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NLA News - home July 2006 Volume XVI Number 10

A Familiar Icon

click to enlarge

Shearing ticket  1905
Manuscript Collection
MS 9924/2/8, Box 3

 

Donna Vaughan describes how folklore collector Bill Wannan documented a way of life that has now largely disappeared

Anyone in Australia over the age of 40 who has sat in a barber’s or doctor’s waiting room browsing through tattered copies of the Australasian Post will be familiar with Bill Wannan, even if they don’t know his name. Wannan ran a weekly column in the Post entitled ‘Come in Spinner’ from 1955 to 1980. His comic yarns about the Aussie battler from the bush, and the accompanying illustrations by Vane Lindesay of a man in a singlet with flies buzzing around his head, seeped into the unconscious of the post-war generation and kept alive a national character type that had developed through the writing of Henry Lawson, A.B. ‘Banjo’ Paterson, Steele Rudd and Joseph Furphy.

Wannan was one of a number of collectors and writers of what is now dubbed folklore, who documented a way of life and national character that have largely disappeared in Australia’s current metropolitan lifestyle and complex multicultural population. Alan Marshall, Frank Hardy, Russel Ward, Patsy-Adam Smith, Bill Scott and Ron Edwards were all active in collecting and publishing, but at the time Wannan’s output in the Post column, and his 50 plus books on Australian folklore and popular history, made him probably the most best known among them. His work was recognised in 1991 with an Order of Australia for service to Australian literature and folklore.

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Vane Lindesay
‘The Old Bush Liars’
Reproduced from Bill Wannan’s cuttings of Australasian Post,
14 July 1955
Manuscript Collection
MS 9924/6/15

Wannan’s first forays as a folklore columnist were in the Argus in 1952 when he had a daily column, ‘Plain Australian’, and a weekly feature, ‘Colonial Cavalcade’. It was through these and his ‘Come in Spinner’ feature in the Australasian Post that Wannan solicited and collected the yarns, poems, bush remedies and jokes that became his signature material. The response from readers of the Post was enthusiastic, and writers of submissions that were published in ‘Come in Spinner’ received a token financial reward for their efforts.

Letters from his readers form a major part of the Bill Wannan papers, which are held in the National Library’s Manuscript Collection. Readers answered his requests for the words of songs and poems, yarns about specific subjects and bush cures, or were inspired after reading his column or books to send him family anecdotes and even documents and photographs. Some examples that illuminate the history of Australia’s shearing industry include a crumpled shearer’s ticket, dated 1905, and some official forms, produced at the time of the 1890 Queensland shearers strike, sent to Wannan by a Dalby Court employee in 1969.

Although Wannan was obviously a highly organised person—his output and diligence in retaining copies of his own correspondence is evidence of that—he struggled to control the volume of research material that he collected. The Wannan Papers are a melange of files of correspondence and subject material arranged in various ways—lists, notes and scrapbooks of cuttings, publications and letters. Browsing through the files and scrapbooks exposes delightfully quirky items. For instance, the custom of garbage collectors leaving little printed cards at Christmas time as a nudge to the householder for a little bonus or bottle of beer was also practised by the night cart collectors (remember them, the men in the truck driving down the alley behind your house to spirit away the pan from the outside dunny?), and Wannan
retained these.

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Collage of Christmas cards from garbage and night-cart collectors
Manuscript Collection
MS 9924/6/16, Box 27

A topic that Wannan took seriously was bush medicine and in 1970 he published Bill Wannan’s Folk Medicine: A Miscellany of Old Cures and Remedies, Superstitions, and Old Wives’ Tales Having Particular Reference to Australia and the British Isles. Letters with cures for corns and rheumatism are particularly prevalent in the Wannan Papers, with raw potatoes, swede turnips and lemons featuring often in the treatments. A ‘cure’ for a different condition was sent in by Reg North, of Vermont, Victoria, who confided to Wannan: ‘When I was sowing wild oats fifty years ago, girls avoided getting in the family way by blowing gently on the back of one hand when they squatted for a widdle immediately after the romp. Between you and me Bill, I can’t help feeling that there were times when Heaven’s been wonderfully kind.’

Although these excerpts from the Wannan Papers are light-hearted, Wannan’s attitude to collecting and interpreting folklore had a more serious bent and was informed by his broader understanding of Australian history and literature. In a letter to Colin McJannet of the Monaro Folk Music Society in 1971
he wrote:

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Handmade book cover of‘The Ballad of Robin Hood’, by William P. Wannan, 1927
Manuscript Collection
MS 9924/4/1, Box 19

Folklorists ought to … re-examine the basis of approaches to Australian history, especially radicalism and nationalism … We (I certainly include myself among the guilty ones) have glossed over aspects that didn’t fit in with our theories about the dignity and decency of the common man in the context of this country’s growth as a nation. We shouldn’t close our eyes to the reactionary, fascist tendencies of writers like Lawson; the jingoism, racist writings of Henry Kendall, the anti-semitism of Marcus Clarke, Archibald, many of the Bulletin writers etc. Our folklore and mythology are full of xenophobia, racist illusions, anti-intellectualism, chauvinism and so on … it sickens me to see them (in this case, bushrangers) adulated by folk-singers and others who have no knowledge of them in the true historical sense.

The Wannan Papers also offer illumination on matters other than Wannan’s folklore activities. Born William Fielding Fearn-Wannan in Melbourne on 28 May 1915, he was the son of William Llewellyn Fearn-Wannan and Ruby Roberta Wannan. He spent his primary school years in Bairnsdale, Victoria, and later attended University High School in Melbourne. Wannan senior was a gifted schoolteacher who instilled in his son a love of literature at an early age, and probably encouraged him to write. According to folklorist John Ryan, from his father ‘young Bill gained a feeling for language, religion, law, folk songs and old bush ballads (sung around the family piano), and for texts embodying the ideals of his own and ancestral races—such as the works of Burns and the Irish balladists’.

In grade five Wannan was already producing his own magazine, although there are sadly no copies held in his Papers. However one handmade, hand-illustrated book of verse, ‘The Ballad of Robin Hood’, is testament to his talent at age 11. He already has a publisher (‘John Castle & Co.’), explanatory notes, an advance notice of a forthcoming publication (‘‘Roger of Salisbury’, a splendid, magnificent book of the 13th century … boys will love this fine, healthy story’) and an autobiographical note. The verse itself is sprinkled with ‘alacks’ and ‘tarries’ as befits the old English theme and displays a love of poetry that was to persist throughout his life.

As was common for anyone of the post-World War I Depression era, Wannan tried his hand at various types of work including fruit-picking and road mending (‘on susso’ —the dole), nightclub waiter and apple grader attendant. At the age of 21 his first newspaper article was published in The Age and in 1938 he travelled to Japan to work as a freelance journalist. Wannan’s journey by boat via Thursday Island, Mindanao, the Philippines and Hong Kong is documented in a journal in letter form. His respect for Japanese people and their culture is already apparent during the voyage when he relates the events of an afternoon tea put on by the Japanese captain to which he and the first class passengers were invited. After refreshments and cigars (to which the American wife of one couple objected—‘George, quit puffin’ that ceegar. You’re like
a volcano’), he writes:

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Page of handmade book of‘The Ballad of Robin Hood’, by William P. Wannan, 1927
Manuscript Collection
MS 9924/4/1, Box 19

The Captain brought out his bamboo flute—a simple hollow tube, but cunningly cut at the mouth. He produced his music—so very different a notation to our own—and played firstly ‘Auld Lang Syne’ very sweetly. Then the popular (in Japan) ‘Spring Song’ of the geisha girls. He next produced some volumes of the Noh drama, composed in the 16th century. I remarked that they were about contemporary with Shakespeare. His eyes lightened. He asked me if I loved Shakespeare. I did. He wanted to know what plays I liked best. I told him. Then he began quotations, in a sweet voice, firstly from ‘Julius Caesar’ (which, rather naturally, is one of the most popular plays in Japan) then from ‘Hamlet’ and ‘Merchant of Venice’ … Then he sang some passages from a Noh play (classical) very strange to our ears. No defined melody. Rather like an involved operatic recitative … He is a most remarkable man.

While in Japan he established friendships with a number of women with whom he corresponded, in particular Miné Suko, the daughter of a Japanese businessman, who had been educated in England and spoke English with ‘an impeccable accent’. Suko and Wannan, together with another young Japanese woman and an American hospital matron, made a tour of Hokkaido based on Basho’s Oku No Hosomichi, which Wannan had discovered in a bookshop shortly after arriving in Tokyo. Suko penned an itinerary in calligraphic style and Wannan wrote a journal describing the trip which was, he wrote to a colleague, a ‘poetical journey through old Japan’. The more sombre purpose of his visit was to depict the rise of fascism in Japan for newspapers in Australia, although he also wrote on art and culture.

In 1942, Wannan joined the Australian Imperial Force and served in Darwin and the Pacific. His time spent in Darwin, along with his earlier experiences on ‘susso’, provided insights into the idiom, culture and lore of the Aussie battler which formed the basis of his later literary directions. In the Dutch East Indies Wannan appears to have become involved with a performing group, Sophie’s Concert Party. The Wannan Papers include some hand-decorated music manuscripts of arrangements of popular songs attributed to Margaret Royce and Peter Bell, with words translated into Indonesian. An unpublished children’s story, ‘Salbiah goes to Samarinda: The Adventures of a Little Girl in Borneo’, was probably also a product of this period.

Accounts of Wannan describe him as a private person, quiet and well-spoken, shy and confident at the same time. The Wannan Papers suggest he was a sensitive man, occasionally depressed, and could be defensive of his reputation and rights with regard to his writing. Family seemed important to him, although life with them was not always smooth sailing. Wannan and his wife, Ora, had two children, one of whom died in childhood. Wannan’s first book, The Australian: Yarns, Ballads, Legends and Traditions of the Australian People, published in 1954, was dedicated ‘In memory of Jeff, little son and mate’.

The eighties saw a period of marital turmoil which was ultimately overcome. In her later years Ora contracted Alzheimer’s disease but Wannan kept her at home. In a letter from 1999 he explained that ‘we’ve been married for some 55 years, we’re still very much in love, she is fully conscious of her condition … she’s fearful of going into a home, and withal she’s such witty company, and so amiable, that I feel I must delay her going as long as possible’. Ultimately Ora outlived Wannan, who died in Melbourne on 20 April 2003. He is also survived by his daughter.

DONNA VAUGHAN is a librarian in the Manuscript Branch at the National Library

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