The National Library Magazine

Volume 5, Number 4, December 2013

The aim of the quarterly The National Library 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.

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National Library of Australia Council

Chair: Mr Ryan Stokes
Deputy Chair: Ms Deborah Thomas
Members: The Hon. Mary Delahunty, John M. Green, Dr Nicholas Gruen, Ms Jane Hemstritch, Dr Nonja Peters, Professor Janice Reid AM,
Director-General and Executive Member: Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich

Senior Executive Staff

Director-General: Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
Assistant Directors-General, by Division:
Resource Sharing: Marie-Louise Ayres
Collections Management: Amelia McKenzie
Australian Collections and Reader Services: Margy Burn
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Commissioning Editor: Susan Hall
Editor: Penny O'Hara
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© 2013 National Library of Australia and individual contributors

Print ISSN 1836-6147
PP237008/00012

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The views expressed in The National Library Magazine are those of the individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors or the publisher. Every reasonable effort has been made to contact relevant copyright holders for illustrative material in this magazine. Where this has not proved possible, the copyright holders are invited to contact the publisher.

On the Cover

Johannes Janssonius (1588–1664)
Wind Map (detail) in Atlantis Majoris
(Amsterdam: 1657)
Maps Collection
nla.map-ra327

Exquisitely coloured, this wind map by Dutch cartographer Johannes Janssonius is a striking image of a compass rose with 32 cardinal points surrounded by wind heads representing various races of mankind, as well as the four seasons. It appeared in Atlantis Majoris Quinta Pars, Orbem Maritimum (Atlas of the Whole World, Part Five: ‘Water World’), the publication of which was a major step in the dissemination of the Dutch mapping of the East to a broader public. Janssonius’ Wind Map is just one of the items featured in the Library’s major exhibition Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia. Discover more about the maps, atlases, globes and scientific instruments in the exhibition.

Contents

Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia

Martin Woods and Susannah Helman introduce the Library’s latest exhibition

Portraits in Profile

Joanna Gilmour ponders the legacy left by artist William Henry Fernyhough’s portraits of Indigenous people

Underground Australia

Michael McKernan ventures into an amazing hidden world

From Pen to Paper

Roger McDonald

A Delicate Vision: Japanese Woodblock Frontispieces

Japanese frontispieces—or kuchi-e—sparked a revival of interest in traditional woodblock printing at a time of rapid modernisation, as Gary Hickey reveals

Collection Feature

A Poster Born in Flames

Canberra as a Symbol of Nationhood and Unity

Patrick Robertson delves into the personal papers of Sir Earle Page to discover more about Canberra’s first Cabinet meeting

News for Our Time

The community is helping the Library to digitise Australian newspapers, as Hilary Berthon explains

Arundel del Re’s Many Exiles

Peter Robb gave the fourth Ray Mathew Lecture at the National Library of Australia on 13 June 2013

Support Us Friends of the National Library

The National Library Bookshop

Mapping Our World

Terra Incognita to Australia

Martin Woods and Susannah Helman introduce the Library’s latest exhibition

Macrobius
Zonal World Map (detail) in Commentary on the Dream of Scipio 11th century
ink and pigment on parchment; 27.5 x 20 cm
British Library, London, © The British Library Board (Harley 2772, f.70v)

For millennia, Europeans speculated about the world: its extent, lands and seas. In ancient and medieval times, some saw the lands beyond those they knew as inhospitable places inhabited by strange, fantastical creatures. The idea of south took hold in people’s imaginations. Some doubted a south land existed. Others mapped it optimistically, naming it Terra Australis, Nondum Cognita, Incognita, Beach, Lucach, Magellanica, Jave la Grande, or, (in their own languages) ‘south land’. By the fifteenth century, the ambitions, rivalries and curiosity of European monarchs and republics fuelled increasingly adventurous voyages of discovery and trade, made possible because of advances in navigational technology. These voyages began to encroach on the southern part of the world. Speculation became science, and navigators used maps to guide their voyages. Information gleaned at sea was relayed to cartographers to assist future journeys. Gradually, through necessity, great skill and sheer luck, in encountering the realities of lands and peoples who lived at the ends of the earth, Europeans pieced together a world map. Australia, the last inhabited continent to be charted, was unlike anything they had imagined.

Michael Nelson Jakamarra (born c. 1949) assisted by Marjorie Napaltjarri
Five Dreamings 1984
synthetic polymer paint on canvas; 122 x 182 cm
The Gabrielle Pizzi Collection, Melbourne © the artist licensed by Aboriginal Artists Agency Ltd

The Library’s summer blockbuster exhibition, Mapping Our World: Terra Incognita to Australia, is open until 10 March 2014. It explores the story of the European mapping of Australia, from early notions of a vast southern land to Matthew Flinders’ published map of 1814. Unprecedented in Australia, it brings together some of the most spectacular and influential maps and globes, rare scientific instruments and evocative shipwreck material in European and Australian collections and is built around the National Library’s own extensive maps collection. Revered maps such as the Fra Mauro Map of the World, and the maps of legendary mapmakers—Ptolemy, Mercator, Blaeu, Cook—embody key moments in the charting of the southern hemisphere. International and Australian lenders have made available their best, most original and most important works for this exhibition. Some of them have never been displayed before. Many of the maps created before Europeans reached Australian waters are well known in the northern hemisphere, where they have particular resonance. Until now, the great maps underpinning modern cartography have been unavailable to those of us

Hessel Gerritsz (c. 1581–1632)
Map of the Pacific Ocean (detail) 1622
ink and pigment on vellum; 107 x 141 cm
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, département des Cartes et Plans, SH, Arch. 30

living under southern skies. The exhibition lets us reorient our understanding of them to a southern context, and to interrogate unexplored regions whose existence European mapmakers could only imagine.

The exhibition is deliberately ambitious in scope, assembling a wide range of works created in various media and circumstances. They include intricate medieval illuminated manuscript maps, stunning hand-coloured engravings in seventeenth-century Dutch atlases, early globes and scientific instruments, and elegant ink-and-wash charts from James Cook’s Endeavour voyage of 1768–1771. Some maps were used aboard ship, while others were luxury items presented to impress the recipient. One was even seized by Napoleon.

The exhibition has five parts, which show in turn how, over almost 3,000 years, Europeans gradually unravelled the south land’s secrets. The opening section, Ancient Conceptions of the World, anchors the exhibition in the ancient philosophical traditions and cartography that first suggested lands beyond ancient philosophy: the idea of south—the notion that there must be an inhabited southern continent to balance the landmass in the north, a place where, as Macrobius put it,‘men stand with their feet planted opposite to yours’. So the Antipodeans came into being, at least in the European mind.

Claudius Ptolemy
World Map in Geographica c. 1454
ink and pigment on parchment; 58.5 x 43.5 cm
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice, ms Gr. Z. 388 (=333), ff.50v-51

The exhibition juxtaposes these beliefs with Indigenous Australian mapping to create a dialogue between parallel traditions. Five Dreamings, by Indigenous artist Michael Nelson Jakamarra, assisted by Marjorie Napaltjarri, maps Dreaming stories in Jakamarra’s country near Mount Singleton, west of Yuendumu in the Northern Territory. Nearby is an exquisitely illuminated fifteenth-century copy of Ptolemy’s Geography, a work first written in second-century Alexandria. Copied for the bibliophile Cardinal Bessarion, it is on loan from the Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana in Venice. A synthesis of ancient geography and a visionary work, Ptolemy’s Geography first set out how to project the earth on a flat surface using coordinates of latitude and longitude.

ibn Ahmad Khalaf (905–987)
Astrolabe 10th century
copper; 19 x 13 cm
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris, département des Cartes et Plans, GE A 324 (Rès)

The second section, Medieval Religious Mapping, introduces the great sacred maps, encyclopedic creations evolving over centuries in scriptoria. These were important records of religious doctrine, at the same time carrying residues of ancient knowledge. As time passed, these works harboured the possibility of continents beyond the Roman world of Europe, Asia and Africa. In Europe, world maps came to be associated with particular works—histories,commentaries and encyclopedias—and the vast majority of surviving medieval maps are illuminations found in manuscript volumes or codexes. A highlight is a world map found in a small book of psalms dating from around 1265, on loan from the British Library. Centred on Jerusalem, and framed by Christian imagery, it shows the world protected by God. It may be the only surviving copy of one of the great medieval wall maps, an immense painting from Westminster Palace’s Painted Chamber, which was ravaged by fire in 1263. In contrast is a tenth-century copper astrolabe from the Bibliothèque nationale de France. Used to fix the sacred direction—the Qibla—of the shrine in Mecca, it was a forerunner of sextants employed by European navigators to determine their position at sea.

The third section, The Age of Discovery, explores the maps behind the great ocean voyages of the Portuguese and Spanish, the innovation of mapmakers challenged by incredible distances, and the inspiration provided by discoveries in the New World and lands to the east. The mid-fifteenth-century maps of monks Fra Mauro and Andreas Walsperger are among the most famed of the late medieval world maps for their vision and dazzling beauty, and are a focal point of the exhibition. At over 2 metres square, the Fra Mauro map is breathtaking in its ambition and encyclopedic in scope.

Psalter World Map c. 1265
ink and pigment on vellum; 19 x 12.5 cm
British Library, London © The British Library Board (Additional 28681, f.9)

Never before displayed outside Venice, its exhibition in Australia is an extraordinary privilege. Yet even these great creations would be eclipsed by the rediscovery of Ptolemy’s method of projecting the world on a map. Eventually, the Mercator projection, developed by the Flemish cartographer Gerard Mercator in the mid-1500s, and seen in the exhibition in his great wall map of 1569, would allow navigators to pass into the Indian and Pacific oceans. Likewise, the magnificent 1529 planisphere of Diogo Ribeiro from the Vatican Library is a powerful exposition of the rivalry between Spain and Portugal, as maps became tools in the search for spices and other commodities in the East.

From this contest also emerged a mysterious group of maps from the French port of Dieppe, which suggested French or Portuguese contact and mapping of Australia in the mid-1500s. Commissioned for wealthy and royal patrons long before the Dutch mapped New Holland, the Dieppe maps seem to depict a landmass in the region of Australia named Jave la Grande. These maps are so reminiscent of Australia’s coast that the contention that they are the first maps of Australia has had many champions, and will doubtless remain an intriguing theory. The magnificent atlas presented by cartographer Jean Rotz to Henry VIII of England in 1542 is one of two Dieppe works in the exhibition from the British Library.

Fra Mauro (c. 1390–1459)
Map of the World 1448–1453
map: pigments on parchment pasted on wood; 193 x 196 cm frame: pigments, gilt wood 223 x 223 cm
Biblioteca Nazionale Marciana, Venice

The loan of the Fra Mauro Map of the World has been generously supported by Kerry Stokes AC, Noel Dan AM and Adrienne Dan, Nigel Peck AM and Patricia Peck, Douglas and Belinda Snedden and the Embassy of Italy in Canberra.

The fourth section, The Dutch Golden Age, begins in the late sixteenth century, when Amsterdam became the great trading powerhouse of Europe. The rise of the Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie (United East India Company, or VOC) is seen through the charts used by its ‘East Indiamen’, and in sumptuous wall maps, atlases and a globe. The Duyfken’s 1606 landing in Western Australia is represented in the secret mapping of Hessel Gerritsz, particularly the splendid 1622 map of the Pacific Ocean from the Bibliothèque nationale de France, a brilliant fusion of art and cartography. Haunting objects from the ship Batavia underscore the risks and rewards of the lucrative East Indies trade. The De Vlamingh Plate from the Western Australian Museum is a remarkable relic of the 1616 and 1696–1697 voyages of Dirk Hartog and Willem de Vlamingh, while the surviving Dutch nautical charts from the National Library of Australia’s collection show the skill involved in mapping the Australian coast.

Jean Rotz (c. 1505–after 1560)
World Map in The Boke of Idrography 1542
ink and pigment on parchment; 76 x 61 cm
British Library, London © The British Library Board (Royal 20.E.ix, ff.29v-30)

The exhibition’s final section, Europe and the South Pacific, reveals how rivalry in the South Pacific between the two major European powers, Great Britain and France, resulted in epic voyages and the finest cartography and major advances in navigational technology. Highlights in this section include early chronometers, six of Captain James Cook’s Endeavour voyage(1768–1771) charts from the British Library, and five Matthew Flinders charts from The National Archives of the United Kingdom. Also on display are landmark French atlases, and a manuscript map, one of two copies drawn at the request of Louis XVI for the ill-fated voyage of French explorer La Pérouse. (La Pérouse took one copy; this version stayed behind in the archives.)

James Cook (1728–1779, surveyor) and Isaac Smith (1752–1831, chartmaker)
A Plan of King George’s Island or Otaheite 1769
ink and wash; 63.3 x 89.4 cm
British Library, London © The British Library Board (Additional 21593 B)

Cook’s mapping is represented by his stunning plan of Tahiti; the iconic map of Tupaia the Polynesian priest who provided life-saving assistance to the Endeavour in the South Pacific; a port chart of Botany Bay; and two charts of the east coast of Australia from 1770. Flinders’ charts, two of which were made during his six-and-a-half year imprisonment on Mauritius, are highly detailed and brilliantly drawn. The exhibition ends with his completed coastal map which named Australia, published in 1814, and its updated version of 1822.

Matthew Flinders (1774–1814)
General Chart of Terra Australis or Australia 1814
copperplate engraving; 63.1 x 91.7 cm
Maps Collection
nla.map-t570

In this journey from Terra incognita to Australia, it is tempting to think about the‘what ifs’. What if the Dutch had completed the job of mapping Australia? What if French settlement had followed their mapping of the continent? For many Australians, the south land legend is the great enduring myth, or truth, depending on your point of view. How the notion of a great south land emerged on European maps, to be reshaped by feats of exploration and discovery and to eventually come face-to-face with its real counterpart, Australia, and thereby vanish, is among the most compelling of stories, and one which needs to be told. We invite you to program your GPS for the National Library and see how Australia materialised on European maps.

DR MARTIN WOODS, Curator of Maps, DR SUSANNAH HELMAN, Assistant Curator of Exhibitions, and NAT WILLIAMS, now James and Bettison Treasures Curator, are the curators of this exhibition

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

A Journey to the Dutch East Indies

Martin Woods explains the importance of rare early documents relating to the exploration of the Dutch East Indies and Australia

* September 2009 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2009/sep09/a-journey-to-the-dutch-east-indies.pdf

Portraits in Profile

Joanna Gilmour ponders the legacy left by artist William Henry Fernyhough’s portraits of Indigenous people

William Henry Fernyhough (1809–1849)
Bungaree, Late Chief of the Broken Bay Tribe Sydney 1836
lithograph; 25.8 x 18.6 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn4737955

When Charles Darwin sailed into Sydney Harbour in January 1836, he was rather impressed with what he saw. A harbour he considered ‘fine and spacious’, and a town—with villas and cottages ‘scattered along the beach’ and streets that were ‘regular, broad, clean and kept in excellent order’—which he asserted to be ‘a most magnificent testimony to the power of the British nation’. Sydney in 1836, according to the gentleman–naturalist aboard HMS Beagle’s round-the-world surveying voyage, could be ‘favourably compared to the large suburbs, which stretch out from London and a few other great towns in England’. He expressed equal amounts of surprise and distaste at the evidence of its rapid development and rude economic health. By 1836, a mere 50 years since the British government had made the decision to colonise New South Wales, Sydney was indeed a thriving place. Its function and reputation as a vast prison was receding in the face of the arrival of increasing numbers of free settlers and the entry into the community of ‘respectable’ ex-convicts and their families. It was as much a place of opportunity as of exile, a country where even those of modest means and humble origins might create comfortable, profitable lives.

William Henry Fernyhough (1809–1849)
Gooseberry, Widow of King Bungaree 1836
lithograph; 25 x 18 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3789297

As a result, the settlement was not entirely the pinched and undesirable convict colony of popular perception, but a complex one characterised by a healthy consumer culture and wherein various industries were growing. A local art scene was one such industry, and artists were included in the numbers of those choosing Sydney as home. Darwin’s friend and erstwhile shipmate, Conrad Martens (1801–1878), for instance, had arrived in 1835 and decided to stay and capitalise on the colonists’ pretensions and new-found wealth, while the ex-convict Charles Rodius (1802–1860), transported for theft in 1829, stayed on beyond the expiration of his sentence, fashioning a relatively successful career in portraiture and printmaking. Though the market may have been relatively small, painters could make a living, securing commissions from wealthy settlers requiring portraits of their wives, houses and horses.

William Henry Fernyhough (1809–1849)
Piper, the Native Who Accompanied Major Mitchell in His Expedition to the Interior 1836
lithograph; 25 x 18 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3789425

Printmakers like Rodius benefited from the robust trade in affordable, souvenir-style images, with the advent of the lithograph making art something acquirable by those occupying less elevated levels of society. The affordability and reach of the printed image, coupled with an increasing tendency on the part of colonists to advertise or make sense of their place in the new world, conspired to augment the local lithography trade, introduced to Sydney in the mid-1820s through a lithographic press brought to Australia at the behest of the then Governor, Thomas Brisbane. The same year, 1836, is also the year in which a printmaker named William Henry Fernyhough (1809–1849) arrived in Sydney, and the year in which his best known work—A Series of Twelve Profile Portraits of the Aborigines of New South Wales— was first published.

John Glover (1767–1849)
On the Ouse River c. 1834
pen, ink and wash; 17.8 x 26.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an4622225

Staffordshire-born, Fernyhough is believed to have worked as an armorial painter, and had obviously gained some experience of printmaking before emigrating to Australia. Soon after arriving in Sydney, he found employment with John Gardner Austin (active 1834–c. 1842), a lithographer who had established a successful printery following his own relocation from England to Sydney in June 1834. In keeping with the opportunistic, market-savvy mood of other Sydney businesses of the period, Fernyhough wasted little time in producing this series of portraits that was seemingly guaranteed to sell. As Sydney newspaper The Colonist reported in September 1836:

A gentleman, named Fernyhough, who has not been long in this colony, has commenced business in Bridge Street, as an artist—one of the first productions of his genius has just made its appearance, in the shape of twelve lithographic drawings of the Aborigines of New South Wales.

Charles Rodius (1802–1860)
Nunberri, Chief of the Nunnerahs, N.S. Wales 1834
lithograph; 17.7 x 12 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an8953966

For ten shillings and sixpence, purchasers acquired silhouette or ‘profile portraits’ of some of colonial-era Sydney’s most visible and significant Indigenous leaders, including Bungaree (c. 1775–1830), a man of Guringai descent who had accompanied the voyages conducted by Phillip Parker King and Matthew Flinders; Bungaree’s wife, known as Cora Gooseberry; and a Wiradjuri man, called John Piper or simply ‘Piper’ by the Europeans, who had acted as a guide to Thomas Mitchell in his expedition of 1835 to 1836. Each of the sitters was depicted standing, and wearing cast-off clothing or draped in government-issue blankets. Bungaree and Piper were shown in their trademark second-hand military coats and hats, with Bungaree also wearing the breastplate, or gorget, inscribed ‘Chief of the Broken Bay Tribe’, which had been given to him by Governor Macquarie in 1815. Rather than attempts at portraying individuals and personalities, these were portraits created to cater to the curious yet not uncommon belief in theories of physiognomy and phrenology, which held that a person’s true nature could be read from the shape of their features. Fernyhough’s Twelve Profile Portraits were thus seen as having ethnographic value as ‘accurate’ depictions of the characteristics of their subjects. In addition to being, as one newspaper described them, ‘striking Profile likenesses of our sable Townsmen’, they were cheap, and ‘will form a pretty present to friends in England as characteristic of this Country’.

Charles Rodius (1802–1860)
King Bungaree, Chief of the Broken Bay Tribe, N.S. Wales, Died 1832 1834
lithograph; 30 x 23.7 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an8953976

As numerous art historians have demonstrated, creating affordable portraits of Indigenous people made sound business sense for early Australian artists. As colonial art expert Elisabeth Findlay has written, ‘from the mid-1820s through to the 1840s the trade in images of the local Indigenous population helped keep printing firms afloat’. Tellingly, the claims made of Fernyhough’s 1836 series were identical to those that had been made of earlier series of similar works, such as the lithographic portraits created by Rodius in 1834. Indeed, one of Rodius’ first Australian works was a ‘lithographic sketch’ of Bungaree—an oft-depicted sitter, whose 1826 portrait by Augustus Earle was the subject of the first

Thomas Bock (1790–1855)
Manalargenna, a Chief of the Eastern Coast of Van Diemen’s Land c. 1833
watercolour; 29.5 x 21.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an6428961

lithograph printed in Australia. The sketch, produced in 1830, was stated to be ‘as accurate and striking a likeness as we ever saw’. In her recent research into the artist, Findlay has speculated that Fernyhough was enabled to produce his Twelve Profile Portraits so quickly and without sittings because he had access to Rodius’ drawings—Rodius having earlier worked for Austin, who published the portrait of Bungaree in 1834. The same year, Rodius produced his now well-known lithographic portraits of visiting Indigenous people from the Shoalhaven and Broken Bay districts, which were promoted as being available ‘at such charges as will place those interesting copies within the reach of all classes’. In Hobart, Thomas Bock (1790–1855), another ex-convict-turned-society-portraitist, was commissioned by a number of collectors to make copies of his celebrated 1833 series of watercolour portraits of Indigenous leaders including Trukanini (Truganini), Woureddy and Manalargenna.

Benjamin Duterrau (1767–1851)
Portrait of Truganini, Daughter of the Chief of Bruny Island, Van Diemen’s Land c. 1835
oil on canvas; 88.2 x 68.1 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an2283035

Like these portraits by Bock and Rodius from the same decade, Fernyhough’s Twelve Profile Portraits were motivated in part by their marketability as souvenirs of colonial life, and as anthropologically correct additions to collections kept by those who styled themselves as educated and science minded. In addition, just as printed landscape images functioned as evidence of the so-called taming and improving benefits of colonisation, printed images of Indigenous people were collected and sent home to demonstrate the necessity of ‘civilising’ them, to confirm colonists’ perceptions of themselves as sober and industrious, or to give credence to notions about a ‘dying race’. This makes such portraits enormously troubling to present-day eyes. A typical response to Fernyhough’s images is to see them as exploitative caricatures, derogatory depictions of ‘types’ rather than of individuals, and inextricable from the prejudices of the time. It is indeed true that the hardening and expansion of colonisation,and the corresponding escalation of conflict, was having powerful implications for art, particularly portraiture. By the 1830s, colonial aspirations were positioning Indigenous people as obstructive to order and progress, giving rise to derogatory images depicting them as ragged, intoxicated, violent or inherently incapable of ‘civilised’ behaviour. At the same time, the commonly held belief in the white community that Indigenous people were fated to disappear fed the demand for images documenting them.

John Glover (1767–1849)
Corroboree c. 1840
oil on canvas; 55.5 x 69.4 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an2246425

Interestingly, however, this latter attitude also occasioned portraits that, though created for such reasons, succeeded in presenting their sitters as individuals rather than curiosities, thereby suggesting critical observations of the ways in which contact was diminishing Indigenous ways of life. Among the tremendous riches of the National Library’s Pictures Collection are many works that exemplify this aspect of Australian art and portraiture in the 1830s, including two sets of the 1836 edition of William Henry Fernyhough’s Twelve Profile Portraits of the Aborigines of New South Wales. The same decade that could produce such seemingly prejudiced depictions also saw the creation of remarkably sensitive images by artists like Bock and Rodius, the memorialising history paintings by Benjamin Duterrau (1767–1851) and the idealised representations of Indigenous life featured in the work of John Glover (1767–1849), which might be read as a lament, or as an acknowledgment of the profound impact of dispossession. Fernyhough’s Twelve Profile Portraits were indeed cheap, poorly executed and unsympathetic, and recent scholarship has shown that they became more so in subsequent reprints. But it may be argued that the first edition of Fernyhough’s portraits has significance today as a series of frank depictions of dispossessed people that somehow eludes the narrow and dispassionate contexts of their making, just as Rodius in 1834 had depicted his sitters with potent visual reminders of colonisation’s impact. The result is portraits that, despite their commercial intentions and the prejudices that underline them, are equally capable of conveying an opposite, alternative view, and of presenting enduring representations of individuals and people impacted by contact.

JOANNA GILMOUR is a Curator at the National Portrait Gallery

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Red Coat Dreamer

Craig Wilcox questions conventional interpretations of one of the Library’s treasures, Augustus Earle’s Portrait of Bungaree

* March 2011 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2011/mar11/red-coat-dreamer.pdf

From Pen to Paper

Virginia Wallace-Crabbe (b. 1941)
Portrait of Roger McDonald 1991
b&w photograph; 19.5 x 19.6 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an11678278

ROGER MCDONALD is the author of nine novels and two books of poetry, among other works. Born in Young in 1941, he moved to Sydney for secondary school and went on to study a Bachelor of Arts and Diploma of Education before taking up his first career as a secondary school teacher. After working for ABC television and radio as a producer and director of educational programs, he became poetry editor for University of Queensland Press.

McDonald wrote most of his poetry in the 1960s and 1970s, publishing his first collection of poems, Citizens of Mist, in 1968. His second book of poetry, Airship (1975), contained the poem featured here. Originally entitled One Eye, and published as The Searcher, the poem, written about the birth of his daughter, illustrates his expressive use of narrative and metaphor.

In 1976, McDonald turned to full-time writing, moved back to Canberra and, since 1980, has mainly lived near Braidwood, in the foothills of the Dividing Range. Since then, he has focused on his novels and, although he undoubtedly began as a fine poet, says he has ‘not written a poem, or thought about writing a poem, for almost 40 years’. It is for his novels that he is best known. His first, 1915: A Novel of Gallipoli, was published in 1979 and was made into a successful ABC miniseries in 1982. His bestselling novel Mr Darwin’s Shooter (1998) won numerous literary awards, and The Ballad of Desmond Kale won the Miles Franklin Award in 2006. In 2009, McDonald wrote Australia’s Wild Places for NLA Publishing. His most recent novel, The Following, was released in September.

Roger McDonald (b. 1941)
One Eye
manuscript in Papers of Roger McDonald, 1954–2009
Manuscripts Collection
nla.ms-ms5612
Courtesy Roger McDonald

THE SEARCHER

Two weeks into the world
she’s hurtled, determined and grim,
seven pounds of naked hunger
flying from a dream:

Where was that dark red
black-starred
absence of light?
It rolled away strangely
behind her,
a desirable weight.

Still she has one eye open
while the other stays stuck:
her right eye tracking the world
as the left hunts back.

Roger McDonald (b. 1941)
The Searcher
page 31 in Airship by Roger McDonald
(St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1975)
Australian Collection
nla.cat-vn2152722
Courtesy Roger McDonald

A Poster Born in Flames

By Linda Groom

Royal Board—Restriction Order: Careful with Fire and Candles (Huang jia gao shi: yan ling jin shen huo zhu) 1864
(Melbourne: John Ferres, Government Printer, 1864)
broadside on linen; 76 x 49 cm
Asian Collections
nla.gen-vn4809688

After five months without rain on the Victorian goldfields, Sunday 11 January 1863 dawned hot and windy. A smell of smoke raised the alarm among the inhabitants of the Chinese settlement at Spring Creek. A cooking fire had set alight a wooden chimney, and soon an entire row of buildings was in flames. Police and citizens from nearby Beechworth joined the local Chinese shopkeepers to fight the blaze. Luckily, the wind which fanned the fire blew it away from the rest of the settlement. No lives were lost, but it had been a close call.

Newspapers as far away as Sydney and Adelaide reported on the fire. The Victorian Government was sufficiently concerned to take the rare step of preparing a poster in Chinese, warning against the dangers of fire. Government Printer John Ferres, faced with the task of publishing characters that were beyond the scope of all his Western fonts, turned to woodblock printing, an art developed in Asia several centuries before it was adopted in Europe.

The poster was clearly targeted at the tens of thousands of Chinese on the goldfields: ‘All Chinese merchants, traders, and gold-diggers from now on must be careful every time when they use a fire and must mindfully prevent uncontrolled fires’. Anyone starting an uncontrolled fire faced a fine of 100 pounds. The proclamation was phrased with the formal elegance of nineteenth-century Chinese:

This is the discipline of carefulness the Crown intends to convey to the people; thus one must understand with respect the Crown’s profound consideration and enjoy the good fortune of peace together and keep avoiding the fire disasters.

Who created the poster and its calligraphy? The creator must have been trusted by the Victorian Government, as they were given the latitude to recast the government’s message into the extended, graceful cadences of written Chinese. Many interpreters employed by the Victorian Government are recorded in reports and newspaper articles of the time: How Qua, William Tsze-Hing and Ky Long, to name a few. Another possibility is Charles P. Hodges, whose name appears a dozen years later as ‘Chinese Interpreter for the Colony of Victoria’ on a published translation of a mining regulation. There is some evidence that he arrived in Victoria prior to the 1860s.

Whoever the creator was, they produced a document which embodied a rare instance of cross-cultural communication in colonial Victoria, in response to the common threat brought by any hot and windy Australian summer’s day.

Washing Tailings 1870s
chromolithograph; 11.8 x 17.4 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an24794265

The Library gratefully acknowledges Mr Haruki Yoshida for his translation.

Undergound Australia

Michael Mckernan ventures into an amazing hidden world

Wolfgang Sievers (1913–2007)
Miners at North Broken Hill Mine, Broken Hill, New South Wales 1980
colour photograph; 49.9 x 40 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an24782825

In 2001, as part of the activities celebrating the centenary of the Australian Public Service, I had the job of guiding groups through a bizarre workplace: the communications section of the Department of Foreign Affairs in Canberra, as it had been in the 1970s—entirely underground. Chrome everywhere, walls covered in woollen fabric, the floor deeply carpeted, curves and ramps. To the intrigued and curious visitors, I pointed out the artworks that were designed to brighten working lives for those deprived of natural light, the ‘street’ where graffiti had been encouraged, again to lighten the mood, and the indicator that detailed the weather above ground so that workers, going out to lunch or to a meeting, would know whether to take a jacket or an umbrella.

Underground Cells, Point Puer 1911–1915
b&w photograph; 8.6 x 13.4 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an23794111

The tours might have continued, but they were disrupting the work of the current occupants and were eventually cancelled. The Commonwealth’s only underground office in Canberra was locked once more, and eventually demolished. Taking those tours was my only experience of working underground. Most of the people taking the tours might have been thinking for the first time of the hazards and difficulties of working underground. But, from the early days of settlement, people have been working and living under the surface.

Charles J. Page (b. 1946)
Five Coal Miners Having Lunch, Moura, Queensland 1986
b&w photograph; 23 x 34.4 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3580895

Convicts, cruelly dispatched to Australia from Britain and Ireland for their crimes, were sentenced to solitary confinement for further offences in the colonies—and structures were needed to accommodate them. Perhaps it was cheaper to burrow into the ground; perhaps it was more terrifying. Cruel, in the extreme, that convict children at Point Puer, off Port Arthur, were placed in underground cells to aid their reformation. It might have driven some of them mad. Reporting to Lieutenant Governor Franklin, Benjamin Horne, a convict supervisor, wrote in 1843:

solitary confinement is a punishment which seems more severely felt when of any duration, as the diet is merely bread and water and communication with their companions is as much as possible prevented.

Christian Pearson (b. 1974)
Long Way Down 2009
digital photograph
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn6151836

But to put boys underground seems so much more cruel and terrifying than ‘mere’ solitary confinement. Some of the boys might have had memories of a burial in a church graveyard in their villages back home, perhaps of a beloved grandparent or other family member. As a boy was being lowered to his underground cell, did he fear that he was being buried?

Convicts commonly worked underground, too. In the first years of the colony, on Cockatoo Island in Sydney Harbour, they quarried into the sandstone to build wheat silos to store the precious foodstuff and help to prevent the starvation of the settlement that threatened the early years of its existence. The discovery of coal in the Illawarra and near Newcastle in 1796 and 1797 ensured that some convicts would be employed underground. The penal colony was exporting some coal to India by 1799 and, after 1804, when the mine at Newcastle was placed on a proper working footing, coal mining became one of the colony’s most important industries. Henry Osborne, to become possibly the colony’s most wealthy citizen by the time of his death in 1859, had heavily invested in coal mines in the Illawarra and around Maitland. Convicts were the first miners, working in fearsome conditions. In 1820, Superintendent of Mines, Benjamin Grainger, reported to Commissioner

Cave Dwellers near Kurnell, New South Wales 1930s
b&w photograph; 7 x 11.6 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3706012

J.T. Bigge, who was investigating the colony, that ‘when all hands were employed the mine [at Newcastle] could produce twenty tons of coal per day’. He continued:

this required eight miners to descend the shaft by windlass or ladder, crawl one hundred yards to the coalface, and gouge out two and a half tons of coal a day. Nineteen other convicts bailed out water, supervised the work, wheeled the coal to the shaft in barrows and moved it to the wharf by bullock wagon.

Grainger explained that ventilation was always a problem and that the miners suffered from a variety of diseases and ailments. It was dirty, dangerous and unremitting work.

In Australia, good quality black coal is only found in great quantity in New South Wales and Queensland, and it has sustained entire communities in those states across two centuries. Australia currently produces about a third of the world’s entire output of coal. By 1910, writes Geoffrey Blainey, so much steaming coal (a low-grade coal) was shipped from Australia that in actual weight, but not in value, it was the nation’s main export cargo. Across the decades, conditions for coal miners improved from the horror that was experienced by convict miners, but coal mining was always dangerous, always dirty, and always very hard work.

Trevern Dawes (b. 1944)
Underground House, Coober Pedy, South Australia 1982
colour photograph; 19.8 x 30 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3886081

Coal miners forged close bonds with each other and mining unions have always been forceful in Australian industrial life. The danger of the work and the closeness of the community have been exemplified during the tragedy and triumph witnessed at Beaconsfield Mine in Tasmania in 2006. A collapse within the mine led to all but three miners rushing to the surface. One man was killed by the rock fall and two remained to be rescued. After 14 days underground, in the most hazardous conditions, the two miners came to the surface, glad to acknowledge a most ingenious and daring rescue.

Christian Pearson (b. 1974)
Essential Services 2012
digital photograph
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn6151897

Not only a place of work, underground can also be a site of domesticity; for many Australians, it is home. At Coober Pedy in South Australia, some 850 kilometres from Adelaide, almost an entire community of around 3,000 lives and works underground. Although the existence of opals at Coober Pedy was known from the late 1850s, it was only after 1916 that opal mining took off. The first opal miners were workers from the Australian east–west transcontinental railway and also soldiers returning from the First World War, looking for a life of independence and, possibly, some wealth. It is likely that the soldiers gave the name ‘dugout’ to the underground dwellings that they excavated at Coober Pedy, a term which was commonly used at the front. Soldiers of every army knew the comfort and security of ‘dugouts’ on the Western Front and, in the frighteningly high temperatures at Coober Pedy, it made sense to burrow into the hillsides, just as at Gallipoli.

Bob Miller (b. 1953)
Coober Pedy: Backpackers Cave & Opal Cave Dug into Hill. Note Air Vents & Solar Panels 1994
b&w photograph; 16.4 x 21.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an13180041-4

Approach to Cave Dwellers House near Kurnell, New South Wales 1930s
b&w photograph; 11.7 x 6.9 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3705987

The homes that these miners dug, at first of course by hand, are in fact caves bored into the hillsides of the town. People have fashioned houses in these caves with bedrooms, living areas and kitchens, just as we know in our own homes. Most have an entrance above ground and many also have front gardens. Unlike in 1916, houses today can readily be air conditioned and some miners and other workers at Coober Pedy have chosen to live above ground. Even so, a substantial proportion of the houses, and two churches—a Roman Catholic and a Serbian Orthodox—are still underground. Tourists who come to Coober Pedy for both the opals and the unusual nature of the town can also choose underground accommodation, either in an up-market hotel or in budget-style motels and hostels.

For others, making a home under the surface has been more a matter of necessity than choice. During the Great Depression, some Australian families, finding themselves turfed out onto the street with their few possessions, took up residence in Sydney’s caves. Today, the homeless still turn to underground bunkers for safety and shelter, sharing them with those they trust. Indeed, men and women in Australia have always shown ingenuity in resorting to the underground in times of difficulty.

In many ways, underground has become part of our everyday life. Much of Australia’s population now lives in cities in which underground infrastructure is taken for granted: we enter basement car parks without a second thought, hidden sewers take our waste out of sight, tunnels for trains or cars have become part of the natural order of things. Yet, as the popularity of the tours of the old Foreign Affairs offices shows, many Australians still have a deep-seated fascination with the underground. Perhaps it is because it has an element of the ‘underworld’, of mystery, even of criminality. It is the sense of descent into another world that makes us nervous, even as we step below.

MICHAEL MCKERNAN is the author of more than 20 books, including Underground Australia produced by NLA Publishing

A Delicate Vision: Japanese Woodblock Frontispieces

Japanese frontispieces—or kuchi-e—sparked a revival of interest in traditional woodblock printing at a time of rapid modernisation, as Gary Hickey reveals

Barbara Konkolowicz
Portrait of Richard Clough 2004
b&w photograph; 34.1 x 22.9 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3311806

One of the most fruitful artistic exchanges of the twentieth century was that between the Western world and Japan. Europe, North America and Australia all benefited from late nineteenth-century trade fairs known as International Exhibitions, in which Japan participated, and which allowed for rare Western contact with this country, and for the acquisition of its artworks. Renowned collections of Japanese art, such as those of the British Museum and of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, were formed around this time as a result of individuals developing their knowledge of, and pursuing their interests in, Japanese art, by putting together focused collections. However, in Australia this did not occur. Delegations from Japan attended the Sydney International Exhibition, held in 1879 to 1880, and the 1880 to 1881 Melbourne International Exhibition. These exhibitions, and the subsequent fashion for all things Japanese, driven in part by this culture’s popular reception in Europe and America, led individual Australians as well as public institutions to begin collecting Japanese art. However, this interest was short lived and, although significant collections were amassed, particularly at the National Gallery of Victoria, it was not until the late 1970s that the collecting of Japanese art was given any serious consideration.

Prior to this, however, some Australians did engage with Japan in a meaningful way. One of these was the scholar Professor Arthur Lindsay Sadler (1882–1970). Sadler was one of a small number of prominent Australians who travelled to Japan in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and who were proponents of an understanding of its culture.

Kodō Yamanaka (1869–1945)
Firefly (Hotaru) 1913
colour woodblock print; 23 x 30 cm
Asian Collections
nla.pic-vn5744773

He was Professor of Oriental Studies at the University of Sydney from 1922 to 1947, and in this role stimulated an appreciation for Japanese art, language, architecture, interior and garden design. He was also a collector of Japanese art, frequently lecturing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales and publishing broadly on aspects of Japanese culture. In 1936, he noted that ‘our museums and galleries are almost entirely devoid of specimens of Japanese art’, despite the fact that their ‘cheapness and beauty’ made them both affordable and desirable. The legacy of Sadler’s passion for Japanese art was to benefit Australian public art collections. In 2011 and 2013 a collection of, in total, 520 Meiji period (1868–1912) Japanese woodblock prints (both as single sheets and bound in books) in the genre known as (literally, ‘mouth picture’) was acquired by the National Library from the collection of one of his former students, Richard Clough (b. 1921).

Clough began studying architecture at the University of Sydney in 1939 after taking the subject History of Architecture, which gave him an insight into the ways in which Western conceptions of history are culturally limited. In 1941, he was first introduced to Asian cultures through History of Eastern Architecture, taught by Professor Sadler. His studies were interrupted by the Second World War; he spent three years serving in the Pacific before returning to university in 1945. Clough was able to revisit his interest in Asian culture by working as slide projectionist in Sadler’s History of Eastern Architecture classes. He graduated in 1947 and left Australia in 1949 to study landscape architecture at University College London. In 1958, two years after returning to Australia, he made a six-week trip to Japan to study gardens in Kyoto, Nara, Tokyo and Nikko. His passion for Japanese gardens had also been shared by Sadler. This was the first of numerous trips Clough would make to Japan. From 1959 to 1981, working for the National Capital Development Commission in Canberra, he also oversaw, among other projects, the landscape design of the forecourt of the National Library.

Hanko Kajita (1870–1917)
Plum (Ume) 1908
colour woodblock print; 31 x 22 cm
Asian Collections
nla.pic-vn5744775

Professor Richard Clough was, and still is, a keen bibliophile, and in London had astutely identified Victorian gardening books—not widely collected at the time, and therefore affordable—as an important collecting area. It was this ability to identify objects of intrinsic worth that are little collected, and thus undervalued, that led him to amass his kuchi-e collection. In developing his knowledge of this area he consulted books on the subject, particularly those by the kuchi-e collectors and scholars Helen Merritt and Nanoko Yamada. It was their book Woodblock Kuchi-e Prints: Reflections of Meiji Culture (2000) that later inspired him to search out, mostly from art auction websites, key prints for his collection. In his role as President of the Australian Institute of Landscape Architects from 1969 to 1971, he established ties with Japanese colleagues. One of these, Takahiro Chikashima, was to provide valuable help with translating text related to his kuchi-e collection. Understanding the cultural value of these works, Clough had many of them conserved before donating them to the Library.

Drawing on the centuries-old tradition of woodblock printmaking epitomised by the ukiyo-e (‘pictures of the floating world’) woodblock prints of the Edo period (1600–1868),

Gekkō Ogata (1859–1920)
First Thunder of the Season (Hatsu kaminari) 1911
colour woodblock print; 31 x 22 cm
Asian Collections
nla.pic-vn5744709

kuchi-e marked a revival of interest in this medium from the late 1880s until the early Taishō period (1912–1926). They were created using a variety of reprographic media, but most numerous were those made using the traditional woodblock print medium, at a time when it had to compete against imported printing methods such as copperplate etching, lithography, photography and collotypes. Kuchi-e were folded—once or twice, depending on their size—in a 'folding inserts' style, then inserted into the bindings of publications such as novels and literary journals. Because they appeared near the beginning of the work, they are referred to as ‘frontispieces’ in English. Along with the pages of text, kuchi-e were ‘wire stitched’ (that is, stapled) together, then covered with a paper dust jacket with a colour design on the cover. The publications in which kuchi-e appeared were printed with metal-type text, mostly in monochrome, with photos and advertisements, and on inferior quality machine-made paper, contrasting with the inserted kuchi-e, which were printed on handmade Japanese washi paper and in colour. For this reason, and although it cost twice as much as the rest of the publication to produce them, they were very popular additions, and were made in the thousands. With the input of talented artists and skilled woodblock carvers and printers, there was a further evolution in the tradition of the Japanese woodblock print.

Kuchi-e artists were called upon to produce designs for two types of Meiji literature: stories of contemporary life in which styles of fashion were readily identified, and historical stories in which both author and illustrator could explore subjects that had been censored prior to the Meiji period. The literary presentation of these subjects marked the development of a modern literature influenced by the West, in which human emotions were centre stage, against a background describing customs and manners. The printing methods and representation used in kuchi-e drew upon the tradition of ukiyo-e ‘pictures of beautiful women’, but with a more delicate vision, in tune with the romantic and dramatic nature of the stories being illustrated. Produced during a period of modernisation in which social conventions were being challenged, these illustrated stories reacted to such changes by reflecting traditional family and societal values.

Keishū Takeuchi (1861–1942)
Widow and Widower (Futari yamome) 1899
colour woodblock print; 23 x 29 cm
Asian Collections
nla.pic-vn5744667

Twenty-three artists are represented in the Clough collection, many of them major figures in the Meiji art world. Because in many cases they were principally painters, they infused the print aesthetic with the painterly quality of watercolours. This was achieved through the use of a technique in which the artist’s painting was skilfully replicated by the printer. It was a method that had not been employed in ukiyo-e, in which the artist only supplied a line design and the printer completed the colouring,resulting in the graphic qualities of flat colour that are associated with ukiyo-e prints.

Clough sees his collection, now housed in the Library, as providing an important research source for Australian scholars of Japan. The Library has furthered its commitment to developing this collection by also purchasing 30 kuchi-e. Consequently, it now has one of the most significant collections of this genre in the world, on a par with holdings in the United States and Japan. In the Australian context,what is unique about Professor Clough’s collection is that it has the ability to outline the history of this genre; as such, it will be profiled in a major upcoming exhibition at the National Library, to be curated by the author of this article. In this way, the Library hopes to share insights into the history and beauty of a remarkable Japanese art form.

GARY HICKEY is a curator and scholar of Japanese art and is on the directorial board of the Tokyo-based International Ukiyo-e Society. In 2012 he was awarded the Library’s Japan Fellowship, supported by the Harold S. Williams Trust

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

The Graphic Novels of Kyokutei Bakin

Emiko Okayama examines the graphic novels of a nineteenth-century Japanese writer

* September 2013 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2013/sept13/september_2013_magazine.pdf

Canberra as a Symbol of Nationhood and Unity

Patrick Robertson delves into the personal papers of Sir Earle Page to discover more about Canberra’s first cabinet meeting

Advance Australia: Coat of Arms 1901
photograph; 22 x 25 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an24437882

This year’s centenary of the founding of Canberra alerts us to the possible discovery of names and events from the past that may have significance for the nation’s capital today. So it was while preparing a descriptive guide to the personal papers of Sir Earle Page (1880–1961), held in the Manuscripts Collection of the Library, that I came across four pages which invited closer examination. Although not official Cabinet documents, they are mementos associated with the first Cabinet meeting to be held in Canberra. They consist of two sheets of letterhead from Yarralumla House (requisitioned in 1913 as a residence for visiting parliamentarians and now Government House), one with ministers’ signatures accompanied by their portfolios, the other with signatures only. The remaining two pages are the text of a speech which Page, then acting Prime Minster, gave during the meeting’s luncheon.

Counselled by the admonition in his autobiography to avoid divorcing personalities from political history, I was led to explore the political and historical context in which Page collected such memorabilia.

Fred Leist (1873–1945)
The Rt Hon. Sir Earle Page 1941
Courtesy Parliament House Art Collection. © Department of Parliamentary Services, Canberra ACT

Earle Christmas Grafton Page, surgeon, Grafton GP, farmer–businessman and local politician, won the federal seat of Cowper as an independent ‘straight-out country’ candidate in 1919. He held the seat for nearly 42 years. In 1920, he and other farmer members formed the federal Country Party. With the Country Party holding the balance of power after the 1922 federal election, Page, as party leader, negotiated the terms of a Bruce–Page government with himself as Deputy Prime Minister. Page described it as a composite government which, unlike earlier coalition and fusion governments, preserved the identity and durability of the junior partner—in this case the Country Party.

Transcript of Speech Given by Earle Page at the First Canberra Cabinet Meeting 1924
manuscript in Papers of Sir Earle Page, 1908–1961
Manuscripts Collection
Courtesy Page Family
nla.ms-ms1633

Page had supported Federation from his student days at the University of Sydney, believing that state governments were indifferent to country problems and resenting the concentration of power in Sydney and Melbourne. Reflecting on the experience of the United States Congress in Philadelphia, which was threatened by a mob of soldiers in 1783, Page became an advocate of an independently located and autonomous federal parliament. He wanted it to be established on terms identical to those applying to Congress, namely:

fixed upon some place where it may be proper to continue its residence, and where it may have some kind of jurisdiction without being exposed to the influence of any particular State.legislative building and the Aunt Sally for the Melbourne Press which showed complete reluctance to part with this source of prestige and influence.

Although not party to the choice of the site for the national capital, Page was soon acquainted with the political processes and rivalries involved in the final selection. He shared the vision of the Fathers of Federation, who decided at the Federal Convention of 1897 to 1898 that isolation and independence of location were of the utmost importance. He thus approved of the inland site, removed from the coastal capitals. Garnering the support of fellow parliamentarians was secondary.

H.M. Rolland (1882–1972)
Canberra: Looking South from near Hotel Acton with Parliament House Nearing Completion 1925
watercolour; 25.8 x 37.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5381439

Page was an active promoter of a purpose-built federal capital, choosing ‘to popularise the place and display its virtues to the rebels and the lukewarm’. He recounted how he used Yarralumla House to host a colleague who was bitterly hostile to the selection of Canberra, with the assurance that the local environment would satisfy his hunting and fishing aspirations. His colleague was persuaded when he bagged a hare, three trout, and enough quail for a luscious lunch.

Page also knew which states supported the Canberra– Yass site, and which remained truculently opposed, as illustrated by this recollection:

When the Bruce–Page Government came to office in 1923, Parliament was still meeting in Melbourne—a cuckoo in the Victorian legislative building and the Aunt Sally for the Melbourne Press which showed complete reluctance to part with this source of prestige and influence.

William James Mildenhall (1891–1962)
Yarralumla House 1920
b&w photograph
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an11030057-32

Following the selection of the Griffin design for Canberra in 1912, there was little construction— due, firstly, to the intervening First World War, and, later, to the patchy pace of development under the Federal Capital Advisory Committee (FCAC). The Bruce–Page government therefore decided to accelerate the program for the building of Canberra, both to eliminate waste and to ensure that the aspirations of the Federation Fathers would be observed. One step was to replace the FCAC from the end of 1924 with the Federal Capital Commission (FCC). Even more significantly, to emphasise the government’s desire to leave Melbourne at the earliest possible moment, arrangements were made for Cabinet to meet on Wednesday 30 January 1924 at Yarralumla House in Canberra to study, on the spot, the problems causing the expenditure of several million pounds on an as-yet unoccupied capital.

First Meeting of Cabinet, Yarralumla House, Canberra, Wednesday 30 January 1924
b&w photograph
in Papers of Sir George Knowles, 1920–1989
nla.cat-vn4494350

That unique day in Canberra’s history started formally, with an official luncheon for the Mayor of Queanbeyan and his aldermen. With Prime Minister Bruce overseas at an Imperial Conference, Page as Acting Prime Minister presided over the Cabinet meeting and the associated ceremonies. The mayor, on behalf of Queanbeyan, presented Page with a gift of a pen and inkstand, specifically for recording the meeting. Remarking on ‘the very historic occasion—the meeting of the Federal Cabinet which controls Australia for the first time in its own proper house’, Page agreed to use the gift as intended. Moreover, determined to highlight the national character of the federal capital and its new works program, in his speech Page drew his audience’s attention to the special part a number of ministers who were present had played in Canberra’s establishment and development, and to the different states they represented. Sir Austin Chapman (New South Wales), federal Member for Eden-Monaro and Minister for Trade and Customs, had fought for the selection of Canberra; Sir George Pearce

Yarralumla House Letterhead with Ministers’ Signatures and Portfolios 1924
manuscript in Papers of Sir Earle Page, 1908–1961
Manuscripts Collection
Courtesy Page Family
nla.cat-vn728534

(Western Australia), Minister for Home and Territories, had been a member of the ministry which had commenced the building of the city; Sir Littleton Groom (Queensland), Attorney-General, had controlled construction activities; and P.G. (Percy) Stewart (Victoria), Minister for Works and Railways, had turned the first sod of Parliament House in 1923 and was responsible for the acceleration of the construction of Parliament House and major infrastructure projects.

The historic meeting followed. With Page were nine ministers from the 11-member Cabinet. Page and his ministers, who too were aware of the importance of the occasion, duly recorded their presence and participation on the two sheets of Yarralumla House letterhead. Consistent with the government’s stated purpose for meeting in Canberra, and, perhaps, as evidence of the first documented instance of a community-based Cabinet meeting, one sheet of signatures was headed:

The first Meeting of Federal Cabinet at Canberra represents a further step in the realisation of a great National Ideal. May it hasten the day when Parliament Itself will sit in the Federal Capital.

page 57 of Cabinet Minutes, 30 January 1924
in Bruce–Page Ministry— Volumes of Minutes and Submissions
Courtesy National Archives of Australia
NAA: A2718, VOLUME 1 PART 2

The minutes were likely written by the Hon. Llewellyn Atkinson, appointed by Stanley Bruce to record Cabinet in order to add a measure of efficiency in the conduct of its affairs. These handwritten minutes are not with Page’s personal papers, but, as official government documents, are held by the National Archives of Australia. As was its purpose, Cabinet focused on advancing the construction of the national capital: an architectural competition for the design of an Australian war memorial was launched; the principles of 99-year leases and the disposal of all city leases by auction were established; the first 500 lots to go up for sale in late 1924 were identified; building sites for churches were allocated; and a request for funds for Andrew (Boy) Charlton to participate in swimming at the 1924 Olympic Games in Paris was refused.

The allocation of church sites was anticipated with much anxiety because of the risk of perceived prejudice. A number of criteria were contemplated, but Cabinet, clearly dropping the ball, asked each denomination to identify its preferred site. Miraculously, perhaps, any uneasiness was avoided when each church chose a different location. In his memoirs, Page recalled that Cabinet also allocated 300 acres for the university in Canberra on the nominal site identified on Griffin’s plan. This decision was not recorded in the official minutes, illustrating in the mind of one commentator that ‘the picture from Cabinet is never rounded or even necessarily accurate’.

These practical and history-making decisions are proof of the intention of the Bruce–Page government to proceed at full speed to establish a working federal capital by 1927. Like the Federation Fathers, they insisted that the capital’s location be isolated from, and independent of, the states. Besides setting an accelerated building schedule towards the realisation of a ‘great national ideal’, they also wanted to ensure that the aspirations of the Federation Fathers would be observed. They anticipated that the national capital would replicate the place that Washington DC had in the minds of Americans; as Page put it, Canberra would be the keystone of the federal arch, and would become the soul of the truly Australian sentiment. Again finding inspiration from Washington, the Bruce–Page government hoped to see Canberra as a symbol of nationhood and unity. Such were the ideals and hopes that inspired the Cabinet at that first meeting in the Federal Capital Territory, and which the government of the day wanted to impart to the nation.

PATRICK ROBERTSON is a volunteer in the Library’s Manuscripts and Pictures collections

News for Our Time

The community is helping the library to digitise Australian newspapers, as Hilary Berthon explains

Maggie Diaz (b. 1925)
Newspaper Seller, Melbourne c. 1965
b&w photograph; 30.4 x 29.9 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn6000897

The Illustrated Sydney News
23 December 1882, p. 1
Pictures Collection
nla.cat-vn117950

There is no doubt that the newspaper industry is in transition. With more readers than ever before accessing increasingly dynamic news content through mobile devices, the very word ‘newspaper’ is becoming difficult to define. Perhaps this is no surprise to the science-fiction buffs who, back in the 1960s, read Arthur C. Clarke’s classic novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, which described ‘the last word in man’s quest for perfect communications’: a machine which could gather the headlines of any desired newspaper, and whose text was ‘updated automatically on the hour’.

Alongside changes in how we interact with today’s news is a quiet revolution in how we access the stories of yesterday. In 2007, the Library commenced its ambitious Australian Newspaper Digitisation Program (ANDP). Now, more than 11 million pages of digitised newspapers can be accessed online through Trove, the Library’s free resource discovery service. This represents over 113 million articles from around 600 newspapers from all states and territories, from the earliest published newspaper in 1803 to mid-twentieth century publications. With fully searchable text, this corpus of digitised newspapers is providing a catalyst for new avenues of enquiry. The trends and patterns revealed by charting the frequency with which particular terms and words occur across the newspapers over time, for instance, can provide what Trove Manager and digital historian Tim Sherratt has described as ‘a fascinating playground’ for research. Even the casual home-based researcher or school student can experience the vibrant immediacy of these stories of our past. This program links to the heart of the Australian Newspaper Plan, a cooperative venture between the National Library and the state and territory libraries, which aims to enable communities to explore their rich heritage into the future by collecting, preserving and providing access to Australian newspapers.

News Stand in a Railway Station Offering Newspapers Announcing the Attempt on the Life of King Edward VIII, Melbourne 1936
b&w photograph; 11.2 x 16 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn5125990

One of the newspapers that has been digitised for Trove is The North Australian, Ipswich and General Advertiser, first published at Ipswich in October 1855, and now regarded as Queensland’s first provincial newspaper. The product of a less hurried era than today, The North Australian recommended itself to readers by ‘The quantity of matter which we now publish—a copious history of every week's occurrence’, the ‘fitting type … capable of giving many words in a small compass, and … a bold, clear, and intelligible face’. As this piece in the 1856 New Year’s Day edition indicates, it took its responsibility seriously:

Meie Kodu: Our Home
26 August 1949, p. 1
Newspapers and Microforms Collection
nla.news-title280

It is written, that “for every idle word thou shalt give an account,” and just is the decree, seeing that in the case of the Press every sentence is fraught with consequence, and on its issues depend the concord or discord of society. We are conscious of this truth, and our aim will be always to maintain, as far as it lies in our power, the integrity of this journal.

In the same edition, a vivid picture is painted of the impact of rain on the landscape:

Since our last the long expected rain, so much desired, has fallen, and refreshed the soil, which is now covered with a splendid mantle of green throughout the country. The water holes are filled to overflowing, and on Friday the Bremer was bank high; but as due precautions were used by the residents, no damage as far as we have learned has accrued to property. Yesterday the fresh had considerably subsided, and there is now every prospect of fine weather. The crops of corn are looking well, and promise a plentiful yield.

Craig Mackenzie (b. 1969)
Readers Using Trove 2012
digital photograph

The first step in digitising the newspapers which appear in Trove involves scanning them to create digital images. Although the original paper copy may be used, usually it is a microfilm of the newspaper that is scanned. This strip of film, containing images of each of the newspaper pages, has an expected lifetime of hundreds of years and has, traditionally, been the medium of choice for libraries wishing to preserve their newspapers. Following a quality-assurance check, the scans are processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software to produce text which can be searched by users. Some of the text—such as headings and article abstracts—is manually typed in, so that readers can have a high degree of confidence in its accuracy.

The pages are also divided into ‘zones’, each zone corresponding to a new article. Each article is categorised to assist users to find what they are looking for when searching. Immensely popular with the public has been the opportunity to add their knowledge to the newspaper content by correcting text (improving the accuracy of the OCR-generated text), and adding tags and comments. The Library also encourages the community to get involved by suggesting newspaper titles which they would like to have digitised, or even by sponsoring the digitisation of a newspaper.

Joy Lai
Evolution of The Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate: The Cumberland Argus Newspaper in Print, Microfilm and Now Online via Trove 2012
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Courtesy State Library of New South Wales

Such sponsorship has greatly contributed to the growing number of regional newspapers on Trove. Historical societies, libraries, museums and family-history groups have enthusiastically embraced the opportunity to contribute to their own stories as told through their newspapers.

The digitisation of the Gippsland Guardian, supported by a local group—the Wellington Shire Heritage Network—is a case in point. This group of 21 historical societies, family-history groups and kindred organisations recognised the importance of making the Gippsland Guardian freely available to all users through Trove. According to Network spokesperson Linda Barraclough, ‘This is Gippsland's first newspaper—the Gippsland Times is already online from 1861 to 1954, but this takes us six years further back, in a vital time in Gippsland's history, especially for gold discovery’. The Network was successful in receiving a grant from the Wellington Shire Council, which met half the costs of digitising the newspaper. The Network then went out to talk to the local community, using both traditional and social media to spread the word. Through the enthusiasm and generosity of many, they have been able to fund the entire project. And the enthusiasm is spreading.

The Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate
26 October 1938, p. 1
Australian Collection
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The Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate—published in Parramatta and circulated throughout Greater Western Sydney and parts of north-west Sydney—has been digitised jointly by 11 local councils, a university library, the Library Council of New South Wales, and the State Library of New South Wales, in partnership with the National Library. Linking with the influential fruit-growing industry, this newspaper commenced publication in 1887, becoming the Cumberland Argus, a free community newspaper, in 1950. It was published until 1962. It commented on life in the community—church, sporting and fundraising activities—and local issues such as gas lighting, railway crossings and footpaths. On 1 August 1896, we learn of a child who broke his arm, find out which hospital he was taken to, and discover which doctor treated him. We find out the subjects of the following Sunday’s sermons. And we read an announcement that:

Fruit for the trial shipment to London must be delivered to the Board for Exports on or before next Tuesday. The consignment goes in the Ophir, which leaves Sydney on Monday week.

Of immense interest to readers of the time were the weather reports. The following one, from 5 January 1901, makes today’s bulletins look bland:

ANOTHER HEAT WAVE.—The old year was ushered out on Monday by a blisteringly hot day, made worse by the fact that a heavy thunderstorm was brewing, and that the air was surcharged with electricity. The thermometer registered 104 degrees in the shade, though readings in many places exceeded that figure. About 7 p.m. the storm broke. First of all, a gale of short duration, but violent, while it lasted, whirled clouds of dust into the air. The sky presented a curious appearance. Overhead, and to the west and south dense masses of blue-black clouds spread in colossal forms; whilst about midway between the two points, a broad shaft of sulphur colored light arose, in which chain and fork lightning frequently flashed. Then down came the rain; and the wind ceased. From the nature of the clouds, and the sudden fall in temperature, it was thought that a heavy hailstorm would have added to the disasters of the year. Fortunately, however, the unlucky fruit growers were spared that loss.

Australasian Sketcher
11 September 1880, p. 1
Pictures Collection
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The Cumberland Argus and Fruit Growers Advocate reported on local boys who went to fight in the First World War. In the 25 December 1915 issue we read that ‘A number of Auburn lads took their departure for the front on Monday morning’ one of whom:

a very popular lad … went away loaded with presents from relatives and friends, amongst them being a pocket lamp and writing tablet from the evening continuation school; periscope, Testament, wallet and fountain-pen from the Church of Christ, Auburn; and parcels of comforts from the Women's Patriotic League.

During the war, readers were exhorted to exercise frugality:

While there is really nothing in the outlook to prevent us from celebrating Christmas in a sane and healthy way, it is right that we should respect the spirit of economy which should operate at a time when the organised community needs all that can be raised to prosecute the war … It is not a time for an extravagant and boisterous Christmas, for excessive eating and drinking and making merry.

Digitised newspapers that tell the story of migrants to Australia in their own languages have also been added to Trove. These include the nineteenth-century South Australian German-language newspapers the Adelaider Deutsche Zeitung, Suedaustralische Zeitung, and the Süd-Australische Zeitung, which date back to May 1850. Although they focused mainly on news from the homeland, they also found room for some ‘colonial news’, market prices, and ads for pills and ointments. The first edition of Il Giornale Italiano: The Italian Journal, which was published in 1932 and which described itself as ‘non-political, nonpartisan, non-sectarian, but independent, bright, breezy, newsy and fearless’, was specifically designed for the thousands of Italian workers who migrated to Australia. The Estonian paper Meie Kodu: Our Home, which is still being published, acknowledged, in its first issue in 1949, that publication was perhaps an ambitious venture, with the total number of Estonians in the country then at only 3,000, though steadily increasing. Next on the Library’s agenda for digitisation are some early Australian Chinese-language newspapers.

Newspapers tell the stories of our communities with a lively candidness. We invite you to contribute to this growing resource that is changing the way we access our nation’s stories.

HILARY BERTHON is Manager, Australian Newspaper Plan, at the National Library

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

That Formidable Foe, Ennui

Ian Warden looks at an early, handwritten newspaper, ‘The Blue Jacket Journal’

* September 2010 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2010/sep10/Fighting-that-formidable-foe-Ennui.pdf

Arundel del Re’s Many Exiles

Peter Robb gave the fourth Ray Mathew Lecture at the National Library of Australia on 13 June 2013. This is an edited extract from the lecture Two Exiles

Lannon Harley
Peter Robb  2013
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Arundel del Re was born in Florence in 1892, just outside a very particular milieu, the Anglo–Florentine community at the end of the Victorian age. This Florence was where Henry James had set his novel The Portrait of a Lady 11 years earlier. The year del Re was born, the young Bernard Berenson arrived there from Boston, and reluctantly accepted his first commission for the sale of a work by a Florentine Renaissance master. James and Berenson were eminences of a time and place when British aristocracy, American money and Anglo cultural hungers melded in Tuscany with incomparable art, a needy local aristocracy and low-cost pleasures. A few years later, E.M. Forster recounted in novels and stories the middle-class English experience of Florence, as our own age of tourism got under way. Arundel del Re grew up outside the ambivalent splendour of Anglo Tuscany, aware of it as a child, and sometimes let in as a young man. He had neither lineage nor money. His father Pietro del Re was a captain in the new Italian army and his mother was the daughter of a canon of Cork Cathedral and chaplain to the English forces in Ireland. One of his earliest memories was of a green parrot:

who liked butter and coffee, and would perch on daddy’s shoulder when he was eating, and gently pull his moustache toward him to take a morsel out of his mouth.

His father resigned from the army when he married and began a cycle of speculation,financial failure and more borrowing. He was often away from home. He died early in a fall down a well that Arundel’s Italian grandmother thought was a suicide. His mother had some settlement money, perhaps from a previous marriage, and the family lived off this.

They moved around 1900 to an old villa after a financial crash, where:

opposite the outer iron gate to the garden there was a small, built-up terrace on the other side of the road, with a sheer drop down to the fields below. Olives and vines below were covered with climbing capers.

It was the same agricultural landscape and the same rural economy as in the time of the Etruscans two or three thousand years before.

The family of Marquis Antinori lived a little below us in a wonderful fifteenth-century villa. I was invited to go to the fair with them in their bullock cart. I saw the cattle market and outside the church under the portico all sorts of booths, a circus, and rows of spits with chickens roasting over the embers.

All the boy’s friends were girls, all older than he was, and given to teasing him, which was both exciting and humiliating. ‘I seem to have been very attracted by girls much older than myself ’, he wrote. While playing on swings he was startled by an early glimpse of a small girl’s vulva. Among these girls was:

my first love … a girl … with wonderful corn-coloured hair and blue violet eyes called Daisy, half Italian and half English.I often went to her villa just outside Florence … we used to climb out onto a red-tiled roof and look over Florence and talk by the hour. I … loved dancing with Daisy. She knew how to dress and I still recollect a violet-coloured velvet tight-fitting gown of hers.

As he grew up, people took young Arundel, or Arundello, into the cultural milieux of the grander Florence, and sometimes abroad. He went to Bavaria when he was 14 and, after being mightily struck on seeing Wagner performed there, got himself taken on to Bayreuth. In the summer of 1906, the boy saw Tristan, Parsifal and the Meistersinger on their home ground. Heady stuff at puberty.

In Florence, he attended a grand dinner of the Anglo community held in honour of the visiting Edward Carpenter, the pioneering socialist, gay liberationist, sandal-wearer and friend of Walt Whitman.

I found these memories in the Library, on two closely typed sheets of semitranslucent paper, pages without date or heading or ending, or any continuity between them. The lower right-hand corner of each had been nibbled away by insects or small animals. The nibbled pages remark that ‘all these years were difficult ones financially’. He went to England for study, not to the Oxford or Cambridge of the grandly connected Anglo–Florentines butto University College in London, a working students’ university in a metropolis where he probably had no connections at all.

But he soon made his connections. He worked for the poet and editor Harold Monro in the Poetry Bookshop. Poetry in English was making a turbulent transition from Victorian to modernist in these years around the First World War, and del Re met the great poets who were the agents of that transition, Yeats and Pound. He enraged Pound with a sharp review of Pound’s version of the poems of Dante’s friend Guido Cavalcanti.

He went to Paris. In 1914 he spent time with Sylvia Beach, who would publish Joyce’s Ulysses there in 1922. He spent at least one evening in Paris à deux with Gabriele D’Annunzio. D’Annunzio had a lot of questions about Rupert Brooke, whom del Re of course knew, and then at the height of his fame and glamour. He would be dead a few months later.

The unknown young man from Florence made himself useful in overlapping worlds—Italian, English and now French; literary, academic and now military—in years of social and cultural crisis. When the war came, he went home to Florence and enlisted in the royal Italian infantry, as his father had. Almost immediately, he was back in London as private secretary to the military attaché at the Italian embassy.

Del Re’s wartime work at the embassy required liaison with the British military, and this led to work for British military intelligence. In the service of MI6, he travelled as a King’s Messenger between London and Paris during the war and the Versailles treaty negotiations after the war’s end, his briefcase of secret documents handcuffed to his wrist. In the 1920s, the Italian del Re received an OBE for services to MI6.

And at the same time he was able to graduate with honours from London University in 1917. In 1921 he got a lectureship in Italian at Oxford and, by 1923, he had master’s degrees from both Oxford and London. He married Joan Harriot that year. He’d wanted to marry his great love Daisy, but in London.

I introduced her to a young Englishman who was at the Italian front with the Red Cross—she was also a volunteer nurse— and he fell in love with her and swept her off her feet and married her. It was quite a shock.

In 1927, with his OBE and degrees from Oxford and London, del Re went to Tokyo with Joan to take up a professorship in English at Tokyo University. They stayed in Japan for 27 years. He loved Japan and made friends who, long after he’d left the country, wrote long letters and travelled long distances to visit him, right to the end of his life.

In Tokyo, he was at the same time working as private secretary to the Italian ambassador, Baron Pompeo Aloisi. He assembled for the baron an exhibition of Japanese art that went to Rome, and worked on the baron’s 1929 book Ars Nipponica. Aloisi was promoting the Berlin–Rome–Tokyo axis. He may have been an art lover, but professionally the baron was a diplomat and a secret agent.

When del Re’s Tokyo professorship expired in 1930, he easily found another chair in Taiwan, which was then under Japanese control. He stayed there 13 years. He became fascinated by Buddhist culture in Taiwan, and, in 1940, published a slim work called The Happy Other world, comparing representations of paradise in early Florentine art—Dante and Giotto—and in Buddhist poetry and painting.

The following year, Japan was at war with the United States and, at some point, del Re was interned with his wife and two daughters.

I found no record of this time, but maybe it was when he began the fragment of childhood memories that survives in those two nibbled and disconnected sheets. At least part of it was spent in Tokyo, because after the war he remembered briefly, for Japanese readers, the American firebombing of Tokyo.

The moment the war was over in Japan, del Re was on the payroll of the Americans. He helped the occupation forces reorder the educational structures of postwar Japan, and received some emphatic letters of thanks from high American authorities when he was terminated in 1951. One praised him at length for his understanding of the Japanese mind, though in the 27 years he lived in Japan and its territories del Re learnt no Japanese at all.

He took up a final university post in Japan, and three years later abruptly left the country. I wonder whether it wasn’t a nervous breakdown that decided his move to Sydney, where he was one of the founders of the Australian Oriental Society. In 1960, he went on to Wellington in New Zealand, where he taught English to Asian students, and Dante to a happy few.

In 1966, he and Joan moved to Melbourne. In the early seventies, he corresponded intensely in French with the abbot of a Christian monastery in India on the question of facing one’s God. He wrote to old and distant friends and, in 1974, he died in Geelong at 82.

Arundel del Re’s life eludes anyone who riffles through the meagre and disordered papers he left behind. There’s an impulse to self-effacement perceptible in these notes and letters, variously without beginning or end or middle, a curious lack of self. The lacunae are what we know best about him.

In Tokyo in 1930, del Re published a book of essays in Italian and English literature called The Secret of the Renaissance. It’s a hard book to find now, but there is a copy in this library, and in it del Re’s slightly opaque prose sometimes quickens with strong feeling. It happens when he writes about John Florio.

Florio was a major figure in the culture and politics of Elizabethan England. He saw himself as the bringer of Italian culture to an uncouth land, and was a major agent of this, through language teaching, translation, criticism. His translation made Montaigne’s Essays available to Shakespeare. He mediated the work of his contemporary, the great Italian thinker Giordano Bruno, to the dramatists Christopher Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson.

Del Re’s Florio was a man who by hard work and intelligence rose from poverty, obscurity and lack of formal education to deal with leading figures in England and civilise them. Here del Re is writing about himself. He identifies passionately with Florio as a self-made intellectual and a mediator of cultures.

John Florio was tough, intelligent, energetic—they called him ‘resolute John Florio’. He was also a spy, one of that network of agents, spies and informers that Queen Elizabeth’s intelligence chief Walsingham maintained through the tense and dangerous years between the massacre of Protestants in Paris in 1572 and Catholic Spain’s attempted invasion of England in 1588. In the two years Bruno lived with the French ambassador in London, Florio was in the embassy too, and visiting Walsingham quite often.

John Florio’s Europe of conflicting loyalties was not at all unlike del Re’s early twentieth century. But Florio’s were the years when modern Europe defined itself, and del Re’s were the time when Europe undid itself, and his response was to flee.

A couple of months before del Re died in Australia, he received a letter from Switzerland, from a man called Ludwig. Ludwig tells del Re, ‘I realize you’ve burnt all of Mummy’s letters … it’s best so, all things considered … even letters can distort the truth’. He speaks about letters telling their own truth, which may be different from the real world’s, and concludes abruptly, ‘Here’s a photo of Mummy and one of her tomb, where her father, brother and my English grandmother also lie’.

Stuck to the airmail sheet, itself almost lost among fragments of typing, newspaper clippings, postcards, unidentifiable notes and partial carbon copies, is an old sepia photograph of a young woman in a long skirt, and a splotchy coloured snapshot of a flower-strewn grave.

The human past is understood from the written words we leave behind. How little they explain.

PETER ROBB is an author whose internationally acclaimed books include Midnight in Sicily (1996), M (1998), A Death in Brazil (2003) and Street Fight in Naples (2010). His most recent book is Lives (2012).

The Ray Mathew Lecture is supported by the Ray Mathew and Eva Kollsman Trust.

You can read or listen to the complete lecture at nla.gov.au/ray-mathew-lecture