December 2014

Volume 6 Number 4

On the cover

May Gibbs (1877–1969)
We Are the Gumnut Corps, We’re Going to the War c. 1916
print; 8.7 x 13.9 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn5816909

May Gibbs supplemented her income during the First World War doing sketches of servicemen prior to their embarkation and selling postcards of gumnut babies as soldiers. Gumnut Babies, the first of May Gibbs’ gumnut children books, was published in 1916 and her most famous book, Snugglepot and Cuddlepie, was published in 1918.

Together with other mementos of war—from the personal to the political—this postcard can be seen in the Library’s latest exhibition, Keepsakes: Australians and the Great War.

Copyright and credits

The aim of the quarterly The National Library of Australia Magazine is to inform the Australian community about the National Library of Australia’s collections and services, and its role as the information resource for the nation. Copies are distributed through the Australian library network to state, public and community libraries and most libraries within tertiary-education institutions. Copies are also made available to the Library’s international associates, and state and federal government departments and parliamentarians. Additional copies of the magazine may be obtained by libraries, public institutions and educational authorities. Individuals may receive copies by mail by becoming a member of the Friends of the National Library of Australia.

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Contents

Keepsakes:
Australians and the Great War

Pen to Paper: 
John Kinsella

John Gould’s Extinct and
Endangered Mammals of Australia

Collections Feature: 
Chasing the Hairy Wild Man from Botany Bay

A Civil Affair: The Emden’s Last Raid

In the Frame:
Wesley College Athletic Team 1914

Writing The Petrov Poems

Fred Ward: Furniture Designer

Chequered Lives: John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack

Keepsakes:
Australians and the Great War

Guy Hansen introduces some of the mementos of war—personal, political and poignant—featured in the Library’s latest exhibition

A studio portrait shows a newly married couple. The husband is dressed in the uniform of the First Australian Imperial Force (AIF) and his wife wears a lace wedding dress. The scene in the photo is very familiar: a patriotic young man marries his love before embarking for war. The inscription reads, ‘With love from Kate and George 17/11/15’. Looking at the photo, we cannot help but wonder what happened. Did the soldier survive the war? Did his experience at the Front change him? How did his wife cope with being left behind?

Studio portraits of this type can be found in homes across Australia. They are usually mounted on card bearing the name of the photographer’s studio. Often there is an inscription noting where and when the photograph was taken. The portraits capture a moment in a soldier’s life just prior to heading overseas. Sometimes, the men are joined by their wives, mothers or children. Dressed in new uniforms, the soldiers gaze into the lens with pride and a sense of optimism.

James C. Cruden
Wedding Portrait of Kate McLeod and George Searle of Coogee, Sydney, 1915
b&w photograph; 19.2 x 13.6 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn6540284

These photos were intended as keepsakes. For the duration of the war, the vast majority of Australian soldiers was unable to return home and many were separated from their families for years. In this way studio portraits served as reminders of someone not present. After the war, the portraits remained on mantelpieces for years—private memorials to service and sacrifice.

These keepsakes move us because we know what happened. Of the hundreds of thousands of Australians who served during the First World War, over 60,000 would not return. While the young men who enlisted, particularly in the early phase of the war, saw the experience as a great adventure, we know that they would face unimaginable challenges at the Front and would be away from home for years. These photos, then, capture a view of the war before the full horror of the conflict was apparent.

The National Library holds numerous First World War studio portraits, as well as other reminders of the war. Many of the young men and women who left Australia to serve as soldiers and nurses returned with mementos of their time abroad. The letters they wrote and the photographs they took were gathered together and kept as treasured items by their families. Over time, some of these collections have made their way into the collections of the National Library. Today, the Library holds the papers of many soldiers and nurses who served at the Front. It is also the home for the papers of Australia’s key wartime leaders, including the prime ministers Joseph Cook, Andrew Fisher and William Morris Hughes, the Governor-General Munro Ferguson, and Major-General John Monash. These collections are complemented by recruitment posters, photographs, maps, diaries, cartoons and ephemera. The print record of the war is also kept as part of the Library’s extensive collection of Australian magazines, newspapers, histories and memoirs, as well as through novels, plays and poetry. The best of these collections are currently on show in a new exhibition marking the centenary of the war. Entitled Keepsakes: Australians and the Great War, the exhibition explores Australia’s memory of the conflict through the mementos and souvenirs kept by service personnel, political leaders, civilians, artists and families.

Among the many treasures on display in Keepsakes is a selection of personal diaries and letters of servicemen. There is the correspondence of Ferdinand Henry Wright, who volunteered at the age of 26, leaving behind his young wife and two children. His letters home illustrate his growing awareness of the possibility of dying at the Front. In one missive, he encloses an envelope carrying a letter to his infant son, only to be opened on his twelfth birthday in the event of his father’s death. As it eventuated, Wright survived the war and the letter to his son was kept as a reminder of what might have happened.

The exhibition also features personal items from Australia’s most senior political and military leaders. For example, there is a handwritten note from Billy Hughes, penned in high dudgeon to the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, complaining about the behaviour of the German delegation at the Paris Peace Conference. Also from the Peace Conference is Joseph Cook’s annotated copy of the Peace Treaty. Other material featured in the exhibition includes letters from Munro Ferguson, Hughes and Monash which illuminate the delicate relations between these powerful men.

One of the key political debates in Australia during the war focused on attempts by the Hughes government to introduce conscription for overseas service. This proposal was defeated twice at referendums, firstly in 1916 and again in 1917. The bitter and acrimonious nature of the conscription referendum campaigns is reflected in the exhibition through a selection of posters and handbills issued by both sides in the debate.

The exhibition also displays correspondence from the journalist Keith Murdoch. Murdoch emerges from the archive as a powerful behind-the-scenes player who sought to influence both prime ministers and generals. Most famously, he attempted to dissuade Hughes from promoting Monash as the commander of the Australian Corps. In the end, Monash was confirmed in the position and, after the war, was widely acclaimed as one of the most successful military commanders of the Allied forces.

Papers of Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch, 1908–1967
Manuscripts Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn913957

While the personal papers of those who served in the war provide an insight into the way it was waged, the poster and ephemera collections held by the Library give a sense of how the war was played out in Australian popular culture. The visual materials of this period are very striking, particularly the propaganda produced by patriotic associations and various arms of the state and federal governments. Even today, 100 years after the commencement of the war, most Australians will recognise Norman Lindsay’s terrifying posters encouraging Australians to support the war effort. The Library is in the unique position of holding both the original artwork for many of these posters as well as examples from the numerous print runs. Lindsay’s portrayal of square-jawed Australian soldiers stands in contrast to his caricatures of German soldiers with brutish, distorted faces and waxed moustaches. Lindsay played to fears of foreign invasion and invited citizens to consider what might happen if the ‘Huns’ ever made it to Australia.

Norman Lindsay (1879–1969)
Quick!
(Melbourne: Government of Commonwealth of Australia, 1918)
poster; 48.2 x 31.0 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an14145615
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holders: H.C. & A. Glad

In contrast to Lindsay’s crude anti-German propaganda, official war artist Will Dyson helped to create an almost beatific view of the Australian soldier. In his collection of drawings completed on the Somme and at Ypres during the campaigns of 1916 and 1917, Dyson depicted Australian soldiers as noble warriors. Their faces literally shine in the light of their lanterns and fires. These drawings were sold as limited-edition lithographs and also published in a popular large-format book entitled Australians at War: Drawings at the Front.

Will Dyson (1880–1938)
Australians at War—In the Tunnel: Hill 60, Belgium, August 1917
lithograph; 52.8 x 78.1 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn6540864

A similarly positive depiction of Australian servicemen can be found in the photographs of Frank Hurley, for which the Library holds many of the glass plate negatives. Hurley was appointed to the AIF as an official photographer in August 1917 and went on to document conditions on the Western Front. He sometimes reworked his photographs to create more powerful images. His famous composite photograph of the morning after the Battle of Passchendaele combines a foreground image of the Front with a dramatic cloudscape which was actually photographed in Palestine during the Second World War.

Frank Hurley (1885–1962)
The Morning after the First Battle of Passchendaele Showing Australian Infantry Wounded around a Blockhouse near the Site of Zonnebeke Railway Station, October 12, 1917
b&w photograph; 54.2 x 48.6 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an24574133

David Lowe is another artist who produced images of the war which have lasted in the national memory. Lowe made his reputation with his scathing caricatures of Billy Hughes in The Bulletin. His depiction of Hughes as an energetic but bellicose and egotistical leader is perhaps best captured in his Billywog cartoon, in which Hughes is drawn as a children’s toy with the attached instructions for use: ‘Blow up with wind until head expands, then release hole in face, whereupon Billy will emit loud noises until he goes flat’. The cartoon stands today as a testament to the robust nature of Australian democracy during the war.

As we mark this important centenary, it is clear that the National Library has a key role to play in helping us to understand and to reflect on the First World War. The Library holds a unique collection of manuscripts, ephemera, artworks, photographs and documents relating to this defining period in Australian history. These collections are a vital resource for understanding the war. While the First World War generation has passed, the collections held by the Library will remain as evidence of how the conflict changed Australia.

GUY HANSEN is the Library’s Director of Exhibitions. Keepsakes is on at the National Library until 19 July 2015

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Billy Hughes and His Radical Son — September 2012

Steven Holt examines the life of a Prime Minister’s son, for whom war and the Great Depression were a test of loyalty

Pen to Paper: 
John Kinsella

Virginia Wallace-Crabbe (b. 1941)
Portrait of John Kinsella 1997
b&w photograph; 25 x 18 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an13287766

John Kinsella is one of Australia’s pre-eminent literary figures: a prolific poet, writer, critic and editor. Here, he talks about writing the poem Fall of Windchime, which appeared in his second collection, Night Parrots (1989).

This poem was written when I was 23 and living in a shack on a farm just outside Bridgetown, Western Australia, with my then girlfriend and various others in what was really a commune-like arrangement. There was no electricity and water was via a large rainwater tank. The shack was wooden posts, boards and corrugated iron. It was extremely cold.

The windchime itself swung from the crossbeam above the verandah. There was a huge walnut tree next to the shack, and the walnuts would fall onto the tin roof, punctuating the windchime’s song. The locale was rich in birdlife, and the robin redbreasts and solitary blue wren were daily visitors.

There were tubes (or ‘planets’) to the windchime, but also six people coming and going, all of whom were slightly lost. It didn’t take dramatic events to change their fortunes, though dramatic events did take place. Some in the town made us feel extremely unwanted—our water was poisoned and a sign left on my poems one day—‘we have been read’. The windchime was either ripped from its setting by intruders, or wrenched from its place in a storm: either way, its fall seemed to presage our own in terms of being able to live in the place.

All of this is tangled into the poem, which is about (dis)connection with place. It’s also a ‘revelatory’ poem: I was reading Blake at the time, and we had just learned that my girlfriend was pregnant. At that stage I was trying to find understated ways of writing about complex things.

John Kinsella, 2014

Manuscript of Fall of Windchime
in Papers of John Kinsella, 1980–1993
Manuscripts Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.ms-ms8241

FALL OF WINDCHIME

A pair of robin red-breasts,

solitary blue wren, touch

of shattered windchime.

In so immediate-a-space

the barrels—six planets, confidence

shaken, fell to a mediocre wind.

And the rainbow fell

upon the triptych of trees,

panelled: clouds supporting

angels supporting clouds.

Scattered. Mummified rat,

late fallen walnut. Apropos.

The scurried particles of water.

Frost. Cold fingers apropos

hands. Windchime fallen,

cold cut of water.

Fall of Windchime in Night Parrots
Fremantle, Western Australia: Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 1989, p. 81
Australian Collection
nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn658481

John Gould’s Extinct and Endangered Mammals of Australia

John Gould (artist, 1804–1881) and Henry Constantine Richter (lithographer, 1821–1902)
Peragalea lagotis (detail) plate 7 in The Mammals of Australia, volume 1, by John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter
(London: John Gould, 1863)
Australian Rare Books Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.aus-vn760101-1-s65

Lost and threatened animals come to life in the pages of Gould’s The Mammals of Australia, writes Fred Ford

Short-sighted indeed are the Anglo-Australians, or they would long ere this have made laws for the preservation of their highly singular, and in many instances noble, indigenous animals; and doubly short-sighted are they for wishing to introduce into Australia the productions of other climes.

So wrote naturalist John Gould in 1863 about the limited thinking of Australians in relation to their native animals. It was a portentous observation; the next century and a half was to see the demise of numerous species of Australia’s fauna, often as a result of the introduction of non-native animals.

Yet even Gould may have been surprised at the extent to which, as colonisation took hold, the Australian landscape was to be irreparably altered, the bush overrun with introduced pests and the country’s native animal populations, especially its seemingly hardy and prolific small animals, decimated. Startlingly, half of all worldwide mammal extinctions over the past 200 years have occurred in Australia. Today, Gould’s great illustrated work, The Mammals of Australia, provides a window onto several native species observable at the time—many of which, sadly, have now been permanently obliterated from our landscape.

Gould had not intended to produce a comprehensive work on Australia’s fauna. When, on Monday 9 September 1839, he arrived in the colony of New South Wales, The Sydney Herald proclaimed:

Mr Gould, the celebrated Ornithologist, has returned to the Colony for the purpose of prosecuting researches necessary for the completion of his work, ‘The Birds of Australia’.

A year earlier, in September 1838, he had landed in Hobart Town, Van Diemen’s Land, to follow his love of birds and the promise of discovering novel and beautiful species in a continent that clearly held animals that were very different from those in the rest of the world.

Louis Auguste de Sainson (artist, 1801–1887) and Achille St. Aulaire (lithographer, 1801–c. 1889)
Vue de la Rade de Hobart-Town, Ile Van-Diemen 1833
hand-coloured lithograph; 22.5 x 33.2 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an8368168

The ‘celebrated Ornithologist’ who, in England, rubbed shoulders with other intellectuals of the time, including a young Charles Darwin, was the product of the Victorian era, a period that spawned a phenomenal interest in natural history, admirably serviced in England by access to a worldwide empire filled with biological curios. Gould was no amateur collector, however; his intention was always to produce scientific descriptions of his findings. Still, his expeditions to the colony required funding, and it was to this end that he planned to produce a lavish series of folios of birds—to which the wealthy were heartily encouraged to subscribe—illustrated by his wife, Elizabeth, based on his sketches and descriptions.

Thomas Herbert Maguire (1821–1895)
Portrait of John Gould, Ornithologist c. 1849
lithograph; 29.3 x 24 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an9547887

It is likely that Gould also intended to collect mammals during his visits to the colony. Working at the Zoological Society in London, he was exposed to a rich collection of mammals—and scientists. Irish zoologist William Ogilby wrote to Gould prior to his departure, urging him to collect multiple specimens, including red and woolly kangaroos, and a Thylacine from Van Diemen’s Land. Fascinated by the country’s unique animals, Gould was soon impelled to go further. As he writes in the preface to The Mammals of Australia:

It was not, however, until I arrived in this country, and found myself surrounded by objects as strange as if I had been transported to another planet, that I conceived the idea of devoting a portion of my attention to the mammalian class of its extraordinary fauna.

Gould went on to produce numerous scientific papers describing mammal species, and a partial monograph on the kangaroo—a clear favourite, on whom Gould heaped many superlatives. He never completed the kangaroo monograph, opting instead to compile the series of folios he had released on the wider mammal fauna into a set of three volumes. The folios were published as early as 1845, but it was not until 1863 that the three volumes of The Mammals of Australia represented a completed work. Gould rewrote the introduction and updated information on some species. The very large format of a folio allowed Gould to replicate parts of larger animals at full size and to capture smaller species in their entirety.

John Gould (artist, 1804–1881) and Henry Constantine Richter (lithographer, 1821–1902)
Osphranter rufus (detail)
plate 6 in The Mammals of Australia, volume 2, by John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter
(London: John Gould, 1863)
Australian Rare Books Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.aus-vn760101-2-s21

The collection and documentation of Australia’s animals was far from Gould’s own isolated effort. The knowledge of the local Indigenous people was an indispensible part of his collecting strategy; numerous accounts in Gould’s work refer to the way Aboriginal people interacted with the fauna. Unsurprisingly, this often entailed hunting methods and some appraisal of how good a species was to eat. Gould also relied on the efforts of the many collectors who found and sent him specimens. Perhaps the most important of these was John Gilbert, who travelled from England to Australia with Gould, and was to make collecting forays into south-western Australia, the Cobourg Peninsula in the far north of the Northern Territory, and Queensland. Gilbert also set off on a second journey to the Cobourg Peninsula as part of Ludwig Leichhardt’s expedition from southern Queensland to Port Essington. It was to prove a fateful decision, however; the expedition was beset by numerous mishaps and Gilbert was killed by an Aboriginal spear in June 1845, bringing the productive partnership between Gould and his collector to a tragic end.

It is difficult for us to imagine what the Australian landscape might have been like when Gould and his collectors worked. While much of it was still largely unexplored by Europeans, with the slow spread of the colonies from the initial settlements, large tracts of land were on the brink of being opened up. Throughout his work, Gould touched on the inevitable demise of landscape and fauna at the hands of Europeans. He wrote of the ‘comparatively undisturbed country’ that he was ‘fortunate … to visit … while so much of it remained in its primitive state’ and was clearly aware that he was in a privileged position to be able to observe Australia at this time, ‘the charms of which will ere long be ruffled and their true character no longer seen’.

Indeed, change over the quarter of century following the publication of The Mammals of Australia was to be dramatic, while another 25 years beyond that would see the wholesale loss of native animals. The introduction of rabbits from the 1880s was to prove disastrous for Australia’s native species, especially its small animals. Not only did rabbits destroy habitat and compete for food, but control measures aimed at them also took a major toll on natives. Rabbit traps and widespread poisoning certainly had an impact on bandicoots (including Bilbies), possums and bettongs. Perhaps the key role of rabbits is that their vast numbers facilitated the rapid spread and population increase of foxes.

Motor Lorry Loaded with 1,760 Pairs Rabbits Drawn from Depot 30 Miles from Nearest Railway Station c. 1918
b&w photograph; 15.1 x 20.4 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an24664485

Today, The Mammals of Australia gives us access to some of these lost animals; of the 27 species that have disappeared forever, Gould provided accounts for 16. The book by no means provides a comprehensive coverage of all mammal species in Australia; it focuses mainly on macropods, underrepresents bats and, significantly, does not include the fauna of the geographically unique tropical rainforest of north-eastern Queensland. Gould himself made no claim to have produced the definitive work on Australia’s animals. Nor can he be said to have made the most important contribution to mammal taxonomy. Gould’s names for 80 mammal species and subspecies (of which only 40 or so are still considered to be ‘real’ species) relied heavily on the work of British zoologist John Edward Gray, who described 72 species, and George Robert Waterhouse, assistant in the mineralogical branch of the department of natural history at the British Museum in the 1840s, who began to compile a catalogue of the world’s known mammals. In turn, the greatest mammal taxonomist of all time, Oldfield Thomas, followed in Gould’s footsteps, describing more than 2,000 mammal species and subspecies, of which 138 were Australian.

Henry Constantine Richter (1821–1902)
Thylacinus cynocephalus (detail)
plate 54 in The Mammals of Australia, volume 1, by John Gould and Henry Constantine Richter
(London: John Gould, 1863)
Australian Rare Books Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.aus-vn760101-1-s163

Where Gould far exceeded the achievements of Gray, Waterhouse and Thomas, however, was in bringing his biological subjects to life. This probably stemmed from the fact that Gould perceived the need to visit Australia to understand its animals. He did not want to describe a fauna based solely on skins sent to him from the other side of the world. As he himself wrote: ‘To see the Kangaroos in all their glory, their native country must be visited; their beauty would then be at once apparent’. His legacy is unquestionable—he made that beauty known to the world.

Fred Ford is the author of John Gould’s Extinct and Endangered Mammals of Australia, published by NLA Publishing

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Nature’s Businessman: Shrewd or Stoic? — June 2011

Roslyn Russell reassesses John Gould’s reputation for ruthless ambition

Collections Feature: 
Chasing the Hairy Wild Man from Botany Bay

By NAT WILLIAMS
The James and Bettison Treasures Curator

Held in the Library’s Rex Nan Kivell Collection, this image of the ‘Hairy Wild Man from Botany Bay’ appears in a unique pamphlet. Written and illustrated by an unknown author, the pamphlet, A Tour through the Apollo Gardens, in Gawsworth, near Macclesfield, Cheshire, was printed in 1802 in England, only 14 years after European settlement in New South Wales.

The text accompanying the image tells an often surreal story in which the narrator, quoting liberally from the verse of Milton and Pope, travels through time and space, encountering a remarkable array of people, experiences and places: musical fountains, a ‘Night piece’ in verse in the sky, a Masonic hermit and, eventually, Botany Bay. Our narrator, hearing the clinking of chains, suddenly beholds ‘The Den of the Hairy Wild Man from Botany Bay’ and, barely having had time to read the inscription, is surprised by the door bursting open and the furious Hairy Wild Man charging out. Luckily, the Wild Man’s chain prevents the narrator from being mauled.

The presence of this Wild Man in a pamphlet created so soon after settlement is curious. He may reflect the sense of intrigue, but also menace, that the struggling early convict settlement radiated back to its source. At least in the early days of settlement, the palpable fear of transportation—to what must have seemed like the end of the earth—was clearly expressed in caricatures and verse. The manacled Hairy Wild Man was perhaps a warning to readers about the perils of exile to remote lands.

The Den of the Hairy Wild Man from Botany Bay
frontispiece in A Tour through the Apollo Gardens,
in Gawsworth, near Macclesfield, Cheshire
(Congleton: Printed and sold by J. Dean, 1802)
Rex Nan Kivell Collection (Australian Rare Books); nla.gov.au/nla.obj-1320552

The Wild Man is also an imaginative and engaging visual trope with a very long heritage. Images of such figures are well established in our collective consciousness, dating all the way back to the figure of Enkidu in the ancient Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh. It may be that the author of our pamphlet was inspired by the fantastic reports of captured hairy giants, and of strange and unlikely wildlife, which were beginning to be conveyed, in watercolour, in prose and through hearsay, on ships returning to England. The figure, with its human face, is no doubt descended from the lineage of wild men imagined and depicted over time, though very rarely are such figures depicted manacled as he is. Perhaps the shackled figure, more benign than terrifying, reflects the convict transported to what Marcus Clarke famously called the land of ‘weird melancholy’. •

The Hairy Wild Man from Botany Bay is currently on display in the Library’s Treasures Gallery. Discover more about the Wild Man at nla.gov.au/blogs/treasures

A Civil Affair: The Emden’s Last Raid

The Emden (detail)
page 5 in Australia’s First Naval Fight, November 1914
(Melbourne: Keystone Printing Co., c. 1915)
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.aus-vn2009055-s6

A wartime encounter between German sailors and Australian telegraph operators was surprisingly amiable, writes Edwin Ride

Ten years ago, the National Library acquired a collection of 22 photographs, complete with descriptive captions, taken by staff of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company’s wireless and cable station in the Cocos Islands. It documents the visit of a group of sailors from the German ship SMS Emden on 9 November 1914.

Many of the 29 staff on the island must have written home about their visitors. Some of the letters were forwarded, and published, with photographs, in Australian and New Zealand newspapers late in December that year (which was, I suppose, how long the mail took in 1914). That the event received such press coverage was due to the significance of the occasion and the fame of the vessels concerned: the Emden had lately become the scourge of the Indian Ocean, and it was on this day that she would be destroyed by the HMAS Sydney—a victorious first sea battle for the infant Royal Australian Navy.

Cover of Australia’s First Naval Fight, November 1914
(Melbourne: Keystone Printing Co., c. 1915)
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.aus-vn2009055-s1

The Emden had chalked up an astonishingly successful score in the three months since the First World War began. While the rest of the German East Asian squadron had sailed south-east from the German colony at Tsingtao on the Chinese mainland, heading for Germany via South America, the Emden had gone south-west. Her captain, Karl von Müller, had been granted a detached command to enable him to harass British commercial shipping in the Indian Ocean. By the end of October, the Emden had captured or sunk 18 Allied cargo vessels, destroyed the oil storage tanks in Madras Port, India, and, in a daring raid on Penang, accounted for a Russian cruiser and a French destroyer by torpedoes and gunfire. Now it was time for a jaunt ashore.

Kirsty Wilkins
Cocos Islands 2013
digital photograph; Courtesy Kirsty Wilkins

The employees of the Eastern Extension Telegraph Company’s outpost on Direction Island, in the Cocos (Keeling) group, had been anticipating a visit from the German raider for quite some time. Their telegraph and wireless station was an important link in the global communication network which connected many of the far-flung outposts of the British Empire, its cables connecting Perth to Durban (in Africa) and Singapore. Australia’s telegraph link through Fanning Island to Canada had been cut by the Germans in September 1914, barely a month after the war began, so now, two months on, it was clearly only a matter of time before Direction Island was targeted. Lately, the Cocos wireless operators had heard the Emden in nightly communication with her collier. Precautions had been taken: spare parts for the instruments had been buried in different locations around the island and dummy telegraph cables had been laid in the lagoon. Many of the staff were, nominally at least, army reservists, with responsibility for protecting the communication facility. They had not, however, been provided with weapons, and their superintendent, Darcy Farrant, had sensibly instructed them that, in the event of a raid, they were to offer no opposition to attacking parties.

Group Portrait of Part of the Crew of the SMS Emden, 1914
page in German Concentration Camp Australia, Album of Internment Camps on Rottnest Island, Western Australia and at Trial Bay and Holsworthy, New South Wales, 1914–1918 by Karl Lehmann
b&w photograph; 13.3 x 21.9 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn4703393-s103-a1

The Emden arrived at dawn, sending 43 men ashore in three boats, with Maxim machine guns mounted in the bows. The raiding party, led by the Emden’s first lieutenant, Hellmuth von Muecke, was met at the jetty by a group of interested onlookers. One of these, A.R. Lenthall, wrote to his uncle in Bairnsdale, Victoria—a letter which was later published in the Bairnsdale Advertiser and Tambo and Omeo Chronicle—describing how the ‘dapper, white uniformed officer formed up his men, then proceeded on the double to the office and wireless plant, saluting us in passing’.

While this interchange was taking place, the duty wireless operator, George La Nauze, was repeating, continuously, a distress call in morse code to all listeners. The call had already been picked up and replied to by HMS Minotaur, whose weak signal indicated she was probably 400 kilometres away—at 25 knots, a good ten hours steaming. Unknown to either the staff or the Germans, however, the signal had also been picked up by the warships sailing under radio silence who were guarding the first convoy of Australian and New Zealand troops to Europe. One of these, HMAS Sydney, was detached to investigate. With her stokers furiously shovelling coal, she was working up to full speed and was now less than three hours away.

Arriving at the wireless office, pistol in hand, von Muecke instructed the operator to stop transmitting. Farrant, who would later describe von Muecke as ‘exceedingly agreeable’, did his best to maintain a civil atmosphere, handing over the keys as requested and going on to offer his congratulations to von Muecke. Somewhat surprised, von Muecke enquired what he meant. Farrant explained that Reuters had reported the Kaiser’s award of the Iron Cross to all of the Emden’s officers and 50 of the crew for their raid on Penang. Cut off from all sources of news, this was the first the Emden crew had heard of it.

Ordered out of the buildings, the staff was kept under guard while the Germans went about their necessary work of destruction, starting on the telegraph and wireless equipment, with axes and sledgehammers—‘The German mode of adjusting instruments’, joked the staff among themselves. The wireless mast was felled with dynamite, but not before von Muecke took notice of the islanders’ concerns and, by the strategic use of supporting stays, ensured it was dropped away from the tennis court. The generator providing power to the wireless and telegraph was put out of action, but the refrigeration plant and fresh-water condenser were spared, as these were not part of the communications equipment. A party of men in the launch dredged up the two transoceanic cables (one of them a dummy) that they could find, and severed them. The staff quarters were searched but not ransacked, with sporting guns and ammunition being temporarily confiscated.

Under the German Flag, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, November, 1914
b&w photograph, 7.4 x 10.4 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3291231

Another View of the Wireless Mast 1914
b&w photograph; 7.6 x 10.6 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3291423

Landing Party from the Emden Leaving the Jetty before the Fight 1914
b&w photograph, 7.4 x 10.4 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn3291384

Finally, the Emden sounded its siren urgently to recall the shore party. Invisible to those on shore, the Sydney had been sighted by the Emden’s lookout. It was vital for her to get clear of the islands for a clean fight.

R.J. Saunders recorded the next episode in a letter to a friend in Adelaide:

After saying a few words of thanks to the Supt. and saluting, the officers marched their men off to their boats and we gave them a good cheer as they left the jetty. Their launch, towing two ship’s boats had proceeded about half way across the lagoon towards the ship when the sound of heavy firing was heard—up we all dashed on the roofs—out onto the barrier, anywhere where there was a clear view out to sea. Away on the horizon was a sight for the Gods—a four funnelled British cruiser speeding up from the N.E. belching forth huge volumes of dense black smoke. Instantly the Emden put to sea, firing with great rapidity … We had a splendid view of the duel.

Soon, the boats were to be seen putting back to the shore and, Saunders wrote:

our short lived liberty was … to come to an end. On re-landing there was a general muster, the German Ensign was hoisted on open ground just in front of the quarters, our movements restricted and the island placed under Martial Law. The officers mounted the roof tops to watch the progress of the fight with binoculars borrowed from us—later by the way, politely returned.

An anonymous member of the staff, in an article published some years later in The Western Mail, recalled how:

Von Muecke, watching the start of the action from the roof of the Coco’s quarters, in company with all the cable staff, refused to believe that this was the end of the raider. He was willing to accept my bet of a fiver that Sydney would win … when the issue was no longer in doubt, von Muecke took off his money belt and paid me, with five sovereigns.

The fight would be over in 100 minutes. Outclassed by the Sydney in both speed and armament, suffering nearly two-thirds of her crew killed or wounded, the Emden, shattered and burning, was deliberately run onto the reef at North Keeling Island, the only way Captain von Müller could save the lives of his men. They would be rescued by the Sydney the following day and spend the remainder of the war as prisoners.

Fregattencäpitan von Müller
plate in Emden by Hellmuth von Muecke
(Berlin: August Scherl, c. 1915)
Overseas Monograph Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.gen-vn2239363-s5

When it became clear that the Emden would not be returning, Lieutenant von Muecke decided his best option was to commandeer the Ayesha, a schooner at anchor in the lagoon. Having ascertained that the island stores held four months’ provisions, he requisitioned half for his men (signing a receipt for what he had taken) and loaded the schooner for departure.

The raiding party, having escaped on the Ayesha, would, in the best traditions of the Emden, avoid capture and eventually make their way back to Germany, via Yemen, in those days part of the Ottoman Empire. As Saunders wrote:

There had not been a single untoward incident throughout the day—a job of work had to be done and they did it. It wasn’t of their choosing but as they said ‘the Fortune of War’. Not one of us but looked on them as brave men going to their fate.

Edwin Ride is an independent researcher and curator

In the Frame:
Wesley College Athletic Team 1914

Peter Stanley takes a closer look at photographs reflecting life during the First World War

They sit before Adamson Hall (built by, and named after, Wesley College’s eminent headmaster, Lawrence Adamson), sure of their prowess with javelin and spiked shoe: the athletics team of the Melbourne private school. With their coach, Harry Kaighin, they look out from a photograph in the last months before a world war overwhelmed them.

A century on, knowing of the cost of the Great War in general, and the price paid by private-school boys in particular, we imagine their fates: Gallipoli, the Somme, Passchendaele. Before we have finished scanning the rows we have imagined epics of enlistment, sacrifice, grief and mourning: a representative story of Australia and the First World War.

When we examine their names, however, the story becomes more complex. Certainly the private schools of Australia, imbued with imperial and national pride, did their patriotic duty without having to be convinced or compelled. Wesley was no exception. A thousand Wesley boys volunteered for the forces of Australia or Britain, some of them sneaking off between classes to enlist (admonished half-heartedly by the proud, envious Adamson). Of them, 148 were killed, their deaths announced by Adamson at assemblies and commemorated on plaques and panels all over the school. Among them, we might expect to find members of the athletics team of 1914.

Indeed, two-thirds of these school athletes volunteered—twice the proportion of the eligible male population as a whole—as did Mr Kaighin (who, in the photograph, stands in the centre of the back row), a lieutenant in the Pay Corps. Of those who served, only one died: Eric Grant (middle row, second from the right), in a training accident with the Australian Flying Corps in Britain in 1918. (Intriguingly, about one in seven Wesley boys died at war, many fewer than we might expect—the proportion in Australia as a whole was one in five.)

The careers of the 12 who served can be traced through the voluminous military records Australia has created and preserved. School magazines and histories also detailed their service and sacrifice.

What of the six who did not enlist? What is their story? Why did they not follow their teammates’ example? The sources are silent on this point, reflecting the embarrassment, and even shame, that their decisions were likely to have brought. They were not alone: another Wesley old boy, Robert Menzies, joined the Militia but remained at home, obedient to a family decision.

The Wesley boys—both those who went and those who stayed—appear now as heroic victims of imperial and national obligation and the expectations of manliness.

Wesley College Athletic Team, 1914
b&w photograph; 15.2 x 20.6 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an23217828

Writing The Petrov Poems

Lesley Lebkowicz visited the Library for inspiration for her verse novel about the infamous Petrov Affair

Evdokia Petrova and Mary Alice Evatt, whose lives crossed briefly in the early 1950s in the course of the Petrov Affair, rest together more peacefully in the Oral History Collection at the National Library. Alive, Petrova had been a thorn in Mary Alice Evatt’s flesh; Petrova’s husband, Vladimir Petrov, had been an even greater one.

In 1954, the Petrovs, first Vladimir, then Evdokia, defected from the USSR to Australia. Before then, the Petrovs and the Evatts must have crossed paths often enough. The Petrovs lived in the Canberra suburb of Griffith, the Evatts in the adjacent area of Forrest. The women must have passed each other at Manuka shops, perhaps tried on the same clothes at Sylvia Parsons’ dress shop in Kingston, and attended the capital’s round of diplomatic cocktail parties—all without rancour.

Evdokia Petrov and Vladimir Petrov
plates in Empire of Fear by Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov
(London: Deutsch, 1956)
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn861280

It was the height of the Cold War; relations between the USSR and the West were extremely tense. The Petrovs, long-term career members of the secret services of the USSR, had been posted to nominally diplomatic positions at the embassy in Canberra. Others in similar positions around the world were defecting. The Petrovs’ position in the embassy became untenable for several reasons.

When the Petrovs defected, Prime Minister Robert Menzies called for a Royal Commission on Espionage (RCE). Mary Alice’s husband, H.V. (‘Doc’) Evatt—leader of the Labor opposition, brilliant, idealistic and mercurial—appeared before the commission to defend members of his own staff accused of involvement with Petrov. (These accusations were never proven.)

Keystone Press Agency
Vladimir Petrov Attends Third Hearing of Royal Commission on Espionage in Melbourne, 5 July 1954
b&w photograph; 20.7 x 25.4 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-vn6491188

The RCE tore the Labor movement apart, resulting in the formation of the right-wing Democratic Labor Party and damaging Doc Evatt’s reputation. Mary Alice was a loyal wife. In an interview with Mel Pratt at the Evatts’ home in Forrest, now held in the Library’s Oral History Collection, Mary Alice’s tone is generally measured and pleasant. Yet when she speaks of Petrov it is of ‘a little man, a rather fat little man that nobody really knew, I’d never even heard of him in Canberra’.

I listened to Mary Alice Evatt in the course of researching my verse novel, The Petrov Poems, which tells the story of the defections from the points of view of its chief protagonists. Mary Alice was not just a wife; she was a painter with a small but significant reputation. She had studied briefly with Picasso in Paris. The Library holds the catalogue from a 2002 exhibition of her work, curated by the Bathurst Regional Art Gallery. I wrote a series of poems based on these images. It was, however, the richness of her oral history which prompted poems presented as notes for paintings. The striking shift in her tone when she talks about Petrov gave rise to this one:

In the foreground, right, lies the swamp
he’s slid from to occupy (unjustly)
the centre ground. A sheen of almost-light,
the slick of something seeping
from its depths, glimmers on this sludge
and by this less-than-light the spy is seen

(from Notes for a Painting: Petrov)

Several of the people involved in the affair wrote about it. Chief among these were the Petrovs, whose own account of their lives appears in Empire of Fear (ghostwritten by Michael Thwaites) and in Dr Michael Bialoguski’s The Petrov Story. Bialoguski, as talented as he was egotistical, was a doctor, musician and womaniser who offered his services to the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). Doc Evatt’s staffer, Allan Dalziel; journalist and member of the Communist Party of Australia, Rupert Lockwood; and Prime Minister Robert Menzies all wrote material about the affair which today is held by the Library.

Satisfying as it was to engage with these stories, and with the oral history of Mary Alice Evatt, the Library’s resources afforded an even more intimate engagement with Evdokia Petrova. This was important, as I wanted to narrate from as close a position to the main players of the Petrov Affair as possible. Petrova’s own oral history is the result of her conversation with Robert Manne. It was recorded in Melbourne in 1996, just six years before her death in 2002. Whether as a result of a faltering memory or a glossing over of painful realities, her account of things is, in one respect, unreliable. Of her husband, she said, ‘I have never ever seen him drinking. Not at home or any parties, never. Maybe when he was with Bialoguski. Never’.

Yet Petrov drank heavily and was alleged to have run a liquor racket with Bialoguski. In this extract from Booze, he is referred to as ‘Volodya’, the more personal form of his given name:

He buys the lovely stuff duty free
as a diplomat. The spirits are sealed

in their bottles like genies in jars.
Bialoguski helps load up the car

and they’re away. The slosh and gurgle
tempts Volodya:

he liberates one
to drink as they drive round the pubs

where they offer bargains in booze.

For the most part, however, Petrova’s testimony is credible, and congruent with the accounts she gives in Empire of Fear (published in 1956, 40 years before the oral history) and with the material in the many ASIO files available in the National Archives of Australia.

Petrova’s life in the USSR had been difficult. Her family had been displaced from the countryside and fled to the capital to live in cramped quarters, often without enough food. Her first husband was taken to a labour camp; their child died. Things got better when she married Petrov. Their second overseas posting was to Canberra. She had ‘expected that everywhere were palms … but I loved it from the beginning … I always like quiet places, always’. The short, intimate form of Evdokia’s name is Dusya.

Dusya likes it here: the quiet, the space. They live
close to the Embassy and walk to work through

a silence broken only by birds. She learns their names:
magpies, currawongs, parrots and the superb blue wrens

(from Canberra)

James Northfield (1887–1973)
Australia: Canberra, Australian Capital Territory (detail)
(Melbourne: Australian National Publicity Association, c. 1940)
poster; 101 x 63 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an20044744

Petrova had earlier been a spy mistress in her own right. In the embassy on Canberra Avenue, she worked as an accountant and secretary. She stayed at home when Vladimir went to Sydney to meet Bialoguski. Petrova was not well liked by the embassy staff. For one thing, her husband belonged to the secret service, while most of the others were diplomatic staff. There was tension between the two: who was spying on whom?

On a more personal level, she was a bit of a dresser and took advantage of her access to Western fashions. In photographs of the embassy women, she is the slim one in the well-tailored clothes standing among heavier women in shapeless dresses. She makes no bones about this. When Manne asked Evdokia if the embassy women were jealous when she attended functions to which they weren’t invited, she was unkind: ‘They were all fat or something, you know’.

Dusya knows she looks good. Western clothes
flirt with her hips and breasts while her blond hair
curls like a film star’s. She sees how men look.
(They may look—but no more)

(from Snake)

Tensions inside the embassy increased as power shifted in the USSR, which had been destabilised by the death of Stalin. Appointed by Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, Stalin’s espionage chief, Petrov’s own position was weakened when Stalin died. Among the embassy women, things came to a head in an incident full of slapstick and political hysteria:

The pie sits near her right hand …
Its crust is gold and its smell rich and strong—
but the wife of the Ambassador has taken to
hating the Petrovs. You wait, she sneers.
When you get back to Moscow …
She rounds off the threat with a silence full of firing squads
and hard labour.
Dusya’s hand hoists the pie; she watches it fly
straight into the face of the wife of the Ambassador of the USSR.

(from Inside the Embassy II)

When Petrov defected, he did so alone; Evdokia was confined to the embassy. Couriers came from the USSR to take her back to Moscow. The photograph of them escorting her across the tarmac at Mascot airport on 19 April 1954 is iconic:

She sees lights flash over the crowd and
glint off the plane. People are screaming:
Let her stay …
The mass swells and jostles—
crashes its voice into her ears.

(from Rough)

In the midst of her discussion with Manne about the couriers, and whether or not they’d been sent to escort Petrova to Moscow, she interpolates this detail: ‘Then, of course, I lost my shoe’.

She must limp.
Beneath her bare foot the tarmac is rough.

(from Rough)

At Mascot Airfield Mrs Petrov Is Hustled to Her Plane by Russian Officials
plate in Empire of Fear by Vladimir and Evdokia Petrov
(London: Deutsch, 1956)
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn861280

Petrova was torn: she believed that if she returned to the USSR she would be punished for Vladimir’s defection, but that if she defected too her mother and sister still living in Moscow would be punished in her stead. The agony of her indecision is moving in the account she gives Robert Manne.

After her eventual defection, in a dramatic exchange at Darwin Airport, Petrova joined her husband in ASIO safe houses where they were debriefed and prepared as witnesses for the RCE. It was a tumultuous time. Both of them were disoriented and fearful of the consequences of their actions. For the rest of his life, Petrov lived in terror of being assassinated by the KGB. Both worried about Petrova’s family. Yet, in the end, their fears were not realised. Petrov died demented in a Melbourne nursing home and, more happily, Dusya was joined in Australia by her beloved sister, Tamara.

Dusya and her sister walk along the flat paths of Bentleigh

like any two women from Europe.
They’re on their way to drink coffee.

They talk about whether to buy veal
for dinner and watch The Bill on TV. Whatever

Tamara says makes Dusya happy—it’s hearing
her voice. Occasionally Dusya mentions Volodya

and Tamara looks at her
but says nothing. His name falls out of their lives.

No one could tell that Dusya
was once the famous Petrova.

(from Tamara)

The Petrov Poems is Lesley Lebkowicz’s most recent book. The oral histories quoted in this article can be found through the Library’s catalogue: ORAL TRC 3500 Evdokia Petrova interviewed by Robert Manne, 1996; ORAL TRC 1221/41 Mary Alice Evatt interviewed by Mel Pratt, 26–31 May 1973.

Fred Ward: Furniture Designer

Fred Ward c. 1970
page 13 of Fred Ward: Australian Pioneer Designer, 1900–1990 by Derek F. Wrigley
(Canberra: Derek F. Wrigley, 2013)
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn6249444

Meredith Hinchliffe reviews the life and legacy of an innovative Australian with a strong design philosophy

If you have ever visited the National Library, you may have paused to notice its elegant and functional furniture. You might be surprised to learn that much of it—chairs, desks, tables, and even wastepaper baskets—is the work of leading Australian designer Frederick Ward.

Born in 1900 in Melbourne, Fred Ward was part of a network of artists living and working in that city from around 1920 until the beginning of the Second World War. Ward attended the National Gallery Art School in Melbourne, and was a proficient draftsman with pencil on paper. At this time he also made woodcut prints and drew cartoons. He formed many friendships with other young artists during this period—contacts which were to prove valuable to him in later life. Ward began making simple and functionally expressive furniture for his family’s newly acquired home in Heidelberg in 1929; as soon as he had made something, however, friends bought it from under him.

At the Arts and Crafts Society’s annual exhibition in 1934, which The Australian Home Beautiful claimed was the best yet held under the auspices of the society, Ward constructed a room displaying his simple furniture, which ‘attracted considerable attention and evoked no little discussion’. Representatives from Myer saw photographs, drawings and prototypes from this exhibition, and purchased work. This led to Ward establishing a furniture design studio at the Myer Emporium in Melbourne.

Ben Wrigley
Furniture by Fred Ward on Display at the Gallery of Australian Design 2013
digital photograph
Courtesy the Gallery of Australian Design

Ward had several strong beliefs about furniture design. He thought that Australia should have its own furniture style, not one imported from Europe. He felt that furniture should be simple—without carving, fussy curlicues or dark staining—and that Australian hardwoods should be used. Finally, he believed that everyone should have access to well-designed, functional furniture.

The introduction of ‘Unit Furniture’, soon after he began at Myer, caused a furore. A two-page article in the August 1935 edition of The Australian Home Beautiful described Unit Furniture as single pieces which could be purchased individually and added to other furniture in a room as required: ‘One unit, while a complete and separate entity in itself, can be combined with another, or several units, to make one complete article of furniture’. Although it featured Ward’s work, the article did not mention his name. In September 1935, a photograph of an interior showing his furniture, which was ‘exclusive to Myer’s’, formed a full-page advertisement in the magazine.

‘Unit’ Furniture by Myer’s in The Australian Home Beautiful: A Journal for the Home Builder
2 September 1935, p. 5
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn94923

In his biography of Fred Ward, architect and designer Derek Wrigley writes that the decade from the beginning of the Great Depression in 1929 to the beginning of the Second World War must have been a lively and exciting time for Ward and his wife Elinor, known as Puss. Soon after the beginning of the war, Ward went from Myer to the Department of Aircraft Production at Fishermans Bend, although he also had an office in Victoria Barracks on St Kilda Road. His knowledge of Australian timbers proved invaluable for the Mosquito, a wooden-framed fighter bomber designed in Britain and made in Victoria.

After the war, the Myer Design Studio was resurrected, with several members returning. Materials were scarce, and Ward felt that men coming back from the war needed to establish, or re-establish, a comfortable home with little or no capital. Believing that these men could be helped back to a ‘normal’ life, he and Roy Simmonds (editor of The Australian Home Beautiful) developed a range of furniture that could be made by people with few skills and little access to equipment. The range of Patterncraft furniture, which could be cut from paper patterns, was launched in October 1947. It was very popular. Later, packs of pre-cut timber became available, making it even easier for people to put the furniture together.

In the late 1940s, Ward was invited by Professor Brian Lewis to become a part-time lecturer in the School of Architecture at the University of Melbourne. Along with several others, Ward was also invited to participate in a limited competition to design the furniture and fittings for University House (designed by Lewis) at the Australian National University. Ward won the competition, taking up his commission around 1948–1949. Ward designed much of the furniture from his studio in Toorak, as can be seen from many of his drawings. He and his family were to move to Canberra in 1952, and the city was to be his home for the rest of his life.

Ward furniture can still be seen throughout University House: in the public rooms and the study-bedrooms. He designed everything, down to the tea trays on which residents kept their cups and saucers. Drawings held by the university archives and its Drill Hall Gallery show how the rooms would look completely furnished, with carafes and glasses on a bookcase, books on the desk, and curtains and rugs—even smoke wisping from a cigarette in an ashtray.

Fred Ward (1900–1990)
Standard Chair plate in Fred Ward: A Selection of Furniture and Drawings; Drill Hall Gallery, 2 May–16 June 1996
(Canberra: The Gallery, c. 1996)
Australian Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2665449
Courtesy the Australian National University

In 1954, Ward was invited to stay on at the Australian National University as University Designer. He established the Design Unit there—a first for a university. In 1958, Ward and Derek Wrigley were seconded to design furniture for the Academy of Science building designed by Roy Grounds.

Ward retired from the university in 1961 to establish his private practice. He was commissioned by the National Capital Development Commission (NCDC) to investigate furniture that was suitable for museums and libraries. On what was his first overseas trip, he visited several countries in Europe. The result, Galleries: A Report on the Design, Arrangement and Equipment of Art Galleries and Museums (1962), is available at the National Library.

Through his work at the Australian National University, Ward knew economist Dr H.C. Coombs, and it is possible that this is how he came to be commissioned to design the furniture and furnishings for the new Reserve Bank in Martin Place, Sydney. (Coombs, who had initiated the new building, always had an acute aesthetic sensitivity.) This commission was followed by one to design furniture for the P&O Building in Sydney in 1963 and, in 1964, for the National Library of Australia.

The furniture and furnishings at the Library—in contrast to the commissioned artworks—received little recognition in early publications about the building. A 1968 book, National Library of Australia, edited by C.A. Burmester and Pauline Fanning, includes a final, short paragraph in the chapter describing the building which states: ‘Furnishing was an important element of the building and, when catering for many special Library facilities, factors of efficiency and economy together with appearance had to be considered’. The slim publication was designed by Arthur Robinson, who assisted Ward.

Left: Wicker Wastepaper Basket with Black Bean Supports, Designed c. 1964
Right: Easy Chairs in the National Library Asian Collection Reading Room, Designed c. 1964

National Library Asian Collection Reader’s Chairs in Silver Ash, Designed c. 1964

Ward’s long-term friendship with Maie Casey, wife of Governor-General Richard Casey, resulted in a commission for furniture for the Aides’ Quarters at Admiralty House and a dining suite for Government House in Yarralumla. Ward also designed a spectacular desk for Lord Casey. This was made by Kees Westra from a single piece of padauk timber given to Lord Casey by Lord Wavell, whom he met in Papua New Guinea.

In addition to contributing his design skills to Australia, Ward was committed to raising the country’s standard of design. Wrigley observes that Ward’s vision ‘was to look beyond designed objects to a wider social context of what could be better for society’. Ward played an integral role in the establishment, in the 1940s, of the Society of Designers for Industry, which supported creators, and the Industrial Design Council of Australia (1956–1958), which promoted good design to consumers. This work took up much of Ward’s spare time for about 25 years.

As Wrigley observes, design was not recognised as a profession in the 1920s and 1930s. Although there were architects, engineers, and fabric designers/printers of various sorts, there was no professional association of people who could design for production of any kind. Additionally, anything designed in Australia was considered to be inferior to designs from the United Kingdom or the United States.

The Industrial Design Council of Australia (DCA), later to become the Australian Design Council, was initiated by Ward when he was at the Design Unit at the Australian National University, with the support and agreement of the Registrar of the university, Ross Hohnen. Coombs spoke about the poor quality of product designs in Australia around 1955 and this set up a chain of actions that eventuated in the establishment of the DCA. In 1970, Ward received an MBE for his services to design in Australia. In 2010, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame of the Design Institute of Australia.

Ward retired in 1980, in failing health, and died ten years later in a Queanbeyan nursing home.

Fred Ward’s furniture is distinguished by its simplicity and functionality, its use of joints as decorative aspects, and its utilisation of Australian timbers. Ward was a pioneering professional design practitioner whose work is regarded as among the best of Australian twentieth-century design. The stylistic appearance of his furniture did not determine function; rather, it was the other way around. His designs have withstood aesthetic changes and have not become old fashioned. Ward has left a remarkable legacy in the many public buildings in which his furniture can still be found.

Meredith Hinchliffe is a Canberra writer, curator and arts advocate, and a valuer of Australian decorative arts under the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Leonard French’s Stained Glass Windows at the National Library of Australia — March 2010

Discover how artist Leonard French also made a unique contribution to the Library’s design

Chequered Lives: John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack

John Barton Hack c. 1870
b&w photograph; 9.4 x 6.0 cm
State Library of South Australia; catalog.slsa.sa.gov.au:80/record=b2048007~S1
Courtesy State Library South Australia

A box of family papers sparked Iola Mathews’ interest in finding out more about her pioneering ancestors

When my father died in 1996, he left behind a large trunk containing reports, maps, a family tree, and a diary and letters (which today can be found in the National Library) relating to our ancestors, the Hack family. The Hacks came from Chichester, in England, and migrated to South Australia at the beginning of the settlement.

Like any family history, the Hacks’ has its own unique twists and turns. Yet much of their story also sheds light on the emigrant experience in general. It reveals the extensive preparations for migration to Australia, the long journey out, the hardships of arriving in a place where nothing was established, and the conflicts in the small community. It tells of the political and financial upheavals in the colony, which led to an economic crash that hurled many into bankruptcy. It shows the doggedness and resilience of the early pioneers in the face of constant setbacks. It illustrates the bravery of the women who had to make a home from almost nothing, giving birth to, and raising, a large number of children, despite the dangers inherent in childbirth and the diseases that killed babies and infants each year.

John Barton Hack, my great-great-grandfather, kept a diary on and off from 1836–1839 and he and his family frequently wrote back to their relatives in England. Those letters were kept for nearly 150 years and were finally returned to Australia. Fortunately for researchers, my grandfather had the diary typed up and, later, my father had the letters typed. The National Library has copies of these typed letters, as well as some of the original handwritten letters on microfilm (the originals are in the State Library of South Australia). The handwritten letters are sometimes hard to read, especially those which are ‘crossed’—written first one way, then turned sideways and written the other way, across the lines, to save on postage costs.

Copy of Letter from S. Hack, Dated 28 October 1836
in Hack Family Letters, 1837–1844
Manuscripts Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn2252737

The Hacks were Quakers, as were quite a few of the early settlers in South Australia. Back in England, they knew the Quaker family of Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who dreamed up the scheme for the establishment of South Australia as a colony of free settlers. (At the time, Wakefield was in gaol for abducting a 15-year-old schoolgirl.) The Hacks supported the scheme and so when Barton was advised to leave for a warmer climate because he suffered from tuberculosis South Australia seemed the natural choice.

They left England on 3 September 1836 aboard the Isabella and arrived in South Australia five-and-a-half months later. Barton was accompanied by his wife Bridget, known as Bbe (pronounced Beeby), their six small children and Barton’s younger brother Stephen, who had just turned 21.

F.A. Thomas (active 1830–1837)
View from the Surveyors Flagstaff on the Beach, Holdfast Bay c. 1837
watercolour; 10.4 x 23.0 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn444991

They found the settlers camped on the beach at Glenelg, waiting for Adelaide to be surveyed. Barton put up two portable houses in the centre of town, where the central railway station now stands. A few months later, he built the first bridge across the River Torrens, below his house. His wooden bridge cost £8; today, a $40 million modern footbridge has been opened on the same place, to join the Festival Centre and the Adelaide Oval.

In the early days of South Australia, Barton was, from the start, one of its most prominent citizens. Within a few years he had a merchant business in Adelaide, a market garden in North Adelaide, and a store and house in Hindley Street. He was the chairman or a committee member of almost all of the new institutions, including the Botanical Gardens, the Agricultural Society, the Literary and Scientific Association and the Chamber of Commerce. He had a whaling station at Encounter Bay and a 3,000-acre estate at Echunga Springs in the Adelaide Hills, where he made his home, travelling on tracks to Adelaide twice a week to attend to business.

J. Hitchen
A View of J. Barton Hack Esqrs. Farm, Echiunga [i.e. Echunga] Springs Mount Barker, South Australia, from a Sketch by Col. Gawler
hand-coloured lithograph 32.6 x 38.9 cm
Pictures Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.pic-an7837302

He planted the colony’s first grapevines on the mainland and made the first wine. His farm was a showpiece, with crops, dairies and 1,000 cows. In 1843, however, he and his brother Stephen lost everything, following the economic depression in South Australia of 1841–1842. Barton’s later ventures were various: he carted ore from the Burra copper mine to Port Adelaide, went to the Victorian goldfields, tried dairy farming on the Coorong and sheep farming in the south-east of the colony, then returned to Adelaide and became controller of railway accounts until his death at the age of 79.

According to the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Hack was too soft-hearted to be a successful pioneer; he paid high wages, gave generous credits and neglected to cover himself. Although he became a Wesleyan Methodist he was a Quaker by upbringing; he befriended Aboriginals and ex-convicts, advocated temperance, presided over the Mechanics’ Institute … and gave land in Pennington Terrace for a Friends’ meeting house.

In retirement, Barton wrote his memoirs, which were published in The South Australian Register in April 1884 and in an expanded version later in the year (both can be found on Trove). ‘Being now 79 years old’, he wrote, ‘I have only to wait for my final retirement from the scenes of a very chequered life, in which I trust I have made very few enemies and many friends’. He died shortly afterwards.

His brother, Stephen Hack, also led a chequered life: a bushman, grazier and explorer, he eventually died in England. In 1857, he led an expedition for the South Australian Government into the remote west of the province. The Library holds a copy of his report of the expedition, and a later account with maps (South Australian Land Exploration 1856 to 1880 by Bessie Threadgill).

Enclosure in Mr Hack’s Letter, July 29th 1857
in Explorations by Mr. S. Hack
(Adelaide: Government Printer, 1857)
Australian Rare Books Collection; nla.gov.au/nla.cat-vn666776

Once I had dipped into my father’s trunk, I was eager to turn the material into a book. I was too busy to do so at the time, but later received an email from a man named Chris Durrant, who said he was working on a history of the Hacks in South Australia. Chris was not a relative, but a retired academic with an interest in South Australian history. He had written about his wife Kerry’s ancestors, the Hursts, who came to South Australia in 1852 and settled in Paracombe in the Adelaide Hills, where Barton Hack had taken out the first survey. Chris then became interested in the Hack papers.

We were soon on a joint quest to find out more. What was life like for those pioneers? What sort of family were Barton and Stephen from, and how did it form their adventurous spirits? I also wanted to find out about the women in the family, including Barton’s mother, Maria Hack, a successful author (some of whose books can be found in the National Library). There was also Barton’s wife Bridget, who supported her husband through his many ventures, giving birth to 14 children, four of whom died in infancy.

So began a happy collaboration, with Chris writing a lengthy and more scholarly ‘source book’ about the family, while I (having been a journalist) set out to write something shorter and more suitable for a general audience. While most of the histories of settlement tell the story through the official records, from a ‘top-down’ point of view, I wanted mine to be very much a ‘bottom-up’ story.

We started with the diary, letters and Barton’s memoirs, but ended up doing a great deal more research. Chris was particularly vigilant in tracking down primary sources—including diaries of the Hacks’ contemporaries in South Australia, and old maps and titles in Adelaide—and searching newspapers of the day using Trove.

The story turned out to be even more dramatic than we expected. The Hack brothers encountered success and failure, joy, tragedy and family division. They led very chequered lives, but they made a significant contribution, in their different ways, to the founding of South Australia.

Iola Mathews OAM is a Melbourne writer. She is the author, with Chris Durrant, of Chequered Lives: John Barton Hack and Stephen Hack and the Early Days of South Australia (Wakefield Press)