a colony in its own right in 1859 and its new government was keen to attract investment and trade. It invited mill and plantation owners from the United States to re-establish their industry in Queensland, passing regulations in 1861 enabling land to be leased and then converted to freehold title within two years if onetenth of the land was used for cotton growing.8 The result was a tropical plantation economy, supported by Queensland’s lawmakers, which benefited from capital, labourers and conditions imported from the American south, including the attitudes that underpinned the American slave trade.9 But the end of the American Civil War in 1865, combined with a number of poor growing seasons, also saw the end of cotton as a viable industry in the colony. The plantation owners that survived turned to growing sugarcane.10 Sugar was a potentially lucrative business—one that, like cotton, had made men rich in other parts of the world where coloured slaves provided

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

193

the labour. The justification in Queensland was that white men were unable to do the back-breaking agricultural work required in the fierce tropical climate—cheap or free black labour was needed instead—a convenient argument that shored up notions of white superiority under the guise of economic necessity. It was also justified on the basis that the Islanders would benefit from the civilising influence of Christianity. Robert Towns began the Queensland trade by paying a sandalwood trader called Henry Ross Lewin to bring men in from the New Hebrides and the Loyalty Islands. Lewin, rumoured to be a slaver to Peru, was known for his unscrupulous methods, including violence, trickery and kidnapping. Like Towns, he claimed the trade would improve the lives of the heathen Kanakas, and he felt no compunction about shooting uncooperative Islanders or burning villages and crops.11 At one point, he was charged with assaulting a Tanna girl he had dragged onto his boat. The residents of Tanna, showing no gratitude for his Christianising and civilising efforts, later killed him and, it is thought, ate him.12 Lewin’s recruiting methods were shared by others, particularly in the early, unregulated years of the trade when Islanders were abducted and forced onto boats, or lured with promises of adventure or trading goods without fully understanding what their indenture would entail. Traders sometimes impersonated missionaries by turning their collars around and painting their boats to resemble a mission schooner that was used by the Anglican Archbishop of Melanesia, Bishop John Coleridge Patterson. In 1872, the bishop was killed by furious Islanders on a visit to Nukapu island where a few days before blackbirders had impersonated him to kidnap several men.13

In the Wake of the Carl: Henry Britton Henry Britton’s 12-part series of “Letters” for the Argus in 1873 was prompted by a scandal that first came to light two years earlier.14 James Patrick Murray, a doctor already known for his part in the failed expedition into the Australian outback in search of the explorers Burke and Wills, decided to turn his hand to blackbirding. He bought the British brig the Carl , setting out first for Fiji, then for the New Hebrides, the Solomon Islands and further to Bougainville. At Paama, Murray and his men tried to trick the locals to board their vessel by the old ruse of pretending to be missionaries, but the trick was too well known by then; the natives weren’t fooled. Frustrated, Murray turned to using pig iron

194

W. MCDONALD

to smash or overturn any canoes that came alongside, violently subduing the occupants before hauling them on board and throwing them into the hold. Visits to half a dozen islands followed, with the same methods used. Before long, fighting broke out among the groups of captured Islanders. Murray’s response was to order the crew to shoot, eventually boring holes in the bulkhead so he and his men could fire directly and indiscriminately into the hold. At the trial of his crew, where he gave evidence in return for immunity from prosecution, it was reported the shooting lasted more than eight hours, with Murray at one stage singing the popular Civil War tune “Marching through Georgia” as he shot. In the morning, according to Murray’s testimony, the crew dragged about 50 dead bodies up from the bloodied hold and threw them overboard along with another 20 badly wounded survivors who were still alive. The ship continued to the island of Epi, with a smaller group of captives, most of whom were wounded. Murray left the Carl at Epi, taking a number of the Islanders with him, supposedly to start a farm. The hold was whitewashed, not long before a chance inspection by the naval ship Rosario. In a typifying example of the way those regulating the trade failed to hear or see the true plight of the Islanders, the Rosario’s inspector found nothing amiss. He ruled the remaining people were on board voluntarily; they were later traded for around £10 a head.15 The Carl quickly went on to make a second “blackbirding” voyage to the islands which, although less violent than the first, also drew public opprobrium when the actions of its crew were finally brought before the courts. Following the conclusion of the trials, the Australian government sponsored the HMS Alacrity to return some of the people kidnapped on the second trip to their various island homes. The group included women and children who had been blackbirded along with the men. Under the usual indenture agreements, labourers were to be returned to their islands at the end of their contracts, although this did not always happen. In the first three years of the trade, for example, Robert Towns had imported 315 Kanakas, returning only seven within the promised period of twelve months.16 Nevertheless, the Australian government decided the survivors of the first voyage of the Carl were close to finishing their periods of indenture and so would be returned “in the usual way by the planters”,17 rather than at the expense of the government.

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

195

British Superiority and Social Darwinism Henry Britton joined the Alacrity to report on the repatriation of the labourers from Fiji back to five different island locations. As he notes, the iniquities of the trade were by that time well known; the more pressing question for him was how far the changes brought in to regulate it were likely to prove successful, a question he goes on to largely skirt in his articles. Britton would spend ten weeks visiting the Fijian plantations before joining the ship for an equal length of time on its journey to repatriate the Islanders. By the end of Britton’s first instalment, published in early September 1873, the reader is left in no doubt as to his stance; the Pacific labour trade was an inevitable outcome of the superiority of the British and the noble cause of spreading civilisation to the further reaches of the world while building profits for the empire. While he writes that he deplored the abuses perpetrated by blackbirders, comparing the early years of the Pacific Island trade to the worst of the African slave trade, he also justified the kidnappings, saying: “… it was necessary to steal some natives in order that the inhabitants might be made aware of the advantages which were being placed within their reach”.18 Excusing traders by citing the difficulty of explaining contracts, even with interpreters, he added: “… it must be remembered that in a shipload the mental capacity of the men will vary from an understanding akin to that of the astute Tongan to that of a debased savage, who constitutes very nearly the lowest link in the chain of humanity”.19 Britton’s attitudes are reflected in the lopsided way he treats his “sources”—white or coloured, male or female, adult or child. He describes the Islanders as fierce and treacherous with “the natural bloodthirstiness which unfortunately exists in all savage races”.20 At the same time, they are infantilised, rendered uncivilised and dismissed as being of “a race … among whom the missionaries have only been moderately successful”.21 While he was writing before the use of interviews became common in Australia, the voices of the people involved in all aspects of the trade do find their way into his articles, but in different and inequitable ways. Towards the beginning of the series, he quotes various traders and planters who gave evidence to enquiries into the Pacific Island labour trade held in Queensland and Fiji, the latter as a result of the retaliatory killing of several trading ships’ captains. The witnesses’ own words are used, and they are identified by their names, in a lengthy piece that

196

W. MCDONALD

creates a damning portrait of the trade despite the fragments of contradictory testimonies given. In contrast, the Islanders are never named in the series, except a small handful who are referred to by the nicknames given to them by the sailors. This group includes a woman, Margaret, who Britton finds attractive, two young boys, and the ship’s native interpreter. The voices of the many labourers are largely ignored except in this single, telling passage: Had a long conversation with some of the natives this afternoon. They all speak Fijian, and as I have the command of a few Fijian phrases, and several hundred gestures, we get along very well. It is surprising how well one can do on this principle. Besides, as we see in everyday life, it is not necessary, in order to keep up a conversation that either party to it should understand the other. I had frequently questioned the Islanders about the manner of their capture by the Carl , and their ideas of Fiji. It appeared to give them unbounded delight to explain how the Carl men chased them in their boats, fired at them if they did not stop, seized them by the hair of the head, dragged them from their canoes, bound their hands together, and bundled them by neck and crop into the hold of the ship. The whole thing seems to present itself to their minds in the aspect of an excellent joke, and they always laughed prodigiously during the recital, showing the rough usage in very animated pantomime …”22

Britton had already indicated that interpreters were of limited use because of the sheer number of different dialects spoken across the Pacific.23 Here, he claims that gestures and a few phrases of Fijian are enough to communicate the trauma endured by these people in being stolen from their homes and forced into labour on the plantations. Leaving aside his use of the scene to add comedy to the piece, he fails to note a number of fairly obvious possibilities that might explain the Islanders’ making light of their predicament—pride, powerless on the British brig, wanting to please him or simply that they have been reduced to “childish” pantomime in the impossible quest of conveying their thoughts and feelings about what was happening to them.

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

197

“A Well-Fed Kitten”: Women, Children and Britton’s Orientalism The women who were traded are also left voiceless by Britton, although there is mention early in the series of the abduction and rape of two Islanders on the deck of a trader. The women ended up being transported to Fiji to work as plantation hands. Britton quoted eyewitness evidence given at an enquiry, “… these rough Fijian sailors were ashamed, though the white men were not … The girls cried; we saw them wiping their eyes. They cried, and asked to go back. We knew they were asking to be sent back because they pointed to themselves and then towards the land”.24 Later he referred with disapproval to the practice of placing single women as “housekeepers” to plantation owners, suggesting the risk of sexual relationships between the two, consensual or otherwise, was well known.25 Against a general background of silence concerning the women is his story of Margaret, the only woman on board “that anyone looks at voluntarily a second time”.26 Described as a Polynesian beauty aged about seventeen, she joined the voyage to return to her home on the Gilbert Islands (now part of Kiribati). As if to prove Edward Said’s thesis of Orientalism, Britton devotes many column inches to admiring Margaret—her “perfect teeth of dazzling whiteness and long black hair”, her “arms, hands and feet” like those of a Greek model, and her skin of “a rich and mantling olive”.27 He remarks, “her only defect is her gait, which is not at all graceful, but that is probably because she is dressed in a long cotton gown and jacket which to her must be irksome to wear”.28 Margaret, who often is found “sprawling about the deck in the luxurious attitudes of a well-fed kitten”, soon discards her irksome clothing to sunbathe. Britton is much moved—enough at least to quote Coleridge’s “Lady Christabel”: Her gentle limbs did she undress. And lay down in her loveliness.29

Having established Margaret as an object of desire, Britton quickly introduces the disconcerting sight of her eating large raw chunks of a just-caught shark, increasing her exotic allure by reminding the reader that she’s a “savage”. When she is finally delivered to her home island,

198

W. MCDONALD

Britton feigns humorous disgruntlement that she “saunter[s] on without staying to say a word of goodbye. This was unkind after all the attention she had received …”.30 In contrast to the way Britton portrays the adults, he writes of the young children who were also captured as at least having the potential to be “civilised”.31 Two ten-year-olds are particularly singled out. Embarlo was sent by a plantation owner, “Mr Brewer”, to Albury in New South Wales for schooling together with his own son. Britton reproduces the letters written by Embarlo to the Brewers over a period of months, praising his progress and championing education as a way to assimilate and inculcate supposedly superior Western ways. Tom, who had been kidnapped and taken on the Carl , is also spotlighted. He became a favourite of the sailors on the Alacrity who wanted to keep him on board but soon realised his relatives would need to be consulted and proper presents made to them. “As this would have amounted to buying the boy outright the idea was abandoned”.32 Britton’s theme throughout his series of articles is that while the labour trade was open to abuse it was an economic necessity if the plantations were to succeed. Showing a familiarity with Darwin’s theory of the survival of the fittest which had recently been published, he further justifies the trade as the inevitable outcome of the contact between a superior and an inferior race. He supports the practice by arguing the few recorded escapes or instances of retaliatory violence as signs the labourers were happy and content. Similar arguments about the passivity of native plantation workers were raised in the nineteenth century to justify the use of African slaves in America, where instances of resistance and rebellion were overlooked or re-interpreted in the American records.33 While the brutal nature of the Australian indenture system is well known, it is less well known that the Islanders were far from passive in their dealings with plantation owners and the government. Desertion was common and violent clashes with employers flared where overseers were cruel and unbending.34 As the century progressed, the labourers even went on to develop an early form of unionism that was effective in bargaining for higher wages.35

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

199

“It’s the Way We Always Speak of the Trade”: George “Chinese” Morrison The Pacific labour trade reached its peak in the early 1880s, with concerns about its morality continuing to rage in press debates. Plantation owners, traders and others with financial involvement defended blackbirding, while it was attacked by humanitarians, missionaries and the more liberal, disinterested politicians. Where there had been few controls on recruiters and employers in the 1860s when the blackbirding trade was at its most notorious, the Queensland government passed laws over the next two decades to prevent the worst of the abuses, although much continued to happen beyond the reach of its jurisdiction. Improvements had been made to recruiting practices on the trading ships and to working conditions on the canefields, with reforms that included the introduction of licences and bonds on traders, inspectors on ships, restrictions on the age of Islanders who could be recruited and other measures that were applied with differing degrees of success depending on the outlook of the trader and the plantation owner or overseer. George “Chinese” Morrison, who would later make his name as the Peking correspondent for The Times and political advisor to China, was a young medical student when, after failing one of his medical exams, he decided to make a similar trip to Britton to see for himself how recruitment was done from the islands. Already something of an adventurer, he previously had records of his Australian treks published in the Melbourne Age’s weekly companion paper the Leader. The Age was a progressive, influential newspaper at the time that was unafraid to take a stand. Morrison contacted the proprietor, David Syme, and offered to investigate the labour trade at first-hand. Syme agreed, and Morrison took a job as an ordinary seaman to work undercover on a brig for three months on its round trip to the New Hebrides and the Banks Islands. The resulting series of eight articles ran from October to December 1882 under the headline “A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver”. The Lavinia, the ship Morrison joined, was recruiting a fresh load to take back to the plantations while also returning eighty-eight labourers, including seven women, who had completed their three-year contracts in Queensland or were too sick to continue. Morrison spent his time helping sick passengers, steering (which he found exhilarating)36 and writing down his observations for his articles. While he didn’t have the

200

W. MCDONALD

advantage of spending weeks on an island as Britton did on Fiji, he wrote to his mother that he, … rowed in the recruiting agent’s boat crew with the Kanakas an uncommon thing for a white man and rather risky. In this way I was enabled to see the natives on their own islands, to speak with them and to undergo what excitement there was in avoiding reefs and breakers and being in the middle of armed savages who could if they liked have taken boat and crew without trouble.37

His stories often contained a mixture of wonder and glib humour and were written under the pen name of “A Medical Student”. This passage typifies the tone of much of the series: “The next morning a crowd of men and women sat on the nearest rocky point, and sent over the water the most dismal wailing and howling for the man we had taken the evening before. This, I may say, was a red letter day in my life, for it witnessed the first occasion on which I have sat down to dinner with royalty”.38 Similarly, he wrote of treating an Aoba boy: ... a nice lad, who was ill with violent dysentery. I gave him a stiff dose of castor oil and chlorodyne. Two days later I repeated the dose, adding ostentatiously, as the captain was standing by, a little sulphate of zinc, to show him that my knowledge of materia medica was practically unlimited. ‘The value of this prescription,’ I remarked to the captain, ‘is self-evident. The chlorodyne seeks to bind him up internally, the castor oil wrestles with the chlorodyne, when the zinc sulphate steps in, intent on dislodging them both. The dysentery, disgusted with the angry contention, makes haste to quit.’ It turned out as I expected partly. The dysentery took its departure, but, worse luck, so did the boy.39

But Morrison, the bantering, callow youth in his articles, also displayed moments of empathy that provide glimpses of the man he was becoming. He movingly described, for example, an Aoba woman who moved across the deck on her hand and left heel, the right leg being carried forward like a bowsprit. She was suffering from a diseased foot, more than half of the sole having rotted away. The woman was in a shocking state of filth and disease, yet she had landed in Queensland only ten months before healthy and active.40

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

201

Similarly, he worried about the deaths of the sick labourers they were taking home, musing on why they were deemed fit to travel by Queensland’s medical officer when Morrison himself could see they were in no state to undertake such a difficult voyage.41 While Morrison provided detailed information, including facts he discerned about an arms trade that involved the labourers returning to the islands with large caches of weapons bought with the money earned from their plantation work, he wrote the series as much from the position of an adventurer as a journalist. Despite his concerns about the condition of some of the ill passengers and their treatment, he expressed few criticisms of the labour trade as a whole. After completing the trip on the Lavinia, Morrison made a short trip to Port Moresby, returning eventually to Normanton in the Australian Gulf of Carpentaria. He decided to act on a long-held plan to walk back to Melbourne, traversing the continent from north to south. It would involve a four-month trek on his own, without horses or camels, covering nearly 3300 kilometres. He wanted to roughly follow in reverse the route taken 21 years earlier by the ill-fated Burke and Wills expedition which resulted in the deaths of seven of its members including the famed explorers. Morrison endured extraordinary hardship on his solo walk as he crossed jungle, desert, flooded rivers and swamps before reaching Melbourne on 21 April 1883. On David Syme’s request, he wrote a 6000word account of his journey.42 It won a few words of praise in the Leader where it was published and the Inglewood Advertiser (a Victorian country paper). There was also a short acknowledgement of Morrison’s remarkable feat in The Times of London, but otherwise his achievement largely went unnoticed.43 In a letter to his mother written earlier from Queensland, Morrison refers to a communication from David Syme asking him for a fuller account of the labour trade, specifically a comparison of the results of the missionaries’ attempts to civilise the Kanakas and the effects on them of the trade. “I don’t know what the dull head of Syme means by this”, he wrote. “I should say generally that the primary effect of missionary civilising was to make the natives lying, fawning, cringing, deceitful and as bad as possible …”.44 By the time Morrison returned to Melbourne, his series on the Lavinia had appeared and he found it was still being discussed in the press. Church leaders vehemently attacked his articles, with the Rev Thomas Neilson stating that during his many years as a

202

W. MCDONALD

missionary on Tanna he had known many young Islanders trained by the British “to a career ‘of bloodshed and crime’ as kidnappers”.45 Perhaps Syme’ request, combined with the attacks by the Church, and his long, difficult and no-doubt contemplative trek, were triggers for a change in approach. Two weeks after returning to Melbourne, Morrison wrote a 2700-word letter to the Age vehemently denouncing the Pacific labour trade as slaving.46 “I do not use this word in any claptrap sense. It is the way we always speak of the trade on board the schooners engaged in the trade itself”. While Morrison said kidnapping was rare “except under very exceptional circumstances”, he claimed most Kanaka labourers were obtained by trickery: When a schooner arrives at an island its two whaleboats are at once sent ashore for recruits. In one is the recruiting agent paid by the owners of the vessel to get boys, in the other is the Government agent paid by the Government of Queensland to see that the boys are obtained fairly … The boats pull in to the shore, and while the recruiting agent’s boat backs in to the beach, the one in which is the Government agent keeps 50 yards or more away, so as to cover in case of attack. Then the bargaining commences. At every island there are beachcombers, cunning natives, who have been carefully trained to decoy boys off to the schooner. The recruiting agent quickly engages in conversation with one of these, and enters into a compact by which the beachcomber undertakes to sneak off a certain number of boys, his success to be substantially rewarded. He is given a present to cheer him on his task, and the boats put back to the schooner. Nothing further is done until smoke is seen on the beach – a preconcerted signal. The moment the smoke becomes visible we jump into the boat and pull for it with all our might. The recruiter urges us by promises of grog if there in time. Perhaps while we are rowing over the water the natives – friends of the boys – opposed to their going, are running along the beach to intercept them. The boat must be there first even though the recruiter has to fire on these friends to compel them to cease running. Just as the keel grates on the sand the boys, who all this time have been waving us to come quick, step into the boat and are pulled leisurely off to the schooner. Most of the boys are recruited in this way. They have not been kidnapped, they have come of their own free will deceived by the lies the beachcomber has been bribed to tell them, and the Government agent assists in the deception …

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

203

Once on board, the Islanders were unable to leave. The crew would vie with each other to shoot anyone who tried to jump overboard: So that in the traffic in flesh, encouraged by the Queensland Government and fostered by the Imperial Government, a native, if he attempt to regain the liberty of which he has been fraudulently deprived, is to be shot like a dog, and the sailor who held the rifle that slaughtered him is to be honoured on the schooner as a hero.

Where in his articles he had sometimes made light of the deaths of the sickly Kanakas, Morrison’s letter painted a very different scene as he described what it was like for returning Islanders who were kept in the cargo hold: I slept in one of these infernal holds with 50 Islanders – we were licensed to carry 20 more – in a brigantine of 110 tons, and the atmosphere was so pestilential that no matter how cold it may have been on deck, the moment I turned in for my watch below, I became bathed in a horrible sickly sweat, as if I had had a malignant fever. It seems that no laborer can proceed to sea without a clearance from the health officer, but our vessel was owned by the health officer. His duty was to grant no certificate to any native, unless he was satisfied that he was strong and well enough to undergo the fatigue of the voyage. Three of our boys were hauled dead out of the hold within the first thirty-six hours, and four more were flung overboard before the schooner could reach their home.

He also drew attention to the treatment of women by the traders: A nice, pretty chaste girl leaves for Queensland, and a year or two later she is sent to her home an ugly, wrinkled, diseased hag. It is the diseases brought back by the women that are depopulating the islands, no less than the taking away of the men … When a number of women are recruited by a vessel the ship becomes a brothel … The Government agent, you will say, is on the schooner to protect the women. But the Government agents, I can testify from personal knowledge, connive at every misdeed …

Morrison gave as an example the plight of Remnestelesa, a woman from Vanua Lava, who was on the Lavinia with her husband. “A sailor conceived an unholy passion for her, and thrashed her husband every day until he was compelled in self-defence to forfeit his wife’s honour. That sailor communicated a disease to the poor girl, a disease which she will

204

W. MCDONALD

carry to her grave”. Morrison supported his claims by privately supplying the editors with information that “may lead to the disproof or verification of every statement contained in this letter”. The contents of Morrison’s letter, which cannot be divorced from the articles that came before, were endorsed in an editorial in the Age the next day, most likely written by Syme who referred tangentially to Morrison’s new display of concern, perhaps to forestall the criticisms that would follow.47 He mentioned the writer of the series was a practical man rather than a philanthropist, “not roused to protest against the atrocities … when he first returned from the islands”. The editorial ended with a call to end “the curse of forced labor” which, it argued, threatened the country’s future. While there were letters in support from readers, including the Rev Paton who had originally raised objections to the series, a major criticism came from the conservative Argus , the rival morning newspaper of the Age. The Argus, founded in 1846 by William Kerr and sold to Edward Wilson two years later, had begun as a very radical newspaper, but from 1867 (not long before Britton wrote for it) it had become increasingly conservative under the editorship of Frederick Haddon who would remain editor till 1898.48 In this instance, it tried to disparage Morrison’s credibility by referring to his “curious and purposeless feat of walking as a swagman from Carpentaria to Melbourne”, proposing that if his slaving allegations were true he “should have sworn an information of murder or kidnapping against the offenders” at the time.49 Morrison’s letter spurred a perfunctory enquiry in June, described by his biographer Cyril Pearl as having “little more value as a judicial process than the trial of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland”.50 Morrison was not present and the witnesses called were all men involved in the practices complained of, along with “a few bewildered and no doubt intimidated natives”.51 Unsurprisingly, Morrison’s allegations were found to be unproven and the final report admonished him for failing to discriminate between “the loveliness of truth and the hatefulness of falsehood”.52 The Queensland premier Sir Samuel Griffith, responsible for the report, called him “a very young man who does not bear a high reputation and whose narratives need to be received with much caution”. The governor of Queensland, Sir Anthony Musgrave, had the task of forwarding the document to the Secretary of State for the Colonies in London. Tellingly, he took the opportunity to side with Morrison, who wrote a spirited letter to the Age in his own defence, asserting the reliability of his own character and the veracity of his words about the

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

205

“odious traffic in human flesh”.53 By the time the furore was drawing to a close, Morrison had completed another trip to Port Moresby, this time in an attempt to explore the New Guinean interior. The trip was a dangerous one. Morrison was badly wounded and, after a convalescence in Queensland, had returned to Melbourne with a spearhead “the size of your second finger” lodged in his abdomen.54 Local doctors were unable to help and in March 1884 he left for Edinburgh. Happily, there the spearhead was successfully removed and Morrison stayed in Scotland to complete his medical studies.55 That same month, Britain’s Western Pacific Commission released a report condemning the Pacific labour trade and calling for substantial reform.56

“Happy Participants”: John Stanley James A year after Morrison made his journey on the Lavinia, John Stanley James also took to the ocean. The Argus , which had been so critical of Morrison’s letter, employed him to investigate the trade, impressed by a series of travel articles he had written on Asia and the Pacific which they published two years earlier. The articles were repurposed for his book Cannibals & Convicts: Notes of Personal Experiences in the Western Pacific (1886). James, who was already at Vanuatu, crossed paths with the infamous labour vessel, the Lizzie, and decided to see if he could join it on its journey through the islands and back to Townsville. Belbin, the recent captain of the Lizzie, was notorious for stealing boys from Ambrym and had been killed in revenge. Says James, If I were able to get a passage in this ship I should certainly learn something of the inner life of a ‘slaver’ … ‘That captain will never take you,’ I was told. ‘If he does, he’ll black you and sell you for a nigger’ was another suggestion which inspired me with a still further wish to take a voyage in the Lizzie.57

Although it wasn’t a passenger ship, the new young captain—who turned out to be a far cry from the infamous Belbin—allowed James to pay his passage on condition he could rough it. James gave his name, but the captain was unfamiliar with it and remained ignorant of his journalistic mission for the rest of the trip. James would spend thirty-four days on the Lizzie as it sought to top-up its load of Islanders. With one hundred and nineteen already on

206

W. MCDONALD

board when James joined, it stopped at “Aneitium”, currently known as Aneityum, an island where the missionaries had worked for more than three decades. There James met the missionary Mr Laurie, with whom he already had a passing acquaintance. Never one for churchmen, or Christian hypocrisy, James clearly disliked the man, who in turn had an intense dislike of labour traders. The journalist, who believed the missionaries were indoctrinated to find fault with the trade before they even left England, summed up Mr Laurie’s attitude: “‘You cannot exactly prove this thing wrong, or that thing wrong, but the morality of the whole system is bad’ … His belief amounted almost to a mania’”.58 On Aneityum, James went out in the long boat with Lizzie’s recruiter, Peter. They were spectacularly unsuccessful, which James blamed on the corroding dominance of the missionaries. An Islander called Outon accompanied them as an extra oarsman, and on a whim James suggested to Peter on the row back to the boat that they recruit him. Peter had already tried recruiting Outon without success, so James had a go, for his own amusement. The exchange is revealing: Outon spurned my advances. He would have nought to do with me, and gave an emphatic ‘No’ to everything I said. ‘I go ashore,’ said he, and once he feinted as if he would jump overboard. ‘You foolish fellow, master no take you suppose you police; me put you ashore at place belong a you,’ said Peter, and then he … tried his hand. The happy plantation life, the £18 clear at the end of ‘three yams,’ the easy existence on board ship, where he would have good ki-ki and excellent society, including that of ‘plenty Mary belongs Malo.’ Malo, be it noted, is the very Paphos of the Hebrides, and its women are renowned amongst the other islands for their beauty and amiability. Outon hesitated, and asked, ‘You go place Nangaree stop?’ ‘Yes. I take you place where I leave Nangaree.’ In the letter this was true, but in the spirit it might not be carried out, as the two boys would be always many miles apart on different plantations. Peter blarneyed away, soothing the boy, who would not assent as yet, but gave no denial. He would not touch anything from the trade-box, however; he knew that accepting ‘Hansel’ was like the recruiting sergeant’s shilling – it bound him. We passed the place where Outon met us; he looked at the shore; there was a struggle in his mind. Then ‘Jack,’ our stroke oar, said, ‘You no be frightened; Peeta good fellow man; he no fight, no swear at you; you get plenty ki-ki, good fellowship. Plenty boy belong a Vaté on board. All missionary boy. I missionary man. You stop along a them you all right.’ ‘Ship he go Townsville?’ asked Outon, who appeared to have been dubious as to our destination. ‘Ship he go Townsville. Good fellow captain;

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

207

good fellow Government.’ ‘You go along a me to Melbourne?’ I asked. A decisive ‘No! was the reply. ‘You go along a me to Townsville?’ asked Peter. A nod, and then a ‘yes,’ and the boy was fairly recruited. I expected the arguments of our native boatman clinched the matter. Missionaries, I suppose, would call him a decoy. But there was nothing but argument used; he was neither coerced nor bribed, not a stick of tobacco even being given. I only hope that he would meet his friend Nangaree in Queensland. Outon was instructed that when he went on board ‘Government’ would ask him if he wanted to go to Queensland, and he would say ‘Yes.’ This, I suppose, was the usual caution given by recruiters; but Outon plainly knew his own mind, and could express himself in English. And so our only recruit in Aneitium was caught, – a stray bird secured by chance …59

James found the “Queensland Act”, which he described as “very comprehensive in non-essentials”,60 was often evaded by the recruiters, mostly because of the impracticality of many of the regulations, such as the requirements Kanakas wear Western dress on the boats or use mosquito nets for sleeping. Often the government agents were encouraged by their superiors not to interfere with the practices on the boats. “Some few, it was alleged, in old times”, said James, “got so disgusted that they took to their bunks and drank gin, and let the captain and mates do as they pleased”.61 Although James was unconcerned by recent minor breaches of the legislation, he noted a couple of instances where the transgressions were more serious. One was the ongoing trade in arms and ammunition with the Islanders, “undertaken with the knowledge of everyone concerned, from the chief immigration agent downwards”,62 despite the Queensland governments’ putative attempts to outlaw it. He also referred to the recruitment of children, observing a large proportion of the Melanesians on board were young, aged between twelve and sixteen. The latter was the minimum age at which the boys legally could be recruited unless they came with older brothers. As James noted, this requirement left open an easy road for evasion, taken advantage of by all the ships. “Juveniles bought from their parents could readily be registered as brothers of some young man recruited from the same village”.63 The government agents, who inevitably stayed on board rather than accompanying the recruiters in the long boats, could not stop the practice as arrangements would be made by the recruiter before the boys entered the boat. James insisted the boys came “willingly enough”, though he clearly had some reservations about their recruitment, hoping they would

208

W. MCDONALD

not be placed to work in the cane fields. “Hard, continuous labour would very possibly break them down”.64 Sadly, the boys almost certainly would have been employed on the plantations. Islanders in Queensland were banned from working in skilled positions in the mills and refineries, as well as from work in domestic service and most agricultural and maritime industries. Few exemptions were granted. At the time James was writing, Islanders who had worked in Queensland for a while had been pushing back against poor conditions and ill treatment. An increasing proportion of workers who had completed their first indentures were remaining or returning to sign on to second and third contracts on better terms. This probably speaks to the impossibility of returning home—or of returning home to the same village life they enjoyed before the blackbirding trade irrevocably changed the island societies. Most had arrived young, with many laying down new roots in Queensland, marrying and raising families. Conditions on the plantations were harsh. Labourers were contracted to undertake the heaviest manual work on days usually longer than the minimum ten hours. While the law was always on the side of the plantation owners, the Islanders used a range of measures to fight back and improve their working conditions.65 Cognisant of the decision by many Islanders’ to return to Queensland—although, without reflection on the irrevocable changes to island societies caused by colonialism and what this might mean for anyone who returned—James concluded from his time on the Lizzie that the evils of the industry had been largely overcome and that the Melanesians were happy participants. That these men came back to Australia willingly and gladly, was to my mind one of the greatest possible proofs against the alleged enormities of the labour traffic. They told the new chums what they had got to expect, and so I think very few of our passengers landed in Queensland who were not thoroughly au fait with what would be demanded of them, and what they could demand. I made it my special business to interview every man and woman who could speak English, and to find out under what conditions they had been recruited, and what were their impressions. Those who could not speak English had always someone I could communicate through. This not once or twice, but all through the passage, when I had gained their confidence by gifts of tobacco, etc. My conclusion was that every man, woman, and lad appeared to have come willingly and gladly; and, as regards kidnapping, the mode of recruiting the boy Outon from Aneitium appeared to have been the nearest approach to that …66

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

209

An Enviable Fate: J.D. Melvin J.D. Melvin was the final literary journalist in this discussion to provide eyewitness reports on the Pacific labour trade. In 1892, he joined the crew of the brig Helena on its round trip from Bundaberg in Queensland to the Solomon Islands. He wrote a series in thirteen instalments titled “The Kanaka Labour Traffic”, which argued the topic was not only of importance to Australia but to the whole of the British Empire.67 The four-month trip would return sixty workers who had completed their contracts to their islands, while bringing back ninety new recruits. Melvin was to carefully observe the recruiting process to discover if questionable tactics were used. He was to be “fearless and impartial” in his reports and provide an “irreproachable record” of all he saw.68 To undertake his assignment, he first spent time in Bundaberg posing as a vagrant looking for employment. He took small jobs here and there on some of the plantations, eventually securing a position as supercargo on the Helena for a nominal wage.69 The Pacific labour trade had been operating for several decades by the time Melvin joined the crew of the Helena. Possibly unsurprisingly, like Britton and James before him, he found no irregularities in the trade. In his final article, he claimed “malpractice in the recruiting of Islanders is, practically, impossible under the existing system. The traffic is hedged in by legislation in every direction”.70 It should be remembered the Argus was conservative on matters of money and empire—and its journalists had consistently supported the trade in human labour. Melvin’s journey on the Helena also came fairly late in the life of the trade when many steps had been taken to regulate it with some success. At the same time, the Islanders were successfully using various means to improve the working conditions on the plantations. Like James, Melvin found “the Helena’s boys recruited of their own free will and as a matter of choice, and that the recruiter had no power to influence them unduly … As for their treatment on board ship, judging them from their high spirits and happy demeanour, the voyage must have been without exception one of the happiest chapters in their lives”.71 Melvin also drew attention to the savings deposits created by the government to hold the Kanakas’ wages, including those of the considerable number of workers who died on the cane fields. Viewing the trade largely through the lens of its economic benefits to the colony, as no doubt would his audience, his wry last words

210

W. MCDONALD

were: “Many British subjects would envy the lot of the Kanaka labourer in Queensland”.

A Rite of Passage As Australia approached Federation, and the White Australia movement gained greater hold, the colonial governments were phasing out the use of “coloured” labour under pressure from the unions and conservative political groups. In 1892, when Melvin was writing, the Queensland government had already legislated to stop further licensing of labour traders. The practice was only allowed to continue through the 1890s because of a depression in the sugar industry. While Melvin may have found no irregularities on the Helena, the Islanders were facing increasing discrimination in Queensland where they were not only restricted in the types of work they could do but were prevented from becoming British subjects, and in turn from voting or owning land. Once the White Australia Policy was legislated, mass deportation of the Melanesians commenced with all indentured labour agreements annulled by 1906. There was public concern over this, including for Aboriginal women married to Islanders who were forced to leave with their husbands. Eventually, the Islander population was dramatically reduced with only around a quarter remaining, the majority staying illegally or through exemptions, with some simply fleeing into the bush to avoid deportation.72 Whether or not the Pacific Island labour trade was a form of slavery is still being debated in Australia. On the one hand, unlike slavery, the indenture contracts were of limited duration, the Islanders were paid, and the rights of the plantation owners over the labourers were extensive but not absolute. In some areas, for example on the island of Malaita, working on the plantations became a rite of passage for young men and a valuable source of trade goods for their families.73 Yet, as Clive Moore observes, the whole trade in human labour was exploitative. There was never an equal bargain in a system that preyed on the Pacific Islanders and irreversibly changed the social structures and economies of their islands, regardless of individuals willingly agreeing to indenture contracts.74 As Brooke Kroeger says, the blackbirding trade, if not slavery itself, was at least slavery’s “just-as-evil twin”.75

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

211

Notes 1. Tracey Flanagan, Meredith Wilkie, and Susanna Iuliano. “Australian South Sea islanders: A Century of Race Discrimination under Australian Law.” e-Race Archives (2003). https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/ race-discrimination/publications/australian-south-sea-islanders-centuryrace#:~:text=The%20Australian%20South%20Sea%20Islander,and%20nort hern%20New%20South%20Wales. 2. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 20. 3. After 80 years of continuous transportation, the last convict ship to Australia arrived at Fremantle on the west coast on 9 January 1868. There were 269 convicts on board. National Museum of Australia, “Defining Moments: Convict Transportation Ends,” n.d., https://www.nma.gov. au/defining-moments/resources/convict-transportation. 4. Clive Moore, “Benjamin Boyd and the Importation of South Sea Islanders into New South Wales in 1847,” (2013), http://www.assipj.com.au/ southsea/wp-content/uploads/docs/10_benjamin_boyd_importation_ of_ssi_into_nsw.pdf.Quoting; Marion Diamond, Ben Boyd of Boydtown (Carlton, Vic.: Melbourne University Press, 1995), 128–9. 5. Encyclopaedia Brittanica, “Kanaka,” (January 11, 2022), https://www.bri tannica.com/topic/Kanaka. 6. Moore, “Benjamin Boyd.” 7. Kevin Rains, Journeys to Sugaropolis: the Australian South Sea Islander story of the Gold Coast region (Surfers Paradise, Queensland: City of Gold Coast, 2013), http://heritage.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/uploads/Sug aropolis/SouthSea_Booklet.pdf. 8. Paige Gleeson, “From Louisiana to Queensland: how American slave owners started again in Australia,” The Conversation (June 17, 2020), https://theconversation.com/from-louisiana-to-queensland-howamerican-slave-owners-started-again-in-australia-140725. See also. 9. Gleeson, “From Louisiana to Queensland.” 10. Rains, Journeys to Sugaropolis: The Australian South Sea Islander story of the Gold Coast region. 11. Cyril Pearl, Morrison of Peking (Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1970), 16–7. 12. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 16. 13. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 18. 14. Anonymous, “The Murders on Board the Brig Carl,” Argus (reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald, August 17), 1872. 15. Anonymous, “The Murders on Board the Brig Carl.” 16. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 16.

212

W. MCDONALD

17. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade, V,” Argus, October 15, 1873. 18. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: I,” Argus, September 6, 1873. 19. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: III,” Argus, September 27, 1873. 20. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: II,” Argus, September 20, 1873. 21. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: I.” 22. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: VII,” Argus, November 1, 1873. 23. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: II.” 24. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: II.” 25. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: IV,” Argus, October 6, 1873. 26. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: VII.” 27. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: VII.” 28. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: VII.” 29. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: VII.” 30. Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: VII.” 31. See the interesting discussion in, Natasha Joyce, “Baby/Lady Blackbirds,” in The Hood and the Hunter, 2016, http://hoodandhunter.blogspot. com/2016/06/babylady-blackbirds.html. 32. Henry Britton, “The Pacific Labour Trade: X,” Argus, December 2, 1873. 33. “Did African/American Slaves Rebel?,” The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross—100 Amazing Facts about the Negro., PBS: Public Broadcasting Service, circa 2013, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/afr ican-americans-many-rivers-to-cross/history/did-african-american-sla ves-rebel/#:~:text=One%20of%20the%20most%20pernicious,purported% 20failure%20to%20rebel%20extensively. 34. Rains, Journeys to Sugaropolis: The Australian South Sea Islander Story of the Gold Coast Region, 35–37. 35. Kay Saunders, “‘Troublesome Servants’: The Strategies of Resistance Employed by Melanesian Indentured Labourers on Plantations in Colonial Queensland,” The Journal of Pacific History 14, no. 3 (1979), http:// www.jstor.org/stable/25168380; Clive Moore, “Pacific Islanders in Nineteenth Century Queensland,” in Labour in the South Pacific, ed. Clive Moore, Jacqueline Leckie, and Doug Munro (Townsville: James Cook University of Northern Queensland, 1990); Rains, Journeys to Sugaropolis: The Australian South Sea Islander Story of the Gold Coast Region. 36. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 23. 37. Quoted in Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 21. 38. George Ernest Morrison, “A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver III,” Leader, November 4, 1882, 36. 39. George Ernest Morrison, “A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver II,” Leader, October 28, 1882.

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

213

40. Morrison, “Queensland Slaver II.” 41. George Ernest Morrison, “A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver I,” Leader, October 21, 1882. 42. George Ernest Morrison, “Across the Australian Continent on Foot,” Age, May 19, 1883. 43. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 27–35. 44. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 27. 45. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 35. 46. George Ernest Morrison, “The Queensland Slave Trade,” Age, May 9, 1883. 47. David Syme, (assumed), “Untitled Editorial,” Age, May 10, 1883. 48. Lurline Stuart, “Argus Newspaper,” in eMelbourne: The City Past and Present (July 2008), https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00085b. htm. 49. Quoted in Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 38. 50. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 38. 51. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 38–9. 52. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 39. 53. Pearl, Morrison of Peking, 40. 54. J.S. Gregory, “Morrison, George Ernest (Chinese) (1862–1920),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biogra phy/morrison-george-ernest-chinese-7663/text13405. 55. Gregory, “Morrison, George Ernest (Chinese) (1862–1920).” 56. Anonymous, “The Western Pacific Commission,” Sydney Morning Herald, April 18, 1884. 57. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, Cannibals & Convicts: Notes of Personal Experiences in the Western Pacific (London, Melbourne: Cassell, 1887), 303. 58. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 309. 59. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 328–9. 60. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 338. 61. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 348. 62. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 348. 63. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 333. 64. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 333–4. 65. Saunders, “Troublesome Servants.” in Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s, ed. Clive Moore, Pacific series (Acton, ACT: ANU Press, 2017); Rains, Journeys to Sugaropolis: The Australian South Sea Islander Story of the Gold Coast Region. 66. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 356. 67. These were collated and republished in, Joseph Dalgarno Melvin, The Cruise of the Helena: A Labour-Recruiting Voyage to the Solomon Islands, ed. Peter Corris (Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1977).

214

W. MCDONALD

68. Joseph Dalgarno Melvin, “The Kanaka Labour Traffic, I,” Argus, December 3, 1892, 9. 69. Melvin, “The Kanaka Labour Traffic, I.” 70. Joseph Dalgarno Melvin, “The Kanaka Labour Traffic, XIII,” Argus, December 22, 1892, 5. 71. Melvin, “The Kanaka Labour Traffic, XIII.” 72. Moore, “Pacific Islanders in Nineteenth Century Queensland.” in Sugaropolis: the Mackay-Pacific Islands people trade voyage statistics, 1867– 1903, ed. Clive Moore (Brisbane: School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland, 2020); Rains, Journeys to Sugaropolis: The Australian South Sea Islander Story of the Gold Coast Region. 73. Clive Moore, Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s (Canberra: ANU Press, 2017), 105. 74. Moore, Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s, 105. 75. Brooke Kroeger, Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception (Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2012), 32.

Bibliography Anonymous. The Murders on Board the Brig Carl. Argus (reprinted from the Sydney Morning Herald, August 17), 1872, 7. ———. The Western Pacific Commission. Sydney Morning Herald, April 18, 1884, 3. Australia, National Museum of Defining Moments: Convict Transportation Ends, n.d. https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/convicttransportation. Brittanica, Encyclopaedia. Kanaka. January 11, 2022. https://www.britannica. com/topic/Kanaka. Britton, Henry. The Pacific Labour Trade, V. Argus, October 15, 1873. ———. The Pacific Labour Trade: I. Argus, September 6, 1873. ———. The Pacific Labour Trade: Ii. Argus, September 20, 1873. ———. The Pacific Labour Trade: Iii. Argus, September 27, 1873. ———. The Pacific Labour Trade: Iv. Argus, October 6, 1873. ———. The Pacific Labour Trade: Vii. Argus, November 1, 1873. ———. The Pacific Labour Trade: X. Argus, December 2, 1873. Diamond, Marion. Ben Boyd of Boydtown. Carlton, Vic: Melbourne University Press, 1995. Flanagan, Tracey, Meredith Wilkie, and Susanna Iuliano. Australian South Sea Islanders: A Century of Race Discrimination under Australian Law.

9

“BLACKBIRDING”, SUBJECTIVITY AND THE UNSEEING “I”

215

e-Race Archives (2003). https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/race-discri mination/publications/australian-south-sea-islanders-century-race#:~:text= The%20Australian%20South%20Sea%20Islander,and%20northern%20New% 20South%20Wales. Did African/American Slaves Rebel? The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross - 100 Amazing Facts about the Negro. PBS: Public Broadcasting Service, circa 2013, https://www.pbs.org/wnet/african-americans-many-rivers-tocross/history/did-african-american-slaves-rebel/#:~:text=One%20of%20the% 20most%20pernicious,purported%20failure%20to%20rebel%20extensively. Gleeson, Paige. From Louisiana to Queensland: How American Slave Owners Started Again in Australia. The Conversation (June 17, 2020). https://the conversation.com/from-louisiana-to-queensland-how-american-slave-ownersstarted-again-in-australia-140725. Gregory, J.S. Morrison, George Ernest (Chinese) (1862–1920). In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/morrison-georgeernest-chinese-7663/text13405. James, John Stanley (Julian Thomas). Cannibals & Convicts: Notes of Personal Experiences in the Western Pacific. London, Melbourne: Cassell, 1887. Joyce, Natasha. Baby/Lady Blackbirds. In: The Hood and the Hunter, 2016, http://hoodandhunter.blogspot.com/2016/06/babylady-blackbirds.html. Kroeger, Brooke. Undercover Reporting: The Truth About Deception. Evanston, Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 2012. Melvin, Joseph Dalgarno. The Cruise of the Helena: A Labour-Recruiting Voyage to the Solomon Islands, edited by Peter Corris. Melbourne: Hawthorn Press, 1977. ———. The Kanaka Labour Traffic, I. Argus, December 3, 1892. ———. The Kanaka Labour Traffic, Xiii. Argus, December 22, 1892. Moore, Clive. Benjamin Boyd and the Importation of South Sea Islanders into New South Wales in 1847. (2013). http://www.assipj.com.au/southsea/wpcontent/uploads/docs/10_benjamin_boyd_importation_of_ssi_into_nsw.pdf. ———. Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s. Canberra: ANU Press, 2017. ———. Making Mala: Malaita in Solomon Islands, 1870s–1930s/Clive Moore. Pacific Series. Acton, ACT: ANU Press, 2017. ———. Pacific Islanders in Nineteenth Century Queensland. In Labour in the South Pacific, edited by Clive Moore, Jacqueline Leckie, and Doug Munro, 144–47. Townsville: James Cook University of Northern Queensland, 1990. ———. Sugaropolis: The Mackay-Pacific Islands People Trade Voyage Statistics, 1867–1903. Brisbane: School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland, 2020.

216

W. MCDONALD

Morrison, George Ernest. A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver I. Leader, October 21, 1882, 36. ———. A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver Ii. Leader, October 28, 1882, 35–36. ———. A Cruise in a Queensland Slaver Iii. Leader, November 4, 1882, 36. ———. Across the Australian Continent on Foot. Age, May 19, 1883, 2. ———. The Queensland Slave Trade. Age, May 9, 1883. Pearl, Cyril. Morrison of Peking. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books, 1970. Rains, Kevin. Journeys to Sugaropolis : The Australian South Sea Islander Story of the Gold Coast Region. Surfers Paradise, Queensland: City of Gold Coast, 2013. http://heritage.goldcoast.qld.gov.au/uploads/Sugaropolis/SouthSea_ Booklet.pdf. Saunders, Kay. ‘Troublesome Servants’: The Strategies of Resistance Employed by Melanesian Indentured Labourers on Plantations in Colonial Queensland. The Journal of Pacific History 14, no. 3 (1979): 168–83. http://www.jstor. org/stable/25168380. Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Stuart, Lurline. Argus Newspaper. In: eMelbourne: The City Past and Present, July 2008. https://www.emelbourne.net.au/biogs/EM00085b.htm. Syme, David, (Assumed). Untitled Editorial. Age, May 10, 1883.

CHAPTER 10

Life in the Trenches: The Challenges of Reporting War

New South Wales Bushman’s Contingent, camp at Kensington en route to South Africa, 1900 (Unknown photographer). Courtesy of Museums of History, NSW—State Archives Collection. MHNSW—StAC: NRS1254-1-[SZ1032]-SZ1032 [IE414712]

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_10

217

218

W. MCDONALD

War reporting is an area where literary journalism has been used to good effect. With its emphasis on immersion and subjectivity, literary journalism has the potential to provide readers at home with a picture of life in the trenches that news reporting cannot match. Traditional news journalists tend to objectify war, keeping it at a safe and emotionally manageable distance while emphasising the strategies of battle. But literary journalists want to go further and convey more than the officially sanctioned facts; they want to enable readers to connect emotionally with their words, to “feel” the scenes being described.1 The danger is to go too far, to succumb to the temptations of jingoism and overstatement, if not sentimentality, which frequently feature in nineteenth century war journalism. In an era when war was seen as ennobling and a tool of empire, the reports the Australian journalists sent home often reflected the racial entitlement and emerging nationalism of the day. The telegraph, which connected the Australian colonies with London and then Europe from 1872, confirmed Australia’s relationship with the motherland and strengthened imperialist attitudes, even as Australia moved towards independent nationhood.2 As a result, the journalism written from colonial battlefields reveals an impulse to prove the Australians were worthy British subjects, and that the colonies were making a useful contribution to the war effort. Some goes further, attempting to rouse fervent support for the causes of nation and empire. Yet, the techniques of literary journalism offered reporters a means to connect genuinely with their subjects, avoid furthering the glory of the generals, and explore instead the repercussions of war on the participants—the soldiers and citizens.

First Overseas Conflict: War with the Maoris In Australia, war reporting in the colonial era was exclusively focused overseas with literary journalists reporting on the major campaigns in which Britain was involved, beginning in the 1860s with the New Zealand Wars, then in the Sudan, South Africa and China. In contrast, the battles on the home front were never officially acknowledged. The story of Australia’s overseas war reporting officially begins with Howard Willoughby who is honoured as Australia’s first war correspondent.3 He was sent by the Argus to cover the Battle of Waikato during the Third New Zealand War, one of a protracted series of frontier conflicts over land. Willoughby sent three lengthy articles of literary journalism back

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

219

to the Argus writing as its “special correspondent”. They were published between December 1863 and March 1864, their long descriptive passages contributing to his reputation as an “imaginative journalist”.4 The frontier wars in New Zealand were the first time the Australian colonies sent people to serve overseas in an imperial war. Troops were drawn for the militia from all over the empire as well as Britain, with the promise of land grants in New Zealand once the wars were won. To recruit men, military agents visited the eastern states of Australia—New South Wales, Tasmania, Queensland and Victoria—with the result that around 2,450 Australian men signed up for the irregular New Zealand militia units. On one level the scheme was a success; around 1,000 wives and children later joined their men and settled in New Zealand. But the land scheme was unsuccessful for many, and more than thirty Australians died in the wars.5 Besides troops having to survive the battles, the land had to be taken from the Maoris before it could be settled, and anyone wanting to take up a grant first was required to serve in the militia around Auckland.6 Willoughby’s articles, in which his narrative voice rings strongly, were anything but objective. He saw his role as supporting the war effort. In this description of the start of one skirmish, he writes: First came the warning roll of the drums and then on dashed our gallant soldiers from the thick tea-tree jungle through the scrub and fern, which was breast high, their arms glittering in the sun and their cheers ringing in the breeze. The rugged ground broke their lines, and the enemy’s shot caused gaps, which could not always be closed. The men did not reach the work in field day order, but they dashed up to the rifle pits with unbroken spirit; and how can I describe the feelings of the spectators when the gallant band became lost in the white smoke which curled up from the ascent and from the brow of the hill, and when the crackling roll of musketry which followed told that the Maoris were pouring in their fire from all their hiding places?7

Although fervent in his British chauvinism, Willoughby was an admirer of the Maori’s fighting abilities, praising their field engineering and defensive skills in his articles. Describing one of the Maori fortifications at Rangariri, he says: “Looking at it, the wonder is not that our loss was so heavy, but that our troops accomplished what they did”.8 Ultimately, he saw the Maori as racially inferior. His admiration for their combat prowess was included in his stories to underscore the superiority of the British

220

W. MCDONALD

who, against such strong opponents, inevitably executed “a most brilliant feat of arms”.9 Yet, his admiration was genuine and he never dismissed the Maori as savage brutes, as his editor did.10 He was appalled when a British colonel (“Hamilton of the 12th ”) led an expedition to burn the Maori’s “whare” or communal houses, commenting the act would not have been approved by General Cameron, the commander of the British forces in New Zealand.11 And he was appreciative that some Maori showed similar respect for the property of the British.

The Great Australian Silence While the frontier wars were recognised in New Zealand, it was a different scenario in Australia where war was never officially declared against the First Nations. At the time Howard Willoughby was writing, there were no war correspondents reporting on the Australian frontier. As Tom Griffiths once commented, perhaps the declaration in Australia of “a proper war would have dignified [the settlers’] violence, brought it out into the open and allowed them the romance of heroes and campaigns”.12 Australians could at least read the work of Willoughby and his successors, with their reassurance of British victories, in the reports of overseas wars. At home, the official silence was palpable. This was despite the question— “What to do about the Blacks?”—so underpinning colonial life the writer and activist Mary Bennett would later comment it “was canvassed when settlers met to fetch the mail”.13 From the very beginning, the British government regarded Australia as a colony that was to be settled rather than conquered, and the question of whether Australia was violently taken from the First Nations peoples continues to be a contentious issue. It is only since the 1960s that the idea that Australia was peacefully settled has been questioned by historians. In 1968, WEH Stanner coined the term the “Great Australian Silence” in reference to the omission of First Australians from the national history, prompting a number of historians to re-examine the consequences of settlement.14 As Henry Reynolds describes it, since then “the violence of the frontier has flooded back into the national story”.15 At least 2,000–25,000 soldiers, police and settlers died in attacks by Aboriginal raiders who fought against the taking of their traditional lands, stealing livestock for food and carrying out retaliatory raids.16 On conservative estimates, 40,000 Aboriginal people died at the hands of military regiments, police forces and settlers’ militia during “the killing times”, as

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

221

indigenous Australians call the 140 years between the arrival of the First Fleet and 1928 when the last known officially sanctioned “massacre” occurred.17 The true figure is likely to be many thousands more.18 The recent Australian “culture wars”—most relevantly the “history wars”—that began in the late 1990s saw a larger debate emerge over the framing of the foundation of modern Australia that extended far beyond the work of historians and into the political and cultural life of a nation wrestling with its past and its identity. On one side are conservative politicians and commentators who question the resistance and the extent of the violence associated with Australia’s settlement, blaming the deaths of Aboriginal people mostly on cultural decline and exposure to European diseases. On the other are historians who are largely agreed that fierce battles took place, as well as reprisal killings including premeditated massacres of Aboriginal Australians.19 While recently more recognition has been given to the violent occupation of Australia in the process of colonisation, the frontier wars remain officially unacknowledged.20

Impact of the Telegraph For newspapers to send correspondents to cover war was a relatively new phenomenon at the time Willoughby was reporting from New Zealand. Only a decade earlier, the Irishman William Howard Russell initiated modern war reporting when he sent dispatches from the Crimean War for publication in London’s Times newspaper.21 Russell’s stories—particularly his descriptions of the suffering of wounded British troops because of poor medical facilities and the heavy loss of life in the Charge of the Light Brigade during the Battle of Balaclava—helped create a picture of mismanagement of the war. They influenced government policy and underpinned the resignation of the Prime Minister, George Hamilton Gordon, Earl of Aberdeen, in 1855.22 Russell had the advantage of the telegraph which had been set up by Britain and France with the Ottoman Empire as part of their war strategy. He used the telegraph to share his eyewitness reports from the front, and it gave his writing an immediacy and credibility that touched the British people.23 Willoughby did not have use of the telegraph—Australia and New Zealand would not be connected until 1876—yet, his articles were reaching Melbourne within three weeks, much more quickly than reports of more distant battles were reaching Australian readers. Short but remote

222

W. MCDONALD

conflicts, such as the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, could be over before clippers reached Australia with news they had even begun.24

Repatriating the “Kanaks” as Humans In 1878, the Sydney Morning Herald sent the literary journalist John Stanley James to report on the Great Revolt by the New Caledonians against the French colonists. His work, published later under the nom de plume of Julian Thomas, provides an interesting contrast to most Australian colonial war reporting as he felt no particular loyalty to the French or their military with whom he was embedded. In fact, he grew more disenchanted with their activities in New Caledonia over the time he spent there. When the French settled New Caledonia twenty-five years earlier, they caused violent displacement, hunger and hardship among the local peoples. Smaller, unsuccessful rebellions occurred in earlier years, but when the French colonists took a fertile river valley to extend the La Foa penitentiary, the Chief of the area, Ataii, led a major revolt that led to a year-long war.25 The uprising was of interest to the readers of the Sydney Morning Herald because of the broad similarities between the two colonies and the proximity of New Caledonia—it lay less than 2,000 kilometres to the north-east, about five days sail away. When James arrived in New Caledonia, his hosts were as suspicious of him as he was of them. He was prevented from receiving telegraphic dispatches that would have given him information essential to his reporting and was kept instead on daily marches to distract him from the business of war. Once he grew wise to the ruse, he packed up and moved to a different regiment in La Foa under Commandant Henri Rivière. His experiences there were similarly compromised, and his work shows a growing sympathy for the local Kanaks. In one particular story, he recounts the execution of five Kanaks, including a thirteen-year-old boy.26 The group was held responsible for the murder of an ex-convict called Brière, an employee of a French settler. The day before the killing, a pig that belonged to the settler had been speared. Brière was among a group of the settler’s employees—all ex-convicts—who in retaliation fired on a group of locals, killing two of them, a man and a woman. Brière, later revealed as a cruel and violent man in his dealings with the Kanaks, was said to have been murdered in revenge for the deaths. The five Kanaks

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

223

who were to take the blame for Brière’s death had already been imprisoned for a month without trial on other crimes when they were brought before the commandant. He ordered them to be marched to the place where Brière had been killed. There they would be executed by firing squad and their bodies burnt as a warning to others. James wrote: “It ordained an act illogical, unjust, and useless in its results”.27 James’s choice of literary journalism as a form gave him some freedom in the way he reported on the war, as did the fact that he was writing for an audience of British subjects who had long shared rivalry with the French. At the start of his story about the executions, he is an accomplice of European colonialism, rendering the Kanaks as objects while striking the faux pose of an ethnologist trying to be objective in his account. The prison doors were opened, and five natives were brought forth. Four were handcuffed in pairs; and they were all joined by a stout rope. The last was a boy of only thirteen; the others of ages ranging from twenty-five to forty. All were quite naked except one, who had still the striped jersey worn by the boatmen of the port. Round his neck the boy had a small key suspended by a piece of string. I wondered whether he had ever possessed a box, or only wore it as an ornament. Another wore a garter adorned with shells; another had a string of beads round his neck. Their woolly hair had been dyed red by lime; some rude combs were stuck therein. They were splendid specimens of humanity; not large men, but with beautifully formed limbs. Two had broad noses and thick lips, but two had almost European features, one being very handsome, with fine eyes, which fixed themselves on mine inquiringly. He seemed to seek a friend, and it might be that he saw the sympathy which was in my soul. In colour, these men were light brown; in each the brain was well developed. They were of a race far superior to the Australian savage.28

David Spurr, noting that journalists generally seek out “webs of signification” already understood by readers, identifies the body as the “sign” most frequently used to represent colonised people—the body cast as object (aesthetic, scientific, erotic or humanitarian).29 As the passage above demonstrates, James’s begins with a physical description of the Kanaks in precisely the way Spurr denotes. In writing about the executions, it seems likely that James’s instincts as a storyteller led him to begin this way; not only were the words and ideas ones with which he himself was comfortable, but they would have been familiar to his readers

224

W. MCDONALD

at home. By beginning this way, James reassures his readers of his—and their—European mastery over the Kanaks. Without elevating James above the colonial attitudes in which he was entrenched, there also may be other ways of reading James’s work. It is possible that James begins the piece this way because this vocabulary— this colonialist rendering of the body—is the only one available to him to connect with his readers when speaking of indigenous peoples. While James’s writing never shakes the coarse racism common to the language of colonialism, as the piece progresses, he finds ways to connect with the humanity of the Kanaks. His stance shifts, moving towards a genuinely empathetic position, and he begins to repatriate the Kanaks as people, despite the looming execution that strips them of their humanity. James does this in two ways. Never free of his racist blinkers, he distances the Kanaks from Aboriginal Australians, held in contempt by many of his readers at home and likens the Kanaks to Europeans. At the same time, he uses the literary techniques common to literary journalism—scenes, detail and characterisation—to deepen his story, and in turn his and the readers’ connection with the Kanaks. James describes the executions with disapprobation reminiscent of Orwell’s “A Hanging” that was published half a century later.30 His sympathy lies firmly with the condemned: The orders were given clearly and quietly. There were five trees in line; to these they were bound. The boy was first uncoupled and taken to the tree, his hands tied behind him, and a bandage placed round his eyes. Then the others must have known the fate in store for them! But they did not wince or take any notice. One by one the process was repeated, the surveillant and a convict, who appeared to take brutal delight in the work, ”officiating.’’ There was not the slightest resistance or murmur from the prisoners. The last was my handsome friend. Released from his fellow, he remained for a couple of minutes perfectly free and unshackled, and again looked at me with those wistful eyes. Why did he not make one effort for life and freedom? If he had started, I would have bet that in the bush none of our rifles could hit him. I almost felt mad with the man, and my lips found words which he would not understand. ‘Far ici’ cried the surveillant – the Canaque was looking at me. ‘Sacre nomme de Dieu !’ said the man, rushing forward, seizing the prisoner’s wrist, and giving him a torrent of abuse for not being in a hurry to go to be killed … M. Varnauld gave the order ... And the victims against the trees? – four stood up erect, with chests inflated, and every nerve and muscle strung,

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

225

ready to die like warriors. The boy alone had his head sunk on his breast. The word was given – a discharge – and three bodies slid softly to the ground. ‘The doctor to the ground’ shouted M. Varnauld. I accompanied him. The other two bodies sank down. There was not a word nor a groan. The coup de grace was given to three who yet lived by the revolver of the surveillant, Le nommé Brière and the pigs of Boyer were avenged. ‘Blood for blood!’31

Despite the seeming passivity of the Kanaks’ responses to their captors, James draws them into the scene as participants, giving them agency and the human traits of intelligence, dignity and bravery so valued by Europeans. The French authorities were displeased with James’s reports, particularly Commandant Rivière who would later accuse James of ungentlemanly behaviour and of abusing his hospitality. When James returned to Sydney, he discovered that none of his New Caledonia reports had ever been sent. He was forced to rewrite them and they were published in the Sydney Morning Herald in September and October 1878. Eight years later, versions of them appeared in his book Cannibals and Convicts. While James’s reports from New Caledonia could never entirely shake the colonialist stance, he nevertheless used his skills as a literary journalist to convey a sense of outrage to his readers in New South Wales by connecting with the Kanaks as people rather than objectifying them as a scourge to be dominated or eradicated.32

Covering the Sudan In 1885, Australian literary journalists were sent to cover the AngloSudan Campaign. The telegraph, by this time an essential link with Britain, brought expeditious news of the death of Major General Charles Gordon in the Siege of Khartoum.33 Aggrieved on behalf of the empire, New South Wales quickly raised a volunteer force of 730 men and 200 horses who were to be sent to the Sudan with much fanfare as Australia’s first independent engagement in a foreign war.34 Britain, wanting to defuse the crisis, discouraged the other colonies from doing the same. In a flourish of intercolonial rivalry, New South Wales, which was sending three special correspondents, tried to limit the involvement of the other states and prevent them sending journalists with the contingent.

226

W. MCDONALD

The Melbourne-based literary journalist, JD Melvin, frustrated at being denied accreditation, made his own way overseas to send back dispatches to the Melbourne Daily Telegraph and the Sydney Bulletin. He obtained a letter from the New South Wales commandant commending him as a correspondent, with the restriction that he could only present it once in Egypt—a ploy to prevent him gaining passage on the troop ship Iberia. Undeterred, Melvin paid £80 to one of the ship’s officers and gained passage as a steward, hiding as much as was possible to avoid recognition by the other newspapermen. He managed in this way till the ship was halfway across the Indian Ocean, when he was discovered by another literary journalist, William Lambie, who was sent to the Sudan for the Sydney Morning Herald. According to Mark Baker, writing for the Australian Media Hall of Fame, Lambie, dressed “in gorgeous silk pyjamas”, was on his way to take a bath when he was splashed with dirty water by a crewman who was swabbing the deck. Turning to reprimand him, he recognised Melvin. “Shortly after, they were laughing uproariously over the incident in the captain’s cabin, to the accompaniment of brandy and soda and cigars”.35 Lambie would become the first Australian war correspondent to be wounded in the course of duty—and later, in the Anglo-Boer War, the first to be killed. Not long after the two men landed in the Sudan, Melvin and Lambie joined a force to cover an attack planned on the enemy about 30 kilometres from Suakin. The British column met a force of about 250 Arabs and the fighting was bitter. In Lambie’s exciting account of his own wounding, he uses storytelling techniques usually associated with fiction to bring the scene in the desert to life. As he describes it, the two journalists were riding by themselves back to town to file their stories via the local telegraph office when they were ambushed on the way by a group of Arabs on camels wielding rifles and spears: We were walking our horses into a rough khor, with a strip of open ground behind and thick bushes on the right. My friend [Melvin] was a few yards ahead on the left. All was still, and there were no signs of danger. Then we heard a sharp crack of a rifle close by the side of us, and a bullet whistled between us. We pulled up and looked around. Nothing could be seen ... Our revolvers were out in an instant, and we waited for what fate would send. Then, like magic, four or five camels with Arabs on them appeared on the edge of the bushes on the right of the track, and pushed towards us quickly. Our first impulse was to fight it out, if there were only a few of

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

227

them, as our twelve shots would give us a show, so up went our pistols and I fired at the nearest Arab. I heard shots on my left, and concluded that Mr Melvin was engaging his end of the line; but as suddenly as before, more Arabs on camels sprang into sight until eight camels were in view, some carrying two men, all of whom were armed with spears and several with rifles. They formed a line reaching past us on either hand … Then the terrible danger of our position became apparent, and we realised that in a few more seconds we might be lying dead on the hot, black gravel. How many more there were of them we knew not, but it was four or five to one already. As they showed themselves, Mr Melvin called out to me, ‘Look out, there is a crowd of them’, and just then I saw another camel come up on their left threatening our escape by the road we had come. I replied, ‘All right, let us strike out for the camp’, and we turned our horses’ heads quickly towards Takdul. More shots were fired as we started, and then began a ride for life that I will not easily forget, although it did not last very long … Turning in my saddle to see how things were going, I saw an Arab on a yellow camel pushing forward from the line to intercept Mr Melvin. This fellow had to be stopped if possible, for although our time might be pretty close it had not come to the pinch when a man drops his mate and fights for his own life. Pulling up suddenly, and turning at the same time, I started towards Mr Melvin, and just at that moment I felt a sharp piercing blow on my right leg below the knee. A red hole and a stinging pain showed what was the matter, but there was no time to think about it … I tried my leg in the stirrup, and found that no bones were broken, and I knew I could sit it out unless the hole bled too much. Another shot or two passed between us, and I gave them a parting shot just before getting out of range. The camels came on after us, the Arabs shouting and flogging the beasts, but they had not the slightest chance against the speed of our horses – they might as well have tried to catch a locomotive.36

Connecting with the Enemy: The Boer War While racism is rife, compassion for the enemy—or, at least, discomfort with the actions of the imperial forces towards the enemy—is not uncommon in Australian colonial literary journalism as demonstrated in some of the reports by literary journalists from the Boer War (the Second Anglo-South African War). Australia was drawn into the war, not by a hatred of the Boer, but by a sense of nationalism and pride in the British Empire. While there was heated opposition in some quarters with the public initially hesitant to provide support, the war, at least in its early

228

W. MCDONALD

stages, came to be seen as a necessary, even gallant, enterprise—a way for Australia to demonstrate the courage and resourcefulness of its men and its maturity as it moved towards forming a nation in 1901.37 Federation, however, receded against the importance of uniting the British people under the flag of the empire.38 Gaining access to a telegraph to send reports was difficult on the African veldt, and cabling was unreliable and expensive. Immediate news about the progress of the war was more easily available from London, written by British journalists from a British point of view. A substantial number of war correspondents were sent to South Africa from Britain and the United States, including Rudyard Kipling, Edgar Wallace, W.S. Churchill, A. Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and “Saki”. The Australian journalists included A.B. “Banjo” Paterson, Frank Wilkinson, Harry “Breaker” Morant, D.A. Macdonald, W.T. Reay, Edith Dickensen and H.H. Spooner.39 The dispatches sent by the literary journalists were long, well-written, usually personal accounts of their observations and experiences that were often polished after the event, mostly sent by ship or collated and written as books on their return home. Lambie was among the Australians, as was the literary journalist Alfred “Smiler” Hales (A.G. Hales) who filed for the London publications the Daily News and the weekly John Bull, as well as several Australian papers.40 Lambie was writing for the Melbourne Age. In February 1900, Hales and Lambie joined a Tasmanian contingent riding out of Rensburg. When they realised they were under ambush by Boer soldiers, they decided to make a dash for the British line which was ahead of them. It was a fateful decision for both of them: Lambie was killed, while Hales was taken as a prisoner of war. Unable to file once he was captured, Hales recalled the incident in his book Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa, published in 1900 on his return. The Boers were very close to us … galloping in on us, shooting as they rode, and shouting to us to surrender, and, had we been wise men, we would have thrown up our hands, for it was almost hopeless to try and ride through the rain of lead that whistled around us…We were racing by this time, Lambie’s big chestnut mare had gained a length on my little veldt pony, and we were not more than a hundred yards away from the Mauser rifles that had closed in on us … All at once I saw my comrade throw his hands up with a spasmodic gesture. He rose in his stirrups, and fairly bounded out of his saddle, and as he spun round in the air I saw

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

229

the red blood on the white face, and I knew that death had come to him sudden and sharp.41

Hales was badly injured and was taken to a field hospital by the Boers who, to his surprise, buried Lambie rather than leaving his corpse on the open field. Hales was impressed by their kindness, recounting the almost apologetic admonition of the commandant on discovering they were noncombatants: “Sir, you dress exactly like two British officers; you ride out with a fighting party, you try to ride off at a gallop under the very muzzles of our rifles when we tell you to surrender. You can blame no one but yourselves for this day’s work”.42 Hales continued throughout his book to reassure readers of the Boer’s honour and benevolence in war: Let no man or woman in all the British Empire whose son or husband lies wounded in the hands of the Boers fear for his welfare, for it is a foul slander to say that the Boers do not treat their wounded well. England does not treat her own men better than the Boers treat the wounded British, and I am writing of that which I have seen and know beyond the shadow of a doubt.43

The Poetic Response: A.B. (Banjo) Paterson The poet A.B. (Banjo) Paterson’s literary journalism echoed some of the features prominent in the reporting of Hales—a sense of nationalism and of Australians before empire,44 increasing respect for the Boers despite the propaganda distributed by the British, and a love for the horses ridden by the Australian troops. Travelling with the New South Wales Lancers, Paterson sailed for South Africa in October 1899. He soon found himself at the front, reporting on General Sir John French’s successful relief of the mining diamond town Kimberley and riding to the Modder River to send the first dispatches to the London Times on its fall.45 He was also there for the surrender of Bloemfontein and the capture of Pretoria, sometimes riding at night through enemy lines to file his stories. His daring and the quality of his reports impressed Reuters which accredited him as a correspondent.46 When Paterson arrived in South Africa, he was already a muchloved bush balladeer whose work in the pages of The Bulletin fostered Australia’s emerging national identity. His poetry promoted the Australian type as a rugged, heroic bushman, noted for his independence, wry

230

W. MCDONALD

humour and superb horsemanship. Paterson’s most loved poem, “The Man from Snowy River”, for example, tells the story of a young, untried rider and his pony who were both tested to the limits of their endurance when rounding up a herd of wild brumbies.47 The poem continues to be so popular that it has outsold the work of any other poet in Australia ever since.48 “Waltzing Matilda”, another favourite of his bush ballads, has proved enduringly popular since it was written in the 1890s, for decades persisting as Australia’s unofficial national anthem. Paterson’s prose dispatches from South Africa traverse many of the same themes as his earlier bush poetry—the rakish courage of the soldiers, the quality of their equestrian skills, their independence in the face of authority. His articles are perceptive and entertaining, but he sees the war more as a gentlemanly contest than a violent confrontation.49 He paints lively descriptions of the action in ways that are not so much personal or particular as panoramic, as this description of French’s cavalry moving across the veldt shows: … a force of five thousand, all Cavalry and horse artillery, all the squadrons moving abreast across the open veldt the grass, and we moved through smoke and dust and blinding heat. The Scots Greys were next to us and were well mounted; but their big English horses were not standing it as well as our leathery Waters. The gun horses were dropping in their harness. Every here and there along the line a pistol shot rang out, telling where some good horse had been dispatched to put him out of misery. Horses and men were about all in, when we reached the Modder; and there was no need to order the troops to clear the Boers off the crossing. The horses just simply bolted for the water; if the Boers had tried to stop them, they would have run over them.50

Paterson writes with immediacy and flair in ways that reflect his poet’s sensibility. He experimented in his journalism—and in his later book of recollections Happy Dispatches —with point of view, sound and imagery in ways that foreshadowed the playful journalism in the 1970s of the American writer Tom Wolfe: Hurrah! Look at the Boers scooting. Give ’em another round. That’s a good shell! Pee-u-u-u-w. Pee-u-u-u-w. Great Heavens they’ve got that great hill in front of us. That’s just like French, always going bull-headed into these sort of places. Pee-u-u-w. You duck instinctively. A man on French’s staff turns and says, ‘Let us get back. No sense in staying here.’

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

231

You turn with him and walk a few paces, leading the horses. Pee-u-u-w. Pee-u-u-w. The dust kicks up in front, and a few twigs fall from a tree overhead. Whack! Your companion staggers forward and you catch him before he falls. ‘Have you got it?’ ‘Yes,’ he gasps. ‘I’m done for. Hit through the body.’ A doctor is hurrying past and you hail him sharply. ‘Here! Here’s a man badly hit.’ You pick him up between you and carry him back, but all the time the bullets whistle past, and the wounded man almost shrieks with pain. ‘Put him down here,’ says the doctor, selecting the base of a small bush, and carefully you lay the sufferer down. The doctor makes a hasty examination and silently puts a bandage around the body. ‘How bad is it?’ mutters the wounded man. ‘Is it through the body?’ ‘Not at all, not at all,’ says the medico, ‘only through the loins. You’ll be all right.’ He lies glibly but unconvincingly, and the sufferer’s face goes an ashen grey. The doctor hurries off and you are left alone with the dying man. It is an unenviable experience. He talks in a feeble voice about his wife – always about his wife. ‘I wouldn’t care so much if it wasn’t for my wife.’ You try to cheer him up with well-meant falsehoods, such as saying, ‘You’ll be all right in no time’ – mere sound and fury signifying nothing. Meanwhile the guns just in front roar away, and from your lair in the grass you can see the battery-major stalking grimly up and down. Pee-u-u-w. Pee-u-u-w. They still whistle over. A horse comes and stands by the tree – a loose horse who has got away from his rider. Whack! He has got it through the body, and that horse will carry a rider no more. It is awful how hard a bullet hits. One would imagine from the small hole it makes that it’s caused little shock. But it hits like a sledgehammer – a terrific blow. The wretched horse staggers away to die, and you lie very flat beside the still man and peer through the grass at the battery-major, still stalking by his guns …51

Paterson also sent a dozen poems back from South Africa describing events at the front in similarly panoramic and animated terms as his prose. While pointing out that poetry will never replace standard journalism and the inverted pyramid, William Dow recently advocated for docu-poetry to be included in the field of literary journalism.52 Analysing the work of American poets, including Charles Reznikoff, Muriel Rukeyser, Mark Novak, C.D. Wright and Claudia Rankine, he has drawn attention to the way they reconcile “the language of information with the language of art through their poetic discourses”,53 a task at the heart of literary journalism. One of Paterson’s best-known poems from South Africa, “With French to Kimberley”, narrates the story of the relief of the diamond mining town in ten stanzas of rousing, rhythmic verse:

232

W. MCDONALD

Our headlong march to Kimberley to drive the Boers away. We reached the drift at fall of night, and camped across the ford. Next day from all the hills around the Dutchman’s cannon roared. A narrow pass ran through the hills, with guns on either side; The boldest man might well turn pale before that pass he tried … For, if the first attack should fail, then every hope was gone: But French looked once, and only once, and then he said, “Push on!” The gunners plied their guns amain; the hail of shrapnel flew; With rifle fire and lancer charge their squadrons back we threw; And through the pass between the hills we swept in furious fray, And French was through to Kimberley to drive the Boers away …54

Censorship by the British: Donald Macdonald The British government kept tight control over the Australian literary journalists’ access to information, censoring their reports. Donald Macdonald was sent to South Africa by the Argus in October 1899 and was soon caught in the 118-day siege of Ladysmith. Until then, Macdonald had made a name for himself as a lively cricket commentator and nature writer, but in the 1890s he had begun writing about Victoria’s volunteer units and militia for the Argus , making him a natural choice to send to South Africa.55 His dispatches dealt with the aftermath of battles as well as the day-to-day experiences of being under siege. He writes freely of his reactions to the events and scenes he describes but keeps some emotional constraint in his work. His descriptions of the clean up after the Battle of Platrand are much quoted in histories of the siege and are a case in point. Macdonald toured the slopes of the Platrand and saw the bodies of Boer and British casualties that had been left exposed on the hillside till a peace fire allowed each side to collect their dead. He wrote that he felt “more sad and sick at heart than ever” as he watched shrapneltorn and weathered bodies loaded onto wagons for burial.56 Not all the dead could be retrieved: About ninety of the Dutch (Boer) dead were taken off the hill they had come to capture. Thirteen of them could not be moved, they were in that pen of death where our shrapnel fell thickest, and, much as we in Ladysmith had seen the destruction of shellfire during this past ten weeks, we had witnessed nothing quite so appalling as that. These men could not be removed for burial – they were too shockingly mangled; so their graves were dug beside them.57

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

233

His reports on the experience of living in a town under siege are memorable. He wrote about the impact of food rationing, the black market in food run by profiteers when civilians and soldiers were starving, the lack of clean water and the toll of dysentery which ran rampant through the town.58 He managed to convey some of the psychological impact of the siege by concentrating on detail, conveyed sparely and factually: Every gun had a double report – the firing, and the bursting of the charge. When the interval between the two was but a few seconds we knew it for our gun; when it was half a minute or more, we knew that the long period was covered by a Boer shell travelling away from us towards Buller’s forces, and the sound of the bursting shell coming back again over the same ground. Twice before when heavy cannon fire had been followed by deathly silence, it meant the partial failure of our advance on the Tugela – hence the depression and deep anxiety that came in with the hundred days.59

Macdonald avoided tackling the subject of the British military operations. As he admitted, the information he could gather was scarce because of military security and censorship. Facts about the Boer operations were easier to come by, sourced as they were from the British military leaders and Boer prisoners.60 Macdonald caught dysentery and was sent home a sick man when Ladysmith was liberated, his reports returning with him on the same steamer to Australia.61 Initially published in the Argus , they were eagerly read and “discussed in every home and hotel bar”, and later collated in his book How We Kept the Flag Flying (1900).62 Macdonald was not the only journalist concerned about the censorship of the press imposed by the British military authorities. Hales was highly critical of it and of the way the British conducted the war. Appalled by the high death rate among the troops from dysentery and “enteric fever”, caused by the failure of the authorities to impose basic sanitation measures rather than from any action of the Boers, he wrote: “There are hundreds of men lying in unmarked graves in African soil to-day who ought to be alive and well, others who have been done to death by the crass ignorance, the appalling stupidity, the damnable conceit which will brook no teaching”.63 The British argument in support of military censorship was that, unlike other colonial wars till then, the enemy were well armed, educated and

234

W. MCDONALD

sophisticated in European ways; press reports would interfere with the war effort by providing the enemy with critical information about British movements and strategy. Hales would have none of it. He saw their censorship, the first encountered by Australians in war, as solely a measure to protect British mismanagement of the conflict from scrutiny. “The real reason is that their awful blunders, their farcical mistakes, and their criminal negligence may not reach the British public”.64 Censorship and poor leadership concerned other literary journalists in South Africa as well, particularly the women covering the war for Australian papers. Kept from the front, they sent home stories of misery in the hospitals and refugee camps, largely the consequence of bungling by the British military administration.

Notes 1. Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists,” in Literary Journalism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-fiction, ed. Norman Sims, and Mark Kramer (New York: Ballantyne, 1995). 2. Fay Anderson, and Richard Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War: The history of Australian Conflict Reporting (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing, 2011), 20–29. 3. Anderson, and Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War, 20; Suzanne G. Mellor, “Willoughby, Howard (1839–1908),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1976), https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/willoughby-how ard-4862. 4. Mellor, “Willoughby.”. 5. Anderson, and Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War, 23. State Library of Victoria, “Australian Colonial Forces and Family History: New Zealand Wars 1860–1864,” Research Guides, https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/coloni alforces/newzealandwars; Australian War Memorial, “Colonial Period, 1788–1901,” Australians at War, https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/ atwar/colonial. 6. A Settler, The Waikato and Ngaruawahia, the Proposed New Capital of New Zealand (Auckland: 1863), http://www.enzb.auckland.ac.nz/doc ument/?wid=2063&page=1&action=null. 7. Howard Willoughby, “The New Zealand War: The Engagement at Rangariri,” Argus, Saturday, December 12, 1863, https://trove.nla.gov. au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news-article5740845.5.pdf?followup=330 3e5bc1df6b766d74b5c86a212b75c. 8. Willoughby, “New Zealand War, I.”.

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

235

9. Willoughby, “New Zealand War, I.”. 10. “The Maori character is rapidly losing all its poetry, and degenerating into the proportions of unmitigated savagery. As the war continues, the instincts of the brute come to the surface with horrible distinctness”. Anonymous, “Editorial,” Argus, November 11, 1863. 11. Howard Willoughby, “The War in New Zealand, III,” Argus, March 23, 1864, https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news-articl e5746128.5.pdf?followup=5e2878cf66fbc793069feb532fa4d2cc. 12. Tom Griffiths, Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia (Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 109. 13. Mary Montgomerie Bennett, Christison of Lammermoor (London: Alston Rivers, 1927), 82. 14. W.E.H. Stanner, After the Dreaming (Podcast Audio, Boyer Lectures 1968), https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/ past-boyer-lectures/4998888. 15. Henry Reynolds, “Friday Essay: It’s Time for a New Museum Dedicated to the Fighters of the Frontier Wars,” The Conversation (February 19, 2021), https://theconversation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-newmuseum-dedicated-to-the-fighters-of-the-frontier-wars-155299. 16. Henry Reynolds, Forgotten War (Sydney, Australia: NewSouth Publishing, 2013), 121–34. 17. Reynolds, Forgotten War. 18. Rachel Perkins, “The Australian Wars,” (SBS - On Demand, 2022), https://www.sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/the-australian-wars. 19. Perkins, “The Australian Wars.”. 20. While the violence against First Nations people is slowly being recognised, the frontier wars are still disputed. Paul Daley, “The Australian War Memorial’s Intransigence on Depicting the Frontier Wars Speaks Louder than Words,” Guardian, Australia, October 17, 2022, https://www. theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/17/the-australian-war-mem orials-intransigence-on-depicting-the-frontier-wars-speaks-louder-thanwords. 21. “The Pen & The Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents,” Warfare History Network, n.d., accessed 9 September, 2021, https:// warfarehistorynetwork.com/2016/06/09/the-pen-the-sword-a-brief-his tory-of-war-correspondents/. 22. “The Pen & the Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents,” Warfare History Network, n.d., accessed September 9, 2021, https://warfarehisto rynetwork.com/2016/06/09/the-pen-the-sword-a-brief-history-of-warcorrespondents/. 23. “Pen & Sword.”. 24. Anderson, and Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War, 22.

236

W. MCDONALD

25. Alice Bullard, Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790–1900 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000); Stephen A. Toth, “Beyond Papillon: The French Overseas Penal Colonies, 1854–1952,” Crime, History & Societies 13, no. 1 (2009); John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, Cannibals & Convicts: Notes of Personal Experiences in the Western Pacific (London, Melbourne: Cassell, 1887). 26. John Stanley (Julian Thomas) James, “The War,” Sydney Morning Herald, September 3, 1878. Later published in his book Cannibals & Convicts. 27. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 89. 28. James, Cannibals & Convicts, 90. 29. David Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 22. 30. Published in 1931. 31. Spurr, The Rhetoric of Empire, 92–3. 32. For a fuller account of James’ report on this incident see, Willa McDonald, “The Vagabond in New Caledonia,” in The Vagabond Papers by John Stanley James, ed. Michael Cannon (Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016), xli–liv. 33. Anderson and Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War, 26–9. 34. Mark Baker, “William Lambie,” The Australian Media Hall of Fame, Melbourne Press Club, n.d., https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/ article/william-lambie. 35. Baker, “William Lambie.”. 36. Reproduced in Mark Dapin, The Penguin Book of Australian War Writing (Camberwell, Victoria: Viking Press, 2011), 46–54. Lambie’s injury was covered extensively by the Sydney Morning Herald while, in contrast, The Bulletin satirised what it saw as excessive attention given to the wound—it was against the participation of New South Wales in the war. 37. Ian Van der Waag, “An Australian War Correspondent in Ladysmith: The Siege Report of Donald Macdonald of the Melbourne Argus,” Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 30, no. 1 (2012); Shirley Walker, “‘A Man Never Knows His Luck in South Africa’: Some Australian Literary Myths from the Boer War,” English in Africa 12, no. 2 (1985). 38. Patricia Clarke, “Australia’s First Female War Correspondent: Edith Dickenson at the Boer War,” in Reporting from the Wars 1850–2015:The Origins and Evolution of the War Correspondent, ed. Barry; Ibanez Turner, Daniel Barredo, and Steven James Grattan (Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press, 2018), 49. 39. Barbara R. Penny, “Australia’s Reactions to the Boer War—A study in Colonial Imperialism,” Journal of British Studies 7, no. 1 (1967): 115.

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

237

40. Donald Grant, “Hales, Alfred Arthur Greenwood (1860–1936),” in Australian Dictionary of Biography (Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1983/2006), https://adb.anu.edu. au/biography/hales-alfred-arthur-greenwood-6522. 41. A. G. (Arthur Greenwood) Hales, Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa, (1899–1900): Letters from the Front (London: Cassell and Company, 1900), 21. 42. Hales, Campaign Pictures, 22. 43. Hales, Campaign Pictures, 23. 44. See, for example, his poem, “A flag for Australia”: And the English Flag May Flutter and Wave/Where the World-Wide Oceans Toss/But the Flag the Australian Dies to Save/Is the Flag of the Southern Cross.”. 45. Walker, “A Man Never Knows his Luck.”. 46. Clement Semmler, The Banjo of the Bush: The Life and Times of A.B. Paterson (St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1974), 110. 47. Published in April 1890 in The Bulletin and in 1895 in A. B. Paterson, The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1895). 48. Walker, “A Man Never Knows his Luck,” 3. 49. Walker, “A Man Never Knows his Luck,” 5. 50. A.B. Paterson, Song of the Pen, A.B. (Banjo) Paterson: Complete Works 1901–1941, ed. Rosamund Campbell and Philippa Harvie (Sydney: Lansdowne Press, 1983), 594. 51. A.B. (Banjo) Paterson, “A Day Under Fire”, Argus, August 15, 1900. 52. William Dow, “Metabolizing Genres: American Poetry and Literary Journalism,” in The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, ed. Roberta Maguire and William Dow (London: Routledge, 2020), 416–33. 53. Dow, “Metabolizing Genres,” 416. 54. A.B. (Banjo) Paterson, “With French to Kimberley,” Sydney Morning Herald, September 29, 1900. 55. Gideon Haigh, “Donald Macdonald,” in The Australian Media Hall of Fame (Melbourne Press Club, n.d.), https://halloffame.melbournepressc lub.com/article/donald-macdonald. 56. Donald Macdonald, How We Kept the Flag Flying: The Siege of Ladysmith through Australian Eyes (London, New York, Melbourne: Ward, Lock, 1900), 189. 57. Macdonald, Flag Flying, 189. 58. See, for example, his articles: DA (Donald) Macdonald, “The Siege of Ladysmith: Some Stray Incidents,” Sydney Morning Herald, May 23, 1900; DA (Donald) Macdonald, “The Siege of Ladysmith: When the Town Was at Its Worst,” Sydney Morning Herald, May 21, 1900.

238

W. MCDONALD

59. Macdonald, Flag Flying, 247. 60. Van der Waag, “An Australian War Correspondent in Ladysmith: The Siege Report of Donald Macdonald of the Melbourne Argus,” 88–91. 61. Max Chamberlain, “Correspondents in the Boer War,” in The Australian Boer War Memorial, https://www.bwm.org.au/correspondents.php. 62. Haigh, “Donald Macdonald.”. 63. Hales, Campaign Pictures, 171. 64. Hales, Campaign Pictures, 175.

Bibliography Anderson, Fay, and Richard Trembath, eds. Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting, edited by Richard Trembath. Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing, 2011. Anonymous. Editorial. Argus, November 11, 1863. Baker, Mark. William Lambie. In The Australian Media Hall of Fame. Melbourne Press Club, n.d. https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/williamlambie. (Banjo) Paterson, A. B. “A Day Under Fire”, Argus, August 15, 1900. Bennett, Mary Montgomerie. Christison of Lammermoor. London: Alston Rivers, 1927. Bullard, Alice. Exile to Paradise: Savagery and Civilization in Paris and the South Pacific, 1790–1900. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 2000. Chamberlain, Max. Correspondents in the Boer War. In The Australian Boer War Memorial, n.d. https://www.bwm.org.au/correspondents.php. Clarke, Patricia. Australia’s First Female War Correspondent: Edith Dickenson at the Boer War. In Reporting from the Wars 1850– 2015:The Origins and Evolution of the War Correspondent, edited by Barry; Ibanez Turner, Daniel Barredo, Steven James Grattan, 39–62. Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press, 2018. Daley, Paul. The Australian War Memorial’s Intransigence on Depicting the Frontier Wars Speaks Louder Than Words. Guardian, Australia, October 17, 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/17/the-aus tralian-war-memorials-intransigence-on-depicting-the-frontier-wars-speaks-lou der-than-words. Dapin, Mark. The Penguin Book of Australian War Writing. Camberwell, Victoria: Viking Press, 2011. Dow, William. Metabolizing Genres: American Poetry and Literary Journalism. In The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, edited by Roberta Maguire and William Dow, 416–33. London: Routledge, 2020. Grant, Donald. Hales, Alfred Arthur Greenwood (1860–1936). In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian

10

LIFE IN THE TRENCHES: THE CHALLENGES OF REPORTING …

239

National University, 1983/2006. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/halesalfred-arthur-greenwood-6522. Griffiths, Tom. Hunters and Collectors: The Antiquarian Imagination in Australia. Cambridge, New York, Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Haigh, Gideon. Donald Macdonald. In The Australian Media Hall of Fame. Melbourne Press Club, n.d. https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/art icle/donald-macdonald. Hales, A. G. (Arthur Greenwood). Campaign Pictures of the War in South Africa, (1899–1900): Letters from the Front. London: Cassell and Company, 1900. James, John Stanley (Julian Thomas). Cannibals & Convicts: Notes of Personal Experiences in the Western Pacific. London, Melbourne: Cassell, 1887. ———. The War. Sydney Morning Herald, September 3, 1878. Kramer, Mark. Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists. Chap. Preface In Literary Journalism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction, edited by Mark Kramer, and Norman Sims. New York: Ballantyne, 1995. Macdonald, DA (Donald). The Siege of Ladysmith: Some Stray Incidents. Sydney Morning Herald, May 23, 1900a. ———. The Siege of Ladysmith: When the Town Was at Its Worst. Sydney Morning Herald, May 21, 1900b. Macdonald, Donald. How We Kept the Flag Flying: The Siege of Ladysmith through Australian Eyes. London, New York, Melbourne: Ward, Lock, 1900. McDonald, Willa. The Vagabond in New Caledonia. In The Vagabond Papers by John Stanley James, edited by Michael Cannon, xli–liv. Melbourne: Monash University Publishing, 2016. Mellor, Suzanne G. Willoughby, Howard (1839–1908). In Australian Dictionary of Biography. Canberra: National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, 1976. https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/willoughbyhoward-4862. Memorial, Australian War. Colonial Period, 1788–1901. Australians at War. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/atwar/colonial. The Pen & The Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents. Warfare History Network, n.d. Accessed 9 September, 2021. https://warfarehistoryn etwork.com/2016/06/09/the-pen-the-sword-a-brief-history-of-war-corres pondents/. Paterson, A. B. Song of the Pen, A.B. (Banjo) Paterson: Complete Works 1901–1941, edited by Rosamund Campbell, and Philippa Harvie. Sydney: Lansdowne Press, 1983. ———. The Man from Snowy River and Other Verses. Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1895. Paterson, A. B. (Banjo). With French to Kimberley. Sydney Morning Herald, September 29, 1900.

240

W. MCDONALD

Penny, Barbara R. Australia’s Reactions to the Boer War—A Study in Colonial Imperialism. Journal of British Studies 7, no. 1 (1967): 97–130. Perkins, Rachel. The Australian Wars. SBS - On Demand, 2022. https://www. sbs.com.au/ondemand/tv-series/the-australian-wars. Reynolds, Henry. Forgotten War. Sydney, Australia: NewSouth Publishing, 2013. ———. Friday Essay: It’s Time for a New Museum Dedicated to the Fighters of the Frontier Wars. The Conversation (February 19 2021). https://theconver sation.com/friday-essay-its-time-for-a-new-museum-dedicated-to-the-fightersof-the-frontier-wars-155299. Semmler, Clement. The Banjo of the Bush: The Life and Times of A.B. Paterson. St Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1974. Settler, A. The Waikato and Ngaruawahia, the Proposed New Capital of New Zealand. Auckland, 1863. Spurr, David. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993. Stanner, W.E.H. After the Dreaming. Podcast Audio. Boyer Lectures, 1968. https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/boyerlectures/pastboyer-lectures/4998888. Toth, Stephen A. Beyond Papillon: The French Overseas Penal Colonies, 18541952. Crime, History & Societies 13, no. 1 (2009): 153–55. Van der Waag, Ian. An Australian War Correspondent in Ladysmith: The Siege Report of Donald Macdonald of the Melbourne Argus. Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies 30, no. 1 (2012): 86–91. Victoria, State Library of Australian Colonial Forces and Family History: New Zealand Wars 1860–1864. Research Guides. https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/col onialforces/newzealandwars. Walker, Shirley. ‘A Man Never Knows His Luck in South Africa’: Some Australian Literary Myths from the Boer War. English in Africa 12, no. 2 (1985): 1–20. Willoughby, Howard. The War in New Zealand, Iii. Argus, March 23, 1864. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/rendition/nla.news-article57 46128.5.pdf?followup=5e2878cf66fbc793069feb532fa4d2cc. Willoughby, Howard. The New Zealand War: The Engagement at Rangariri. Argus, Saturday, December 12, 1863. https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/ rendition/nla.news-article5740845.5.pdf?followup=3303e5bc1df6b766d7 4b5c86a212b75c.

CHAPTER 11

Boer War Journalism: Sentimentality or the “Feel of the Facts”

Woman and starving child at a camp during the Boer War from Emily Hobhouse’s book The Brunt of the War and Where it Fell (Methuen, 1902). Courtesy of Rare Books and Special Collections, the University of Sydney Library © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_11

241

242

W. MCDONALD

There is nothing “nice” about war. The literary war journalist’s job is to bring home to readers the consequences of a conflict, frequently by including material that is sickening, degrading or horrifying. Because of this, as John Bak points out in relation to United States literary war journalism, sensationalism is a key tool of literary journalists. In skilled hands, when combined with irony and understatement, it successfully conveys negative emotions and facts without becoming “newsporn”. Instead, it “season[s] the story in a way that whets a reader’s appetite”.1 The corollary of sensationalism is sentimentality. Because of the extreme emotions aroused by war, there is a similar danger that the literary journalist is driven to overuse positive emotionality. Possibly, the greatest challenge to the writer of fine literary war journalism is the need to tread the line between shocking sensationalism and manipulative sentimentality, aiming instead to convey the “feel of the facts” effectively through the judicious use of telling detail and understatement. Most of the Australian journalists were called home by October 1900 following the taking of the Boer capitals of Pretoria and Bloemfontein by Lord Kitchener’s forces.2 Death and disease had decimated their ranks, public interest in the war was waning, and the cost of keeping the press in South Africa was unjustifiably high.3 The Australian troops nevertheless stayed on, fighting the Boers during the guerrilla phase of the war that continued till Kitchener forced a surrender with his “scorched earth policies“. The British burnt farms, slaughtered livestock and imprisoned Boer civilians, mostly women and children, in concentration camps where 26,000 people died, largely from starvation and disease.4 Africans were held in separate camps to prevent them helping the Boers, resulting in many thousands more deaths. While the figures are harder to come by for native deaths, possibly more than another 20,000 died, by far the majority of whom were children.5 Two Australian women—Edith Dickenson and Agnes Macready— reported on the war long after the Australian forces left. Edith Dickenson was appointed special correspondent for the Adelaide Advertiser. Although kept from the front because she was a woman, and heavily censored by the British military, she covered in her later reporting the dreadful conditions inside the concentration camps. Agnes Macready wrote for Sydney’s Catholic Press, using her position as a nurse to report on the consequences of war she encountered in the field hospitals. The women filed reports that communicated some of the brutality and pain they encountered without lapsing into extreme sensationalism or mawkish

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

243

sentimentality. W.T. Reay’s emotive piece, “The Highland Brigade buries its dead”, provides an interesting contrast. It has become a classic of Boer War reporting, yet the highly romantic language used by Reay arguably makes it a less appealing piece to modern readers.

“From a Woman’s Standpoint”: Edith Dickenson Edith Dickenson, by employing understatement and concentrating on the small details of the scenes before her to convey emotion, provided some of the best literary journalism produced in the war. She made three trips to South Africa as a correspondent for the Adelaide Advertiser. When she first arrived there in March, 1990, she was one of five correspondents The Advertiser employed directly or shared with other newspapers.6 She had caught the eye of the proprietor, Sir John Langford Bonython, with her travel writing.7 Over six months between September 1899 and March 1990, she had twelve articles published in The Advertiser from her travels through Burma, India, Ceylon, Java and Singapore, which the newspaper published as a book in 1900, What I saw in India and the East.8 Bonython appointed Dickenson as Boer War correspondent before she had even returned from Java and commissioned her to write on the war from a woman’s standpoint.9 While she made it her mission to visit the women and children imprisoned in the camps, she took a wider perspective from the beginning. Remarkably for a woman in that era, her stories were run under her own byline in the news section of the paper. Dickenson’s first trip was mostly spent in Natal and the Orange River Colony, when she visited Ladysmith, Colenso and surrounding areas which had been damaged by both the Boers during the long siege and the actions of the British when the town was relieved in February 1990. Her travel to South Africa was risky. Not only was the front a dangerous place to be, but diseases of many kinds were rife. In May 1900, before she reached Ladysmith, she was forced to recuperate after a bout of malaria or dengue fever at a sanatorium in Pietermaritzburg.10 Her report from there tells matter-of-factly about the problems enduring in Ladysmith of getting light, nutritious food for those who were sick. A nurse newly arrived from that town told her “numbers of convalescents died of sheer starvation, being unable to digest horse flesh and biscuit”.11 Dickenson also wrote of her tour of Grey’s Hospital, one of several hospital tours she undertook, where she inspected the wards, including the “native ward”.

244

W. MCDONALD

A month later, still travelling on her own, she made it to Ladysmith despite continuing tough restrictions on access because of the lack of supplies, unsanitary conditions and high rates of illness. Dickenson’s editor wrote she was the only woman allowed into the town besides Lady Randolph Churchill.12 Writing for the senses, she reported from her hotel room that she could hear the steady “boom, boom, boom” of war only fourteen miles away, while from the top of a nearby hill she could see the smoke from the Boer artillery.13 She wrote revealingly of the caves along the riverside where women and children lived out the siege; some were furnished with trappings from home, but others had few comforts.14 On the train ride into the area, she heard of families that had intermarried—Boer and British—now riven by war. Without the need for over-statement to arouse emotion, she reported seeing the wreckage of the bombed bridge over the Tugela River; destroyed houses; dead animals “in agonised distorted positions”; and “the debris of war – saddles, harness, biscuit tins, haversacks, mess tins, clothing”. The details she included told the story. And all the while, “the sickening smell of decaying flesh” was “painfully evident even from the train”.15 As John Hartsock observes, literary journalists are well placed to humanise war for readers because they can include the everyday details of disrupted life that are the backdrop to war. As he posits, literary journalists, by focusing on the phenomenal world—negotiating “between the testimony of our vital senses – the aesthetics of experience – and the murky ambitions of abstract consciousness”—attempt to avoid the idealisations associated with glorifying war.16 The description of the state of a soldier’s feet or of a white flag flapping on a makeshift line can communicate another layer of meaning beyond the battle facts contained in a dry news report. Dickenson excelled at including telling details. On the hills near Tugela Falls, she came across the graves of both Boer and British soldiers. Those of the Boer were shallow. Some bodies were simply covered hastily with rocks from which limbs protruded. There she saw the body of a Boer woman who had been fighting in the trenches. Contributing to the debate back in England about whether Boer women were actively fighting in the war, she wrote: A human head almost fleshless, but with the long black hair streaming over the jacket behind, and the coarsely made skirt showing plainly the sex of the dead. It was a woman’s body. Near it lay a broken umbrella and a portion of straw hat….17

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

245

The scene is made all the more chilling in Dickenson’s hands by the inclusion of the dead woman’s everyday belongings.

Refugee Camps or Concentration Camps? Dickenson left for England in July 1900 but returned to South Africa in late 1901 to report for the Advertiser on the camps for Boer women and children run by the British. The British welfare campaigner Emily Hobhouse, who founded the Distress Fund for South African Women and Children, had been in South Africa earlier in the year to distribute funds to the camps. After she reported back to the Fund on the appalling conditions—Hobhouse estimated fifty children were dying each day—she was refused permission to re-enter the country by the military authorities. Dickenson was commissioned by The Advertiser to report on the true state of the camps, which were represented by the military as “refugee camps”.18 She visited Merebank, Pietermaritzburg, Voksrust, the Irene Camp near Pretoria, and Bethulie. Her husband Dr. Augustus Dickenson, who accompanied her on this second trip, took a position at Bethel tending the sick and dying, and she saw him there briefly amid her travels. She was refused permission to enter Bloemfontein, from which she drew her own conclusions about its conditions.19 Dickenson’s reports echoed Hobhouse’s findings. She exposed the misery of the “prison camps”, including the disruption to families, overcrowding, poor sanitation, inadequate access to freshwater and food supplies, and the consequences of the resulting diseases.20 Hobhouse would quote extensively from them in her book The Brunt of the War and Where it Fell.21 Dickenson interviewed people wherever she went, and her articles are full of the stories of the women she encountered, just as much as the scenes she observed. One of her articles describes a visit in October 1901 to a relatively new camp at Merebank, close to Durban. The commandant asked for her pass and then offered to send one of his men around with her as a guide. She declined, commenting she would readily find people who spoke English who would offer to translate for others.22 No doubt she also realised she would see and hear much more if she was on her own rather than with a soldier. As Dickenson walked around the camp, women crowded around her, holding their sick children, hoping she could help. A doctor advised her there was a bout of measles. Without lapsing into “newsporn” or sentimentality, she wrote:

246

W. MCDONALD

Soon sad evidence was brought before me. Four boys, bearing a stretcher, passed and stopped at a tent. A woman, sobbing bitterly, stepped out and laid a little bundle wrapped in a railway rug on it. As the boys returned, I met them and saw that their burden was that of a young child, perhaps about 5 years old, who had just died, the second the poor mother had lost in a fortnight.23

Another woman sat at the entrance to her tent clasping her dying child, her two sick boys lying on an oilcloth near her. She had already lost two children, one the previous week and one the week before that.24 At “Maritzburg” (Pietermaritzburg) camp, Dickenson encountered some Boer women residents who were reasonably cheerful and contented because of a two-tiered arrangement that provided better conditions to the wives of children and men who surrendered. Their husbands were allowed paying work in town, while their families were given privileges such as school for the children beyond the camp boundaries. The families of men who were still fighting were punished with tough restrictions.25 In this camp too, Dickenson saw people suffering intensely. Wherever she travelled, Dickenson found the cost of basic necessities such as food prohibitive, but in Maritzburg even the cost of infant coffins was beyond the reach of many, with women having to borrow the money if they could so that they could bury their children. She wrote about one mother who had been forced to leave her children with their grandmother on the promise she soon would see them again. After seven months, she had no idea where they were and was unable to contact them. She heard of another woman whose husband had to leave her as he was commandeered to fight. She died in the camp giving birth. The child survived and was adopted by another woman who had lost her own two children. The father, at the front, had yet to be informed of either event.26 On the way to Pretoria, Dickenson learned of a “nurse” at Volksrust near the Natal border who was unqualified. The dangers of untrained and poor nursing were a problem she had raised the previous year following a visit to the Rondebosch military hospital in her final article from South Africa before returning to England. Angered, she attributed some of the deaths in the war to inadequately trained medical staff rather than wounds or disease.27 In early 1902, Dickenson received permission to visit Bethulie camp where her husband was working. He was not her only relative in South Africa. Her twin sons from her first marriage were in the British forces, while her two younger children had accompanied her and were staying in

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

247

Cape Town. Other relatives, highly placed in the military, were influential in getting her into the camps (which she was now openly describing as “concentration camps”) and possibly in enabling some of her reports to slip through the censors. Unfortunately, while Dickenson carried her camera with her on all her trips, the censoring of photographs by the military was strict and her pictures do not seem to have survived.28

Censorship of Mismanagement Dickenson had heard the town of Bethulie could be a “hot, dusty and miserable” place.29 It lived up to its reputation. She wrote of the “terrible mortality” caused by the camp having “every fault possible”. The conditions in the camps were so dire, overstatement was hardly possible. Contaminated water and overcrowding meant 1,200 of the camp’s 4,000 residents died over a period of six to seven months from measles, whooping cough and enteric fever. Dickenson described “debility and atrophy” among the mothers and marasmus in the children; some of the people she saw were “really mere skeletons”. She complained about the poor administration by the previous superintendent, whose “qualifications for the post consisted in being a great sportsman, and having been the means of recovering some officer’s valuable dog, which had been lost”.30 She told Emily Hobhouse that she had written more but that a large part of her article had been cut by the censors before it reached The Advertiser.31 This was not the first time Dickenson had complained in her stories of poor leadership by the British officers. In an earlier article, she wrote: My own opinion, gathered from ‘all sorts and conditions of men,’ is that our army, though splendidly manned, is badly officered. Too many of the young British officers are in the style of the ‘Gaiety Girl.’ ‘And what do you do?’ they are asked? ‘Oh, we play polo,’ is the reply. If each subaltern on joining had to pass a certain time in the ranks before being allowed to take any command he would not only learn a great deal of soldiering, but he would have more sympathy with his men. An officer’s wife assured me that several unpopular officers had been shot by their own men, and it was also reported that an officer, hated by the ‘Tommies’ for his tyranny in small matters, was dropped into the Modder as he was being carried wounded on a stretcher.32

248

W. MCDONALD

Although she did not mention her husband, Augustus, in her article on Bethulie, Dickenson spoke presciently of the strain on the overworked doctors who “either fell ill, and sometimes died themselves or resigned their hopeless task”.33 Augustus would not survive his time in the camp. He died in March 1902 and was buried there.34 Dickenson stayed in South Africa for a short while, collecting her two younger children from Cape Town, but by June was ill herself in hospital in England. She returned to South Africa in August with her children, apparently to report further, but with the intention of erecting a tombstone for Augustus.35 She wrote one last article for The Advertiser before falling gravely ill again herself. She died on 17 February 1903 near Cape Town at the age of fifty-two.36

News from the Field Hospital: Agnes Macready Agnes Macready also wrote moving literary journalism from the Boer War that avoided sensationalism and sentimentality. Her literary journalism appeared in Sydney’s Catholic Press under the byline “Arrah Luen”. It was republished extensively in Britain and the United States, earning “for the young paper a world-wide reputation”, according to her editor Tighe Ryan, who would later write that her work was “among the best here or in the old world”.37 Macready’s protestant family had migrated to Australia from Ireland when she was twelve, and she converted to Catholicism as a young woman. An experienced nurse with a mission to work at the front, she left for South Africa two weeks after war was declared and arrived not only before Edith Dickenson but before any Australian troops which, according to the historian Jeannine Baker, makes her Australia’s first female war correspondent.38 At this time, the paper was only two years old and had already featured Macready’s poems and articles.39 Father Francis Timoney, one of the paper’s founders, would also send literary journalism back from the Boer War after he became the volunteer chaplain with the NSW Citizens Bushmen in the Third Contingent that sailed from Australia.40 He had originally come to Australia from Fermanagh, Northern Ireland, in 1878, to become inspector of Catholic schools.41 The Catholic Press had a more questioning outlook than most of the metropolitan newspapers whose proprietors were of English or Scottish descent and which took copy directly from British correspondents and British newspapers. The Catholic Press denounced them as “jingo organs”.42 Far from being unreservedly patriotic, Macready and

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

249

Timoney were disturbed by the violence and suffering they encountered in South Africa. They saw blame and honour on both sides. Macready was initially rebuffed by the military. She paid her own way to South Africa and arrived with letters of recommendation from the NSW Premier William Lyne, Cardinal Moran and “the leading medical men of Sydney and Melbourne”,43 but they made little difference. As Jeannine Baker points out, military nursing in Australia was in its infancy, while the British Army Medical Service was strongly prejudiced against using nurses in hospitals except as limited supervisors of orderlies.44 Eventually, Dickenson was advised to try at Pietermaritzburg where she was immediately put in charge of a ward at Fort Napier Military Hospital. Macready would go on to serve in military hospitals in Ladysmith, Escourt, Wynburg and Pretoria, and in a prison camp for Boers in Simon’s Town. She treated men who fought at Spion Kop, Colenso, Vaal Kraatz and Pieter’s Hill, writing, “Whilst applying wet dressings or dry dressings to the wounds, so numerous as to be commonplace, I get a glimpse of the battlefield where no woman’s face is seen”.45 In her first “letter” for the Catholic Press , Macready wrote that before she left Australia, she had been “dazzled by the glory of war”. She downplayed her journalism, writing: “Of course I see with a woman’s eyes, and my point of view is limited”.46 Like Dickenson, she took a broad view in her articles, commenting frequently on the progress of the war but always through the concrete details she observed and anecdotes she recorded from her nursing. She wrote of jam sent by the British military to the hospitals, the flavour of which was “a constant surprise packet”,47 of the “set, stony expression of unutterable grief” on the face of a woman watching her husband taken by train as a British prisoner of war48 and of the injuries to her patients by the ammunition used by both the Boers and the British.49 Macready was an engaging writer who had a talent for using juxtaposition rather than overstatement to draw attention to the paradoxes and tragic absurdities of war. For example, in her article of 3 February 1900, she writes: And into this life, filled with strange sights and sounds, Christmas Day suddenly appears at hand. In a shop at Maritzburg Christmas cards are displayed, bearing the message of ‘peace and goodwill on earth’, while next door pieces of shell from blood-red Colenso are exhibited on a heart-shaped drapery of blue plush. Children press their faces against the

250

W. MCDONALD

windowpane, behind which a waxen Santa Claus stands amongst lovely dolls, while a company of stretcher bearers march past to the railway station to receive the sick and the dying … Signs of peace and signs of war everywhere. Then one is apt to grow dazed, for there can be no answer to the riddles of today.50

Macready noticed the small details, using the particular to draw broader conclusions while writing compassionately about the young men in her care: Here, where the sick and wounded pour in, in their hour of need, the loved ones at home are not forgotten. The photo of wife and child are stowed somewhere in the kit, to be looked at in secret, and a boyish Gordon Highlander blushes as he folds away carefully a piece of Transvaal money bearing Kruger’s head, for that piece of money is destined to be worn as a brooch or buckle by a sweetheart far away in England when the Transvaal is no longer an independent State. There are red-letter days, when a home mail comes in, bringing news of the absent, and there is a certain day when a Major steps into each ward and reads a message of sympathy from the Queen. ‘What is that he says,’ murmurs a poor fellow, turning his head listlessly on the pillow. ‘Ah, well, I wish she had sent us somethin’ good to eat,’ for his soul longs for the flesh pots of Egypt, and words of sympathy from the Queen under the circumstances are but as dry husks …51

But Macready’s empathy was not limited to those fighting for the British. At the end of February, she wrote in emotive language that skirts sentimentality but does not finally give in to it: [B]eing a woman I feel that I want to cry, for it does not fall to my lot to see any of the ‘glory of war’; it is mine only to look upon the maimed limbs, the ghastly wounds, the suffering, the after results of an engagement be it a victory or a defeat. And being a woman I feel that I want to cry, too, for the Dutch woman on her lonely farm beyond the veldt, whose grey-haired husband and little son, scarce strong enough to hold the rifle, died together in the trenches yesterday morning. For Rachael is weeping for her children on both sides of the sea.52

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

251

Sentimentality and War: W.T. Reay Macready intends to stir the emotions. She wants the reader to share some of her feelings about this war. She uses detail, symbolism and understatement, avoiding cheap sensationalism and sentimentality, even though her subject matter could easily lead to both in the hands of a less skilled writer. This holds true for much of the better Australian literary journalism on the war. An interesting exception is some of the writing of W.T. Reay. Having joined the Victorian Mounted Rifles in 1886, Reay travelled with the first Australian contingent to South Africa, leaving in October 1899. He agreed to file copy for the Herald and the South Australian Register. When he returned home, he published his book Australians in War (1900). It includes a piece called “The Highland Brigade buries its dead” which has become a classic of colonial war reporting: In a separate grave, at the head of a long, shallow trench, the body of General Wauchope is laid, in sight of and facing the foe. The chaplain advances, and the solemn service for the dead is recited in a clear and markedly Scotch voice, while all bow their heads and either listen or ponder. A grief-stricken kinsman’s quivering hand drops earth upon the body at the words, “Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” and the grave of the General is quickly filled in. There, beside the trench, already lie the corpses of fifty officers and men … Once more the chaplain steps forward, and a new funeral service is commenced. Again great, powerful men weep. Some grow faint, some pray, some curse. “Oh, God! Oh, God!” Is the cry which comes from bursting hearts as comrades are recognised, and soil is sprinkled over them by hard, rough hands, which tremble now as they never trembled in the face of a foe. Then the burial parties get to work, gently as a sweet woman tucks the bedclothes round her sleeping child. The soft soil falls kindly upon the shreds of humanity beneath. Men cease to weep, and catch something of the “rapture of repose” of which a poet has sung. Mother Earth has claimed her own, and the brave are sleeping their last sleep in her kindly embrace. Again, the dirge of the pipes, and the sweet strains of “Lochaber no more” fill the evening air. The Highland Brigade is burying its dead.

Like Macready, Reay wants his readers to be swept up in the narrative; he wants them to share his grief as he witnesses the scene and the sorrows of the people he is writing about. However, he also opts for overstatement and strong emotion towards the end of the story that rings uncomfortably sentimental to modern ears.

252

W. MCDONALD

The Difficulties of Writing About Emotions Sentimentality was a term of approval in the eighteenth century for literature displaying feelings. A reaction against the rationalism of the Age of Enlightenment, it represented a refined emotional viewpoint, closely aligned with moral value.53 It was only from about the 1860s onwards that its reputation began to fall as the term came to stand for fiction that was emotionally manipulative and inauthentic.54 Oscar Wilde famously criticised Dickens for his sentimentality, reportedly saying: “One must have a heart of stone to read the death of Little Nell without laughing”.55 The question of sentimentality has continued to vex theorists ever since, with its use in the twentieth century becoming questionable not only aesthetically, but also ethically. I.A. Richards was one of the first critics to link sentimentality with both ethics and aesthetics. He argued it arose from either inhibition on the part of the writer where they wrote with too narrow an emotional register (e.g. seeing only innocence in childhood or camaraderie in war), or as fear on the part of the reader who distrusts emotional excess.56 Others followed, seeing sentimentality as a failure on the part of the writer of both skill and morality. Mark Tanner, for example, says sentimentality involves self-deception and dishonesty, as well as a sense of illicit pleasure.57 Mark Jefferson similarly thought the sentimental artist fell prey to self-deception, oversimplifying their beliefs and misplacing their idealism.58 Marcia Muelder Eaton condemns sentimental artworks because they fail to notice or communicate “the very nuances that are often required if one is to make correct ethical assessments”.59 She says that Little Nell’s death is sentimental not only because of the stock metaphors and clichés Dickens employed, but because he coupled them with an unrealistic picture of children as unfailingly good and of death as without suffering.60 Recent feminist analyses have drawn connections between the rise of novels written by women in the nineteenth century and the fall into disfavour of sentimentality. They argue that the examination of emotion and affect in relationship is the hallmark of women’s literature, and that it is no coincidence that sentimentality fell out of favour in the nineteenth century as women writers became more numerous and more prominent.61 From the late 1970s and early 1980s, a number of writers have acknowledged the difficulty of writing about emotion and speaking out in favour of sentiment, if not sentimentality. In 1978, Roland Barthes, in A Lover’s Discourse, pointed to the difficulty of writing about deep

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

253

emotion: “To try to write love is to confront the muck of language: that region of hysteria where language is both too much and too little, excessive … and impoverished”.62 A year later, the novelist John Irving, writing in the New York Times , emphasised the connection between writing that emotionally engages the reader—which he saw as writing about people and their most heartfelt concerns—and writing that matters. “A short story about a four-course meal from the point of view of a fork will never be sentimental; it may never matter very much to us, either”.63 Leslie Jamieson recently urged us, “not to become so preening and protective of our rational, modern selves that we end up snickering indiscriminately at any non-ironic appeal to human emotion”.64 Jamieson and Irving also argue that beneath our distrust of sentimentality is our fear of commonality—that we are just like everyone else or that we tell stories just like everyone else, using predictable ideas, banalities and clichés of expression. It is the commonality of experience, after all, that touches the reader. Severin Schroeder points out not every “stylized or idealised representation in literature” should be dismissed pejoratively as sentimental.65 He argues Dickens’s A Christmas Carol is meant to work at the level of fairy tale or myth rather than being realistic, which helps explain its enduring popularity.66

Emotional Engagement or Sentimentality? As we have seen, the favoured term for emotion in writing in literary journalism is “empathy”, or “the ability to imagine and understand the thoughts, perspective, and emotions of another person”.67 In this theoretical context, it is interesting to return to Reay’s article to question whether, in the context of his day, he is writing with empathy or has lapsed into sentimentality. If the latter, then does sentimentality compromise the value of his work? When Reay uses the simile of the mother tucking her child into bed, or personifies Mother Nature, he risks sounding to the modern ear lachrymose and indulgent. There are many reasons to justify a turn to affect in the writing of literary journalists. Firstly, they do not write with the freedom of a novelist, nor with the constraints of conventional journalism. They reach for a rendering of experience that lies outside what is offered by the other two forms. Like the other literary journalists, Reay was attempting to find words for a scene he personally witnessed, the emotional resonances of which would have been next to impossible to convey accurately to readers going about their ordinary lives safely on the

254

W. MCDONALD

other side of the ocean. It is possible that Reay found his own reaction to the scene emotionally overwhelming, lapsing into clichéd simile and personification as a way of distancing himself and his own emotions. At the same time, Reay was writing in the context of Victorian literature with its greater tolerance of emotionality in writing—and he would have been well aware of his audiences as newspaper readers who may not have had the same education or cultivated tastes as the readers of a literary novel. It is also clear Reay was attempting to write at a mythic level, not just to file a report on this specific event—the mass burial of soldiers after this battle—but on the larger, enduring theme of loss in war and the grief felt by soldiers and their loved ones. The work of the Boer War journalists demonstrates the challenge literary journalists face in conveying the “felt lives” of their subjects, or what Mark Kramer calls the “feel of the facts”.68 Ultimately, the job of the literary journalists is to balance the writer’s subjectivity with the demands of creating enough distance from the scene to give readers a sense of accuracy and credibility, while drawing the reader emotionally into the story. Writing about war, possibly the most difficult of all reporting jobs, demands sensitivity, skill and discipline. Ultimately, the sensibilities of the literary journalists, and the level of sophistication they bring to their craft—including the deployment of understatement and detail—will determine how successful they are in avoiding unhelpful emotionalism, including overt sensationalism and sentimentality, while still conveying a sense of the conflict around them.

Notes 1. John S. Bak, “Of Troops and Tropes: US Literary War Journalism from the Civil War to the War on Terror,” in The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, ed. Roberta Maguire and William Dow (New York and London: Routledge, 2020), 235–236. 2. Fay Anderson and Richard Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting (Carlton, Victoria: Melbourne University Publishing, 2011), 33–34. 3. Anderson and Trembath, eds., Witnesses to War, 33–34. 4. South African History Online, “Women and Children in White Concentration Camps During the Anglo-Boer War, 1900–1902,” 21 March 2011.

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

255

5. South African History Online, “Black Concentration Camps During the Anglo-Boer War 2, 1900–1902,” 21 March 2011, https://www.sahist ory.org.za/article/black-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-21900-1902. 6. Patricia Clarke, “Australia’s First Female War Correspondent: Edith Dickenson at the Boer War,” in Reporting from the Wars 1850– 2015: The Origins and Evolution of the War Correspondent, ed. Turner Barry, Daniel Barredo Ibanez, and Steven James Grattan (Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press, 2018), 40. Patricia Clarke, Bold Types: How Australia’s First Women Journalists Blazed a Trail (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2022), 67. 7. For interesting biographical background on Dickenson, see Jeannine Baker, Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam (Sydney, NSW: NewSouth Publishing, 2015); Clarke, Bold Types. 8. Clarke, Bold Types, 66. 9. Anonymous, “A Lady War Correspondent,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 20 February 1900, 4. 10. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “In Pietermaritzburg, The Indolent Kaffir, A Quiet and Peaceful Town,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 19 May 1900, 11. 11. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “In Pietermaritsburg, Nurses from Ladysmith, A Patriotic Meeting, Visit to Hospital, Boer Women in the Trenches,” Advertiser (Adelaide), 1 June 1900, 7. 12. Anonymous, “General News: ‘The Advertiser’ War News,” The Advertiser, 12 May 1900, 6. 13. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “In Ladysmith, Difficulties Overcome, Brother Fighting Brother, A Sound of Distant Guns,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 May 1900, 10. 14. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “Battle Horrors, Corpses Unburied, Women in the Trenches, Some Gruesome Spectacles,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 9 June 1900, 11. 15. Dickenson, “In Ladysmith.” 16. John C. Hartsock, Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016), 1, https://muse.jhu. edu/book/48954. 17. Dickenson, “Battle Horrors.” 18. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “Boer Women and Children, Life in Refugee Camps, Really Prisons, A Pathetic Account,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 8 November 1901, 6. 19. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “Bloemfontein, The Refuge Camp, Kaffirs Garrisoning Block Houses,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 26 April 1902, 9. 20. See, for example, Edith C.M. Dickenson, “A Refuge Camp, Pitiful Stories, The Transvaal Still Closed,” Advertiser (Adelaide), 30 November 1901, 4. Dickenson, “Boer Women and Children.”

256

W. MCDONALD

21. Clarke, “Edith Dickenson,” 53. See also, “Special Correspondent Edith Dickenson,” The Australian Boer War Memorial, 2010, http://www. bwm.org.au/soldiers/Edith_Dickenson.php; Clarke, Bold Types. 22. Dickenson, “Boer Women and Children.” 23. Dickenson, “Boer Women and Children.” 24. Dickenson, “Boer Women and Children.” 25. Dickenson, “A Refuge Camp.” 26. Dickenson, “A Refuge Camp.” 27. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “Pretoria, An Interesting Journey, A Refugee Camp Visited,” Advertiser (Adelaide), 25 December 1901, 6. 28. Clarke, “Edith Dickenson,” 52–53. 29. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “The Orange River Colony, A Fortified Village, Bethulie Camp,” Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 April 1902, 4. 30. Dickenson, “Bethulie.” 31. Emily Hobhouse, The Brunt of the War and Where It Fell (London: Methuen & Company, 1902); Clarke, “Edith Dickenson,” 48. Clarke, Bold Types, 73. 32. Edith C.M. Dickenson, “Provisioning Ladysmith, A Stream of Soldiers, Kindness of Sir George White, Sympathy with the Boers,” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 May 1900, 10. 33. Dickenson, “Bethulie.” 34. Clarke, “Edith Dickenson,” 57–58. Clarke, Bold Types, 75. 35. Clarke, “Edith Dickenson,” 57. Clarke, Bold Types, 75. 36. Clarke, “Edith Dickenson,” 58. See also the report of her death in, Anonymous, “The Week,” The Adelaide Chronicle, 28 March 1903, 25–26. Clarke, Bold Types, 75–76. 37. Tighe Ryan, “In Natal,” Catholic Press, 26 May 1900. 38. Baker, Women War Reporters, 8. 39. Anonymous, “‘Arrah Luen’ at the War,” Catholic Press, 20 January 1900, 3. 40. Tom Johnstone, Tony Larnach Jones, and David Deasey, “Padre Francis Timoney: Francis Timoney—Fighting Padre and Whistle Blower,” The Australian Boer War Memorial, n.d., https://www.bwm.org.au/soldiers/ Francis_Timoney.php. 41. Johnstone, Larnach Jones, and Deasey, “Timoney.” 42. As Jeannine Baker notes, most of the metropolitan dailies at the time were supportive of the war, being “predominantly owned and managed by middle-class businessmen of English and Scottish descent,” frequently running pieces taken directly from the British press and its correspondents. The Catholic Press was more radical, even than the other Catholic paper in Sydney Freeman’s Journal which was owned and edited by middleclass, local laymen. While the Advocate and Austral Light in Melbourne were both pro-Boer, Austral Light condemned Donald MacDonald (a

11

43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55.

56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63.

64.

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

257

Catholic) for his pro-British reportage for the Argus, which it described as “melodramatic blood-and-thunder business of kissing bayonets and swearing revenge.” Baker, Women War Reporters, 15–16. Anonymous, “‘Arrah Luen’ at the War.” Baker, Women War Reporters, 11–12. Agnes Macready, “With Wounded Tommy Atkins: ‘Will Australia Ever Become a Seat of War?’,” Catholic Press, 21 April 1900. Agnes Macready, “‘Arrah Luen’ at the War, Her First Letter, The First Australian Nurse to Go to the Front, Her Experiences,” Catholic Press, 20 January 1900. Agnes Macready, “A Refugee Cook,” Catholic Press, 28 July 1900, 25. Agnes Macready, “In the Space of Twenty Minutes, Sad South Africa,” Catholic Press, 21 July 1900. Agnes Macready, “After the Red Battle of Tugela! When the Wounded Came In, Heartbreaking Scenes,” Catholic Press, 24 February 1900. Agnes Macready, “After the Battles: Among the Wounded, Scenes at Maritzburg,” Catholic Press, 3 February 1900. Macready, “After the Battles.” Macready, “Tugela.” Hartsock, Aesthetics, 113. Carolyn Burdett, “Is Empathy the End of Sentimentality?,” Journal of Victorian Culture 16, no. 2 (2011): 259. Marcia Muelder Eaton, “Laughing at the Death of Little Nell: Sentimental Art and Sentimental People,” American Philosophical Quarterly 26, no. 4 (1989): 269. I.A. Richards, Practical Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1929), 242–54. Michael Tanner, “Sentimentality,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77 (1976–1977). Mark Jefferson, “What Is Wrong with Sentimentality?,” Mind 92 (1983). Eaton, “Laughing,” 279. Eaton, “Laughing,” 276. See, for example, Sue Campbell, “Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression,” Being Dismissed, Hypatia 9, no. 3 (1994): 59. Roland Barthes, A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments, Trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1978), 99. John Irving, “In Defense of Sentimentality,” The New York Times: Books, 25 November 1979, https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes. com/books/97/06/15/lifetimes/irving-sentimentality.html. E.V. De Cleyre, “On Sentimentality: Zoe Heller, Leslie Jamison, Nate Pritts, & Mary Ruefle,” Ploughshares, June 6, 2016, https://blog.psh ares.org/on-sentimentality-zoe-heller-leslie-jamison-nate-pritts-mary-rue fle-2/.

258

W. MCDONALD

65. Severin Schroeder, “Sentimentality as an Aesthetic Flaw,” in Aesthetics and Life: Essays in Honor of Jean Pierre Cometti, ed. C. Carmona and J. Levinson (Italy: Mimesis International, 2019), 9. 66. Schroeder, “Sentimentality as an Aesthetic Flaw.” 67. As defined in the Oxford Reference dictionary. 68. Mark Kramer, “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists,” in Literary Jouranlism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction, ed. Mark Kramer and Norman Sims (New York: Ballantyne, 1995).

Bibliography Anderson, Fay, and Richard Trembath, eds. Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting. Edited by Richard Trembath. Carlton, VIC: Melbourne University Publishing, 2011. Anonymous. “A Lady War Correspondent.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 20 February 1900. ———. “‘Arrah Luen’ at the War.” Catholic Press, 20 January 1900. ———. “General News: ‘The Advertiser’ War News.” The Advertiser, 12 May 1900. ———. “The Week.” The Adelaide Chronicle, 28 March 1903, 25–26. Baines, John. “Background to the Boer War.” The Australian Boer War Memorial, 2010. https://www.bwm.org.au/warcourse/Background.php. Bak, John S. “Of Troops and Tropes: Us Literary War Journalism from the Civil War to the War on Terror.” In The Routledge Companion to American Literary Journalism, edited by Roberta Maguire and William Dow, 235–55. New York and London: Routledge, 2020. Baker, Jeannine. Australian Women War Reporters: Boer War to Vietnam. Sydney, NSW: NewSouth Publishing, 2015. Barthes, Roland. A Lover’s Discourse: Fragments. Translated by Richard Howard. New York: Hill and Wang, 1978. Burdett, Carolyn. “Is Empathy the End of Sentimentality?” Journal of Victorian Culture 16, no. 2 (2011): 259–74. Campbell, Sue. “Being Dismissed: The Politics of Emotional Expression.” Being Dismissed. Hypatia 9, no. 3 (1994): 46–65. Clarke, Patricia. “Australia’s First Female War Correspondent: Edith Dickenson at the Boer War.” In Reporting from the Wars 1850–2015: The Origins and Evolution of the War Correspondent, edited by Barry Turner, Daniel Barredo Ibanez, and Steven James Grattan, 39-62. Wilmington, Delaware: Vernon Press, 2018. ———. Bold Types: How Australia’s First Women Journalists Blazed a Trail. Canberra: National Library of Australia, 2022.

11

BOER WAR JOURNALISM: SENTIMENTALITY OR THE “FEEL …

259

De Cleyre, E.V. “On Sentimentality: Zoe Heller, Leslie Jamison, Nate Pritts, & Mary Ruefle,” Ploughshares, 6 June 2016. https://blog.pshares.org/on-sen timentality-zoe-heller-leslie-jamison-nate-pritts-mary-ruefle-2/. Dickenson, Edith C.M. “A Refuge Camp, Pitiful Stories, the Transvaal Still Closed.” Advertiser (Adelaide), 30 November 1901. ———. “Battle Horrors, Corpses Unburied, Women in the Trenches, Some Gruesome Spectacles.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 9 June 1900. ———. “Bloemfontein, the Refuge Camp, Kaffirs Garrisoning Block Houses.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 26 April 1902. ———. “Boer Women and Children, Life in Refugee Camps, Really Prisons, a Pathetic Account.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 8 November 1901, 6. ———. “In Ladysmith, Difficulties Overcome, Brother Fighting Brother, a Sound of Distant Guns.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 May 1900, 6. ———. “In Pietermaritzburg, Nurses from Ladysmith, a Patriotic Meeting, Visit to Hospital, Boer Women in the Trenches.” Advertiser (Adelaide), 1 June 1900. ———. “In Pietermaritzburg, the Indolent Kaffir, a Quiet and Peaceful Town.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 19 May 1900. ———. “Pretoria, an Interesting Journey, a Refugee Camp Visited.” Advertiser (Adelaide), 25 December 1901. ———. “Provisioning Ladysmith, a Stream of Soldiers, Kindness of Sir George White, Sympathy with the Boers.” The Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 May 1900, 10. ———. “The Orange River Colony, a Fortified Village, Bethulie Camp.” Advertiser (Adelaide), 12 April 1902. Eaton, Marcia Muelder. “Laughing at the Death of Little Nell: Sentimental Art and Sentimental People.” American Philosophical Quarterly 26, no. 4 (1989): 269–82. Hartsock, John C. Literary Journalism and the Aesthetics of Experience. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2016. https://muse.jhu.edu/ book/48954. Hobhouse, Emily. The Brunt of the War and Where It Fell. London: Methuen & Company, 1902. Irving, John. “In Defense of Sentimentality.” The New York Times: Books, 25 November 1979. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/ 97/06/15/lifetimes/irving-sentimentality.html. Jefferson, Mark. “What Is Wrong with Sentimentality?” Mind 92 (1983): 519– 29. Johnstone, Tom, Tony Larnach Jones, and David Deasey, “Padre Francis Timoney: Francis Timoney—Fighting Padre and Whistle Blower,” The Australian Boer War Memorial, n.d. https://www.bwm.org.au/soldiers/Fra ncis_Timoney.php.

260

W. MCDONALD

Kramer, Mark. “Breakable Rules for Literary Journalists.” Chap. Preface. In Literary Journalism: A New Collection of the Best American Non-Fiction, edited by Mark Kramer and Norman Sims. New York: Ballantyne, 1995. Macready, Agnes. “A Refugee Cook.” Catholic Press, 28 July 1900. ———. “After the Battles: Among the Wounded, Scenes at Maritzburg.” Catholic Press, 3 February 1900. ———. “After the Red Battle of Tugela! When the Wounded Came in, Heartbreaking Scenes.” Catholic Press, 24 February 1900. ———. “‘Arrah Luen’ at the War, Her First Letter, the First Australian Nurse to Go to the Front, Her Experiences.“ Catholic Press, 20 January 1900. ———. “In the Space of Twenty Minutes, Sad South Africa.“ Catholic Press, 21 July 1900. ———. “With Wounded Tommy Atkins: ‘Will Australia Ever Become a Seat of War?’.” Catholic Press, 21 April 1900. Online, South African History, “Black Concentration Camps During the AngloBoer War 2, 1900–1902,” 21 March 2011. https://www.sahistory.org.za/art icle/black-concentration-camps-during-anglo-boer-war-2-1900-1902. ———. “Women and Children in White Concentration Camps During the Anglo-Boer War, 1900–1902,” 21 March 2011. Richards, I.A. Practical Criticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, 1929. Ryan, Tighe. “In Natal.” Catholic Press, 26 May 1900. Schroeder, Severin. “Sentimentality as an Aesthetic Flaw.” In Aesthetics and Life: Essays in Honor of Jean Pierre Cometti, edited by C. Carmona and J. Levinson. Italy: Mimesis International, 2019. “Special Correspondent Edith Dickenson.” The Australian Boer War Memorial, 2010. http://www.bwm.org.au/soldiers/Edith_Dickenson.php. Tanner, Michael. “Sentimentality.” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77 (1976–1977): 127–47.

CHAPTER 12

Conclusion

Australia’s first press photograph: Gang member Joe Byrne’s body after the Siege of Glenrowan. Photographer J.W. Lindt. Courtesy of the State Library of Victoria.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7_12

261

262

W. MCDONALD

There are many writers currently working in Australia whose articles and books can be classified as compelling literary journalism—Helen Garner, David Marr, Chloe Hooper, Anna Krien, Margaret Simons, Paul Toohey and Melissa Lucashenko are just a few of the leading names in this field. The publication of their creative non-fiction was encouraged by the efflorescence of the form from the 1960s in the wake of the American “new journalism”.1 But Australian literary journalism did not begin in the late twentieth century, nor did it begin as an offshoot of recent American versions of the form. As this book demonstrates, literary journalism has enjoyed a close alignment with modern Australia from the beginning, sailing through the heads of Sydney Harbour with the British First Fleet. I have devoted much of this book to defining this field, examining various types of colonial non-fiction—books and articles—in the light of recent international debates concerning the boundaries of literary journalism. These debates are ongoing but cover such topics as the extent of factual accuracy required, whether there are limits on subjectivity, the use of empathy and the reach of the public sphere. By looking at the writing produced by the colonists through the prism of such recent discussions, Australian literary journalism is easy to identify in the books of the men who explored and founded the new settlements. These were commissioned and published in Britain and are identifiable not just because of the accuracy of their historical facts but also because of the narrative styles in which they are written. These are the works of the adventurers and administrators, the men with the licence to write and be heard. Also easy to identify are the articles and books of literary journalism written in the last quarter of the nineteenth century when a local press had been firmly established. Journalists and writers were employed to produce long-form non-fiction that captured the reality of colonial life. Mostly indistinguishable from contemporary expressions of literary journalism, the stories included quotes or dialogue, observation, description and background research. They were accurate, immersive, subjective, often empathetic and used the sorts of storytelling techniques that are more usually associated with fiction than reporting. Into this category fall the colourful, detailed and often moving reports of the men and women who investigated urban poverty in the industrialised cities, the Melbourne institutions that housed the ill and unfortunate, the “blackbirding” trade

12

CONCLUSION

263

in human labour from the Pacific Islands to Queensland, the capture of marauding bushrangers in the high country of north-eastern Victoria and the wars that drew Australian soldiers and nurses overseas in support of the British empire. Besides these more obvious examples of literary journalism, I have included in this survey other non-fiction writing from the early days of the colony for consideration at least as precursors to the form. As this book demonstrates, there was “reporting” done by the early settlers in letters, journals and memoir. At the beginning, the colonial governors were the resident publishers, the infant press was tightly controlled and censored, and the various branches of the British press were unlikely outlets for most of the colonists who wanted to tell their stories. Even if a local free press had existed at that time, the voices of many of the colonists would unlikely have been heard. Yet, despite the dearth of opportunities for formal publication, the colonists did write. Astonished by their encounters and experiences, many of the settlers—regardless of gender, social standing or occupation—wrote in detail and at length, wanting to convey to people back in Britain what everyday life in the colonies was like. They sent their letters, journals and memoirs not just to close family and friends but with an eye to having their “news” circulated more broadly. Their topics covered fundamental activities crucial to the formation of the new settlements, from building shelters to running homesteads, caring for livestock and interacting with the local indigenous peoples. Even at the time, there was recognition of public interest in this ostensibly “private” writing with some finding its way to publication in the British press and, later, the Australian press. Similarly, sketches were an important mode of non-fiction writing in modern Australia’s first years and commonly appeared in newspapers and magazines from the late 1820s onwards. Attractive to writers and readers because they were subjective, descriptive, informal and egalitarian— anyone interested could attempt them and try for publication—they acted as a bridge in many ways between the unpublished reporting of the first settlers in letters and journals and the more recognisable literary journalism that would develop later. Character sketches left a revealing record for present-day readers of those who inhabited the colony. The people chosen to be written about help illustrate how the colony was beginning to define itself and who a typical Australian might be. Just as illuminating were the decisions to omit some groups from the public record because they were not thought

264

W. MCDONALD

to belong or to be sufficiently important to include. First Nations people, women and other groups went unrecognised or were marginalised. Landscape and travel sketches also featured large in the colonial press. They described the relationships the settlers were developing with their new country as they made their way to new homes or businesses, often in remote locations, transcribing their observations and inscribing their presence on the land in the process. Memoir was another egalitarian form favoured by the settlers to document their escapades as well as their everyday worlds for readers at home. Many colonists, including women, wrote first-hand accounts of their experiences, reporting on colonial life in the process. These autobiographical narratives are less about the consciousness of the writers as the world they could see and document around them as they tried to earn a living and survive in circumstances as diverse as the pasturelands of Tasmania, the sugar plantations of Queensland or the goldfields of Victoria. Although they raise concerns, particularly regarding factual accuracy, some of these too could be considered literary journalism given the looseness of rules around the form before it became a field of academic study in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Of particular interest in this book is the journalism written for the newspapers and magazines once an independent press was in place, when the existence of literary journalism is undeniable, and examples of the form abound. The slower pace of the colonial era lent itself to such writing. The editors of the major publications regularly sent journalists on assignments to immerse themselves in the major events of the day and provide eyewitness reports in lively prose. The slower pace allowed the journalists to spend time with their subjects and produce lengthy pieces written with care that would have a long “shelf-life” compared to the quickly produced news of the day. Their assignments could involve considerable travel and take weeks or months to complete, resulting in articles—and series of articles—of many thousands of words, often later republished in book form. Sometimes these were sent back in stages by the postal service to editors; others returned with the journalists to be written up and refined once home. Many seem as current and interesting to read today as they must have been when they were written. “Slow journalism” has been proffered as a way to reduce bias and misinformation in journalism.2 By allowing journalists to spend time to get to know and research their subjects first-hand, it is argued the problems of once-over-lightly reports written to meet the demands of the

12

CONCLUSION

265

modern 24-hour news cycle largely can be avoided. At the same time, it is often stated that the subjective approach in literary journalism more honestly reveals the writer’s biases rather than hiding them beneath the official and omniscient tone usually adopted in news writing that aims to be objective and emotionally distanced. This analysis of the colonial literary journalism, however, demonstrates that journalists bring their own sensibilities to their practice. We are all subjects of our own time and place, our own understandings and experiences. Then, just as now, our biases filter into the work despite our best intentions. While many of the articles analysed in these pages demonstrate the potential of empathetic literary journalism to prompt significant change, racism, misogyny and class prejudice were endemic in the colonial era. It was a rare journalist, no matter how well-meaning, who could see beyond the prejudices of the day or the interests of the empire. Nevertheless, there are many instances where journalists wrote against the official viewpoint, advocating for the welfare of people in prison or the asylums for example, or crossing the military line to praise the humanity of the enemy at war in affecting words that clearly fit modern international definitions of literary journalism. The literary journalism discussed here tells stories about people who were courageous, resourceful and resilient. Many were transported or migrated without much say in their own futures—not only convicts but wives and adult children forced to follow the menfolk and create new lives away from the class strictures or potential poverty of Britain. Yet, they carved cities and towns from the bush, established viable industries and agriculture, raised families, and found much to praise in the colony. They recorded their efforts and reported on those around them in letters, journals, books and articles that are all worth considering when defining Australia’s own take on the literary journalism form. Sadly, literary journalism faded from view from the time of Federation. A number of factors were responsible. The invention of the telegraph transformed the way news was written, favouring shorter, less descriptive pieces that could be filed via the one-fingered typing of an operator. Expensive and unreliable, the telegraph forced journalists to write the main facts, with minimal description, at the beginning of their pieces; not only were proprietors paying for length but the line often went dead before a longer story could be completed. News photography allowed newspapers to replace detailed descriptions with pictures and short captions. The beginning of wire services gave rise to standardised,

266

W. MCDONALD

impersonal copy that could be sold to numerous proprietors regardless of their political alignment. The economic and social disruptions of the two world wars and the Great Depression affected paper and ink supplies, the availability of journalists to write copy, the money that could be invested in stories, the types of stories that could be covered and the ability of readers to purchase newspapers. The professionalisation of journalism saw the introduction of ethical standards, including the elusive requirement of objectivity as a way of fostering a scientific approach to journalism practices that it was hoped would minimise the spread of biased copy and misinformation. Given all these factors, it is not surprising that literary journalism largely disappeared in the first half of the twentieth century until, as Jennifer Martin shows, it re-emerged as a new literary force, most prominently in the pages of the National Times under the innovative editorship of Evan Whitton. Whitton, who wrote narrative journalism for his previous employer Truth, inventing a form he called “pattern journalism”, was editor of the National Times from 1978 to 1981. In the late 1970s, a number of “supplements”—pull-out magazine sections covering topics such as food, entertainment and sport—were introduced to the Melbourne Age and later the Sydney Morning Herald. These were inspired by the success of supplements at the New York Times , the Los Angeles Times and London Observer in drawing new readers and advertisers. After John Fairfax and Sons, publishers of the Sydney Morning Herald, took over the Age, they introduced the Good Weekend magazine in 1984 as a full-colour supplement. It appeared in both newspapers and became a platform for some of Australia’s most talented journalists and non-fiction writers who revelled in the creative freedom of writing subjective literary journalism.3 Since then, multiple outlets for literary journalism have come and gone as newspapers and magazines have struggled to survive through the finde-siecle to the present time. The internet’s challenge to the business model of traditional media, based as it was on classified and other advertising, has threatened the future of literary journalism through shrinking readerships, closed publications and job losses. Yet, the online space has also opened up new opportunities in the form of aggregator sites, such as Longreads and Longform, as well as multimedia approaches to doing stories for online newspapers and journals that involve hybridising and combining text, sound and images.4

12

CONCLUSION

267

The literary journalism being produced at the moment in Australia demonstrates that many of the issues and concerns in the colonial press continue to resonate. For example, an examination of the settlers’ literary journalism reveals the attitudes and circumstances that enabled systemic racism towards First Nations people to become entrenched, echoing down the years and emerging in Chloe Hooper’s award-winning article about the death of an indigenous man in custody, “The Tall Man”, originally published in the Monthly in 2006 and later released as an award-winning book of the same title. Colonial concerns persist in the way we draw boundaries around who belongs in Australia and who is excluded. Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the Mountains published in 2018 reveals how ferociously we continue to defend the imagined borders of our national community against those perceived to be insufficiently white and Westernised, a practice traceable to our colonial insecurities. Colonial attitudes to the Australian landscape aimed at dominating and transforming the land in the name of progress and profit for the good of the empire is evident throughout the early literary journalism. Bruce Pascoe’s 2014 book of literary journalism Dark Emu demonstrates the way this endures and the ongoing damage our insistence on European agricultural methods causes as we fail to acknowledge the sustainable agricultural practices of the First Nations. An examination of the literary journalism written during the colonial years reveals how important the field has been to the building of modern Australia. The reporting of the last stand of the bushranger Ned Kelly, and other pieces in this book, demonstrates the truth of the comment that “journalism is the first rough draft of history”. The way in which the descriptions of the Glenrowan siege by the journalists who attended live on in contemporary renditions of the story across all art forms shows how significant the role of literary journalism has been as a foundation stone of Australian society and culture. Despite my best attempts in this book to sketch in the definitional boundaries of the field of literary journalism, at least as it was practised in colonial times, it resists final definition. There are no simple answers to what does or does not constitute the field. It continues to evolve, not in isolation, but in a globalised environment, just as our nation does, challenging us to understand who we are as a people and how we relate to the world around us.

268

W. MCDONALD

Notes 1. Jennifer Martin and Willa McDonald, “A Brief History of Literary Journalism in Australia,” in The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism, eds. John S. Bak and Bill Reynolds (London: 2022). 2. Megan Le Masurier, Slow Journalism (London: Routledge, 2020). 3. Martin and McDonald, “A Brief History of Literary Journalism in Australia,” 48–50. 4. Ibid., 50–58.

Bibliography Le Masurier, Megan. Slow Journalism. London: Routledge, 2020. Martin, Jennifer, and Willa McDonald. “A Brief History of Literary Journalism in Australia.” In The Routledge Companion to World Literary Journalism, edited by John S. Bak and Bill Reynolds, 41–58. London, 2022.

Index

A Aboriginal, 7, 8, 26–29, 45, 71, 80, 82, 106–109, 122, 210, 220, 221, 224. See also “Blacks”; First Nation/s -- First People/s; First Nation Clans; Indigenous; Native Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle, 29. See also Arthur, Walter George; Brune, Thomas Aborigines Protection Society, 107 Accuracy factual, 4, 73, 74, 262, 264 inaccuracy, 77, 85 See also Emotion, emotional truthfulness; Real; Truth/ Truthfulness Addison, Joseph, 97 Adelaide, 20, 22, 243 Adelaide Express , 18 Advertisements, 15, 30, 146 Advertiser Inglewood, 201 South Australian Advertiser, 18

Advertising, 15, 20, 26, 266 Aesthetic/s, 18, 73, 74, 96, 119, 120, 244, 252 Africaine, 52 Africans, 240 Age, 18, 19, 22, 24, 168, 176, 178, 190, 199, 202, 204, 266 Age of Enlightenment, 252 Agriculture/Agricultural, 14, 24, 52, 55, 121, 122, 140, 193, 208, 265, 267 Alacrity, 190, 194, 195, 198 Alexievich, Svetlana, 4, 81 Allen, George, 168, 172, 183 America, 98, 152, 175, 198 North, 49, 50, 144 American Civil War, 175, 192 Slave Trade, 192 South, 133 American-Style Journalism, 23. See also New Journalism

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 W. McDonald, Literary Journalism in Colonial Australia, Palgrave Studies in Literary Journalism, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31789-7

269

270

INDEX

Archibald, JF, 7, 26, 27, 101, 102, 129 Argentina, 6 Argles, Theodore Emile (Harold Grey), 101, 102 Argus , 18, 19, 21, 22, 24, 30, 100, 125, 127, 142, 143, 149, 151, 154–158, 168, 174, 175, 178–180, 190, 193, 204, 205, 209, 218, 232, 233 “Arrah Luen”, 248. See also Macready, Agnes Arthur, Walter George, 29. See also Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle; Brune, Thomas Asian/s, 26 Aspirations aesthetic, 18 British, 19 commercial, 17 intellectual, 18 political, 17 Association for the Protection of Native Races, 80 Astrological Astronomy, 5 Asylum Benevolent, 149, 154 Infant, 155, 158 Kew Lunatic, 155, 156 Magdalene, 155 Victorian Asylum and School for the Blind, 155 Yarra Bend, 157 See also Institution/s; Poor house Ataii, 222 Atkinson, Louisa, 8, 30, 118, 126, 127 Auckland Star, 78, 79 Australasian, 30, 143 Australasian Sketcher in Pen and Pencil , 2, 168, 170

Australia/Australian beginnings, 2, 9, 31, 44, 45, 55 culture, 9, 104, 221 federation/federated, 6, 19, 26, 210, 228 football (Australian Rules), 101 history, 2, 9, 78 modern, 2, 55, 78, 168, 181, 221, 262, 267 nation/nationhood, 6, 26, 218 White, 26 Australian, 17 Australian Dictionary of Biography, 48 Australian Eclipse Expedition, 127 Australian Journal , 30 Australian journalists, 242 Australian Magazine, or, Compendium of Religious, Literary, and Miscellaneous Intelligence Australasian Sketcher in Pen and Pencil , 15. See also Howe, Robert Australian Media Hall of Fame, 226 Australian National Film and Sound Archive, 179 Australian Town and Country Journal , 25, 30 Avieson, Bunty, 107 B Baker, Jeannine, 248, 249 Baker, Mark, 226, 236 Baker, William, 7, 105, 106. See also Heads of the People: An Illustrated Journal of Literature, Whims and Oddities Bak, John, 242 Balzac, Honoré de, 143 Baneelon (Bennelong), 45 Barthes, Roland, 252, 257 Barton, Charlotte, 126

INDEX

Bass, George, 46 Bass Strait, 46 Bathurst, 56, 129 Battle of Waikato, 218 Bay of Plenty Times , 78 Belbin, Robert J., 205 Belgrade, Paul, 5, 10 Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer, 99, 100. See also Johnson, Thomas Revel; The Satirist and Sporting Chronicle; Sunday Times Benevolent Asylum, 149, 154 Bennett, Mary, 220, 235 Bent, Andrew, 94, 95 Berry, Graham, 179 Biographical and Imperial Magazine, 106 “Blackbirding”, 8, 22, 190–192, 194, 262. See also Boyd, Ben; Britton, Henry; Carl; Melvin, Joseph Delgarno; Morrison, George “Chinese”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; Queensland; Slavery; South Sea Island Labour Trade; Stanley James, John (Julian Thomas); Sugar; Townsend, Robert “Blacks”, 27. See also Aboriginal; First Nation Clans; First Nation/s -First People/s; Indigenous Blaxland, Gregory, 55 Bledensbourne, 83, 84 Bloemfontein, 242 Blue Mountains, 30, 55, 126 Bly, Nellie, 144, 155, 159 Boer/s People, 244–246 War, 8, 26, 227, 243, 248, 254 Seealso Second Anglo-South African War Boer War Camps

271

Bethel, 245 Bethulie, 245–248 Bloemfontein, 229, 245 Irene, 245 Merebank, 245 Pietermaritzburg (Maritzburg), 246 Voksrust, 245 Bohemia/Bohemians, 143–147 Bonython, John Langford (Sir), 243 Booandick, 106. See also First Nations Clans Boochani, Behrouz, 81, 267 Boomerang, King, 106 Bourdieu, Pierre, 118 Bourke Street, 141, 142, 143. See also Melbourne Boy/s, 142, 151, 196, 198, 200, 202, 203, 205–209, 222–225, 246 Boyd, Ben, 191, 192. See also “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; South Sea Island Labour Trade Bright, Annie, 7, 8, 104, 105 Bright, Charles, 104 Britain, 19, 21–23, 26, 44, 48, 68, 70, 119, 144, 175, 181, 218, 219, 221, 225, 228, 248, 262, 263, 265 British Army Medical Service, 249 Colonial Office, 108 convicts, 24, 27 Empire, 209, 227, 229, 263 First Fleet, 14, 262 Parliament (Westminster), 16, 99 Protestants, 182 subjects, 28, 210, 218, 223 Britton, Henry, 24, 127, 134, 190, 193, 195–200, 204, 209, 212. See also Argus; “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; South Sea Island Labour Trade

272

INDEX

Broadsides, 14, 15 Brown, James, 109 Brown, Megan, 142 Brune, Thomas, 29. See also Aboriginal or Flinders Island Chronicle; Arthur, Walter George Bulletin, xxiii, 7, 25–27, 30, 75, 101–103, 106, 129, 130, 159, 229 Australia, 103, 104 San Francisco, 26 Bunce and Brothers (publishers), 125 Burke and Wills Expedition, 201 Bush, 7, 46, 83, 120, 121, 126, 128, 130, 140, 210, 224, 229, 231, 265 Bushranger/s, 2, 14, 27, 77, 168–177, 179–182, 263, 267. See also Captain Moonlight; Kelly, Ned; Wantabadgery Bushranger Genre, 179 Bussell, Bessie, 7, 51 Bussell, Fanny, 7, 51 Butler, Gamaliel, 95 Byline, 243, 248 Byrne, Joe, 171, 261 Byron, Lord (George Gordon), 97

C Cambridge, Ada, 71, 72 Cannibal/Cannibalism, 83, 108 Capote, Truman, 3, 74 Captain Moonlite, 27. See also Bushrangers; Wantabadgery Bushrangers Carey, James, 173 Carey, Peter, 168, 180, 185 Carl , 193, 194, 196, 198 Carlyle, Thomas, 97 Carrington, Thomas, 2, 24, 168, 170–172, 174, 176, 178–183.

See also Bushranger; Glenrowan; Kelly, Ned Cartoon/s, 26, 179 Cash, Martin, 77 Cassell’s Magazine, 123 Catchpole, Margaret, 56–59 Catholic/Catholicism, 99, 100, 159, 169, 179, 182, 248. See also Irish Catholic/s Catholic Press , 248, 249 Cavendish, Margaret (Duchess of Newcastle), 54 Celebrities, 5, 102, 103 Censors, 247 Censorship government, 7 New South Wales, 49 press, 15, 17, 173, 233 Tasmania, 16 Chalaby, Jean, 145 Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal , 123 Chappell, Ann, 46 Character, 3–5, 26, 49, 72, 77, 79, 80, 95, 97, 100, 102, 104, 105, 120, 128, 130, 148–150, 154, 176, 181, 204 Characterisation, 2, 45, 46, 224 Character Sketch, 7, 97, 101–105, 107, 108, 263. See also Sketch Children, 24, 27, 55–57, 70, 107, 108, 126, 146, 154, 156–159, 194, 197, 198, 207, 219, 242–250, 252, 265 Chisholm, Caroline, 30, 71 Chitty, Ben, 180 Christian, 106–108, 123, 206 Church, 14, 28, 72, 108, 201, 202 Churchill, Lady Randolph, 244 Churchill, W.S., 228 City/ies, 6–8, 18, 20, 97, 99, 100, 123, 129, 130, 140–144, 146, 149, 178, 262, 265

INDEX

Clacy, Ellen, 7, 76, 77 Clacy, Frederick, 76 Clarke, Marcus, 8, 24, 77, 142–149, 151, 159, 160 “Q” , 143 Clarke, Patricia, 30, 54, 126, 133, 236, 255 Clarke, Roy Peter, 73 Clark, Manning, 169 Class, 16, 22, 24, 28, 29, 53, 119, 131, 142, 144, 147, 151, 152, 265 middle, 17, 19, 28, 68, 142 Clisby, Harriet, 30, 102. See also Dexter, Caroline; Interpreter Clontarf, 102 Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, 97 Collins, David (Lieutenant Governor), 45 Collins, Wilkie, 97 Colonial Times , 94, 95 Colonisation, 52, 84, 124, 221 Colonist/s, 16, 19, 28, 47, 54, 71, 83, 84, 99, 118, 119, 121, 122, 128, 142, 168, 222, 262–264 Colony/Colonies British, 44, 145 penal, 14, 16 population, 17 Column/columnist, 3, 15, 20, 21, 23, 30, 31, 71, 79, 123, 143, 197, 226 Commercial aspirations, 17 Commonwealth Franchise Act, 1902, 19 Community, 53, 81, 152, 191 national, 8, 267 Concentration Camps, 242, 245, 247 Conley, David, 75 Conservative/s, 22, 23, 169, 174, 179, 204, 209, 210, 220, 221

273

Contract/s, 20, 191, 192, 194, 195, 199, 208–210. See also Indenture; Labour Convict/s emancipated, 16 labour, 55, 191 rebellion (Castle Hill, 1804), 14 ticket-of-leave, 15, 24 transportation, 99 workforce, 14 Cosmos: An Illustrated Australian Magazine, 104 Cotton, 192, 197. See also “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; South Sea Island Labour Trade; Towns, Robert Crane, Stephen, 144 Crime, 2, 24, 27, 28, 109, 140, 144, 151–153, 223 true, 3, 168 Crimean War, 221 Crónica, 81 Cross, George, 71 Crowe, Russell, 181 Cryle, Mark, 79–81 Cultural, 69, 73, 81, 85, 99, 105, 106, 118, 124, 168, 172, 178–180, 221 history, 2, 9 reflection, 3 Culture, 3, 9, 24, 25, 27, 48, 81, 83, 103, 107, 109, 140, 191, 267 Culture Wars, 221 Cumberland, 51 Curr, Edward M., 82, 84, 85 Currency Lads and Lasses, 119 D Daily Mail , 23 Daily Telegraph (Melbourne), 168, 172, 178, 226 Daily Telegraph (Sydney), 18

274

INDEX

Daley, Victor, 101, 102 Darwin, Charles, 198 Darwin (city), 20 Darwinism social, 84, 195 Davies, Kerrie, 159, 178 Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women, 30. See also Lawson, Louisa Dawson, Barbara, 69 Day of Rest , 123 Debrett’s, 44 Definition/Definitional Analysis, 3. See also Literary Journalism Defonseca, Mischa, 73 Democracy, 19, 21, 26, 53, 179, 182 Depression, 25, 210, 233, 266 Derwent Star and Van Diemen’s Land Intelligencer, 16 Description, 2, 3, 45, 83, 94, 95, 98, 102, 104, 120, 122–124, 127, 142, 144, 150, 168, 219, 221, 223, 230, 232, 244, 262, 265, 267. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques Detail, 44–46, 58, 68, 70, 76, 79, 83, 130, 142, 148, 156, 168, 171, 175, 177, 179, 224, 233, 244, 249–251, 263. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques Dexter, Caroline, 30, 102, 103. See also Clisby, Harriet; Interpreter Dialogue, 2, 44, 45, 58, 70, 95, 123, 130, 146, 168, 175–177, 262 Diamond Jubilee Diary, 44, 50, 52, 55, 72, 76 Dickens, Charles, 97, 105, 143, 145 Dickenson, Augustus (Dr), 245 Dickenson, Edith Charlotte, 8, 243–245, 248, 255, 256 Discrimination, 119, 169, 210

Disease dysentery, 233 enteric fever (Typhoid), 233, 247 Distress Fund for South African Women and Children, 245. See also Boer War; Boer War Camps; Hobhouse, Emily Donoghue, Jed, 181 Dow, William, 231 Doyle, A. Conan, 228 Dyer, Geoff, 74

E EA Petherick & Co (publisher), 83 Eclipse Australian Eclipse Expedition, 127 Economic Growth, 190 Economics, 5 Eco-Writing, 8, 118 Editor/s, 4, 8, 29, 30, 70, 79, 102, 104, 119, 142, 145, 154, 174, 175, 204, 220, 244, 248, 264 Editorial Independence, 173 Education, 14, 22, 57, 71, 98, 108, 119, 147, 151, 155, 157, 158, 175, 198, 254 Einfühlung , 148. See also Empathy Eliot, George, 97 Embarlo, 198 Emotion/s emotional truthfulness, 3 felt sense, 6 See also “Feel the Facts” Empathy definition, 148 empathetic, 6, 45, 148, 159, 262, 265 See alsoEinfühlung; Facts, “Feel the Facts”; Pity Empire British, 209, 227, 229, 263

INDEX

Ottoman, 221 Empire Review (The), 72 England, 14, 16, 44, 46, 49, 51, 52, 55, 57, 78, 96, 98, 123, 147, 149, 206, 229, 245, 246, 248, 250 English, 21, 24, 26, 46, 72, 83, 94, 96, 97, 105, 106, 120, 121, 123, 148, 173, 191, 207, 208, 230, 245, 248 Esquire, 58 Essay, 3, 75, 97, 98, 120 Ethics, 75, 169, 252 Ethnicity, 8 Ethnography, 7, 107 Ethnological Society of London, 107 Ethnologist, 223 Eureka Stockade, 22 Euroa, 174, 175 Evening News (Sydney), 178 Execution, 222–224 Experience Sharing, 148. See also Empathy Explorer/s, 7, 44, 46–48, 55, 71, 78, 104, 124, 193, 201 Eyewitness/es, 2, 4, 57, 76, 109, 175, 176, 197 F Fact/s “Feel the Facts”, 58, 254 Fact and Fiction, 73, 74 boundary between, 3 Family Colonisation Loan Society Federation, 71. See also Chisholm, Caroline Favenc, Ernest, 104 Federation, 19, 26, 29, 104, 128, 210, 228, 265 Feminist/s, 3, 7, 26, 54, 102, 142, 155, 252 Fenians, 152

275

Fiction, 2, 3, 18, 24, 73–75, 77, 81, 104, 140, 226, 252, 262 Field, WG, 81 Fire-stick Farming, 122 First Fleet, 14, 44, 45, 49, 121, 221, 262 First Nation/s -- First People/s dispersal, 27 Eora, 49 Gadigal, 14 massacre, 27, 28, 80, 109, 221 silence regarding, 81 Unacknowledged War, 106 See also Aboriginal; “Blacks”; First Nation/s -- First People/s; First Nation Clans; Indigenous First Nation Clans Bangerang, 85 Booandick, 106 Moner Balug, 69 Tanganekald, 109 Tasmanian, 29, 228 Wathaurong, 69 Wattatonga, 109 Yorta Yorta, 84, 85 First Settlement, 6, 7 Fitzgerald, Jonathan D., 75 Fitzhardinge, L.F., 45 FitzSimons, Peter, 181 Fitz-Stubbs, Maud, 103, 104 Flâneur/Flâneuse, 140, 142 Flinders Island, 29 Flinders, Matthew, 7, 46 A Voyage to Terra Australis , 46 Flippen, Robert G., 152, 162 Flourens, Gustave, 152 Food, 16, 48, 49, 69, 99, 156, 220, 233, 243, 245, 246, 266. See also Hunger Forde, Kathy Roberts, 75 Fortune, Mary Helena, 30, 140–143 Foss, Katherine A., 75

276

INDEX

Fraser, Nancy, 7 French, John (General Sir), 229 French Revolution, 96 Frey, James, 73 Frontier/s, 29, 80, 106, 140, 218, 220 Wars, 190, 219–221 Froude, James, 122, 132 Fryer Library, University of Queensland, 81 Furphy, Samuel, 85

G Garibaldians, 152 Garner, Helen, 3, 4, 262 Garran, Andrew, 104 Gender, 8, 53, 71, 119, 142, 263 Geographical Society of Australasia, 79, 81 Giles, Ernest, 7, 47, 48 Glass, Stephen, 73 Glenrowan, 2, 6, 14, 168–170, 172–181 siege, 2, 31, 169, 267 See also Bushranger; Carrington, Thomas; Kelly, Ned; Kelly Gang Goldfields, 7, 21, 76, 122, 140, 179, 264 Gold Rush/es, 17, 19, 141 Goldstein, Vida, 30. See also Woman’s Sphere Gonzo, 74, 150 Good Weekend, 266 Good Words for the Young , 123 Gordon, George Hamilton (Earl of Aberdeen), 221 Government advertising, 20 agents, 203, 207 contracts, 20

democratic, 19, 181 imperial, 203 military, 14, 17 Queensland, 7, 19, 192, 199, 202, 203, 207, 210 responsible, 15, 19, 99 subsidies, 20. See also “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; South Sea Island Labour Trade “Grandfathering”, 75 Great Depression, 266 Greeley, Horace, 175 Green, HM (Henry Mackenzie), 18, 26 Green, Louis, 48 Greenwood, Frederick, 145 Greenwood, James, 145, 149, 160 Grey, Harold (Argles, Theodore Emile), 101 Griffith, Samuel (Sir), 204 Griffiths, Tom, 220, 235 Guerin, Bella, 158

H Habermas, Jürgen, 53, 54, 97 Haddon, Frederick, 204 Hales, AG (Arthur “Smiler”), 228, 229, 233, 234, 238 Hall, Dianne, 169 Hall, Edward Smith, 17, 24 Hamlet’s Ghost, 171 Hangman, 147, 150 Hardship, 16, 28, 49, 121, 128, 201, 222 Harmsworth, Alfred, 23. See also Lord Northcliffe Harrison, Robert, 121, 132 Hart, Dan, 171 Hartsock, John C., 4, 10, 82, 147, 161, 244, 257

INDEX

Hart, Steve, 171 Hawk/s, 127 Hawkins, Elizabeth, 55, 56 Haynes, John, 7, 13, 26, 101, 102 Hazlitt, William, 97 Heads of the People: An Illustrated Journal of Literature, Whims and Oddities , 7, 105, 106. See also Baker, William Hearst, William Randolph, 23 Helena, 190, 209, 210 Herald (Melbourne), 22, 23, 174, 251 Hergenhan, Laurie, 147, 160, 161 Hero/Heroic, 2, 79, 82, 123, 130, 181, 203, 220, 229 Herr, Michael, 74 Hill, Arthur, 17, 24 Hill’s Life, 24, 100 History popular, 3 wars, 221 Hobart, 16, 70, 94–96, 99 Hobart Convict Penitentiary, 96 Hobart Town Almanack, 70 Hobart Town Courier, 47 Hobart Town Gazette, 16, 70 Hobhouse, Emily, 245, 247 Home, 7, 19, 44, 46–48, 51, 57, 68, 69, 77, 99, 118, 121, 123, 140, 147, 150–152, 191, 201, 208, 218, 224, 228, 233, 234, 242, 244, 250, 251, 264 Homeless, 5, 8, 145, 146, 149. See also Asylum/s; Institution/s Hooper, Chloe, 262, 267 Hooton, Joy, 71 Hopkins, Cyril, 147 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 147 Horse/s, 47, 48, 56, 57, 101, 130, 143, 169, 201, 225–227, 229–231, 243

277

Horticulture, 126 Hospital, 155, 156, 229, 234, 243, 246, 248, 249 Howard, Rod, 95 Howe, George, 14, 16, 32 Howe, G.T., 70 Howe, Robert, 24 Hughes, George, 14, 15 Humanitarian/s, 18, 28, 71, 190, 199, 223 Humour, 26, 45, 71, 99, 100, 143, 150, 200, 230 Hunger, 16, 29, 48, 49, 222. See also Food I Iberia, 226 Ignatieff, Michael, 145, 160 Illustrated London News , 79 Imagination, 5, 48, 73, 76, 144, 177 Imaginative journalist, 219 literature, 6, 75 See also Literature; Literary Journalism Immersion, 4, 58, 168, 170, 172, 173, 218 immersive, 5, 6, 20, 144, 262 See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques Imperialism, 83 Indenture, 190, 191–194, 198, 208, 210. See also Contract/s; Labour Indenture System, 198. See also “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; Slave/s; Slavery; South Sea Island Labour Trade Indigenous, 7, 27, 69, 221, 224, 263, 267. See also Aboriginal; “Blacks”; First Nation/s -- First People/s; Native Individualism, 96

278

INDEX

Industrial Revolution, 140, 144, 168 Ink, 15, 16, 20, 103, 266 Institution/s, 5, 18, 30, 53, 54, 84, 108, 118, 149, 151, 154, 155, 158, 159, 262 Interpreter, 102. See also Clisby, Harriet; Dexter, Caroline Interview/s, 3–5, 23, 73, 103, 104, 171, 172, 175, 177, 195, 208 illustrated, 103–105 Interviewing, 146 Ireland, 99, 119, 169, 248 Home Rule, 26 Irish Anti-Irish, 169 Irish Catholic/s Anti-Irish Catholic, 169 Irony, 85, 143 Irving, John, 253, 257 Irving, Washington, 98, 119 Islander/s, 22, 189–199, 202, 203, 205–210

J Jagger, Mick, 168, 180 James, John Stanley (Julian Thomas), 8, 24, 100, 149–154, 159, 161, 175, 190, 205–209, 222–225. See also Vagabond Jamieson, Leslie, 253 Jefferson, Mark, 252, 257 Jensen, Judith, 119 Jenyns, Essie, 104 Jerrold, Douglas, 30, 71, 143. See also Weekly Newspaper Jingo, 248 Jingoism, 218 John Murray (publisher), 83, 125 Johnson, Thomas Revel, 99, 100. See also Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer; Sunday Times;

The Satirist and Sporting Chronicle Jones, Ian, 180, 184, 185 Josephi, Beate, 76 Journal/s, xvi, 2, 6, 7, 18, 21, 24–26, 30, 44–46, 48, 50, 51, 53, 55, 75, 85, 99, 102, 105, 106, 123, 124, 127, 145, 168, 173, 263, 265, 266 Journalism American Style, 23 business model, 266 byline, 243, 248 embedded, 170 imaginative, 75, 219 literary, 2–9, 14, 16, 18–20, 22–25, 27, 30, 31, 44, 48–50, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 68, 71–74, 76–79, 81, 82, 84, 85, 94–96, 99, 100, 104, 105, 122, 124, 126, 127, 129, 130, 140, 143, 147–149, 159, 168, 172, 173, 178, 182, 190, 218, 223–229, 231, 234, 244, 248, 251, 253, 254, 262–267 new, 23, 26, 262 pattern, 266 professionalisation, 75 slow, 264 undercover, 149 Journalists, xxiii, 2–6, 8, 9, 23, 25, 29, 30, 73, 75–78, 80, 101, 104, 131, 140, 144–146, 149, 153, 159, 168, 170–178, 180, 182, 190, 191, 201, 206, 209, 218, 222, 223, 225–228, 233, 253, 254, 262, 264–267 Juxtaposition, 249. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques

INDEX

K Kanak/s, 222–225 Kapu´scinski, ´ Ryszard, 81 Keeble, Richard, 3 Keesing, Nancy, 102 Kelly Country, 169 Kelly Gang, 173, 174, 180. See also Byrne, Joe; Hart, Dan; Hart, Steve Kelly, Ned, 2, 6, 167, 168, 171, 172, 175–182, 267. See also Bushranger; Carrington, Thomas; Glenrowan; Kelly Gang Kelly “Outbreak”, 174, 175 Kerr, William, 21, 204 Kew Asylum, 157 Khouri, Norma, 73 Kidnap, 193 Kidnapping, 190, 192, 193, 202, 204, 208 Killing Times, 220 Kingdon, Bridget, 55 King, Philip Gidley, 15 Kipling, Rudyard, 228 Kirkland, Katherine, 68–71 Kramer, Mark, 5, 10, 11, 74, 254, 258 Krien, Anna, 262 Kroeger, Brooke, 210 Kurzel, Justin, 181

L Labour black, 193 coloured, 192, 210 convict, 55, 191 indentured, 190, 192, 210 Pacific Island, 8, 195, 210 sick, 201 South Sea Island, 189 White, 26

279

Labourers, 52, 78, 140, 150, 152, 190, 192, 194–196, 198, 199, 201, 202, 208, 210. See also Workers Lambie, William, 226, 228, 229 Landscape, 7, 56, 70, 85, 98, 118, 119, 121–124, 126, 128–130, 264, 267 Language body, 4 choice of, as a Literary Technique, 223 English, 6, 97 Laud, William, 57 Laurie (Rev JH Lawrie), 206 Lavinia, 190, 199, 201, 203, 205 Lawrence, DH, 26 Lawson, Henry, 8, 25, 118, 128, 130, 134 Lawson, Louisa, 30. See also Dawn: A Journal for Australian Women Leader, 190, 199, 201 Ledger, Heath, 180 Legislative Council, 16, 99 Letter/s, 6–8, 31, 44, 47–58, 68, 75, 79, 85, 97, 99, 141, 154, 156, 174, 198, 203–205, 226, 249, 263, 265 Lewellin, Dr AM, 156 Lewin, Henry Ross, 193 Libel, 21, 100–102 Life Writing, 3 Listening, 5, 170 Literacy, 19, 56, 59 Literary historian, 220 Literary Journalism/Literary Journalists as a field, 3 definition, 49, 59 definitional analysis, 3 epistolary, 49

280

INDEX

methods and techniques. See Atmosphere; Characterisation; Description; Details; Dialogue; Immersion; Juxtaposition; Language (Choice of); Listening; Observation; Point of View; Rhythm; Scenes; Structure; Symbolism; Tone; Understatement types. See Column; Cultural Reflection; Essay; History, popular; Life Writing; Long-Form; Memoir; Sketch; Sport; Travel; True Crime Literary Journalism Studies , 50 Literary Journalism Techniques Irony, 242 Understatement, 242 Literary Techniques. See Literary Journalism, methods and techniques Literature imaginative, 6, 75 Little Nell, 252 Lizzie, 190, 205, 206, 208 London, 17, 20, 30, 47, 49, 52, 57, 71, 72, 79, 83, 97, 124, 125, 151, 179, 204, 218, 221, 228, 229 London, Jack, 144 Longform, 266 Longreads , 266 Lord Kitchener, 242 Lord Northcliffe, 23. See also Harmsworth, Alfred Los Angeles Times , 266 Lucashenko, Melissa, 262 Lumholz, Carl, 7 Lydon, Jane, 79, 80 Lyne, William, 249

M Macarthur, Elizabeth, 7, 55 Macarthur, John, 55 MacDonald, D.A., 228 MacDonald, DA, 232, 233, 237 MacDonald, Louisa, 104 MacKay, George, 181 Mackinnon, Lauchlan, 21 Mack, Louise, 104 Macready, Agnes, 8, 248–250, 251, 257. See also “Arrah Luen” Magazine/s, 3, 6, 8, 18, 24, 26, 27, 29, 50, 68, 83, 102–105, 126, 140, 168, 263, 264, 266 Mail, 21 Mailer, Norman, 3 Mainstream media, 31 writers, 6 Malcolm, Elizabeth, 169 Maori/s, 218–220 Margaret, 196, 197 Marr, David, 262 Mars, 7 Martin, James, 8, 118–121 Martin, Jennifer, 266, 268 Massacre/s, 27, 28, 80, 83, 109, 221. See also Aboriginal; First Nation/ s -- First People/s; Indigenous; Reynolds, Henry Masters and Servants Act (1863), 192 Matthews, Brian, 130, 134 Mauritius, 46 Maybanke, Susannah Wolstenholme, 30. See also Woman’s Voice McCarthy, Maud, 104 McCullagh, JB, 175 McWhirter, John, 168, 176 M’Donogh, Felix, 98 Mead, Jenna, 3 Mechanics’ Institutes, 19 Media

INDEX

mainstream, 31 social, 6 Melanesia, 193 Melanesians, 191, 192, 207, 208, 210 Melbourne Bourke Street, 141–143 General Cemetery, 154 Hospital, 155, 157 institutions, 30, 151, 154, 155, 158, 262 “Marvellous Melbourne”, 141 slums, 8, 149 University, xxiii, 3, 158 Melbourne Advertiser, 18 Melbourne Punch, 139, 154 Melville, Henry, 95 Melvin, Joseph Delgarno, 8, 168, 170, 174, 176, 177, 181, 190, 209, 210, 226. See also Argus; “Blackbirding”; Kelly, Ned; Lambie, William; South Sea Island Labour Trade; Sudan; Sugar Memoir/s, 3, 6, 7, 31, 68, 70–72, 74, 76–78, 84, 85, 107, 140, 263, 264 Men military, 7 white, 6, 19, 27, 83, 109, 193 Mercury (Hobart), 18 Meredith, Louisa Anne, 8, 118, 124–126, 133 Migrants/Migration, 7, 19, 118, 140, 141, 181 Military prisons, 233 rule, 17, 182 Militia, 219, 220, 232 Miserabilism, 145 Misinformation, 264, 266 Missionaries, 71, 190, 193, 195, 199, 201, 206, 207

281

Mitchell, Thomas Livingstone (Sir), 47 Modernisation, 140 Moner Balug of the Wauthaurong, 69 Monitor, 17, 24 Monthly, 267 Moore, Clive, 210, 211 Moran, Patrick Francis (Cardinal), 249 Morant, Harry “Breaker”, 228 Morning Chronicle, 49, 97, 98 Morning Post , 72 Morrison, George “Chinese”, 8, 22, 190, 191, 199, 200–205, 212, 213. See also Age; “Blackbirding”; South Sea Island Labour Trade; Sugar; Syme, David Motherhood, 108 Motherland, 16, 44, 218 Mother Nature, 253. See also Nature Muelder Eaton, Marcia, 252 Müller, Christine, 76 Multimedia, 266 Murray, James Patrick, 193 Murray’s Home and Colonial Library, 124 Musgrave, Anthony (Sir), 204 Myall Creek Massacre, 27, 28, 80. See also Wirrayaraay People N Narrative/Narratives, xxiii, 2, 3, 7, 23, 44, 45, 49, 50, 58, 70, 73–75, 77, 83, 94, 107, 118, 125, 130, 149, 175, 176, 204, 219, 251, 262, 264, 266 Nation, 6, 8, 9, 72, 104–106, 129, 130, 181, 218, 221, 228, 267 National character, 105, 128 type/s, 129 Nationalism, 181, 218, 227, 229

282

INDEX

National Library of Australian Newspaper Plan 1802-1900, 100 National Times , 266 Nationhood, 218 Native/s, 14, 78, 80, 82, 83, 85, 108, 125, 126, 193, 195, 196, 198, 200–204, 207, 223, 242, 243 Native (Mounted) Police, 78, 83 Nature, 6, 8, 9, 83, 97, 107, 118, 120, 124, 127, 152, 198 Mother Nature, 253 Nature Writing, 94, 122, 126 Neilson, Rev Thomas, 201 Netherlands, 6 New Caledonia, 222, 225 Great Revolt, 222 New Guinea Bougainville, 193 Port Moresby, 201, 205 New Journalism, 23, 26, 262. See also American-Style Journalism News sheets, 14 telegraphic, 20 traditional, 23, 73, 182, 218 value, 5 New South Wales, 18, 19, 21, 26, 28, 47, 49, 51, 55, 77, 99, 119, 126, 129, 191, 192, 198, 219, 225, 226, 229 New South Wales General Standing Orders (1802), 15 New South Wales Lancers, 229 Newspaper/s British radical, 17 circulation/s, 20 column, 20 columnist, 20 dailies, 20 metropolitan, 8, 18, 168, 248 Penny Papers, 22 proprietors, 17, 248

readers, 254 rural, 8 subscribers, 20 suburban, 8, 18 Newsporn, 245 New Yorker, 26, 104 New York Times , 253, 266 New York Tribune, 175 New Zealand Battle of Waikato, 218 Third New Zealand War, 218 Wars, 218 Nichols, G.R. (Bob), 119 Nineteenth Century, 17, 22, 29, 31, 49, 54, 75, 77, 82, 98, 99, 104, 105, 118, 119, 124, 126, 142, 158, 198, 218, 252, 262 second half, 19 Nobel Prize, 4 Nolan, Sidney, 168, 180 Nom de plume, 68, 145, 149, 222 Non-Fiction, xxiii, 4, 6, 18, 54, 73, 75, 82, 104, 106, 168, 262, 263, 266 Northcliffe, Lord, 23. See also Harmsworth, Alfred Novak, Mark, 231 Novels, 8, 25, 45, 75, 77, 78, 80, 81, 94, 126, 143, 147, 168, 180, 181, 252, 254 Nurse/s, 155, 156, 159, 243, 246, 248, 249, 263 Nursing, 246, 249 O Objectivity, 5, 58, 75, 168, 172, 173, 266 Observe/Observing, 2, 4, 5, 45, 59, 124, 126, 140, 146, 149, 157, 207. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques Observer, 266

INDEX

Occupation, 8, 71, 106, 118, 122, 157, 221, 263 O’Connell, Lady Mary, 106 Olney, Howard (Justice), 85 O’Loghlen, Bryan, 179 Ordinary Lives, 5, 72, 253 Orientalism, 197 Orwell, George, 224 Osborne, Dorothy, 54 Other, 82 “Outlawry Act” (Felons Apprehension Act), 1878, 174 Overland Telegraph Line, 20, 48

P Pacific Island Labour, 8, 195, 210 Pacific Island Labour Trade recruiting practices, 199 recruitment, 199, 207 See also “Blackbirding”; Slave Trade; South Sea Island Labour Trade Pacific Islands Aneitium (Aneityum), 206–208 Aoba, 200 Banks Islands, 199 Epi, 194 Fiji, 190, 193, 195–197, 200 Loyalty Islands, 193 Malaita, 210 New Hebrides, 190, 193, 199 Nukapu, 193 Paama, 193 Solomon Islands, 193, 209 Tanna, 193, 202 Vanua Lava, 203 Vanuatu, 190, 205 Pall Mall Gazette, 23, 145, 175 Paper, 14–16, 18, 20–23, 28, 30, 49, 51, 70, 100, 103, 105, 119, 174, 190, 199, 228, 234, 248, 266 Paris Commune, 152

283

Parliament, 19, 21, 102 Pascoe, Bruce, 267 Paterson, AB (“Banjo”), 8, 25, 101, 118, 128–130, 134, 228–231 Patriotic/Patriotism, 248 Patterson, Bishop John Coleridge, 193 Pauly, Thomas H., 98 Pearl, Cyril, 204, 212 Peep Show, 123 Penny Papers, 22, 23 Pentridge Gaol, 149, 150 Periodical, 15, 24, 25, 50, 53, 94, 126, 159 Perspective taking, 148. See also Empathy Perth Gazette and Western Australian Journal , 16 “Peter Possum” (Rowe, Richard), 122, 123 Phillip, Arthur (Governor Sir), 45 Pity, 82, 147, 152. See also Empathy Plantation, 8, 22, 190–192, 195–199, 201, 208–210, 264 Plays, 8, 75 Poem, 101, 124, 129, 130, 230, 231, 248 Poetry, 8, 25, 26, 49, 75, 97, 102, 123, 124, 129, 130, 144, 229–231 Point of View, 5, 58, 130, 144, 176, 190, 228, 230, 249, 253 Police, 2, 24, 78, 80, 144, 151, 168–174, 176, 177, 179–182, 220 Political aspirations, 17, 21 Polynesian, 197 Poor, 2, 17, 49, 50, 56, 71, 108, 140, 142–146, 151, 152, 154, 171, 179, 182, 192, 203, 208, 221, 234, 245–247, 250

284

INDEX

Poor house, 5. See also Asylum/s Popular, 3, 8, 23, 25, 45, 79, 80, 98, 99, 123, 124, 129, 130, 140, 142, 143, 153, 181, 194, 230 Popularism, 23 Population, 14, 17, 19, 29, 140, 178, 210 Poverty, 16, 129, 143–145, 149, 151, 152, 155, 262, 265 Power, Harry, 175, 181 Pratt, Mary Louise, 120 Press beginnings (Before 1850), 17 bias, 172 censorship, 15, 17, 173, 233 colonial, 8, 27, 264, 267 emergence, 53 establish/ed (After 1850), 8 free, 8, 16, 85, 263 freedom, 94, 172 independent, 264 printing, 14 proprietors, 102, 173 rotary, 8, 17, 20, 168, 178 thriving, 8 Pretoria, 242 Priestly, Susan, 76 Prison hulks, 16 sentence, 57 Prisoners, 15, 150, 224, 228, 233, 249 political, 18 Profile/s, 7, 69, 94, 103, 104, 107. See also Baker, William; Bright, Annie; Savery, Henry; Smith, Christina Propaganda, 229 Protestant/s, 100, 108, 173, 248 Public sphere, 7, 51, 53, 54, 97, 106, 262 Pulitzer, Joseph, 23

Pulitzer Prize, 173 Punch, 72, 105, 178 Q Queensland, 7, 8, 19, 22, 78–83, 190–193, 195, 199–205, 207–210, 219, 263, 264 Quinn, Katrina J., 48 R Race, 78, 83, 195, 198 Racism, 152, 224, 227, 265, 267 Racist, 26, 224 Radical, 17, 19, 21, 179, 204 Railway/s, 2, 8, 17, 20, 129, 140, 168, 170, 250. See also Trains Rankine, Claudia, 231 Reader/s engagement, 3 trust, 4 Real, 3, 6, 82, 95, 101, 128, 144, 148, 151, 156, 173. See also Accuracy; Emotion, emotional truthfulness; Truth/Truthfulness Realism, 75 Realist, 128 Reay, WT, 228, 251, 253, 254 Rebel/Rebellion, 2, 14, 198, 222 Register (South Australian), 30, 251 Religion/Religious, 16, 17, 24, 29, 50, 76, 107, 152, 154, 159 Religiosity, 152 Remnestelesa, 203 Remnick, David, 104, 113 Reportage, 74 Reporting, 3–6, 23, 24, 26, 28, 46, 58, 73, 74, 84, 85, 96, 140, 145, 152–154, 172, 173, 175, 190, 218, 220–222, 229, 251, 262–264, 267 Reuters, 229

INDEX

Review of Reviews , 23 Reynolds, Henry, 78, 82, 220, 235 Reznikoff, Charles, 231 Rhythm, 5, 26, 46, 141 Rich, 4, 5, 27, 98, 131, 152, 182, 192 Richards, IA, 252, 257 Riis, Jacob, 144 River Coal, 57 Darling, 47 Hawkesbury, 57 Herbert, 82 Leichhardt, 47 Murray, 46, 47 Murrumbidgee, 47 Shannon, 70 Tugela, 244 Rivière, Henri, 222 Roberts, Nancy L., 50 Robertson, George, 72 Robinson, G.A., 71 Rogan, Thomas, 27. See also Bushrangers; Wantabadgery Bushrangers Romantic, 96, 97, 120, 130, 144 Romanticism, 75, 120 Rosario, 194 Ross, James, 70, 71 Rotary Press, 8, 17, 20, 168, 178 Rowe, Richard (“Peter Possum”), 8, 118, 123, 124, 133 Royal Commission on Asylums for the Insane and Inebriate, 1884–1886, 157 Royal Commission on the Police Force of Victoria, 1881, 182 Rukeyser, Muriel, 231 Russell, William Howard, 221 Ryan, Tighe, 248

285

S “Saki”, 228 Sala, George, 143 Sand, George, 102 Sandringham Station, 79–81 Sappho Smith, 31. See also Wildman, Alexina Satire, 24, 94, 99, 100, 102 Satirical, 24, 26, 94, 96, 97, 99, 101, 102, 143 Satirist and Sporting Chronicle, 99. See also Bell’s Life in Sydney and Sporting Reviewer; Johnson, Thomas Revel Savage/s, 71, 106, 169, 195, 197, 200, 220, 223 Savery, Henry, 7, 94, 95–99. See also Character Sketch Schadenfreude, 182 Schroeder, Severin, 253, 258 Scientific, 47, 82, 83, 126, 127, 223, 266 Scorched Earth Policies, 242 Scotland, 49, 70, 205 Scotsman, 123 Scottish, 68, 173, 248 Second Anglo-South African War, 227. See also Boer War Second Fleet, 49, 50, 55 Secret ballot, 19 Selectors, 179, 182 Sensationalism, 4, 23, 147, 148, 150, 156, 242, 251 Sentiment, 169, 252 Sentimentality, 75, 148, 218, 242, 251–253 Settlement agricultural, 14 colonial, 6, 262 First, 6, 7 penal, 14 white, 6, 45

286

INDEX

Settlers, 8, 17, 24, 27, 28, 44, 48, 52, 59, 68, 69, 71, 78, 83, 107, 109, 118, 119, 121, 122, 130, 220, 263, 264, 267 free, 15, 57, 169, 173 Sexism, 152 Shaw, Ian, 176, 183 Shelley, Percy, 97 Ship/s, 14, 17, 18, 46, 48–52, 71, 99, 143, 145, 189, 190, 192, 194–196, 199, 203, 205–207, 209, 226, 228 Siege Glenrowan, 2, 31, 168, 169, 267 Khartoum, 225 Ladysmith, 232 Sign, 129, 150, 208, 223 Silence, 27, 28, 79, 81, 106, 154, 190, 197, 233 Great Australian, 220 Sillesen, Lene Bech, 149, 161 Silvester, Christopher, 175 Simons, Margaret, 262 Sims, Norman, 5, 10, 11, 74 Sketch/es character, 7, 97, 101–105, 107, 108, 263 landscape, 8, 118, 264 nature, 94 travel, 7, 118, 264 Slave/s, 79, 192, 198 Slave Trade African, 195 American, 192. See also “Blackbirding”; Boyd, Ben; Britton, Henry; Carl; Indentured Labour; Melvin, Joseph Delgarno; Morrison, George “Chinese”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; Queensland; South Sea Island Labour Trade; Stanley James,

John (Julian Thomas); Sugar; Townsend, Robert Slaving, 202, 204 Slow journalism, 264 Slum/s, 8, 140, 142, 144–147, 149 Smith, Christina (Mrs James), 7, 106, 107 Smith, Duncan, 107 Smithers, Gregory D., 29 Snake/s, 57, 58, 127 Social justice, 145, 155, 159 standing, 8, 68, 119, 263 Soldier/s, 8, 218–220, 228, 230, 233, 244, 245, 254, 263 South Africa Bloemfontein, 229, 245 Cape Town, 247, 248 Colenso, 243, 249 Escourt, 249 Ladysmith, 232, 233, 243, 244, 249 Modder River, 229 Natal, 243, 246 Orange River Colony, 243 Pieter’s Hill, 249 Pretoria, 229, 245, 246, 249 Spion Kop, 249 Transvaal, 250 Vaal Kraatz, 249 Wynburg, 249. See also Boer War Camps; River South Australia, 17, 19, 47, 52, 107, 109, 121 South Australian Advertiser, 18 South Australian Gazette and Colonial Register (later the South Australian Register), 17, 52 South Sea Island Labour Trade, 189. See also “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade

INDEX

Spectator (Australian), 30. See also Weekes, Cora Anna Spectator (The; London), 97. See also Addison, Joseph; Steele, Richard Spence, Catherine, 30 Spence, Percy, 104 Spender, Dale Writing a New World: Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers , 54 Spooner, H.H., 228 Sport, 99, 100, 168, 266 Sports writer, 3 Spurr, David, 190, 211, 223, 236 Squatter/s, 182 Stanner, WEH, 220, 235 St Christopher’s Island, 14. See also West Indies Stead, WT, 23, 175 Steele, Richard, 97 Steensen, Steen, 172 Stereotype/Stereotyping, 4, 79 St Louis Globe Democrat , 175 Storytelling techniques, 6, 159, 226, 262. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques; Literary Techniques Stowe, Harriet Beecher, 79, 80 Structure, 5, 210 Sturt, Charles, 7, 46, 47 Subjective, 5, 6, 49, 50, 73, 82, 173, 262, 263, 265, 266 Subjectivity, 5, 49, 68, 73, 85, 148, 168, 172, 173, 190, 218, 254, 262 Sublime, 120 Sudan, 218, 225, 226 Anglo-Sudan Campaign, 225 Suffrage men’s, 22 universal, 17 women’s, 19, 30, 155

287

Sugar industry, 210 sugarcane, 192. See also “Blackbirding”; Carl; Pacific Island Labour Trade; Slavery; South Sea Island Labour Trade Sunday at Home, 123 Sunday Magazine, 123 Supplements, 266 Swan/s, 125 Sydney, 14, 16–18, 20, 25, 46, 55, 79, 80, 94, 99, 101, 105, 125, 177, 178, 191, 192, 225, 248, 249 Cove, 14 Warrane, 14 Sydney Gazette and New South Wales Advertiser, 15 Sydney Mail , 30, 126, 159 Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney Herald), xxiii Sydney Morning Herald (Sydney Herald), 18–21, 23, 30, 99, 123, 126, 222, 225, 226, 266 Symbolism, 251. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques Syme, David, 22, 199, 201, 204 T T & W Boone Publishers, 47 Tanganekald, 109 Tanna, 193, 202 Tanner, Mark, 252 Tasmania, 16, 125, 219, 264. See also Van Diemen’s Land Tasmanian News , 157 Tax/es, 17 Technology(ies), 17, 22, 168, 177 Teeth, 123, 150 Telegraph Adelaide, 22

288

INDEX

Brisbane, 18 Telegraph, 8, 17, 20, 168, 178, 218, 221, 225, 228, 265 cable, 20 Overland Line, 20, 48 Telephone, 20 Tench, Watkin, 7, 44–46 Terra Nullius , 8 legal fallacy, 8 Thackeray, William Makepeace, 97, 143 Theobald, Marjorie, 76 Theophrastus, 105 Theoretical framework, 9 Thomas, Evan Kyffin, 53 The Diary and Letters of Mary Thomas (1836–1866): being a record of the early days of South Australia, 53, 61 Thomas, Julian (James, John Stanley; Vagabond), 8, 24, 31, 100, 111, 149, 151–154, 159, 161, 162, 175, 184, 190, 206–209, 213, 222–225, 236 Thomas, Mary, 7, 52 Serious Poems , 52 Thomas, Robert, 52 Thompson, Hunter S., 74 Thomson, Catherine Hay, 8, 24, 30, 155–157, 162, 163 Times , 14, 20, 21, 199, 201, 221, 229 Timoney, Father Francis, 248, 249 Titchener, Edward Bradford, 148 Tom (kidnapped child), 198 Tone, 5, 17, 23, 26, 70, 104, 141, 200, 265 Toohey, Paul, 262 Town, 105 Towns, Robert, 192–194 Trade arms and ammunition, 207

labour, 190, 192, 195, 198, 199, 201, 202, 205, 206, 209, 210 slave, 192, 195 Seealso “Blackbirding”; Pacific Island Labour Trade; South Sea Island Labour Trade Traill, John, 102 Trains, 20. See also Railways Transport, 181 Transportation, 17, 18, 52, 57, 148, 191 of convicts, 99 Transportation Theory, 148. See also Empathy Tranter, Bruce, 181 Travel narratives, 3, 125 writer, 3 writing, 50, 94, 122, 124, 125, 243 Tree Kangaroo (Boongary), 82 Trevelyan, Florence, 104 Trollope, Anthony, 97, 122, 132 Truth, 18 Truth/Truthfulness, 5, 73, 74, 81, 152, 172, 204, 267. See also Accuracy; Emotion/Emotional; Real Tulloch, John, 3, 50, 53 Turner, Ethel, 104 Twain, Mark, 101, 122, 132, 228 U Undercover, 149, 154–157, 190, 199 Understatement, 251. See also Literary Journalism, methods and techniques UNESCO, Memory of the World, 179 Unionism, 198 Unions, 210 United States, 3, 20–23, 26, 75, 140, 181, 192, 248

INDEX

Urban/Urbanised, 28, 131, 140, 142, 159, 262. See also City/ies

V Vagabond, 24, 101, 149, 153–155, 159, 175. See also John Stanley James (Julian Thomas) Van Diemen’s Land, 19, 29, 70, 94. See also Tasmania Van Vorst, Bessie and Marie, 144 Victoria, 2, 18, 19, 85, 126, 168, 179, 219, 232, 263, 264 Victorian literature, 254 Victorian Mounted Rifles, 251 Violence/Violent, 15, 27, 29, 54, 78, 79, 81, 82, 106, 109, 144, 147, 152, 169, 190, 193, 194, 198, 220–222, 230, 249 Vivienne, May, 121, 122 Vogan, Arthur, 7, 78, 79–82. See also First Nations; First Nations People; Native Police; Queensland Voice, 5, 8, 26, 27, 29, 44, 45, 50, 58, 68, 82, 84, 94, 97, 103, 104, 107, 142, 146, 175, 195, 196, 219, 251, 263

W Wahl-Jørgensen, Karen, 173 Wakefield, EG, 52 Wallace, Edgar, 228 Walsh, Kay, 71 Waltzing Matilda, 230 Wantabadgery Bushrangers, 27 War/s Anglo-Sudan, 225 Austro-Prussian, 222 Boer War (Second Anglo-South African War), 226, 227

289

correspondent/s, 218, 220, 221, 226, 228, 243, 248 Crimean, 221 culture, 221 Frontier, 190, 219–221 history, 221 New Caledonian Great Revolt, 222 New Zealand, 218, 219 reporting, 218, 220–222, 251 See also Conflict Wardell, Robert, 17 Warrane, 14. See also Sydney Watling, Thomas, 49 Watson, Don, 128 Wattatonga, 109 Weaver, Rachael, 25, 104 Webby, Elizabeth, 51 Weber, Adna, 140, 160 Weekes, Cora Anna, 30. See also Spectator Weekly Newspaper, 30, 71. See also Jerrold, Douglas Wegearmin, 108 Wentworth, William Charles, 17, 56, 119 Wergon (Peter), 107, 109 Westerly, 142 Western Australia, 18, 19, 51, 52, 80, 122 Western Pacific Commission, 205 West Indies, 14 St Christopher’s Island, 14 White Australia, 210 White Australia Policy, 210 White, John, 45 Whitter, John Greenleaf, 80 Whitton, Evan, 266 Wilde, Oscar, 252 Wildman, Alexina, 31. See also Sappho Smith Wilkinson, Frank, 228 William, Nicholas, 105

290

INDEX

Willoughby, Howard, 218–221, 234, 235 Wilson, Edward, 21, 204 Wirrayaraay People, 27. See also Myall Creek Massacre Wolfe, Tom, 58, 230 Woman’s Sphere, 30. See also Goldstein, Vida Woman’s Voice, 30. See also Maybanke, Susannah Wolstenholme Woman/Women Boer, 244–246 children, 245 wives, 246 Women’s literature, 252 sections, 23, 30 writing, 7

Wood, Rebecca, 28, 29 Woolf, Virginia A Room of One’s Own, 54 Wordsworth, William, 97 Worker, 18 Workers, 68, 71, 79, 191, 198, 208, 209. See also Labour; Labourers World War II, 181 Wright, C.D., 231 Wright, Tom, 177 Wyckoff, Walter, 144 Y Yahoo Serious, 178 Yellow Journalism, 23, 26 Young, Brigham, 175 Young, Florence, 104 Young, Sally, 17