Friday Five: Inhabiting Change

At the Belconnen Art Gallery, I came across an exhibition, Inhabiting Change by Fiona Heard. Change Management is one of the things we hear about often at work. In corporate spaces, the theory of how to adapt and manage changes to our routine and processes is much touted. I thought I'd take a look at how that is represented in art and nature. 

According to the brochure, Fiona Heard is a multidisciplinary artist based in Lake Macqaurie who, inspired by the Australian landscape, uses mark making to explore the relationship between nature and time. Mark making is described as a deeply personal 'visual signature' of an artist, crating different lines, dots, patterns, textures and shapes in an artwork. 

Fiona Heard writes, "Inhabiting Change explores the nature of impermanence, framing the present not as a static destination, but as a dynamic threshold between what was and what will be. The images in this body of work originate in the landscape of South Western NSW: a reflection of both childhood memory and my evolving relationship with the region as an adult. My process mirrors this continuous state of becoming. I begin with the unpredictability of hand printing, embracing chance marks and reduced control to form an initial visual language.

"The final worls emerge through physical reconfiguration. By tearing, combining, and sewing these printed elements, I mimic the way memory and land are constantly reshaped. The resulting pieces move beyond literal representation to evoke an abstracted familiarity, reflecting the reality that change is never a finished state, but an ongoing transformative process."

The Guarded Ruin

Dawn Arrives and Colour Returns

The Deserted Hearth

Birdsong and Bullrushes

The Scorched Earth

The Sun's Benediction

What strikes me most about these images is the fluctuating light and shadows; hues change constantly with the intensity of the day, with our eyes deceiving us after dark - forms around us seemigly move and change, prompting us to question what is real and what is imagined? In some images the landscape is stripped back to its red ochre earth; in others trees stand as sentinels or skeletons. The shifting nature belies a restless earth that envelops the vegetation in its path, subsuming ruins of buildings and infrastructure, echoing absences and acknowledging ghosts.

The vibrating earth will continue thrumming with life. Birdsong breaks into quietude and, "The sun's energy unites the earth and the sky, the life cycle continues and still waters witness a world out of time." Everything has a place and co-exists; we cannot have the present without the past that informed it. Just as the canvas is composed of many layers and palimpsets, so is the country on which we live, work and play.

How well can you really ever know anyone? The Wife and The Widow

The Wife and the Widow by Christian White

Affirm Press

Pp. 326

In this novel Kate is the widow (husband; John) and Abby is the wife (husband; Ray), and, although this occasionally gets confusing, it is well-written and with enough suspense and intrigue to keep the reader engaged. It has a contemporary feel in that the characters frequently refer to true crime podcasts or “suburban procedural TV shows”, indicating that we have all become familiar with these, and that there is a communal enjoyment. It also explores a common theme of these novels in how secret lives are discovered after the death of a loved one (and sometimes even when they are alive), causing one character to reflect, “We all have things that ought to stay buried, things a person should keep to themselves. Things that, if they were ever dragged into the light, would change the way people saw us. I suppose my point is, how well can you really ever know anyone?”

 

With a wry aside to the power of fiction on susceptible minds, Kate first learns something may be amiss when she discovers her husband was skipping work and “reading horror novels by this mad American – Lovecroft? Something like that.” White examines the consequences of hiding feelings and burying emotions, suggesting that suppressed memory will never remain that way, even when counselled, “Put it someplace out of the way, in a room behind a locked door. Then all you have to do is not go in that room.” Kate remembers that John told their daughter they had to confront their fears; after all, “If they didn’t talk about the monsters in this world, then they wouldn’t be ready for them when they jumped out from under the bed.”

 

When Abby asks her husband why he hadn’t previously spoken to her of his fears, and dreams, he replies, “Come on Abby, I’m not one of your girlfriends. Men aren’t like that.” Later he relates his reading matter, “I started reading Tolstoy but couldn’t get into it. Vonnegut and Salinger were both pretty good. Didn’t mind Jane Austen either – bet you’re surprised to hear that one?” It’s difficult to tell whether this gender-reductive viewpoint is that of the character or the author, or both.

 

While appealing to the common denominator – we all consult Dr Google, right? “Her left foot ached with what the internet had diagnosed as either gout, a corn, or foot cancer.” – there are some aspects of the novel which are unoriginal or overexplained. We all know what TMI is and don’t need it spelled out. Similarly, the story of Orpheus and Eurydice is used to indicate the consequences of broken trust and looking back. This must be one of the most overworked myths in recent literature, and the fact that it needs to be explained suggests a level of disrespect for the reader.

 

On the other hand, the author deals well with the subject of grief. “Since John’s disappearance, such simple things had become near impossible. Preparing meals, for example, now seemed like a bizarre foreign custom, needlessly complicated.” Kate cannot easily see a way forward. “She baulked at people who said things like life’s too short and time passes in a blur and Jee-zus, is it Christmas already? Life was long, time moved too slow, and anyway fuck Christmas.” Her friend advises her how to cope with the aftermath. “You keep moving. You eat, you take a bath, you shave your legs and you keep looking forward. Guilt, fear, grief, they’re all like moss. If you slow down long enough, it’ll start to grow and it won’t stop until you’re covered.” Apart from the bit about shaving your legs – another male writing about women trope – this is an interesting metaphor.

 

At other times, the similes are so original as to almost be jarring. “She was quiet, like a duck slipping through a pond.” A false person speaks “words like a backdrop in a Hollywood studio, held together by balsawood and coated in cheap paint.” While waiting for news, a character smokes with attitude. “He sucked on the cigarette hard and fast, as if he was hoping to develop lung cancer before dinnertime.” The colloquial is ever-present as the ferry doors opened and “spat the Lexus out like a dislodged chunk of meat” or fact is sifted from fiction. “Around here, rumours are like holey buckets. They don’t hold water.”

 

The characters and setting are distinctly Australian. Abby practices taxidermy on roadkill her friends bring her, and the tools of her trade, pelts and glassy eyes are all fabulously macabre. It is set on a fictional Victorian (Australian) island out of season where, “The island represented a cold exclamation mark at the end of a sentence.” The atmosphere is frigid and grim, or as Abby puts it, “It’s colder than a fairy penguin’s pocket.”

 

Overall, this is an intense and compelling thriller which is hugely readable and atmospheric. It is only White’s second novel and already he is being described by The Age as a master of the art of misdirection.

Friday Five: Books Read in July

1. Redback by Howard Jacobson (Black Swan) - I struggled with The Finkler Question, so thought it was worth giving Howard Jacobson another go; he is well-known for being funny and writing award-winning fiction. I suspect, however, his may be a style of humour (self-indulgent, middle-class, academic white man) that has passed me by. Think Tom Sharpe and Kingsley Amis, but more Jewish. Dense paragraphs, picaresque style, random characters, anxious first-person narrator, excessive hyperbole, roughly linear narrative peppered with tangents, flashbacks and digressions, and a barely-there storyline all appear to be hallmarks of the author's practice. The plot, such as it is, is that Karl Leon Forelock receives a double-first in Moral Decenies from Cambridge, is recruited by the CIA, and heads to Australia as a spy where he attends a lot of parties and makes sweeping generalistions about the country and women, whom he clearly doesn't understand. While he claims to have resolutely, "kept my nose out of politics", he feels entitled to comment on such matters, occasionally with amusing results. “Liberal in Australia, incidentally, means Conservative (unlike in England where it means nothing very much in particular), and is not to be confused with Labour. Which also means Conservative only not to quite the same degree.” Written in the 1980s, and set in the 1960s, the tone of this novel is very much last century.
2. An American Marriage by Tayari Jones - The winner of the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction is an extremely engaging and accessible novel, narrated by the main three protagonists. Celestial and Roy are happily and newly married when he is arrested and sentenced to twelve years in prison in Louisiana for a crime Celestial knows he didn’t commit. She finds comfort in her childhood friend, Andre, Roy’s best man at their wedding. As their feelings develop, Roy’s conviction is overturned and Celestial has big decisions to make. Celestial is an artist; Roy is a business executive – they are not the blue-collar stereotypes of the American South, but because they are African-American, their lives are destroyed by a system which is prejudiced against them. On the evening of the alleged crime (a woman was raped and claims Roy was the perpetrator and, as a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time, he is almost automatically convicted) Roy and Celestial had had a big fight. This is their last interaction before he is hauled away by the police, and the situation throws their 'perfect' marriage into question. Jones has expressed that her novel is a version of The Odyssey, with Celestial playing the role of the waiting wife, unsure how to handle the return of her man. The men are infuriating as they fight over Celestial - "You don’t have to pee on her like a dog marking your territory. Have some manners.” They may well have suffered hardship and institutionalised racism, but that does not excuse their machismo and their sexism. This was a favourite of Oprah, Obama, and books clubs all across America.
3. The Windsor Knot by S.J. Bennett - This is the first in what has become a series of cosy crime novels, described as ‘Miss Marple meets The Crown’ in which the Queen solves mysteries. It was written in 2020, when the author went on a writer’s retreat during the pandemic to write something else entirely and came up with this instead. It’s highly implausible but thoroughly entertaining, as we are told, “The Queen solves mysteries. She solved the first one when she was twelve or thirteen, so the story goes. On her own. She sees things other people don’t see – often because they’re all looking at her. She knows so much about so many things. She’s got an eagle eye, a nose for bullshit and a fabulous memory. Her staff should trust her more.” At the behest of Prince Charles, the Queen hosts a ‘dine and sleep’ for Russian dancers, composers, and selected glitterati. When a pianist is found strangled the next day, hanged by the cord of his dressing gown in a wardrobe at Windsor Castle, the optics aren’t good. Initially it appears that it may have been a case of autoeroticism gone wrong, although the aides are hesitant to alert the Queen to this fact. She, meanwhile, tells Prince Philip that she is unshockable because “I’ve lived through a world war, that Ferguson girl and you in the Navy.” The MI5 suspect political involvement, but the Queen disagrees and sets out to solve the crime herself. Which, of course, she does.
4. Murder in Paradise by Ann Cleeves - Set on Kinness, an island off the coast of Scotland (bleak and misty with 'traditional values' and sheep), this is billed as a George and Molly Palmer-Jones mystery, but George is on his own, and Molly is back at home. George works with Sarah instead, a new bride who has just got married to Jim and returned to the island (where he grew up) for celebrations. It is difficult for her to adjust as everyone has secret alliances and their own ways of being. There is very little bird-watching (they ring some swans and shoot some geese) and George is cross and irritable with everyone and everything including himself and his feelings about retirement. “How pagan they are still, he thought… They pretend to be Christian, but when they’ve had a few drinks, they still behave like loutish Norsemen.” George is determined to solve the crime – the death of a girl who is believed to have fallen to her death – and even this annoys him. “He felt the weight of responsibility. It was as if the police had given up, and had handed over the task of finding the murderer to him.” The murder seems incidental to the narrative, which is more about adaptability. There is an entire red herring thread about child abuse, but mostly the islanders are afraid of change and the pervasive question is whether they can preserve the island as it is, or does that make it a museum?
5. Cassandra Speaks: When Women Are the Storytellers, the Human Story Changes by Deborah Lesser - Inspired by a woman at a conference who was exploring 'the power of myth in modern culture' (basically, my university dissertation), the author decides to look at how female stories are interpreted, such as those of Eve, Pandora, Athena. It has a very Western focus.  Her tone is irritating - telling people what to do and treating the audience as if they haven’t considered this before she brought it to our attention. I am not surprised to learn she delivers TED talks; her approach is didactic, individual, and lecturing. She comments,“Everything I knew about European history had to do with wars and kings, trade routes and power plays between religions, royalty and tyrants. Why did we only know and care about those aspects of being human?” Speak for yourself! Maybe stop blaming education from fifty years ago and look into things yourself, like those of us who are interested already have. It may appeal to young people (as the alarming pink jacket suggests) as their first foray into this sphere, but there is nothing in here that I haven't read (in better formats) before.

Daring Escape: Fled

Fled is based on the life of Mary (Dabby) Bryant, the woman behind one of history’s most daring escapes. Sentenced to seven years transportation to Australia, she escaped from the colony and sailed over 3,000 miles for 66 days in a stolen open boat with her husband, two children and other companions to West Timor (Coepang as it was then called). Here she was discovered, arrested and returned to Britain to be incarcerated until she was taken up as a cause célèbre by James Boswell who set her up in a house and sent her a stipend after she returned to Cornwall. In an Author’s Note, Meg Keneally stresses that this is a work of fiction, which is why she has changed some elements of the story, including names of the characters – Mary Bryant becomes Jenny Trelawny, later Gwynn after marrying Dan Gwynn.

The first part of the novel concerns Jenny’s route to crime and the highway robbery for which she was transported to the other side of the world. There is a detailed account of that trip on the Charlotte, on which she conceives and after which her daughter is named. She befriends Captain James Corbett, whose character is based on that of Watkin Tench, who tells her, “We don’t need to remake Newgate on the other side of the world. Well, I imagine there will be a guard house, or something like it. I’m sure that not everybody has left their criminal disposition back in England. But the entire place is intended as a prison. We’ll have no need of walls for the most part, it is to be hoped. We’ll have the ocean.”

The Charlotte at Portsmouth, May 1787 from Frank Allen's The Ships of the First Fleet

Life in this colony is brutish and cruel, as it is intended to be, in a land that must seem upside-down. The triangle that is used for the floggings is “an ominous symbol, a profane and subverted trinity.” To save herself from rape and degradation by the male convicts and soldiers, she marries Dan and has another child, Emmanuel (these were the real names of Mary Bryant’s children). Married couples are given separate quarters but others, jealous of what they perceive to be her advantages, strive to bring her low. When their actions result in Jenny being expelled to the women’s camp, she reflects, “While space was the only blessing this colony provided in abundance, it was one of the many denied to the hut convicts. Jenny now lived in a place of wails and screams and sobs and fights, of stench upon stench, of dangers buried in innocent conversation.”

From the moment she lands in Botany Bay, Jenny knows she wants to leave, and it soon becomes apparent that their best chance of survival is escape. Food is scarce, supply ships are absent, farming is in its infancy, and provisions are rapidly dwindling; making theft of food a hanging offence and starving to death a distinct possibility. Perhaps if the settlers had collaborated with the local people they might have had better chances of survival, but there is limited interaction between the white settlers and the Indigenous tribes. Jenny encounters an Aboriginal woman who shows her what leaves to chew or to brew to avoid scurvy. Although these are plentiful, Jenny guards this knowledge as currency, as she does when the Indigenous people take her fishing and share their methods with her.

Questions have been asked as to why Mary Bryant would risk a journey for herself and her children on the ocean and potential drowning. As well as starvation, the new colony is rife with disease (particularly smallpox) and the dangers to the women convicts are manifold. “Emmanuel’s death at sea is a possibility. His death here is nigh on certain.”

1930s era illustration of the convict escape

Much of the action of the novel takes place on the water, either in the Charlotte, or the cutter in which Jenny and her companions make their escape. These seafaring experiences are described in some length, which is both terrifying and tedious as indeed it must have been in reality. When they land, Dan’s bragging of his expertise at sailing the boat back to Coepang, leads to them being discovered and their subsequent arrest. The governor who had supported them and admired their skill and courage when he thought they were shipwrecked, turns against them when he learns they are escaped convicts, because he is angry that he has been cheated and make to look a fool; he fears for his reputation and “Laughter, laughter on the seas as the story spreads about the dupe of a governor.” Jenny is frequently at the mercy of men and their egos.

Eventually she returns to her family in Cornwall. She had been afraid of their reaction, but they are thrilled to see her and welcome her back, so the story has come full circle. This is one of the bits that the author has invented, but it makes for a satisfying conclusion. Mary Bryant’s adventure is a fascinating story and, although she has changed the names to compensate for lack of certain facts, Meg Keneally has told it with drama and compassion.

Gently Hurling: After She Left

After She Left by Penelope Hanley

Impact Press

Pp. 337

This novel focusses on three generations of women and in particular the mother/ daughter relationship, but the characterisation is shadowy and they all blend into one. Penelope Hanley obviously has things that she wants to say about Irish immigrants, illegitimacy, art, Sydney, politics, and the Women’s Liberation Movement but the forced plot and the unnatural dialogue does her story a great disservice. The granddaughter, Keira, is trying to do a photo essay project on her grandmother (Deirdre Wild)’s art, but her mother, Maureen, resists saying much about her, creating a sense of mystery. It transpires she had an illegitimate child after an affair with a married man; this is not a scandal today and the consequences of it then aren’t covered well enough for it to merit the supposed shock.

There are ways of blending historical detail seamlessly into a novel, which Penelope Hanley ignores. She uses newspaper articles to fill in details, or clunky discussions about conscription and the Vietnam War; Whitlam’s speeches are transcribed. Neither does the author follow the advice given to every aspiring author of ‘show; don’t tell’. The description of Deirdre’s peripatetic lifestyle reads like a route map, and rather than trying to weave the effect of the artworks into the narrative, Hanley chooses to describe Deidre’s art in a mock newspaper review; a three-page long account of the paintings and the artistic style supposedly from the Sydney Morning Herald.

Queen Elizabeth II officially opening the Opera House on 20th October 1973

Characters discuss sexism in art, and the architecture and politics of the Opera House in a way which is simply unrealistic. Keira won’t go to the opening, because the author wants to shoehorn in her opposition to the monarchy. The frequent discussions about gender roles and how women do all of the “domestic stuff” even when they have a paid job too, are clearly important, but are presented as daughters and mothers lecturing each other with full speeches. It plays to the gallery so strongly I feel as though I’ve been hit over the head with a pop-up placard. Earnest debates about apathy and change read more like a social history textbook, and the writing is turgid as no noun is left with an adjective; no verb without an adverb. “When she let herself in, Lady, in a quick dash of woolly curls and wagging tail, hurled herself gently at Keira, barking ecstatically, her paws on Keira’s thighs.” – can a dash be anything but quick? Can one hurl gently?

Depth is implied through what the characters are reading, perhaps hoping their knowledge and ideas might be inferred; all books are mentioned from Iris Murdoch and Erica Jong to Germaine Greer and Simone de Beauvoir. Apparently constant mention of characters’ outfits is also a substitute for giving them any personality. This could have been an interesting tale but it is submerged in layers of overblown prose, excessive detail, stilted dialogue and indistinguishable characters.

The Human Face of History

Crime, Punishment and Redemption: A Convict’s Story by June Slee 

(NLA Publishing), Pp. 194

The diary of John Ward is one of the few existing records of life from the perspective of a convict. He was sentenced to ten years transportation to Australia in 1838, before which he spent 19 months on the prison hulk York, moored at Gosport. He was then transported on board The Mangles (1839-1840) but by the time he arrived in NSW, they were no longer receiving convicts, so he was sent instead to Norfolk Island. During 1840-1844 he came under the more humane system of Captain Alexander Maconochie and his marks system, before being sent to Van Diemen’s Land to serve out the final four years of his sentence.

June Slee is delighted with this diary of 155 pages, which provides valuable information about the period. In this book she has copied excerpts from the dairy, adding analysis and background. It is lavishly illustrated with photos, paintings and images of artefacts, collected by the National Library of Australia. Interpretative sections on a variety of topics add colour and include smuggling; eating out; fox hunting; county courts and the justice system; hulks; homosexuality (punishable by death – between 1801 and 1835 more than 50 men were hanged in England for sodomy); convict ships (often shoddy and barely sea-worthy); surgeons-superintendent (the highest ranking man on the ship; he had power over all the convicts; a decent one made a huge difference); convict class and society; and evangelicalism (men could be saved through religious conversion).

In some ways it is reminiscent of Moll Flanders, dwelling on the sordid and squalid aspects which sell, and then the religious conversion and desire to do good seem narratively disappointing. His religious conversion is probably a result of the evangelical tracts which were in vogue at the time. He sees life through the eyes of the evangelists and shuns relatively innocent pleasures such as the line-crossing ceremony held as the Mangles crossed the equator, describing it as “very improper”. The diary in effect becomes an extended confession in which he interprets his previous lifestyle with new-found disapproval.

As a surviving record of transportation, John Ward’s diary adds a human element to the statistics. “Transportation to Australia began with the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in 1788 and ended when the Hougoumont landed 279 convicts in Western Australia in 1868. Over that 80-year period, an estimated total of 163,000 convicts was sent to Australian penal colonies from Britain.”

Sections on Captain Alexander Maconochie are fascinating from a philosophical perspective as to the future of the nation. He believed that punishment alone would not result in peopling the colony with desirable citizens, and that it was important to recognise that those who were convicts would become settlers.

In writing his diary, John Ward hoped that it “may prove of service to those that may come after me”. Clearly he was intending to convert potential sinners to his brand-new evangelism, but it has proved invaluable to those studying this fascinating period “as a rare, if not unique, eyewitness account of the final decades of British transportation to the Australian penal colonies.”

Hilda Rix Nicholas: Paris to Monaro

Paris to Monaro: Pleasures from the studio of Hilda Rix Nicholas

National Portrait Gallery (May - August 2013)

Pied Piper (1911)

Hilda Rix Nicholas is known for many things in the world of art, not least her war paintings. These are deliberately excluded from this exhibition which focuses on her standing as a ‘female’ artist. It highlights her imagination linked with a practical mind, resulting in intricate costume designs, images of her son in every possible guise, and a love of colour and clothing.

Born in Ballarat in 1884, Emily Hilda Rix left Australia in 1907 and travelled with her mother and sister to London. She studied at the New Art School and then the Académie Delecluse in Paris. With her sister, Elsie, she spent time in Tangier, Morocco, where she made many striking portraits and sketches, reflecting her love of light and vibrancy. One of these paintings, Grand Marché, Tanger, was bought by the French government after an exhibition.

Marchands du charbons de bois (Charcoal sellers) (1912)

The Well in the Blue, Arab Quarters (1914)

In 1916 she met and married Australian soldier, Major George Matson Nicholas DSO. He died within weeks leading a battalion in France. She drew charcoal and pastel on paper portraits of George and his two brothers, Frank and Athol; the one of her husband is particularly remarkable and the catalogue notes that the brothers evoke the Australian soldier of legend; “raffish, iconoclastic, and proud all at once”.

George Nicholas (1916)

Also during the First World War, she lost her sister and mother to typhoid fever. With amazing positivity, she continued to design and draw costumes for a matinee fundraiser for the Anzac Club and Buffet in 1917 – the exhibition includes her designs for magpie, wool, cheese, gold, gum blossom and warratah.

Hilda Rix Nicholas (as she now signed her paintings) returned to Australia in 1918 and settled in Mosman by Sydney Harbour, where she lived among ‘arty-party-loving people’. She made costumes for parties and illustrations for fairytales – Mary Mary; Simple Simon; Jack and Jill; Little Miss Muffet; Mother Hubbard; Pied Piper etc.

In 1928 she married Edgar Wright, grandson of James Wright – first magistrate of Queanbeyan and pioneer white settler of Lanyon, Cuppacumbalong and Booroomba in the Canberra region. Edgar was severely injured at Passchendaele (buried in the earth by one blast and regurgitated by another explosion). He was repatriated and took over the family farm. The Fleece is a fabulous study of her husband Edgar as he goes about his business.

The Fleece (1944)

On her travels to Europe, Hilda Rix Nicholas was determined to show viewers the virtues of the bush and pioneer life, following in the tradition of the Heidelberg School and writers such as Henry Lawson and Banjo Patterson. Her portraits of men and women of the land capture an earnest respect for hard work and rugged beauty.

The Shearers (1922-23)

At Knockalong, Hilda Rix Nicholas had a studio built to her specifications, which was completed in 1930. It was French provincial in style with a broad mediaeval-style fireplace, huge windows, soaring ceiling, a loft and a stage. It is recreated in this exhibition and furnished with mementoes from foreign lands: robes, clogs, vests, bags, belts, rugs, slippers, pots and plates, and paintings.  

It is a treat to see these artefacts collected here, along with the pictorial representations of them. Among the clothes which she loved and collected in a trunk, are a Chinese robe and Spanish shawl that she painted with a meticulous eye to the expansive colours and design. 

When she was 46, Hilda had a son, Rix, who became the focus of her life. She loved to tell him stories and play games with him, making wire and wadding minikins for their entertainment. She made portraits of Rix in every aspect of life: as a soldier, scout and shepherd among other things.

Some of the minikins Hilda made for her son, Rix

The Shepherd of Knockalong (1933)

She loved her garden and the natural surrounds, painting them with bright blue skies and Pissaro/ Cezanne-like colours. The style may evoke French Impressionism, but the eucalypts are pure Australia.

Spring in my garden, Knockalong (1940)

Country Garden, Knockalong (1945)

Hilda always loved horses and riding, and many of her paintings feature Rix’s governess and jillaroos as models.

Bringing in the Sheep (1936)

The Fair Musterer (1935)

A neighbour described Autumn evening’s golden glow as combining Hilda’s favourite subjects: humans, horses, flower garden and the Monaro landscape brought together on one large, joyously vivid canvas.

Autumn evening's golden glow (1935)

Friday Five: Cricket grounds

Spider-cam at the W.A.C.A.

Don't worry, I won't mention the cricket. I won't even whisper the word 'Ashes', which is all that is left of England's dreaming. I will, however, mention some grounds where I have seen the game played (by one team at least). I enjoy watching cricket, as I have said before, and I have see it in some fine locations. I am omitting the Westpac(Trust) Stadium in Wellington because it is not a particularly good ground. I did once watch England play an ODI there against New Zealand and it was my turn to go the bar when England were halfway through the batting order on a run chase. I returned with the required four pints to be told, 'drink up; we're all out'.

5 Great Cricket Grounds:

1. Worswick Memorial Ground, Rawtenstall - I've seen Rawtenstall play here (with Michael Bevan as their professional) and I've also seen Roger Harper when he played against them with Bacup in the Lancashire League; cracking stuff!
2. The Basin Reserve, Wellington - from England to my nephew's under-eight team, I've seen a variety of entertainment here this big-hearted little cricket ground.
3. The Events Centre, Queenstown - with grass bank seating and some of the finest views in the country (the Remarkles form the backdrop to many a dropped catch) the cricket has to be pretty spectacular to gain the spectators' attention. It usually isn't.
4. The W.A.C.A. Ground, Perth - it was hot and I saw some records including Captain Cook's first ever golden duck and the highest number of runs scored in an over in what is possibly the last Ashes test ever at this venue.
5. The MCG, Melbourne - one of the greatest sporting arenas in the world.

The Melbourne Cricket Ground

Friday Five: Oz ID

It looks like the magpies have stopped swooping for the season, so I am back on my bike. As Him Outdoors and I cycled through the bush at the weekend, we looked around us and thought that we really couldn't be anywhere else.

5 Things that make you sure you're in Australia:

1. Kangaroos bouncing alongside us
2. Kookaburras laughing at us
3. Eucalpytus trees
4. Red earth
5. Cloudless blue sky and bright sunshine

Get Carta: Magna Carta Place

The Magna Carta monument in Canberra was unveiled in 2001. It celebrates both the Centenary of Federation and Australia's special relationship with Great Britain. The funds for the project were raised by the Magna Carta Committee, a part of the Australia-Britain Society. It is heartening to see the countries supporting and respecting each other in relation to such an important issue as government and democracy.

The materials used apparently convey a sense of timelessness - bronze, bluestone, granite and ironbark. The design by architect Alastair Falconer was inspired by history, myth and geology. It consists of a three-tiered pavilion with a hill at the back referencing ancient burial mounds. It is designed as though the hill is slashed open and the pavilion is revealed at the heart.

The mound is shored up with a wall along which runs a time line through a series of murals (by Silvia Velez and Chris Meadham) tracing the events that led to the emergence of the Magna Carta in England and its relevance to Australian law and civil rights.

The time line then spirals through the centre of the monument with tenets of the Magna Carta imprinted on it, such as Justice; Equality; Freedom; Rule of Law and Trial by Jury - all noble sentiments and fundamental to the British (and, hence, Australian) justice and legal system.

A time capsule is buried in the middle to be opened in 2101. Meanwhile, back in the present (and past), the pavilion is crowned with a golden ring incised with the Latin wording of Chapter 29 of the Magna Carta (one of the four remaining copies of the 1297 issue of the Magna Carta is displayed at Parliament House). The English translation is found on a rubbing plaque in the pavilion:

"No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemnation, but by lawful judgement of his Peers, or by the Law of the Land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny or defer to any man either Justice or Right"

These legal terms are stirring and impressive, and make me feel proud to be a British (and New Zealand) citizen.

A World Away: Child Migration

On Their Own: Britain's Child Migrants
National Archives of Australia
December 2012 - March 2013

From the 1860s more than 100,000 British children were sent to Canada, 7,000 to Australia, and several hundred to Southern Rhodesia (later Zimbabwe) and New Zealand through child migration schemes. Some were as young as three, but the average age was eight years old, and most of them never returned home.

Their lives changed dramatically and fortunes varied. Some succeeded in creating new futures. Others suffered lonely, brutal childhoods. All experienced disruption and separation from family and homeland. This exhibition, a collaboration between the Australian National Maritime Museum and National Museums Liverpool UK, tells their emotional stories.

In the late nineteenth century, emigration was viewed as a solution to Britain’s economic and social problems. Between 1801 and 1911 the population of Britain increased from 9million to 36million and the rapid rise of industrialism led to overcrowded cities, disease, long hours and poor working conditions. It cost ₤15 to migrate a child and ₤12 a year to look after them on the Poor Law in Britain.

Charities were set up to support emigration including the Child Migration Scheme established by Kingsley Fairbridge in 1909. In 1900 many of the emigrating children came from workhouses, later they came from children’s homes and orphanages. Some parents chose the scheme for their children – orphans were not necessarily without parents – many children were taken into care when their parents couldn’t afford to look after them. They were told they were orphans to ensure they severed all ties with allegedly unworthy relations and made a fresh start.

Children were sent for the prospects of better living conditions and steady employment – a way to improve life away from the perceived evils of city life. It was not all totally altruistic, obviously, as there were growing labour needs in Britain’s dominions. The children were to be the bricks upon which the Empire would continue to be built. Australia in particular ran a ‘Populate or Perish’ campaign. The country was booming and there were demands for more children.

Before leaving Britain, children were given a wooden trunk containing winter and summer clothes (the first time many of them had ever had new clothes), a copy of the Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress. Fairbridge boys were outfitted in smart blazers, shorts, leather shoes and brown and gold striped ties. This fine wardrobe was taken from the children on arrival and replaced with khaki work clothes and bare feet. Barnardos gave children travel bags with new clothes, shoes and personal items (such as toothbrushes and combs) which were taken off them when they arrived in Australia and sent back to Britain to be used again by the next party of migrants.

The voyage was both frightening and exciting. The children they left behind home and family, but also poverty and hardship: they had new clothes and made new friends. Depending on their destination, they saw and experienced many strange sights, boats, islands and harbours – Suez Canal; Arab traders and camels; whales, dolphins and icebergs (off Labrador Coast); Quebec; Montreal; Dar es Salaam; Tanzania; Tenerife; Rock of Gibraltar; Naples; Mt Vesuvius; Port Said; Tropical Colombo; Sri Lanka.

Steamship travel afforded exotic delights and plenty to eat; many children put on weight. They played games of leapfrog and quoits and learned to swim in the pool. One interviewee remembers, “The ship had a swimming pool in the middle and I was terrified to jump in because I thought it would have no bottom and I would end up out in the sea and drown.” I can’t help but be reminded of the Land of Toys in Pinocchio where children are lured with leisure before being turned into beasts of burden. A quote at the exhibition confirms,

“The visual record of child migration is dominated by photographs of cheering children departing the UK and arriving in new lands. These photographs were taken to promote the work of sending organisations and ensure they continued to attract financial support from governments and wealthy patrons. They provide a remarkable contrast to the often damning written and oral testimonies of former child migrants, which form the basis of many case studies in the exhibition.”

Land of Toys by Bakke

Some children were given the choice of emigrating to Canada or Australia and the reasons for their choices are heartbreakingly innocent – they chose Canada because they wanted to be lumberjacks; Australia because they liked cricket or didn’t like the cold. In New Zealand many were fostered; in Canada and Australia they were put to work on the land; in Rhodesia they were educated (at the time they were told that ‘the blacks worked the land’). Some were happy with the skills they learned and later went into the farming trade, wool industry and defence forces.

For some the experience of Canada was that they were stationed in bleak, remote farms, where their accent was ridiculed and they were not allowed to eat with the family. In Australia many were shocked by the heat and the landscape, and sent to remote farm training schools or religious institutions. Pinjarra (80km south of Perth) was the first school of the Kingsley Fairbridge’s Child Emigration Society in 1912. The cottages in which the children were accommodated were called Clive, Raleigh etc – named after British navigators and war heroes to reinforce his imperial vision.

The Fairbridge Society and Barnardos sought ‘good British stock’ to populate, settle and defend the continent, but the boys were destined to be farmers, and the girls domestics and farmers’ wives. One woman recalls, “You finish school at 15 and became a cook in the Fairbridge dining room. Later you meet your future husband, an old Fairbridgian at the Fairbridge holiday camp.” The children were often put to hard labour; tilling soil, churning butter, milking cows, and hauling heavy bricks to build their own dormitories. The correspondent continues, “They asked for the best British stock – children of good health, high IQ and sound moral character – then put them to work as labourers. What a breach of faith that was.”

For some children, things were not so bad. The exhibition collects anecdotal evidence from many who underwent the schemes. One lad earned ₤10 a week and sent ₤1 to Barnardos for banking, for the savings to be released when he was 21. Others, however, tell tales of physical, sexual and verbal abuse, producing scars that remained with them for life. Some societies stole the children’s wages, belongings and letters from ‘home’ and told the children their parents were dead and that they had no siblings; that they were unloved and unwanted. When some of these children found out the truth the betrayal sent them mad. Things improved slightly with the Big Brother Movement (BBM) where Big Brothers helped Little Brothers to settle, but an interpretation panel baldly states,

“For former child migrants the legacy of their experience remains. Many have struggled, not only due to the hardships and abuse they endured, but also because they were torn from their homeland and lost their identities. Others were lucky enough to find fulfilment in their lives.”

In 1914, the First World War put a stop to child migration, although many former child migrants fought in the Canadian army as they still felt strong connections with their British roots. It recommenced after the war, but the interwar years were marked by poverty and austerity in formerly receptive colonies and child migration to Canada was formally ended by 1939. Australia became the main destination after Canada ended the scheme. One third of war evacuees to Australia later emigrated there for good. Indeed, some former child migrants also fought in the Australian army, only to later discover that they had never been granted citizenship.

In 1945 the introduction of the Welfare State reduced the need for child migration schemes, and they were officially ended in 1967. The Australian and British governments apologised for their roles in schemes “that were once considered generous philanthropy, but are now widely condemned as being fundamentally flawed.” The exhibition contains a number of oral histories, which are very moving. Videos and recordings reveal adults who still have a love for Britain even though they have lived in Australia since the age of 12, rationalising that they would have had to endure another war if they had remained in Britain.

Since the 1990s the Child Migrants’ Trust helps to reunite families. The hardest hearted cynic cannot fail to be moved by the collection of tales of reconciliations with parents thought dead and the difficulties of tracing families. Children were often given the wrong birth date and wrong name, and told they were told they had no relations, making it almost impossible to find their missing identity. One interviewee finally found his mother through her name on his birth certificate which had been concealed from him for many years. By the time he found it, she had been dead for two years.

Former child migrants gather in London for the apology from British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in February 2010.

The exhibition is sensitively handled; a well-balanced and thought-provoking treatment of an incredibly emotional issue. We can’t change history, but hopefully we can learn from it. We have done some terrible things in the past with the best of misguided intentions. In the words of the exhibition itself:

“The history of child migration is complex and contested. Issues of redress and compensation remain unresolved. Many former child migrants are still coming to terms with their deportation and dislocation and find it painful to reflect on their past.”