The National Library Magazine

Volume 5, Number 2, June 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.

Individuals may receive hard copies by mail by becoming a member of the Friends of the National Library of Australia.

National Library of Australia
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nla.gov.au

National Library of Australia Council

Chair: Mr Ryan Stokes
Members: The Hon. Dick Adams MP, Ms Glenys Beauchamp PSM, The Hon. Mary Delahunty, Dr Nicholas Gruen, Ms Jane Hemstritch, Senator Gary Humphries, Dr Nonja Peters, Professor Janice Reid AM, Ms Deborah Thomas
Director-General and Executive Member: Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich

Senior Executive Staff

Director-General: Anne-Marie Schwirtlich
Assistant Directors-General, by Division:
Innovation and Resource Sharing: Marie-Louise Ayres
Collections Management: Amelia McKenzie (acting)
Australian Collections and Reader Services: Margy Burn
Information Technology: Mark Corbould
Public Programs and Executive Support: Jasmine Cameron
Corporate Services: Gerry Linehan

Editorial/Production

Commissioning Editor: Susan Hall
Editor: Tina Mattei
Designer: Kathryn Wright Design
eBook Designer: Brad Ferguson
Image Coordinator: Jemma Posch
© 2013 National Library of Australia and individual contributors

ISSN 1836-6147
PP237008/00012

Send magazine submission queries or proposals to pubadmin@nla.gov.au

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

George Frederick Gregory (1821–1887)
SS City of Adelaide  1866
watercolour; 59.8 x 85.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5944942

George Frederick Gregory’s watercolour rendition of the steamship, SS City of Adelaide, is a reminder of a time when Australia’s connections to the rest of the world ran through its ports with cargo carried by grand ships. Gregory began a family legacy of painting Australian maritime scenes that, through his two sons, lasted nearly a hundred years. The National Library of Australia holds a number of works by the Gregory family, who were able to make a living from their art by cleverly catering to wealthy colonists and proud mariners who desired portraits of their pride and joy—their ships.

Contents

Marine Masters: The Gregory Family of Artists

Alexander Ibels examines the work of a family of early Australian maritime artists

City of Trees

Michael Desmond takes us through the Library’s latest exhibition

Appealing to the Ladies

Penny Olsen is drawn to the many ways in which great nineteenth-century botanist Ferdinand von Mueller touched the lives of colonial women botanical artists

From Pen to Paper

Zora Cross

A Mountain Lake for Canberra

Dianne Firth uncovers what might have been a very different sort of lake for Canberra

‘Made Portable for the Pocket’

Denis Shephard finds pocket globes in the Library’s collection that demonstrate the evolution of European knowledge of the Australian coastline

‘Nurturing the Feeble Flame of Canberra’s Early Musical Life’

Jenny Horsfield examines Charles Daley’s invaluable contribution to Canberra’s musical culture

Searching for Australian Words

Julia Robinson finds hidden meanings in Trove

Support Us Friends of the National Library

The National Library Bookshop

Marine Masters

The Gregory Family of Artists

Alexander Ibels examines the work of a family of early Australian maritime artists

George Frederick Gregory (1857–1913)
Kaitangata  c. 1910
watercolour; 35.7 x 55.3 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5944972

The National Library of Australia holds an interesting visual record of Australian maritime history—the work of three artists of the Gregory family, father George Frederick (1821–1887) and sons George Frederick junior (1857–1913) and Arthur Victor Gregory (1868–1857). Each of these three prolific artists managed, with varying degrees of success, the extraordinarily difficult task of earning a livelihood through the sale of their art. The thousands of works they created portrayed the celebrated ships and maritime events of the day. 

The Gregory legacy began in the mid-1850s, when English-born George Frederick arrived in the colony of Victoria and started to paint marine scenes. It ended almost a hundred years later, when Arthur Victor was in the twilight of a long career. Together with George Frederick junior, he sketched and painted immigrant ships, wool clippers, coastal steamers, pilot vessels, yachts, ocean liners and warships. Added to an assortment of ship portraits were quaint port scenes, raging naval battles and maritime disasters—all favourite subjects for marine artists. Their careers were beset by some of the most calamitous social events in Australian history, with wars and economic depression taking a heavy toll on the maritime industry that formed the core of their business.

The Gregorys are well represented in collections both in Australia and around the world. The Library holds 11 original watercolours and various contemporaneous prints by the Gregorys, each work giving an insight into how the artists operated at different stages of their lengthy careers.

after George Frederick Gregory  (1821–1887)
The Dayspring  c. 1876
albumen photograph on carte-de-visite mount; 6.2 x 10.2 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn6225475

Two large ‘ship portraits’ by George Frederick senior in the Library’s collection date from the mid-1860s, only a few years after he had switched his principal occupation from that of shipwright to ‘marine artist’. The glut of ships in Melbourne, left over from bringing loads of people during the gold rush, had caused financial hardship for those employed in the boat building trade. At the time, though, Victoria lacked a full-time marine artist and George perceived an opportunity to use his refined drafting and seaman’s skills to exploit this artistic niche. Painting in a style reminiscent of other English marine watercolourists of his generation, George sold works primarily to colonists, shipping companies and visiting mariners.

George Frederick Gregory (1821–1887)
Clipper Ship Macduff Entering Port Phillip Heads, 1st. Dec. 1865
watercolour; 50 x 83 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5944947

One watercolour in the Library’s collection, Clipper Ship Macduff Entering Port Phillip Heads, 1st. Dec. 1865, retains the original title label, handwritten by the artist and mounted below the painting. It was a quick portrait, commissioned by Macduff’s commander William S. Bruce. While not an example of his finer work, it represents the inexpensive watercolours sought by mariners during their stay in port. The quality of George’s output varied greatly, in accordance with what his clients were prepared to pay. Unlike the more elaborate port scenes acquired by wealthier colonists (which could cost more than ten pounds), mariners rarely justified spending many weeks’ earnings on a portrait of their beloved ship. Although the size of George’s paintings was usually generous (approximately 50 x 80 centimetres were common dimensions), the line work and attention to detail was noticeably less for cheaper works. Mariners’ commissions would either be taken home as a souvenir or, in the case of the Macduff painting, adorn the wall of the master’s cabin. Although most of those sea-faring vessels were eventually lost through disaster, decay or the scrapper, removable effects such as paintings were often spared, becoming mementos and family heirlooms.

Numerous contemporary reproductions of George’s work are also held by the Library, dating from the early 1860s. They include wood engravings of his sketches and a handful of colour lithographs after his paintings. Two albumen prints from the 1870s are also a part of the collection. These show a watercolour of the celebrated South Seas missionary schooner Dayspring (II). One print, in carte-de-visite format, bears on its mount the monogram of Melbourne photographer James Stewart. Interestingly, the previous Dayspring vessel had been the subject of one of George’s earliest paintings to be photographically reproduced; in that instance by Charles Nettleton in 1870.

Arthur Victor Gregory (1868–1957)
Omeo  1891
watercolour; 56 x 90.8 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5944953

Such prints amply demonstrate the rising trend for photographic souvenirs at the time. As a commercial artist with a large family to provide for, George was quick to capitalise on the steady rise of the photographic industry and the opportunity to make additional sales. Comparatively cheap and portable reproductions had the potential to appeal to a different type of customer than his large paintings. They could also be used to advertise his skills. It is unknown if George travelled with a selection of his artworks as ‘calling cards’, but it seems plausible. After the introduction of The Copyright Act of Victoria in 1869, he immediately began selling the copyright of his paintings to several of Melbourne’s prominent photographers. 

Indeed, he was one of the first artists in the colony to formally embrace such commercial partnerships under the new Act. Rather than bringing about the end of ship portraiture by pencil and paintbrush, photography served as a chance for marine artists to diversify their artistic output and to increase potential marketability. 

The Library holds one work by George F. Gregory’s younger marine artist son, Arthur—a watercolour portrait of the ship Omeo. It is an early solo career painting, similar to the style Arthur employed while assisting with collaborative works in his father’s studio during the 1880s. After the patriarch’s death in 1887, Arthur’s painting style and palette underwent a period of transformation. This lasted through most of the 1890s, before reaching a consistency which was retained for the rest of his career during the twentieth century.

Frederick Grosse (1828–1894)
after George Frederick Gregory (1821–1887)
Burning of the Result, in Hobson’s Bay  1866
wood engraving
Courtesy State Library of Victoria

All of the eight original George Frederick junior watercolours in the Library’s collection date from the ultimate and most prolific stage of his career. By that time he worked in New South Wales and was focused on producing large numbers of modestly-sized paintings. They depicted a variety of vessels, including many of the small coastal steamers which dominated the cargo and passenger trade along the eastern seaboard. By the early twentieth century, George Frederick junior was a seasoned artist with some three decades of experience in his chosen niche and having established a reliable method of composing his scenes and representing ships. His method of rendering turbulent white-capped oceans became somewhat stylised and his composition was generally conventional, enabling him to paint dozens of scenes comparatively quickly.

Just as George Frederick senior had seized the opportunity to sell the rights of his works to engravers and photographers, marine artists in the early twentieth century could not ignore the growing reproduction industry. Along with the sale of paintings, the two Gregory sons also sold copyright of their works to photographers. Hundreds of their works were reproduced in the popular and remunerative format of the Edwardian era—picture postcards. These cards were the quintessential souvenir, popularised by the convergence of global tourism, a reliable postal service and the diminishing cost of making photographic reproductions.

After George Frederick Gregory (1857–1913)
The Bark Antiope  c. 1908
b&w photograph on card; 8.7 x 13.7 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn6225453

The incessant demand by the photographic industry for a ready supply of illustrations kept most marine artists busy from the turn of the twentieth century until the First World War. During that time, copyright infringements by photographers were probably common. Although many of his paintings were reproduced as postcards, Arthur was more proactive than his older brother when it came to the control and protection of copyright. In 1910, he provided a test case for new Commonwealth laws by successfully suing a photographer for making and selling copies of his work without permission. Subsequently, Arthur tended to sell paintings and reproductions directly to clients from his studio in Melbourne.

George Frederick junior formed close associations with several prominent photographers in Newcastle and Sydney and was employed for periods as a commercial artist by the studios of Oliver Godfrey and later Samuel Hood. The number of his paintings reproduced by the Sydney studios of Alfred Dufty and Samuel Hood exceeded 200, along with dozens more by other studios. Such was the proliferation of the postcard industry that all of George Frederick junior’s paintings in the Library’s collection were likely to have been reproduced in that format. Dufty made copies of at least two of them, the watercolours of Kaitangata and Ururoa. Despite the large number of George Frederick junior’s reproductions, it is doubtful that the artist earned much money from them—he died a pauper in Sydney in 1913, at the height of the postcard boom. 

As time passes, it is easy to underestimate the maritime industry’s role in Australia’s development and in shaping its collective imagination. While most art historians have traditionally emphasised artistic responses to the Australian interior, the desire of a majority of Australians to reside near the ocean and to celebrate marine pursuits has too readily been dismissed. Marine artists such as the Gregorys have played an important role in the overall artistic milieu in Australia and their contributions and stories both invite and reward further investigation.

ALEXANDER IBELS is a Canberra-based designer and writer

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

‘Breakers Ahead!’: William Westall’s Record of a Reef Wreck

Richard Westall looks at firsthand depictions of an early Australian shipwreck

* June 2011 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2011/jun11/breakers-ahead.pdf

City of Trees

Samuel Cooper (b. 1982)
Portrait of Jyll Bradley  2013
digital photograph

Michael Desmond takes us through the Library’s latest exhibition

Designed by Chicago architects Walter Burley Griffin and Marion Mahony Griffin, Canberra was planned as part of the garden city movement in the early twentieth century. As such, it incorporates significant areas of natural vegetation that have caused the city to become known as the ‘bush capital’. It is ironic, therefore, that the forestation of Canberra is recent and coincidental with the establishment of the city.

‘The finest plain we ever saw … not a tree’—so was Canberra described when Europeans arrived in the 1820s. The first settlers who ventured into the Canberra region were impressed by the abundant grasslands, eminently suitable for grazing, not the trees that are so characteristic of the city today. As Bill Gammage points out in his recent publication The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia, the flora and fauna in and around Canberra had been maintained for centuries by the Indigenous people to suit their needs. Regular burning minimised the trees on plains around the Molonglo and Queanbeyan rivers, with the new grass growth after each burn attracting game. The Canberra of today is unrecognisably changed, transformed from an Indigenous estate to ‘a perfectly good paddock’ to eventual renown as a garden city, the city of trees. The trees of Canberra are intrinsic to the history of the city and appropriately celebrated in the centenary year.

Frank Hurley (1885–1962)
Two Women Walking up a Hill, a 1930s Vauxhall Car 211-651, Spring Blossoms, Possibly in the Cotter Reserve near Canberra  between 1938 and 1959
full plate glass negative
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an23478058

Briton Jyll Bradley has been commissioned to create a work of art for the Centenary of Canberra and chose to illuminate how trees, treescapes, related folklore and personal histories are the backdrop to life in Australia’s capital. ‘City of Trees,’ says Bradley ‘is a timely reflection upon Canberra’s 100 years through an exploration of the “Bush Capital’s” treescapes, the hidden stories and the hopes of the people who planted them and those who nurture them today.’

Bradley works across a variety of media, using drawing, photography, sound, installation and performance. Born in Folkestone in 1966, she trained in London at Goldsmiths and the Slade School of Fine Art. Her practice, as you would expect from the diverse range of mediums, tends towards conceptual art, rather than strictly painting, sculpture or photography. She mixes aesthetics with history, politics, social commentary and nature to explore the ties between locale and identity, often focusing on the complex relationships between culture and the natural world.

Jyll Bradley (b. 1966)
Pines, National Arboretum  2010
photograph
Courtesy Jyll Bradley

Bradley has created several major works charting the connections between people and plants. In 2008, her Mr Roscoe’s Garden told the story of a nineteenth-century plant collector and the fate of his collection in Liverpool, making the links with trade and society. In 2010, Flower Train recorded the movement of flowers by rail from Penzance to London and the stories of the growers against the rising international market for flowers. In the group exhibition Galápagos, in 2012, Bradley considered the effects of exotic species on the indigenous plants of the Galapagos Islands. Central to each project has been the idea of the plant as a cultural object.

Jyll Bradley (b. 1966)
Adam Burgess, National Arboretum  2010
photograph
Courtesy Jyll Bradley

Canberra is similarly a cultural object, a construct as artificial as its lake, and one of a select group of planned capital cities that includes Washington DC, Islamabad and Brasilia. Bradley points out how unnatural the trees in Canberra are: trees were planted as part of the domestication of the bush and planned from the moment the first street was laid out. The first government nursery was established about 1911 on the site of the National Museum of Australia. In 1914 it was moved to Yarralumla, the first plant being produced in 1916. It is estimated that Yarralumla Nursery has grown 50 million plants in its 100-year history. Since the 1920s, the residents of Canberra have been entitled to a generous free handout of shrubs and trees for their gardens from the nursery—a practice that continues today. Of course, the planting of Canberra is not just an institutional story, as many people brought their own trees with them when they came to the new city. Who planted and nurtured what trees and where is a curious and an ongoing history with many layers. As Bradley comments: ‘The story of Canberra could in a way be told through the trees, that every tree had a human story to tell. In a way the trees are a door into the understanding of Canberra and the people who live and work here’.

Jyll Bradley (b. 1966)
Dawn, National Arboretum  2010
photograph
Courtesy Jyll Bradley

Bradley’s installation features backlit photographs, drawings, interviews and ambient sound, creating a mixture of personal politics and geography and an intimate perspective of Canberra. She takes apart aspects of Canberra’s domestic forest, considering different areas and treescapes and talking to people connected to each. The arboretum is an archive of trees, equivalent in some ways to the Library, which is a storehouse of books. The Library houses ideas and acts as a history of peoples, both Canberrans and Australians. Trees also record history, their annular markings documenting the seasons, time and branches fated to flourish, struggle or die. 

The trees in Canberra also record the coming of Europeans and the disruption to the continent with settlement. There have always been newcomers and exotics coming over land bridges or floating across the oceans, such as the boab, an early arrival. In Canberra, the influx of exotic species is notable for the numbers that followed settlement. There were small numbers at first: the plane trees around St John’s Anglican Church in Reid were planted by Reverend Pierce Galliard Smith in the 1840s. Other specimens brought by settlers have become a record of both taste and economic consideration. There was no gradual planting of the Westbourne Woods, though, another site that Bradley has explored. The woods were planted by Charles Weston in 1913, the year he took charge of Yarralumla Nursery. By 1920, he had planted 44,900 exotic trees, many into holes blasted by dynamite. The following year, he commenced the planting of the Mount Stromlo pine plantation, locating nearly 1.2 million trees on the slopes. It was hardly a subtle integration of species.

Jyll Bradley (b. 1966)
Interior, Tool Shed, Yarralumla Nursery  2012
photograph
Courtesy Jyll Bradley

In contrast, the Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, also considered by Bradley, retains the natural flora and fauna of the Canberra region. Bradley presents the stories of Indigenous rangers, who provide a different reading of the trees and scrub and for whom Canberra is a map of campsites, quarries, sacred areas and Dreamtime stories of the Ngunnawal people. For Bradley, the links between place, time and identity are poetic and obliquely political, offering parallel narratives that are at once confrontational and elusive.

Stories are vital to Bradley’s take on Canberra and trees are the conduit for the expressions and feelings of nostalgia, pleasure, awe, calm and civic pride. Her sound recording of the joy of two small girls climbing a tree is just one response of many she introduces in the exhibition. She sees strong connections between the Library and the trees of Canberra in holding people’s stories, emotions and memories. The treasury of stories that comprises the Library equally has connections with trees in the many leaves of paper that act as doors to human feelings and achievements.

Jyll Bradley (b. 1966)
Seed Bed, Glasshouse, Yarralumla Nursery  2012
photograph
Courtesy Jyll Bradley

Working with long-time collaborator Jonquil Panting, a BBC Radio producer, Bradley has created a suite of audio works, each exploring a different Canberra tree-scape or tree-person. Each includes associated sounds and poetry by local poets. These can be heard in specially designed sound portals made from cardboard. The portals, standing like tree trunks in a clearing, curl like a leaf to enclose listeners. They are located close to many drawings on sheets of old blotting paper, the sort used in Canberra’s herbarium, that Bradley found at Yarralumla Nursery. The paper, once intended to press plant specimens, was surplus to requirements, and on request was generously given to Bradley for use in her exhibition. She has preserved her vision of the woods on the blotters but in a different way: using a photocopier. The medium remains graphite, like the ‘lead’ in a pencil, but in a powdered form applied electrostatically to the paper in a burst of light. The drawings are suggestive and map-like but the lines are obscured by tones and textures, more like wash in a watercolour. The combination of mechanical and organic in the photocopy drawings is reiterated elsewhere in the installation and conjures up the notion of the city’s buildings and streets among the trees. In the slightly darkened entrance to the exhibition, a panoramic image of trees in light boxes is illuminated like an industrial stained-glass window and the whisper of voices further enhances the notion of a church-like, sacred space. This is no accident; nor is the opening up, beyond the entry passage, of a clearing in the next space, where the three portals stand. The nexus of humanity and nature is at the heart of heightened sensory experience of self.

Jyll Bradley (b. 1966)
Interior, Tool Shed, Yarralumla Nursery  2013
photograph
Courtesy Jyll Bradley

Bradley starts with the ideas of beauty and of history and then alludes to sowing and nurturing. Almost by definition, planting trees is an act of faith in the future. The act of making images, stories, music and poems is also an act of faith, with an implicit notion of giving to future generations. Bradley’s installation bears witness to the present, allowing visitors to stand between the past and future and to become a part of the chain of life in Canberra. Her sound recordings will be donated to the Library’s Oral History Collection to secure this moment for posterity.

City of Trees is a place to listen and look, a place to reflect and remember and to know who we are and where we come from.

MICHAEL DESMOND is a freelance curator and writer. City of Trees is on display in the Library’s Exhibition Gallery 5 July–7 October. City of Trees is a Centenary of Canberra project, proudly supported by the ACT Government, the Australian Government and the National Library of Australia

From Pen to Paper

Portrait of Zora Cross  c. 1920
sepia toned print; 15.5 x 9 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3663767

Zora Cross was very much a woman before her time. She challenged the mores of her society and was not afraid to express her feelings in verse  and prose. She experienced hardships in life and strove to overcome adversity with determination and good spirit. Her choices in life scandalised the literary circles in which she moved. Zora Cross was one of the first Australian women to write explicitly about sex, childbirth and war.

Born in 1890 in Brisbane, Zora Bernice May Cross became a primary school teacher, but left when she conceived a child out of wedlock. The child later died. She displayed her literary aspirations as a young woman and supported herself by acting, teaching elocution and through regular contributions to newspapers and literary magazines.

While contributing works to The Bulletin, Zora met David McKee Wright, with whom she developed a de facto relationship. This association scandalised literary and journalism groups as Wright was in another relationship. The publication Songs of Love and Life presented sexuality from a female point of view and included a series of sonnets on love. The Lilt of Life portrayed her love for Wright.

After Wright died suddenly in 1928 Zora Cross struggled to support her three children. She pursued freelance journalism and contributed a column for the Australian Women’s Mirror in which she interviewed women writers. Zora was also a novelist and children’s author and poet, as well as writing the lyrics for several musical pieces.

Zora Cross died in 1964.

The Poet’s Vow was first published in The Bulletin in 1915.

Zora Cross (1890–1964)
Manuscript of The Poet’s Vow in Australian Literary Manuscripts 1852–1929
Manuscripts Collection
nla.cat-vn1391580
Courtesy April Hersey

The Poet’s Vow

[FOR THE BULLETIN.]

Beloved!  O beloved one,

I write you this to tell you, dear,

That earth and sky and sea and sun,

       Are all of mine when you are near.

My love for you is, as a fire

       That burns with scented incense fine,

A thing beyond all base desire,

       Exquisite, holy, chaste, divine.

Your eyes are humid pools of light,

       There is a fragrance in your hair,

And even in this silent night

       I feel your presence everywhere.

Adored of all, good-night, mine own,

       The very stars your grace adore;

               Believe me,

                        Ever thine alone….

Alicia, Ettie, Rose—O Lor’!

Whichever did I mean this for?

ZORA CROSS.

Page 45 in The Bulletin, 26 October 1916
Newspapers and Microform Collection
nla.cat-vn445034

Appealing to the Ladies

Penny Olsen is drawn to the many ways in which great nineteenth-century botanist Ferdinand von Mueller touched the lives of colonial women botanical artists

James Armstrong (active 1879–1940)
Portrait of Baron Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von Mueller  c. 1879
b&w photograph; 14.5 x 10.4 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an23514205

In 2010, I came upon one of the many advertisements placed by Ferdinand von Mueller in newspapers across the Australian colonies, soliciting collectors of plants. This one appealed to ‘ladies’ in remote parts who were ‘bereft … of those intellectual resources to which many of them have been accustomed’. I knew that several of Mueller’s ‘ladies’ were illustrators and that he had been engaged several times and died leaving a vast, if fractured, body of correspondence. A famous bachelor botanist seeking women collectors, incomplete letter trails, matrimonial prevarications and beautiful illustrations … it was all too tantalising. And so Collecting Ladies: Ferdinand von Mueller and Women Botanical Artists began to take shape.

Late in 1847, to escape the scourge of tuberculosis, 22-year-old Ferdinand Müller brought his surviving siblings Bertha and Clara across the sea to the free colony of South Australia. To Müller, a botanically trained pharmacist, among the many attractions of the Australian colonies were plants of scientific, commercial or ornamental value, just waiting to be discovered. Müller applied himself to the task immediately, scooping up unfamiliar seaweeds even before his ship had docked at Port Adelaide. In Adelaide, he worked occasionally in a pharmacy, dabbled in farming, became naturalised and changed the spelling of his name to Mueller.

Fanny Anne Charsley (1828–1915)
Macdonaldia antennifera, Diuris elongata, Diuris oculata, Glossodia major, Caladenia alata, Utricularia lilacina, Caladenia pulcherrima  c. 1867
watercolour and pencil; 36.8 x 26.7 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an10265475

In 1852, Mueller moved to Victoria where his botanical expertise was soon noticed. The next year he was appointed Victorian Government Botanist, a position he held for life. Mueller began a series of botanical explorations of Victoria. Governor La Trobe was delighted with his appointee: ‘My clever little Botanist has returned having done quite as much as I expected & more than any but a German, drunk with the love of his Science’.

Through the 1850s, the young Mueller collected plants in not only Victoria but also further afield, on the Gregory Expedition to Victoria River, Northern Territory. Thereafter, he supported several expeditions, hiring botanists for some, and largely depended on his expanding network of correspondents and collectors to add to the herbarium he was building. The frequent mentions of his doings and discoveries in the broadsheets quickly made him a household name in Victoria and, not much later, in all the Australian colonies.

Frederick Schönfeld (1810–1868)
Nematolepsis euphemiae (now Rhadinothamnus euphemiae)
plate 25 in Fragmenta Phytographiae Australiae, vol. 3, no. 23, by Ferdinand Mueller (Melbourne: Auctoritate Gubern. Coliniae Victoriae, 1862–1863)
Australian Rare Books Collection
nla.cat-vn2289329

Encouraged by Mueller, members of the public often took or mailed specimens or illustrations to him at Victoria’s Botanic Gardens for identification. Anything of significance was archived in the herbarium, scientifically described and named by Mueller or sent to experts overseas, particularly to specialists at the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew in London.

The 1860s were years of romantic exploration for Mueller. In 1862 he became enamoured of Euphemia Henderson, of Melbourne and Phillip Island, and by March 1863 he had proposed. She shared his interest in botany and music and drew plants. But the flame dimmed rapidly when Mueller noticed ‘that destiny had brought us together years too late for matrimonial life’. The 42-year-old Henderson protested but Mueller believed that she was past childbearing age. He wanted an heir, so that was that as far as he was concerned and the engagement was quietly called off.

Anna Frances Walker (1830–1913)
Hardenbergia (Kennedya) monophylla Benthem. and Clematis glycinoides D.C. in Flowers of New South Wales by Anna Frances Walker (Sydney: Turner & Henderson, 1887)
hand-coloured lithograph; 36.7 x 28 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an10237086

Then, in 1865 Mueller boasted to his mentor, William Hooker at Kew, that he was courting ‘a dear most gifted girl beaming in the beauty of youth … a young Lady of high and independent social standing’. Rebecca Nordt was indeed a girl, a mezzo-soprano, just 16 years of age and 24 years Mueller’s junior. Mueller wasted no time naming a plant—a fern ‘remarkable for its gracefulness’—in his young love’s honour, as he had done for Henderson. That engagement, too, was short lived.

Almost as much as he sought new plants, Mueller chased honours—and garnered many, not least a baronetcy in 1871 and knighthood in 1879—believing that they would help him in more ways than one. In 1871, at the age of 45, he wrote to a colleague, Ferdinand von Krauss, at the natural history museum in Stuttgart:

Gifts of this kind, especially when they can be shared with a lady, may lead to a turning point in my life … for great fortunes … and the youth of a glorious being are more easily sacrificed to an older man, if rank and honours are thrown in to tip the scales.

Louisa Anne Meredith (1812–1895)
Blandfordia and Box: Great Red Lily (Blandfordia grandiflora), Native Box (Bursaria spinosa), Tassel Flower (Anthropodium paniculatum)
plate 7 in Bush Friends in Tasmania: Native Flowers, Fruits and Insects, Drawn from Nature, with Prose Descriptions and Illustrations in Verse by Louisa A. Meredith (London: Macmillan, 1891)
Australian Rare Books Collection
nla.aus-nk5689-10x-v

A few months later, the new Baron Mueller wrote to Krauss again, thanking him for his help in securing the honour and sharing the news:

This high hereditary title, which is of great value to the lady of my choice, will contribute considerably to the establishment of my domestic happiness, and that within the next few months.

Again, though, nothing transpired on the domestic front.

During the 1870s, Mueller began advertising in the broadsheets for collectors. The Brisbane Courier, for example, promoted the opportunity to contribute to Mueller’s ‘great national work’, cataloguing the flora of the continent:

What trouble would it be to collect and preserve flowers, and enclose in an envelope to their destination? How many ladies might devote a few leisure hours to this pursuit? Every contribution would be acknowledged, and not only that, but the donor’s name become a part and parcel of this grand undertaking.

Ellis Rowan (1848–1922)
Mushrooms Including Red-capped Mushrooms from the Genus Russula  c. 1880s
watercolour; 27.9 x 19 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn4365924

Mueller successfully enlisted a veritable army of willing enthusiasts—teachers, doctors, clergymen, postal workers, surveyors, farmers, men, women and children—to collect samples of everything, from forest trees to seaweed. Known for his coterie of women collectors, they amounted to only about ten per cent of his more than 2,000 known troops. Nonetheless, at a time when women typically had little recourse to science or contact with men outside their family circle of friends, his network of ladies was quite extraordinary.

A polite interest in botany was a traditionally feminine pursuit. For some ladies, collecting and pressing plants for the great botanist would have been a welcome extension—a chance to contribute to a grand project and scientific knowledge and to engage with the wider world. Indeed, botanical study was a path to a healthy body and mind. As one of Mueller’s ladies wrote:

When I first took up the pleasant occupation of collecting and painting the wild flowers around Melbourne, I had not any idea of bringing the result of my labours before the public; I did it merely as a healthy and interesting pursuit. There is nothing like the study of Nature for amusing the mind, and leading us to think of the Great Creator of all things.

Ferdinand Mueller (1825–1896)
Inscription for Louisa Atkinson on title page of Flora Australiensis: A Description of the Plants of the Australian Territory, vol. 1, by George Bentham, assisted by Ferdinand Mueller (London: Lovell Reeve, 1863)
Australian Rare Books Collection
nla.cat-vn1853899

Women were still unwelcome at the cutting edge of science, where plants could be described and named and spoken about at professional societies—this domain was still preserved for men. Also, until late in the nineteenth century, women were excluded from universities, the professions and full membership of various learned societies. Instead, with the patronage of men like Mueller, many channelled their interests into supporting roles for the emerging sciences like botany.

Mueller may not have responded to correspondence from the ladies in quite the same tone as to his scientific colleagues in Europe but he invariably replied with great interest and sent botanical details that would have flattered their intelligence. Unused to such attention, let alone from a famous scientist, some would have read his letters over and over. The more successful collectors would see their names mentioned in his publications, in newspapers or enshrined in the name of a plant.

Despite his consuming life’s work, Mueller generously made time to assist and encourage several women in pursuit of their own passions. For Fanny Charsley, Louisa Atkinson, Annie Walker and Ellis Rowan, Mueller identified the plants they painted and provided letters of introduction to publishers and scientists. Of the 14 ladies profiled in Collecting Ladies, Fanny De Mole, Gertrude Lovegrove and the jilted Euphemia Henderson had only brief flirtations with his botanical world. Louisa Anne Meredith forged her own literary career and, against the odds, Harriet and Helena Scott and Rosa Fiveash became professional illustrators (but not for Mueller, who employed only men). Mueller’s great friend Lady Margaret Forrest collected plants for him but her artwork was purely decorative. Mueller’s niece, Marie Wehl, and his colleague in the Field Naturalists’ Club, Flora Martin, collected and sketched plants, particularly fungi.

Harriet Scott (1804–1866)
Purple Coral-pea, Botany Bay, NSW  1842
watercolour; 20.3 x 19.6 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an6132178

Between them, these ladies produced some of the most beautiful books and botanical art to come out of Australia in the nineteenth century, representing plants from all the Australian colonies. Through their artwork and writings they helped to popularise botany and increase knowledge and appreciation of Australia’s native plants in the lead up to Federation. While their relationships with Mueller differed, all benefited from the milieu he created. Their paths in life illustrate the many challenges facing women of talent and ambition in the last half of the nineteenth century.

To Mueller’s vast botanical achievements can be added his special effort to enlist ladies to his cause, including being a benefactor to several. In doing so, he helped many to find purpose and even minor fame in botanical collection. Unstintingly, he assisted several with their own projects and, for a determined few, helped them to carve out highly successful careers involving botanical art. Yet, despite several attempts, the bachelor botanist never did find a lady to share his life.

PENNY OLSEN is an Associate Professor at the Research School of Biology, ANU. Her book Collecting Ladies: Ferdinand von Mueller and Women Botanical Artists (2013), is published by NLA Publishing

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

The Other Banks

Ian Warden examines a journal written by Sarah Banks, Sir Joseph Banks’ sister, revealing that she too shared a passion for collecting and classifying

* June 2012 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2012/jun12/the-other-banks.pdf

A Mountain Lake for Canberra

Mountain Lake, Canberra  1913
map; 50 x 45 cm
Maps Collection
nla.map-gmod11

Dianne Firth uncovers what might have been a very different sort of lake for Canberra

Could you imagine sailing from the centre of Canberra to Tharwa? This possibility is envisaged in a map dated 1913 and titled Mountain Lake, Canberra held by the National Library of Australia. It shows a dam on the Murrumbidgee River below the junction with the Molonglo River throwing back a large lake to link with the future Lake Burley Griffin.

Although labelled as a diazo print on the catalogue entry, it is actually a blueprint copy. It is inscribed ‘To Dr Fredk Watson with A.J. Macdonald’s compliments’ and has the imprint ‘Printed by Paterson & Co. 396 Flinders Lane Melbourne’. With both the printer and Macdonald based in Melbourne, it would seem that the map’s origins are Melbourne rather than Sydney. The map was acquired by the Library from Pauline Watson, one of the three daughters of Frederick Watson.

L.A.B. Wade and J. Marshall
Contour Plan of Proposed Storage Reservoir at Barren Jack: Murrumbidgee River District  1905
map; 79 x 96 cm
Maps Collection
nla.map-rm2810

I first came across this map when I was undertaking research for my PhD thesis. Who was Macdonald, how did this map come into his possession and why did he give it to Frederick Watson? Although the map shows the ornamental lake system of Walter Burley Griffin’s initial design and was referred to by Griffin in 1915, the graphic style of the map does not suggest that it originated from his office. I was intrigued by it then and continue to be so in the context of urban design, grand schemes for water conservation and management and the processes of government in committing to large infrastructure works.

The first record of the idea for this large lake appears in a report by Stephen Weedon to Leslie Augustus Burton Wade (1864–1915). Wade was Principal Engineer for Rivers, Water Supply and Drainage for New South Wales and the driving force behind the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area. Supported in his endeavours by the Premier of New South Wales, Joseph Carruthers, Wade travelled to America and Europe to investigate major dam building and irrigation projects. Although the construction of Burrinjuck Dam on the Murrumbidgee River, as part of the larger irrigation scheme, did not start until 1907, preliminary studies began much earlier. Wade’s Contour Plan of Proposed Storage Reservoir at Barren Jack (Burrinjuck): Murrumbidgee River District (1905) is also held by the Library.

Assistant Engineer Weedon was asked to investigate and report to Wade on the possibility of building another large dam on the Murrumbidgee River below the junction with the Molonglo River. In his Report on Water Supply of 7 September 1906, Weedon considered:

By the erection of a dam at this point, a large body of water could be conserved in the two rivers, and by means of low weirs in the Molonglo River, boating could be made possible throughout the entire proposed Federal Capital territory at Canberra and up the Murrumbidgee River, giving a waterway of from 40 to 50 miles on the combined rivers for boating, fishing, and water carriage generally.

Walter Burley Griffin (1876–1937)
Canberra Federal Capital of Australia Preliminary Plan  1913
map; 33 x 33 cm
Maps Collection
nla.map-gmod34

Wallinger Studios Chicago
Walter Burley Griffin, Designer of Canberra  c. 1912
sepia tone print; 27.5 x 20.2 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an23137769

Weedon’s immediate superior, Acting Chief Engineer Ernest Macartney de Burgh (1863–1929), marked the location of the large lake on the Canberra district map. This, however, was before the declaration of the final boundaries of the Federal Territory and before state and territory responsibilities separated. Wade’s report Federal Capital: Proposed Site at Canberra, which incorporated Weedon’s report, was tabled in 1907 in the Commonwealth of Australia Parliamentary Papers. The map in the Library’s collection may well have been created by de Burgh and updated after 1912 to incorporate the ornamental lakes of Walter Burley Griffin’s winning design.

Griffin, appointed Federal Capital Director of Design and Construction in 1913, probably became aware of this proposal through his connection with Wade. In 1914 Wade, as executive officer and secretary of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Trust and through the Town Planning Association of New South Wales, met Griffin and commissioned him to design two new towns in the MIA. Unfortunately Wade died suddenly in 1915. That year Griffin brought the idea of the lake before a Public Works Committee Inquiry into the construction of the sewer for the city. Inquiries were held for all works that would cost more than 25,000 pounds. During the Inquiry, Griffin referred to the possibility of a large lake in the future. He requested that no sewer works be located below the level of the central ornamental lakes so that drainage would not be compromised:

All operations and works contemplated below the 1,825 level in the Molonglo and Murrumbidgee Valleys within the Territory … will be rendered a total loss in the event of creating the 35 square miles of water … when an expenditure of 1 million pounds will take advantage of a providentially natural opportunity to secure a mountain lake.

The building of the Federal Capital received close scrutiny, not only from parliament, but also from the Sydney and Melbourne press. On 16 April 1915, Melbourne’s The Argus reported:

This lake would extend 50 miles through rugged gorge and mountain scenery making available directly by steamers from the heart of the capital several hundred miles of deep water frontage, and an infinitude of water view sites, establishing not only a continental attraction scarcely if at all to be matched in the world, but contributing to the capital territory the one climatic amelioration and elemental feature needed to raise mere existence there on dry land to full-rounded life associated with unlimited water facilities.

Such visionary plans did not impress the Chairman of the Inquiry, Mr Riley MHR, a plasterer and pragmatic union secretary. He thought that it would cover the best portions of the Federal Territory and that it was beyond the consideration of his committee. In addition, the timing was wrong. With the onset of the war, manpower and finances were in short supply and only the essential infrastructure of the city could be considered for the foreseeable future.

A.J. Macdonald
Suggested Mountain Lake for Canberra
plan in Canberra and Water Power (Lakes Scheme) by A.J. Macdonald,  1915–1946
Courtesy National Archives of Australia

Twenty-nine years later the vision of a mountain lake made another appearance. In 1944, 80-year-old A.J. Macdonald wrote an article ‘Canberra and Water Power: A Plea for the Mountain Lake’ in The Australasian Engineers Year Book. It was illustrated with a black-and-white plan identical in layout to the 1913 plan. His plea was for water conservation to enable irrigation of Australia’s arid inland, generation of hydroelectricity for modern cities and work for returning soldiers. He supported the argument by profiling other significant water conservation dams built in America in the 1930s which had provided much prosperity, particularly during the war years.

In 1945 Macdonald wrote to the Coordinator General of Works Sir Harry Brown with a copy of his article and requested consideration of the scheme. The article was forwarded to the Department of the Interior and then to the Department of Works ACT, where Superintending Civil Engineer L. Thornton reported that the dam would be in New South Wales and was therefore a matter for that state. This was a response reflecting the complexities of cross-border legislation. His summary was that ‘the whole proposal is extremely visionary and would require years of study and investigation into all ramifications’. He suggested that more favourable dam sites could be found.

Wolfgang Sievers (1913–2007)
Snowy Mountains Scheme, 1957, 4
b&w photograph: 24.3 x 19.6 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3416695

Thornton’s report was sent back up the line to Interior, where it languished for over a year until another polite letter from Macdonald inquired if the proposal had been considered. The response was that the letter had been received and that the oversight in acknowledging receipt was regretted. Following elections in November 1946 and the appointment of new ministers, the file was closed. The new Chifley Government had another idea for national development, one that was unconstrained by state borders. This was the vision of a vast irrigation/hydroelectric scheme based on the waters of the Snowy River, rather than the development of a large lake at Canberra.

Macdonald’s background is worth noting. Scottish born and trained as an architect, he designed several highly regarded public buildings for the Victorian Public Works Department. When he met Griffin in 1913, he had moved from architecture to a position of examiner of patents. Macdonald was familiar with the Canberra site as he had submitted an entry in the Federal Capital competition. On short loan from the Patents Office, he worked as chief assistant in Griffin’s Melbourne office and managed the office when Griffin returned to the United States in 1913 to settle his affairs. Macdonald would have known of this lake proposal but it is unknown how the map in the Library’s collection came into his possession. Macdonald’s interest in town planning flourished and in the 1920s he became Chief Technical Officer for the Melbourne Metropolitan Town Planning Commission.

Craig Mackenzie (b. 1969)
Aerial View of Capital Hill and Lake Burley Griffin  2012
digital photograph

Why Macdonald sent the map to Watson is also a matter for speculation. Watson edited The Historical Record of Australia until 1925, moved to Canberra and, in 1927, published A Brief History of Canberra. In 1929, he served briefly with the Federal Capital Commission at a time when the construction of Griffin’s ornamental lakes was being considered. Macdonald may have sent the map when Watson was working on his historical records, as background to his book or as an idea to complement the building of the ornamental lakes. Certainly it would have been before Watson’s death in 1945. He was survived by his wife and three daughters.

The 1913 and 1944 maps of the Mountain Lake for Canberra provide evidence of the visionary aspirations of engineers and designers in harnessing water to benefit the future Canberra. As an unbuilt work, it should be placed in the context of two other visionary built schemes: the Snowy Mountains Hydro-Electic Scheme (1949–1974) and Lake Burley Griffin (1960–1964). The Snowy Scheme was made possible by legislation established at the time of Federation to enable water sharing rights to the Snowy River. Although Lake Burley Griffin is named after Griffin, it is not the lake he envisaged. Griffin’s lake included a large East Lake and required control of the catchment as well as dams on the upper Molonglo and Queanbeyan rivers to maintain water levels. Only Googong Dam on the Queanbeyan River eventuated, and is the primary supply of Canberra’s ornamental lake. Water rights and water quality continue as issues.

DR DIANE FIRTH is Adjunct Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra and Deputy Chair of the ACT Heritage Council

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Charles Scrivener: The Surveyor as Town Planner

Greg Wood revisits the endeavours of the surveyor, Charles Scrivener, to influence the planning of Canberra

* June 2010 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2010/jun10/03-Charles-Scrivener.pdf

‘Made Portable for the Pocket’

Denis Shephard finds pocket globes in the Library’s collection that demonstrate the evolution of European knowledge of the Australian coastline

Nathaniel Hill (1708–1768)
A New Terrestrial Globe  1754
globe; 7 cm (diam.), in case 7.5 cm (diam.)
Maps Collection
nla.cat-vn6104211

‘Made portable for the pocket’ was how Joseph Moxon (1627–1691) described the small terrestrial globe that he advertised for sale in 1659. Today, this size of globe is generally called a pocket globe. The six examples in the National Library of Australia’s collection range in date from the early eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries. Their detail traces, among other mapping features, a growing European knowledge of the continent that came to be known as Australia.

A map globe is a spherical map of Earth (terrestrial globe) or the stars (celestial globe). Unlike flat maps, terrestrial globes show an undistorted view of Earth, provided that the information used to construct them is accurate. Celestial spheres show the apparent positions of the stars in the sky, without the Sun.

Map globes of all sizes start out as a flat map in the form of a series of painted or printed gores—strips with curved sides tapering to a point along lines of longitude—which are glued on to a sphere made of papier-mâché, wood or cardboard stiffened with shellac. The polar caps consist of circles of paper which cover the edges of the gores. Larger globes are generally mounted on a stand while pocket globes have two pins at the polar axis so that they can revolve freely inside a case. The Library holds a set of 12 gores ready for assembly into a 20 centimetre terrestrial globe, created by Peter Anich in 1758.

Peter Anich (1723–1766)
Excelsae Repraesentationi Regio-Caesareae Oenipontanae  1758
12 gores; 23.3 cm
Maps Collection
nla.map-rm3856-s1

Celestial globes were constructed as early as the time of Bede (c. 672–735) and formed part of the educational apparatus of monastic schools. The earliest surviving celestial globe, the Farnese Atlas, exists as a second century Roman copy in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Italy. Terrestrial globes first appeared after the acceptance of Earth’s spherical shape, being described as early as 360 BC by Eudoxus of Cnidus (408–355 BC).

Early terrestrial globes depicting the entirety of the Old World were constructed in the Islamic world, including one introduced to Beijing by Persian astronomer Jamal al-Din in 1267. In Europe, the rediscovery and publication of Ptolemy’s Geographia from the mid-fifteenth century began a ‘golden age’ of map-making and, consequently, globe-making.

The oldest surviving terrestrial globe made by a European is the Erdapfel (meaning ‘earth apple’). It was created by Martin Behaim (1459–1507), merchant and map-maker of Nuremberg, in Germany, in 1492, on the eve of Colombus’ departure for the New World. Richly coloured, it had a diameter of 30 centimetres and summarised European knowledge of the world at the time. The first known printed gores for a terrestrial globe were created by Martin Waldseemüller (c. 1470–1520) in the first decade of the sixteenth century. With gores of a height of 18 centimetres, they would have produced a globe with a diameter of 7.6 centimetres.

John Senex (1678–1740)
A New & Correct Globe of the Earth  between 1730 and 1750
globe; 7.3 cm (diam.), in case 7.6 cm (diam.)
Maps Collection
nla.cat-vn6104210

Globe production became a prosperous activity in Amsterdam in the early seventeenth century, while production also proceeded in other parts of Europe. In 1850, Charles Dickens, in his weekly magazine Household Words, estimated that about 1,000 pairs of globes, both terrestrial and celestial, of various sizes were produced annually with prices ranging from six shillings to 50 pounds. The 27 globes in the Library’s collection illustrate this size range, with the largest having a diameter of 72.7 centimetres, the smallest a diameter of 4.3 centimetres.

The eighteenth century was a period of extensive European maritime exploration, during which emerged the mass production of a popular version of the map globe—the pocket globe. These relatively small globes measure approximately 5 to 7.6 centimetres in diameter and are enclosed within two hinged hemispheres held together by hook-and-eye clips. The inner surface of the two hemispheres usually has celestial detail, while the outer surface has a black leather covering, most often shagreen, fish skin, sharkskin or rayskin. The globe is a miniature world ‘made portable for the pocket’ and easily carried at all times—clearly pockets were much larger back then.

Nicholas Lane (active 1775–1783)
A New Globe of the Earth  1776
globe; 7 cm (diam.), in case 7.5 cm (diam.)
Maps Collection
nla.cat-vn6104213

In England, Moxon began producing pocket globes in the mid-1650s, after having studied the methods of Joan Blaeu during a visit to Amsterdam in 1652. Although made in many parts of continental Europe, the globes were primarily an English phenomenon that continued into the nineteenth century. By the mid-nineteenth century, however, they were no longer in vogue and other types of educational globes, such as foldable versions, became popular.

The practical use of a pocket globe can only be speculated but it cannot have been much more than a ready reference. Although sturdy and portable, the small globes were unable to show the same amount of detail as larger counterparts. Nevertheless, they carried enough information about the geographical location of major places around the world and showed the tracks of various maritime explorations or, in the case of celestial globes, the identity of particular stars. They have also been spoken of as expensive status symbols, conversation pieces, novelties or simply gentlemen’s toys.

Carl Johann Sigmund Bauer (1780–1857)
The Earth and Its Inhabitants  between 1830 and 1840
globe; 4.3 cm (diam.), in box 5.6 x 6.2 cm, with folded strip
4.7 x 137 cm
Maps Collection
nla.map-glob10

The Library’s collection of six pocket globes—five terrestrial and one celestial—comprises examples of the work of five makers, namely John Senex (1678–1740), Nathaniel Hill (1708–1768), Nicholas Lane (active 1775–1783), J. & W. Cary—the partnership of brothers John (c. 1754–1835) and William (1759–1825) Cary—and Charles Silberrad (active 1799–1834). The oldest globe in the collection is A New and Correct Globe of the Earth, created by John Senex between 1730 and 1750. The most recent globe is Terrestrial Globe, created by Charles Silberrad in 1808. They vary in diameter from 7 centimetres to 8.3 centimetres, with cases varying from 7.9 centimetres to 8.8 centimetres.

Leonard Compere Cushee (active 1751–1760)
A New Globe of the Earth  1751
globe mounted on wooden stand; 7 cm (diam.)
Maps Collection
nla.map-glob8

All are beautifully coloured and display a high level of draftsmanship. The Senex globe is a very rare type, being a later issue of the first English globe published by Senex & Price in 1710. The Hill globe, A New Terrestrial Globe, survives in many forms, indicating that it was one of the more popular mid-eighteenth-century English pocket globes. It was also sold mounted on a stand and is found, at times, mounted in orreries. The Cary celestial pocket globe shows the stars to various magnitudes, labelled with Greek characters and numbers. It is a well-preserved example of a seldom-seen celestial pocket globe. Stand-alone, celestial pocket globes are far rarer than terrestrial globes.

Nathaniel Hill (1708–1768)
A New Terrestrial Globe  1754
globe; 7 cm (diam.), in case 7.5 cm (diam.)
Maps Collection
nla.cat-vn6104211

There are two other globes of similar size to these in the Library’s collection. The first, by Leonard Cushee, is dated 1755 and is mounted in a mahogany stand. The second, by Carl Johann Sigmund Bauer, is dated somewhere between 1830 and 1840 and is housed in a cardboard box together with a hand-coloured foldout engraving of people from around the world. Neither is made to go in a pocket, at least not comfortably.

Viewed in sequence, the five terrestrial globes summarise the knowledge being gathered about the Australian continent by successive Dutch and English explorers. The two earliest terrestrial globes, by Senex (1730–1750) and Hill (1754), show a continent, named New Holland, with a partial southern coast, no east coast and with New Guinea as an extension of the north coast. The southern coast of Tasmania, labelled ‘Dimens Land’ (as is the north-west coast), is only hinted at, as is the coast of New Zealand. This view reflects the work of successive Dutch explorations complemented by that of Englishman William Dampier. The ‘Antipodes of London’ is marked on the Senex globe.

John Cary (c. 1754–1835)
Cary’s Pocket Globe Agreeable to the Latest Discoveries  1791
globe; 8.3 cm (diam.), in case 9.2 cm (diam.)
Maps Collection
nla.cat-vn5213930

The Lane and Cary terrestrial globes, dated 1776 and 1791 respectively, show the input of Cook’s exploration with an east coast added to the continent, although ‘Dimen’s Land’ is still shown as a peninsula. The Cary globe includes a pink shaded area along the east coast, labelled ‘New South Wales’. Unusually, it does not have celestial information on the inside cover. Instead, there is a table of latitudes and longitudes on one side and a map labelled ‘The World Known in Caesar’s Time According to D’Anville’ on the other. The fifth globe, by Charles Silberrad, is dated 1809 and includes the results of George Bass and Matthew Flinders’ circumnavigation of Van Diemen’s Land a decade before, showing it as an island rather than a peninsula to the New Holland–New South Wales mainland.

Whether a teaching aid or gentleman’s toy, each pocket globe beautifully illustrates contemporary geographical information of its time. The Library’s five examples show European knowledge of the Australian continent’s coastline evolving over seven decades.

DENIS SHEPHARD is a volunteer in the Library’s Maps Collection

IN A PREVIOUS ISSUE

Java Emerging: Unfolding Cartographic Views 

Col Simpson charts the history of European exploration and settlement in Java through its maps

* December 2010 nla.gov.au/pub/nlanews/2010/dec10/java-emerging.pdf

‘Nurturing the Feeble Flame of Canberra’s Early Musical Life’

Portrait of Charles Studdy Daley  c. 1925
b&w photograph; 20.5 x 15.6 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn4665355

Jenny Horsfield examines Charles Daley’s invaluable contribution to Canberra’s musical culture

It is widely acknowledged that the early residents of the new Federal Capital Territory were reluctant newcomers. In 1924, as Commonwealth departments began to transfer staff from Melbourne to Canberra, people were uprooted from the associations that they held dear: family, settled neighbourhoods, community life, established homes and well-loved gardens.

In the 1920s, Canberra offered little intimation of the ‘city beautiful of our dreams’ that Lord Denman had envisaged at the laying of the Foundation stones on Capital Hill in 1913. The mountain-ringed Limestone Plains might have offered a dramatic setting for the creation of a new city but the geography of the place initially imposed feelings of isolation and pessimism on its residents. To the south of the Molonglo River, the dusty paddocks contained a sprawl of new dwellings, whose infant tree plantings offered little protection from summer westerlies and winter gales. A little over three kilometres away to the north lay another cluster of houses and the administrative block at Acton. Canberra seemed, in the words of a later public figure, ‘a place of exile’. In 1921, Robert Ewing, Commissioner of Taxation, warned a senior colleague: ‘I may as well tell you that my department will not be moved to that place’.

Henry Maitland Rolland (1882–1972)
Canberra; Kingston, Early Buildings and Power House, Looking North East from near the Original Road to Cooma  1924
watercolour; 22.8 x 29.2 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an5381443

One of the few senior public servants to welcome the move was Charles Studdy Daley, an officer in Percy Owen’s Department of Works and a man who had been involved with the planning of the new city since its very beginning. From 1913, he had been active in the administration of early engineering works in the new capital. In 1921, he was appointed Secretary to the Federal Capital Advisory Committee, which was charged with the post-war challenge of preparing a detailed scheme for the transfer of the seat of government from Melbourne—a scheme that had been put on hold with the outbreak of war in 1914.

Daley was widely regarded as one of the most brilliant of the new crop of public servants serving the young Commonwealth. As a young man, he undertook part-time courses at the Workingmen’s College in Melbourne and gained a practical knowledge of architecture, mechanics, building construction and other engineering subjects, as well as accountancy and commercial law. He later gained Arts and Law degrees from the University of Melbourne. In 1925, his diligence and experience would see him appointed as Secretary of the new Federal Capital Commission and, in 1930, as Civic Administrator, charged with executive responsibility for all matters of policy and services in connection with the Federal Capital.

We would consider a senior public servant with this degree of responsibility as a man likely to be chained to his desk, but this was not the case for Daley. What is remarkable about his story is the degree to which he was inspired by the cultural and intellectual claims of life, so central to his character and values.

William James Mildenhall (1891–1962)
Albert Hall  between 1928 and 1948
b&w photograph
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an11030057-331

Daley was a gifted musician, a pianist since boyhood. His mother disapproved of her son’s interest in music, fearing that a musical career would offer little security. In an ill-considered move, she burned some of his sheet music but this did not deter the young Daley, who was devoted to the keyboard for the rest of his life. On the day before he died, in 1966, he played for the residents of a Canberra nursing home.

Gladys Moncrieff Wearing the Montezuma Dress Used in Rio Rita, St. James Theatre, Sydney  1928
b&w photograph
24.4 x 18.1 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3601272

Daley was to become a central figure in the early musical life of Canberra, especially with his leadership of the Canberra Musical Society. The society was formed in 1928
(with Daley as vice-president) by a group of like-minded citizens who were keen to arrange and promote ‘a vital and widespread interest in this art’. Their inaugural concert was held at the official opening of the new Assembly Hall (soon to be known as the Albert Hall) on 10 March 1928. A group of singers from the Sydney Conservatorium was invited and performed popular excerpts from La Bohème and Madame Butterfly. The evening was a great success, with a profit of 100 pounds for the new society. Before long, a choir was formed, which took part in the inauguration of the Australian War Memorial in April 1929. There was even a small orchestra under the baton of Professor J.F. Haydon, senior lecturer in modern languages at the new Canberra University College. Daley played in the orchestra and also performed with a small ensemble, the Canberra Musical Trio.

There were many drawbacks to attracting a large audience to the concerts. The Albert Hall could hold about 700 people and had good acoustic properties but it was over three kilometres away from the residential areas. On Canberra’s cold winter nights, there was little to attract patrons away from the domestic fireside to travel to the chilly concert hall, especially for those without private cars who relied on a poor bus service. Within two years of the society’s founding, the effects of the Great Depression began to be felt, with unemployment reaching 11 per cent nationally in 1930. Commonwealth construction programs came to a halt and no further government departments were transferred from Melbourne. Nevertheless, the society was determined to remain a positive presence in the community at a time when life had otherwise become so grim and sombre. In 1931, the Christmas concert was held in aid of the Canberra Unemployment Relief Fund. That year, the subscription concerts were all performed by local people and free lectures on music were also programmed, including Daley’s talk ‘The Evolution of Jazz’.

Portrait of Howard Jacobs, Conductor of the A.B.C. Dance Orchestra  1936
b&w photograph; 18.9 x 24.8 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn4657456

Daley served as President of the society through the Depression, the years of slow economic recovery and the Second World War. Throughout this period, he and his committee ensured that three or four subscription concerts were held every year. Alfred Cunningham, a Sydney baritone who performed at a 1934 subscription concert, wrote to Daley: ‘You must be a very happy man to be there—at the heart of things—with all your scope for constructive thinking—and the more so that you are contributing so literally to the “harmony” of the city’.

Besides the subscription concerts, the society supported the visits of international celebrity artists by arrangement with the Australian Broadcasting Commission. From 1937, this greatly enriched the young city’s musical life, bringing to the Albert Hall performances that ranged across a wide cultural spectrum: Howard Jacobs and his Rhythm Boys, the pianist Eileen Joyce, the Budapest String Quartet, singers Gladys Moncrieff and Richard Tauber and pianist Arthur Rubinstein.

The distinguished list of visiting artists for 1939 included Artur Schnabel, Lotte Lehmann and the Ballet Russes. How remote this quiet country town must have seemed from the upheavals in their homelands. On 15 July, The Canberra Times advertised the coming visit of the ‘Australian pianist Arthur [sic] Schnabel’. Daley, in a gentle correction to the editor two days later, wrote:

Much as we would like the honour, Australia cannot claim the birthplace of Arthur Schnabel, who was a native of Austria, if one can still use that word. In these times when we see evidences of so many spurious forms of nationalism … it is satisfying to find that in music we have one of the greatest forces making for world unity. Arthur Schnabel and other famous artists who are making their contributions to these times and generations, belong to no particular country; they have a wider family than mere territorial boundaries.

For Daley, the later years of the war were shadowed by the strain and worry of having his only surviving son, Geoffrey, on active service with the AIF in New Guinea. In November 1943, Geoffrey contracted scrub typhus and lay dangerously ill in a Port Moresby hospital. That same month, Daley’s wife, Jessie, died of cancer.

Charlotte Cameron
Canberra Waltz  1927
music; 8 pages
Music Collection
nla.mus-an23954515

Throughout the 1940s, despite the increased pressures of war, Daley’s commitments to his work and community did not slacken. In January 1941, he had to decline an invitation to an RAAF concert as ‘public departments, under wartime conditions work on Wednesday evenings until 10 pm’. In his annual report to the Canberra Musical Society in 1942, Daley pointed out that, with the grave risks so near to home, most Australians’ voluntary work was concentrated on those things vital to the war effort. Yet ‘there is still widespread interest in music, as something fundamental … [we] especially need to consider the practical place that music may take in the entertainment of members of the fighting services, who are coming to Canberra in ever greater numbers’. In 1940, Daley was instrumental in bringing the renowned Australian singer Peter Dawson to Canberra for a Red Cross concert, which attracted a capacity audience to the Albert Hall with hundreds unable to gain admission. This was one of a number of successful wartime musical events, including the visit of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra with American conductor, Eugene Ormandy, the first official Lend Lease musician to tour Australia.

In March 1945, the Canberra Musical Society committee awarded a Life Membership to Daley, who maintained a lifelong involvement with Canberra’s musical life as a performer, music critic, committee member and volunteer. One of his abiding pleasures was his Ronisch baby grand piano, which stood in the living room of the Daley home in Acton. His daughter, Nancy Boyd, remembers that he played the piano every night before retiring: he could play from memory, for hours. Music was fundamental to his life. We remember him as a man who enabled many other early Canberra residents to take a ‘vital interest in this art’.

JENNY HORSFIELD is a Canberra writer and historian

Searching for Australian Words

Julia Robinson finds hidden meanings in Trove

David Reid
Interior of the Rare Book and Manuscript Reading Room, National Library of Australia  1972
b&w negative; 5.5 x 5.5 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn3050110

At the Australian National Dictionary Centre, we investigate the history of Australian English and write and edit dictionaries. The centre grew out of a project that, in 1988, published a landmark dictionary recording the history of Australian words, the Australian National Dictionary, which is now undergoing a major revision. The dictionary contains some 10,000 Australian words and meanings; each entry illustrates the history of the word with quotations, beginning with the date of its first recorded use. Therefore, one of the main tasks of the editors of a historical dictionary is to track down the earliest printed or written evidence for a word or meaning.

The work of gathering quotation evidence for the first edition of the Australian National Dictionary began 35 years ago, before the advent of personal computers and online archives. The chief sources were the texts held by the National Library of Australia. A group of dedicated readers inhabited the Library’s reading rooms, collecting evidence of Australian English by diligently combing through books, manuscripts, journals and newspapers, in hard copy and on microfilm. They copied quotations and source details in longhand on six-by-four-inch index cards, which were later alphabetically filed by headword. Some 250,000 quotations were collected and formed the archive from which the dictionary was compiled.

fair go: an equitable opportunity; a reasonable chance.

T. Robinson and H. Wade
detail of Sketches of Life in Queensland  1884
hand-coloured wood engraving; 39.7 x 28 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-an12548257

At the Australian National Dictionary Centre, we continue to collect quotation evidence of Australian words from the Library’s archives but our practices have changed radically. Although it is only a few years since we began using the Library’s online search engine Trove and its ‘Digitised Newspapers and More’ database, it has revolutionised the way we conduct research into Australian English. Now we have access to fully searchable Australian newspapers and journals (1803–1954) and we can perform fast, targeted searches without leaving the office. We can search for a word by date, newspaper, state, text category or combinations thereof, proving an invaluable means of finding evidence.

As a result, we are finding earlier evidence for many of the Australian English words in our own archive. One significant example is the Australian term fair go (‘an equitable opportunity’). Our first evidence in print was from 1904 but Trove has a reference in 1891. An earlier date is exciting stuff for dictionary-makers but more interesting is the context in which it occurs: a shearers’ strike in Queensland. Not only has Trove extended the life of a term central to the Australian egalitarian ideal—a fair go for all—but it gives an insight into the circumstances of its birth in the midst of a time of political and social upheaval that ultimately led to the formation of the Labor Party.

one day of the year: Anzac Day.

Page from Anzac Memorial Day
(Sydney: W.A. Gullick, Government Printer, 1916)
Australian Rare Books Collection
nla.aus-vn789582-s14

We have been able to antedate hundreds of other terms too and some have histories beginning much earlier than we expected. For example, our first record of the phrase the one day of the year (‘Anzac Day’) was from the 1960s and the title of Alan Seymour’s play about attitudes to Anzac commemoration. The database surprised us with a much earlier origin: 1916, when the first Anzac Day services were held a year after the Gallipoli landing. The context is poignant: ‘Not forgotten nor forsaken / Are the lads no longer here, / I shall call—and you will waken / On this one day of the year’ (Melbourne Argus, 29 April, 1916). Often we find that, as with fair go, the context is just as revealing as the early date.

Extending the history of words by antedating is one way in which access to Trove has made a huge difference to our research. It can also give us insight into the course of a word’s popularity over time, shed light on a word’s origin, allow us to see how a new word is adopted into common use, show us shifts in usage, reveal a word that is new to us and sometimes change our understanding of a word’s meaning. And if a word is not in the database, we know it is likely to be recent, rare or unprintable.

The ability to see word frequency represented as clusters of ‘hits’ around specific dates gives us insight into a word’s changing popularity. Take for instance the term Barcoo rot, a form of scurvy characterised by chronic sores, prevalent in rural areas. A search shows us evidence spanning a century but peaking in the period 1895–1919. The majority of evidence occurs in advertisements, far outweighing references in articles, revealing that during its heyday Barcoo rot was largely popularised by purveyors of patent remedies. Real evidence tails off almost completely after the 1940s; a brief flurry in 1950 can be discounted as the name of a theatre revue. Although there is evidence of Barcoo rot today in contemporary records, it is often as a memory of things past. The term may thus eventually be labelled ‘Hist.’ in our dictionaries—meaning a term that is used now only in a historical context.

Barcoo rot: scurvy … 1870 ‘Land scurvy is better known in Queensland by local names, which do not sound very pleasant, such as “Barcoo rot”.’

Advertisement from Kalgoorlie Western Argus,
27 January 1903
Newspapers Collection
nla.news-title73

The history of the word lamington has been tantalisingly illuminated by the database. The lamington, a small square of sponge cake dipped in chocolate mixture and coconut, is commonly thought to be named after Lord Lamington, Governor of Queensland (1896–1901), but the theory lacks proof. If it were true, we would expect to find contemporary Queensland evidence but our first record of lamington was from a Melbourne cookery book in 1909, eight years after Lord Lamington left Australia. Now a search has produced new evidence that coincides with his Governorship and it is from a Queensland source. In the final week of his posting, December 1901, the Brisbane Queenslander ran an item asking about ‘Lamington cake’. Three weeks later, it published the recipe and the lamington quickly gained popularity with Australian cooks. Within a year a recipe appeared in a Perth newspaper and, by 1909, it was a baking competition item in horticultural shows in Yea, Euroa and Grafton. This evidence does not conclusively prove Lord Lamington inspired the cake (there is some competing New Zealand evidence too) but we are a step closer with evidence from the right time and place.

For researchers tracing the history and meaning of a word, a definition is only as good as the available evidence. Trove recently caused us to redefine the short-lived (now obsolete) Australian word Johnniedom. Our existing evidence was thin, just two quotations from the early 1900s: ‘Fancy Fred was English / And a “Simon Pure” of Johnniedom’ (‘Milky White’, Shanty Entertainment, 1904) and ‘He had a very haw-haw voice and the high-pitched intonation peculiar to well-to-do Johnniedom’ (Sydney Truth, 28 October 1906). On the basis of these quotations, our editors originally defined Johnniedom as ‘England’ but Trove told a different tale. Several puzzling references in the 1890s, especially from regional newspapers in Western Australia, South Australia, Victoria and Queensland, made no sense, such as ‘This lady … made a tremendous hit in Melbourne Johnniedom with her serpentine dances’ (Kalgoorlie Miner, 29 March 1899). In the light of the new evidence, we re-investigated the etymology of Johnniedom and concluded it is formed on the British English word Johnny ‘a fellow or chap, a fashionable young man of idle habits’. We now confidently define Johnniedom as ‘the social world of fashionable young men; fashionable young men considered as a class’. Some evidence hints that the term might also have been used occasionally in Britain but, as it stands, the usage is chiefly Australian.

lamington: a square of sponge cake coated in chocolate icing and desiccated coconut.

jamieanne  2010
digital photograph
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieanne/4944049876/
Reproduced under Creative Commons license: creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/2.0/deed.en

Our work on lamington and Johnniedom highlights the significance of regional sources to our research. Regional newspapers in small towns tend to use informal language and report on local social and cultural events. Therefore, they give us access to words not often found in the major dailies. Tin-kettling, a noisy celebration of a marriage with the banging of pots, pans, and other improvised musical instruments, is one such word. The database shows it was chiefly regional, especially prevalent in Victoria and South Australia, and reveals too that the meaning has changed over time. From the last half of the nineteenth century until the First World War it was regarded as an antisocial activity, engaged in by young roughs and larrikins. Court reports of the time tell of violence and injury resulting from it. A radical shift in meaning and social attitudes occurred in the first part of the 1900s, when tin-kettling evolved into a good-natured celebration of the couple by friends and family, accompanied by refreshments and entertainment.

Johnniedom n. The social world of fashionable young men ... 1906
‘He had a very haw-haw voice and the high-pitched intonation peculiar to well-to-do Johnniedom.’

Smiling Man Wearing a Hat, Australia  c. 1900
b&w glass negative; 10.7 x 8.2 cm
Pictures Collection
nla.pic-vn4654413

The original readers who collected evidence for the Australian National Dictionary were meticulous and productive but occasionally Trove discovers a word they missed. A search for sandgroper (‘a West Australian’) also revealed references in some of the same articles to straighthair: ‘The quarrel is said to have arisen through the deceased calling the stranger a “straighthair”. The latter took umbrage at the appellation, and it is alleged that the two engaged in a stand-up fight’ (Perth, West Australian, 1 January 1897). The evidence occurs from the 1890s to the 1920s. Investigation has shown us that although straighthair can mean simply a person from Western Australia, it originally meant one who had convict ancestry, referring to the convicts’ short-cropped hair. The evidence demonstrates that, at the end of the nineteenth century in the Perth area, there was clearly strong sentiment surrounding people of convict ancestry.

Without access to the Library’s database, these examples of our research would have been difficult, time-consuming or impossible. Through it we have an insight into the history of Australian English that was unavailable to us before.

JULIA ROBINSON is a researcher and editor at
the Australian National Dictionary Centre, College of Arts and Social Sciences, ANU