Doryanthes November 2013

A Southern Sydney Journal of History, Heritage and the Arts Volume 6, Number 4, November 2013 ISSN 1835-9817 (Print) ISSN 1835-9825 (Online) Price $7.00 (Aus) Dor yant hes Exec. Editor: Les Bursill OAM JP Doryanthes . The Gymea Lily (spec. Doryanthes excelsa) From Greek “dory”: a spear and “anthos”: a flower, referring to the spear-like flowering stems; excelsa: from Latin excelsus: elevated, high, referring to the tall flower spikes. Go to www.doryanthes.info Edit orial Commit t ee Edit or ial Policy; Chair: Garriock Duncan, BA(Hons) DipEd. Syd MA Macq GradDipEdStud NSW MEd DipLangStud Syd. Editor/Publisher and Secretary: Les Bursill, OAM, BA M.Litt UNE JP. Treasurer: Mary Jacobs, BEd Macq DipNat Nutr AustCollNaturalTherapies. Film Review Editor: Michael Cooke, BEc LaT GradDipEd BA Melb MB VU. Botanical Editor: Alan Fairley BA (Hons. History) UNSW Committee Members: Prof. Edward Duyker, OAM, BA(Hons) LaT PhD Melb FAHA JP. Sue Duyker, BEc BA(Asian Studies) ANU BSc(Arch.) B Arch Syd. Merle Kavanagh, DipFamHistStud SocAustGenealogists AssDipLocAppHist UNE. John Low, OAM. BA, DipEd. Syd DipLib CSU. Index of Articles Page Editorial - Les Bursill 3 Gleanings - Sue Duyker 4 Film Reviews – Michael Cooke 6 Thomas Holt Cottage Threat Andrew Greifeneder 11 1. All views expressed are those of the individual authors. 2. It is the Policy of this Journal that material published will meet the requirements of the Editorial Committee for content and style. 3. Appeals concerning non-publication will be considered. However decisions of the Editorial Committee will be final. 4. Please read the Notice to Contributors that can be found on the back page of the online edition at www.doryanthes.info for formatting instructions regarding submission of items. Index of Articles Luke’s Christmas Census Garriock Duncan Page 38 Scattered Seeds - The legacies of ‘the last paradise’ - Garry Wotherspoon 45 Notice to Contributors - 57 The Chapel Builder – Merle Kavanagh 16 A short story: The Real - Colin Ryan Camden Park springs into bloom Ian Willis Xant horrhoeas and t heir uses Dawn Emerson 22 26 31 The articles published herein are copyright © and may not be reproduced w ithout permission of the author ISSN 1835-9817 (Print) - ISSN 1835-9825 (Online) The publishers of this Journal known as “Doryanthes” are Leslie Bursill and Mary Jacobs trading as “Dharawal Publishers I nc. 2009” The business address of this publication is 10 Porter Road Engadine NSW, 2233. [email protected] www.doryanthes.info Edit orial Les Bursill OAM It might come as a surprise to some that Garriock Duncan is not the Editor this quarter. He has had the temerity to take a holiday. Garriock has done a sterling job over the last few issues: writing, editing and being a contributor also, but now it’s my turn. Some changes, Movie and Book reviews, for a change in this issue they will follow Gleanings. Now for my editorial subject. Garriock has often written articles on religious subjects (see his Christmas special this issue) so I will steer clear of that subject, but funnily enough I am going to talk about the word “belief” I have been thinking what the word means for some time, I think it means that there is an element of doubt in what I am going to say? So if I say I believe in something, or that I believe that such and such is true then I am in fact saying that there is an element of doubt in my statement. “I believe that climate change is true and can be seen in our daily lives” But is that statement real. “I have evidence that climate change is true” This statement leaves little room for doubt. Now I just need to provide the evidence. “Here are the weather records for the last 100 years and here is the carbon emissions for the last 100 years and there is a direct correlation”. I suppose what I am getting at is that the Western world has changed the way we use the word belief into some sort of pseudo factual statement. Perhaps we need to get rid of that word from our lexicon and replace the word belief with the words “proof, or evidence”. Why am I so worried?, I am worried, though I have no proof, that our new Prime minister is a believer.. Unfortunately I believe (blast that word) that he has little concept of evidentiary matters and relies on a system of belief. The evidence is clear that humans are going to overpopulate the earth in the next 100 years. Unless we stop believing in ideas and start using evidences and proofs then we are doomed. I am informed by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that by 2050 we will not just have to cut our emissions completely, we will have to actively remove carbon from the atmosphere. Why do I have these fears for our leader. One of his first acts is to remove the carbon tax, maybe that’s all right but what measures will he put in place to start an emissions reduction. His second act seems to be to reduce the value of pure research at our Universities. Why is it that Liberal (conservative) Governments see pure research as fruitless, when all the evidence shows that serendipitous discoveries and wonderful advancements have often come from such research. His third act appears to be to reduce the quality and speed of the internet by only having internet connections to the node and not to the home. Please Mr. Abbott, stop believing and start looking at the evidence for yourself. Please we only have one Earth and we are doing a good job of making it unsuitable for our children’s children. November 2013 3 Gleanings Sue Duyker Chrismas Night Market 5pm—9pm Thursday 14 November 2013, St Joan of Arc Primary School, Haberfield, NSW Start your Christmas shopping early and at the same time support Sydney artists and craftspeople including our own local fabric designer Deb McGinn from barebones studio. www.sixinarow.com.au/calendar-of-events/ and www.barebonesstudio.com.au/ Archibald Prize 2013 @ Hazelhurst Until 8 Dec. 2013, Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and Arts Centre, 782 Kingsway, Gymea, NSW Missed it in the city? See it in the Shire! Since its inception in 1921, the Archibald Prize has continued to be one of Australia’s most prestigious art awards and never fails to draw interest, attention and debate. Awarded to the best portrait painting, the Archibald Prize is a who’s who of Australian culture—from politicians to celebrities, sporting heroes to artists. This year 868 entries were received and judged by the Trustees of the Art Gallery of New South Wales. Del Kathryn Barton was selected as the winner, receiving $75,000 for her painting, hugo. Free. www.sutherlandshire.nsw.gov.au/Arts_Entertainment/Hazelhurst/Whats_on 16th annual exhibition of Australian Bookbinders Tuesday–Saturday 10am–4pm, 7 November–14 December 2013, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney This exhibition of the Australian Bookbinders focuses on contemporary practice in the art form known as design binding. On display are over 40 books with unique bindings created by 33 artists. Each binding is designed to reflect and complement the content of the bound book, as well as to showcase the unique physical attributes of the book. The aim of this annual exhibition is to promote the appreciation of design binding, and to encourage bookbinders through craftsmanship, artistry, creative expression and technical mastery of the form to bestow integrity upon the book as a whole. Free. www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/coming/ Ian Milliss & Lucas Ihlein—The Yeomans Project 28 November 2013–27 January 2014, Art Gallery of NSW, Sydney The Yeomans Project is based on the figure of Australian farmer and engineer P. A. Yeomans. Although he never described himself as an artist, Yeomans consciously set out to change the cultural understanding of the Australian landscape. A notable inventor of the 1950s, 60s and 70s, he sought to increase soil fertility and water use by regenerating bushland, creatively adapting farmlands and—in perhaps his most important breakthrough— developing a new understanding of water flows and tools for soil cultivation. His experimental Yobarnie Keyline Farm was recognised through listing on the State Hertiage Register earlier this year. For Ian Milliss and Lucas Ihlein, The Yeomans Project presents an opportunity to look at art as an entirely utilitarian enterprise—one that proposes new, creative and sustainable ways 4 of working with the land. They have collected together writings, images, documentary films and educational videos and will host a series of conversations in the exhibition to illustrate Yeomans’ philosophy and design innovations. They have also invited other artists— Milkwood Permaculture, Taranaki Farm, Artist As Family, (f)route and Diego Bonetto—to challenge our assumptions of art by relocating us to farms, masterclasses on permaculture, and alternative market places for selling and buying food. Free. www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/exhibitions/coming/ Gold and the Incas—Lost worlds of Peru 6 December 2013–21 April, National Gallery of Australia, Canberra ‘Gold and the Incas’ is the first exhibition of Peruvian art ever staged in Australia and will showcase the splendour of the ancient pre-Hispanic cultures of Peru. Audiences will encounter the aesthetic depth, drama and beauty of the famous Incan empire and its predecessors. More than 200 objects, from scintillating gold pieces made to decorate the nobility in life or in death, intricate jewellery, elaborate embroidered and woven cloths to breathtakingly sophisticated ceramic sculptures will be on display. The exhibition will be on display in Canberra only. Timed tickets are available through Ticketek www.premier.ticketek.com.au/shows/show.aspx?sh=GOLDINCA14#.UnN2wCg82gx Vikings—Beyond the Legend Until 2 February 2014, Australian National Maritime Museum, 2 Murray Street, Darling Harbour Hundreds of treasures from the Swedish History Museum reveal how they really lived. Warriors, invaders and plunderers or explorers, traders and farmers? Beyond the myths and legends, what do we really know about the people we call Vikings? The fascinating world of Vikings is revealed in the international blockbuster Vikings - Beyond the legend—open for a limited season. This must-see exhibition draws on recent archaeological discoveries and nearly 500 rare artefacts to shed new light on the Viking way of life while challenging stereotypes of Vikings as ferocious, plundering pagans in horned helmets. Many of the artefacts have never been seen in Australia such as the oldest known Scandinavian crucifix, finely crafted bronze and silver jewellery, exquisite gold and silver pendants, small statuettes of Norse gods, and Viking swords dating from 700–1100AD. Visitors can also see an eight metre replica of the Viking boat Krampmacken, and step on board the Jorgen Jorgenson - a newly restored reconstruction of the late 9th century Gokstad ship. Details at www.anmm.gov.au/vikingexhib/ Adult $27, child and concession $16, ANMM members and children under 4 years free. 5 Film Reviews Michael Cooke The Empir e St r ikes Back 3: The ant ipodean - ‘no bull mat e’ appr oach t o f ilm making Friday night [he’s] too tired; Saturday night too drunk; Sunday too far away.1 No, No, Sir! It wasn’t quite so handsome. And as for the rules, we didn’t carry military manuals around with us. We were out in the veldt fighting the Boer the way he fought us. I’ll tell you what rule we applied, Sir. We applied rule 303. We caught them … and we shot them under rule 303. Breaker Morant2 It’s hard to believe, given the dismal box office receipts for recent Australian films, that there was a time forty years ago when we could not get enough of our own stories, accents, flora and fauna, foibles and understated heroism. The beginning was not auspicious, with the faux ockerisms of the two Bazza McKenzie films, hiding a deep contempt for all things Australian. But things improved when directors like Tim Burstall, Fred Schepisi and Peter Weir, amongst others, were allowed to make films that were occasionally quirky, sometimes moving and above all original. For the first time Australian films examined male angst, sexual politics, religion, our relationship with the first inhabitants of our island continent, and the bewilderment, fear and enchantment engendered by our unique landscape. Along with this was the usually stated 1 ‘Shearer’s wife’s lament’: uncited – the source is probably Australian folklore of the 19th century. 2 From the screenplay of the 1980 film Breaker Morant. Screenwriters: Jonathan Hardy, David Stevens and Bruce Beresford. Story by Kenneth G. Ross. 6 and sometimes understated need to be not only free from the coat-tails of the ‘mother country’ but also be critical of our relationship of it. Two fine films exemplify these themes and our new-found confidence: Ken Hannam’s Sunday Too Far Away (1975) and Bruce Beresford’s Breaker Morant (1980). The shamefully neglected Sunday too Far Away (1975) did this by putting the working man at the fore of the action and relegating the upholders of Empire, the owners of vast pastoral properties, to bit parts. Breaker Morant (1980) made our relationship with the British Empire central to the drama. Both Ken Hannam and John Dingwall, director and writer respectively of Sunday Too Far Away, cut their teeth in the dramas of Hector Crawford’s prolific television production house, in particular Homicide (1964-77) and Division Four (1969-75). Whilst the production values of these dramas could be described as a little dodgy, the accents, storylines and acting by most of the leads were never less than excellent. It is these gifts that they brought to Sunday Too Far Away, which was based on the experiences of John Dingwall’s brother-inlaw, a shearer in the period in question. The background to the drama is a threat to remove the shearers’ bonuses and the consequent successful nine month strike in 1955, to keep the bonus. Central to the drama is the backbreaking work done by the shearers, the shimmering never-ending heat, the camaraderie of the workers, the disturbing amount of booze they consume, their economical and wry use of the English language and the landscape. They are the rivets that bolt the drama tight, provide its sense of realism and ultimately allow us to identify with the shearers’ fate. The film opens with a car hurtling down a vast flat plain of red dust, interspersed by patches of bush and the occasional tree. Close up the landscape is majestic; when the camera pans out it can seem monotonous. The driver, Foley, a gun shearer played by Jack Thompson, is either dog tired or just drunk, Foley takes one too many sharp turns and up-ends the car, leaving it wrecked and out of place in this primeval landscape. It is only when he climbs out the wreck and realises his predicament do we get a sliver of dialogue - ‘Bugger me’ - that aptly summarises what we have just seen. He then treks to a township that looks as natural as an oil rig does in an ocean. Gradually we are introduced to the main players in our tale, who are hired by agent Tom King (a youthful Max Cullen) to shear sheep at a prize stud farm for a few weeks. Cullen invests his role with a sly hesitancy of someone who is not sure of what he is doing, but nevertheless feels sure he can cope. All the Aussie male archetypes are on display. Old Garth, played by Reg Lyle, was once a top shearer; unfortunately life’s vicissitudes have made him a barely functioning drunk. He is the least social of the bunch and spends his spare time either drinking himself senseless or with a bottle in one hand and a book in the other. Foley and the rest of the gang mostly tolerate his foibles. The ever reliable Robert Bruning brings understated grace to his role as the experienced shearer Tom West. It is John Ewart, playing Ugly, who steals the show with his wry grin, his unerring ability to spin a yarn or crack a joke. Jack Thompson gives us a perfectly judged performance of the troubled gun shearer Foley. In lesser hands this role would have descended into cliché. He invests his performance with the tragic gravitas usually reserved for Shakespeare’s heroes. But his flaws are not Shakespearian: there is no hesitation when action is demanded and he is not given to soliloquies: his dialogue is sparse. Foley’s flaws are antipodean, a love of gambling and booze and the itinerant life, with an awareness that his time as gun shearer is coming to the end. One is struck by the physicality of his performance, his gait, the way he holds his head to one side, his reluctance to engage with others, like becoming the union representative for his fellow shearers. He perfectly delivers his lines in the patois of his country, giving his role 7 a tragic heroism it truly deserves. The only caveat being that he is filmed one too many times without a shirt, in a singlet, bare bodied, in undies, in the nude and in one sequence he engages in a bum wiggling competition with John Ewart’s Ugly; we of course never get the ‘money shot’ – too much Jack the lad for some, too little for others. But his performance, fine as it is, is overshadowed by that of Peter Cummins as Jack Black (Blacky) who in the end out-guns Foley. We are immediately drawn to Blacky when we first see him, his quiet intensity radiates from the screen. His measured speech, the mystery of the man and his innate and steely need to be top dog is beautifully conveyed by Cummins. Whenever he is on screen we cannot keep our eyes off him. It has to be one of the great understated cinema performances of any era. This is a world far removed from the romanticism of Tom Roberts painting Shearing the Rams3. The shearing shed when we first see it, looks like a piece of pus oozing up from an ugly man-made landscape that is a sheep run. The sheep are not small dainty animals that frolic and gambol across the western bucolic imagination that we see and read in paintings and novels. These creatures are large, heavy stubborn animals, which the shearers have to grab, lug out of their pens, hold in one hand and shear as fast as possible without harming them with the other hand. Sweat pours from the shearers’ faces and drenches their singlets, and their sheer exhaustion can be seen in eyes, aching backs and the silent and stubborn way they work. At the end of the day they are exhausted and most resort to drink to ease their aches and pains and help them face another day. There is lovely Australian ‘piss take’ quality to the dialogue that wonderfully captures the ethos of the working man down under. After Foley makes a stirring speech to the scabs (non-union labour grubs whose job is to take the work of striking unionists, the speech is ignored by the scabs, probably because they are backed up by a large contingent of the rural constabulary. As a result, Foley is told by one of the strikers that the speech was ‘piss weak’. Foley and the rest of the strikers laugh go back to the pub and the film ends in an allout brawl between the scabs and the unionists. There are flaws to this cinematic masterpiece - the absence of strong female characters, an undercooked and unnecessary romance between Foley and the station owner’s daughter and the complete absence of the country’s first inhabitants. Bruce Beresford is a journeyman director who sinks or soars on the quality of the screenplay and what his actors brings to the dance. He is an unfussy director and knows where to place the camera and how long to hold a shot, be it the human in the wilderness in Black Robe (1991) or the vicious way Ray Barrett’s face illuminates his bitterness and inadequacies in Don’s Party (1976). He brings these gifts to the wonderful and moving Breaker Morant (1980). Breaker Morant mainly deals with the court martial of Breaker and two of his Australian colleagues for the killing of prisoners of war and a German preacher during the Boer War (1899-1902).4 The Boers created mobile units known as commandos to harass British lines. In response the British created irregular forces like the Bushveldt Carbineers, of which Morant and his co-defendants were members. With the encouragement of the British military high command they were allowed to fight fire with fire. The British, fearing German 3 Painted in 1890 – the painting is at the National Gallery of Victoria. 4 Dutch Afrikaner word for farmer – Boers are the descendants of Dutch settlers who came to the Cape in the 18th century. 8 intervention and wanting to end the war, decided they would make scapegoats of Morant and his co-defendants. In doing so they could show the outside world that the British could, ‘impartially’ get rid of the ‘bad eggs’. Unlike Sunday Too Far Away, the dialogue is rich and emotional. The film centres on the trial, intercut with filmic recreations of the incidents, argued about during the trial. The first thing that captures the eye is the light slanting down on the landscape near the military encampment, silhouetting the protagonists and illuminating the veldt. It is a beautifully photographed film. The film sets up its drama skilfully in a minimum of scenes. We are left in no doubt that Breaker and his co-defendants are killers, but they are also being scapegoated for the larger game of empire being played by European powers at the time. As Kitchener (maliciously played by Alan Cassell) explains to one of his officers, Germany was dying to get into the conflict on behalf of the Boers because they were also after South African gold and diamonds. British cynicism and their sense of superiority are revealed in the comment of Kitchener’s minion that at least the British are ‘altruistic’ in their imperial ambitions. They also want to end the war and counter claims of British savagery by putting a number of their colonial officers on trial for war crimes. To ensure a conviction they give the defence little time to prepare (one day), ensure most of the defence’s witnesses have been shipped to India, make sure they have officers sympathetic to the imperial cause as judges and allow the prosecution weeks to prepare. The head judge, played by Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, is a revelation, given how used to we have become to his genial, slightly befuddled persona on screen. He shows a steely ruthlessness, emphasised by icy pronouncements at key points in the drama. Bryan Brown is given a role riddled with clichés. He plays the quintessential larrikin who enlists because he could not find a job to support his family. The little screen time and dialogue he is given he uses wisely. He invests his character with charm and a certain integrity, making us care what happens to him. His spirited and funny interjections during the court martial are perfectly timed and offer some comic relief as the drama unfolds. Jack Thompson again gives us a wonderful performance as the inexperienced country solicitor whose legal skills are in writing wills and doing conveyancing; he has never represented clients in a trial. His evolution from a hesitant, patronised colonial and harassed advocate to a passionate and articulate defender is wonderfully conveyed by Thompson. The way he looks at the judges and Morant and his co-accused and shuffles his papers, his silences and way he fumbles for words, finding the right ones at last in a denunciation of British military justice and war in general – all constitute a master class in acting. But the acting honours go to Edward Woodward. Edward Woodward’s two best known roles till then were in the television series Callan (1967-71) and the hapless hero in the cult film The Wicker Man (1973). In Callan he invested his role of a world weary spy with a rage that he sometimes can barely control. In The Wicker Man he plays a virginal and deeply Christian police officer, a victim of pagan worshippers. In lesser hands it might have descended to the ridiculous. It is to Woodward’s credit, it does not, for he endows his role with a timid integrity and doggedness. In Breaker Morant he dominates the picture as a deeply flawed man, though civilised, well read and aware of the evils of imperialism; he is also immensely practical when it comes to breaking horses, riding and the art of war. One of the lovely moments of the film is when Woodward sings in his strong, lilting baritone to a group of toffs at a dinner party; we also see his mingled pride and embarrassment when he reads his own verse. Woodward conveys the 9 man’s inner conflict, rage, fear and desire for revenge, and does a great deal with a few words. The rage within the man and the growing awareness that his end is nigh is conveyed by Woodward in the twitching and narrowing of his eyes, how his hand shakes when he smokes a cigarette and the slight catch in his voice. In the end like all flawed human beings he must face the consequences of his actions with all the grace he can muster. He dies like the hero he never was in life. The epitaph on his grave is from Matthew 10:36 ‘And a man’s foe shall be they of his own household.’ When asked if wants a padre at his execution he replies he is a pagan; refuses a blindfold and with the sun setting behind the hills, yells in probably the most memorable line of the film: ‘Shoot straight you bastards, don’t make a mess of it’.5 As with Sunday Too Far Away, women and blacks (whose country it is) are barely seen; we never get any sense of the terror, the Boers felt, facing the might of the British Empire, they are also bit players in the story of the relationship between us and the British. The radical impulses imbued in these films have dissipated in the theological constructs of economic rationalism and a hidebound conservatism that would have seemed inconceivable in the heady days of the 1970s. The working man and woman is probably working in a deregulated non-union workplace whose passions are now put in paying their mortgages and their never ending need to shop. Hawke, Howard and other conservative political thinkers and activists reinforced and strengthened our links to the United States of America and their seeming never ending wars around the globe. We still send our breaker Morant’s to fight other countries imperial wars. We still make fine films, but they are either infused with a deep and ironclad pessimism like Snowtown (2011) or paeans to suburbia and our never ending love affair with the kitsch and melodic tunes of Abba in films like Muriel’s Wedding (1994). We have also cinematically explored our love of cross-dressing, ball-room dancing and our quarter acre suburban castles. These films have made us weep and laugh but something was lost or has remained hidden in the contours of our history and our screens. Maybe it is our sense of solidarity, fair play and our passion for independence. I hope I am wrong. Such is life October 2013 5 Op cit: Screenwriters: Jonathan Hardy, David Stevens and Bruce Beresford. 10 THOMAS HOLT' S SUTHERLAND COTTAGE: UNDER A THREATENI NG CLOUD. Andrew Greifeneder Picture a cottage, if you will... Not one that gets its glow from brightly whitewashed walls under a tightly thatched and bound wheat straw roof. Not one that breathes the soft air of lavender down a misty cobbled path behind box hedge in an English country garden. But something more rugged. Something more natively suited to Cottage at No. 5 Evelyn Street, North. where it finds itself, Photograph by the Author something that reflects the brashness and personality of a people and a land once far removed from the rest of civilisation, a distant and wild place that took in the unwanted element of British society, flung across the high seas; a new and fledgling colony where things, as they have thrived and progressed, could just as easily have withered and died away for good had it not been for the determination and sheer tenacity of its new inhabitants to make it succeed. Such a cottage exists. Not on the dusty weathered plains beyond the Great Dividing Range, although there are such things there. Not in the rustic shambolic remains of gold diggings scattered through towns along the dry western rivers and creekbeds, although there are such things there. Not in the rugged windswept landscape of an Arthur Streeton oil painting, though such things certainly are there. This cottage exists in the very heart of the palm and grevillea tinged suburban ideal of the Sutherland Shire, a southward expansion of the city of Sydney, only footsteps from the lapping waves of Botany Bay, that hallowed body of water where Cook and his party came ashore to pronounce a new foundation of European acquirement. In the years and decades that followed that initial landing, the colony would grow and augment, to the west, the north and south. Free settlers would arrive to replace the legions of convicts, commercial trade would be born, farming and working of the land to feed the bustling colony, building and development expanding into an almost limitless boom that continues to this day; fortunes would be made, by those willing enough to take an entrepreneurial chance. 11 One such fortune was that of the English immigrant Thomas Holt, born 14 November 1811 in Yorkshire, who came to Australia in 1842 and gained great wealth and fame as a wool trader, financier and businessman. He soon became a successful landowner, building six mansions south of Sydney, including a Victorian Gothic grand estate ‘The Warren’ in Marrickville. He invested in over 3,000,000 acres of pastoral land across NSW and Queensland and consolidated more wealth selling holdings after gold was discovered in the 1850s. He was at various Thomas Holt stages a director of the Sydney Tramway and Railway Co. as well as City Bank. He was also a successful parliamentarian, being member of the inaugural Legislative Assembly and the first Treasurer of the colony. Later in life he would found the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, before returning to the country of his birth and continuing charitable work for the Salvation Army and the Rev. A. Mearns and Dr Barnardo, publishing Christianity, or the Poor Man's Friend before passing away in 1888. Among Holt’s many achievements he also holds the dubious honour of playing more than just a minor part in Australia’s great rabbit plague, after several of the beasts escaped from the grounds of his well stocked Marrickville mansion ‘The Warren’ and hopped off into the Sydney sunset. The rest, as they say, is history. In the 1860s Thomas Holt acquired a considerable tract of land of some 13,000 acres around Kurnell in the Sutherland Shire, including Captain Cook’s landing site. It was here he constructed Australia’s first oyster farm at nearby Gwawley Bay. As the estate in Sutherland grew, he employed teams of workers on site digging the oyster claires and tending the property, and in the 1870s established his final mansion known as Sutherland House complete with English park landscape over 786 acres. The cottage that we speak of was part of Thomas Holt’s Sutherland Estate. It was one of three similar workers’ cottages situated at the centre of the holding, and is in fact the only surviving remnant of this once grand and historic estate. It was probably inhabited by gardeners, coachmen or general hands and their families, as can be seen by the basic character of its workmanship and unadorned decoration. Its construction is of simple weatherboard. It has a corrugated iron and skillion roof to keep out the rain, and a large wraparound verandah to keep the walls cool through the beating hot summers. The brickwork of a later laundry addition remains on the back side of the property, while inside it retains “original lath and plaster walls and ceiling linings, and original ledge and sheeted internal walls.” 12 Official dating can be difficult due to the nature of the long-running design use of such cottages, however it is typical of a style of architecture once prevalent in the Shire, and can be traced to be a product of at least the 1870s. As such, it remains one of the oldest buildings in the Sutherland Shire, often reported to be the oldest. The offset angle to the street frontage is testament to the true age of this building. When Thomas left the estate, the land was sold to his son Frederick who resided there for thirteen years with his family before leasing the mansion to Mrs Mary Hamilton in 1894 for use as an infirmary. In 1908 the property was subdivided including the worker’s cottage which was sold at auction on 20 April 1908 with 33 acres. It was once again subdivided into two lots in 1952, but remained relatively unchanged as a structure, being owned for a continuous period of 70 years by the one family, of which Jan Buchanan was the last resident. During this time it was known as ‘The Gunyah’ which is an Aboriginal term for humpy or crude bush shelter. Two views of the Cottage, courtesy of the author. In 2003 Sutherland Shire Council bought the property from Jan Buchanan for the sum of $610,000 and placed it on the Local Heritage List for preservation and future restoration for the benefit of the community. It was thought to be in good hands with the council researching the origins of the building and investigating the possibilities of its next course of action. There have been several heritage impact statements over the years of ownership by council, however no work has been undertaken to restore the house. Fast forward to 2013 and the recently elected (and it must be said, developmentfriendly) council headed by Mayor Kent Johns have decided abruptly to remove the house from its draft LEP (among other heritage items), and document and demolish the building before selling the land for private redevelopment. Previous owner Jan Buchanan was devastated, telling Fairfax reporters "When I sold it, the council told me they had grandiose ideas about its restoration. They promised there would be a caretaker to look after it, but the last time I went to visit it was vandalised and run down. I had to walk away.” Ten years prior, when council had originally purchased the property, they had a heritage impact statement prepared by Truman, Zaniol and Associates Pty Ltd. The Statement of Significance surmised: “No. 5 Evelyn Street North is historically significant as a minimum at a high local level as a unique and tangible remnant of development in the Sutherland Shire from the early part of the 20th Century, and prior to the implementation of smaller lot subdivision. It is likely to be the oldest remnant workers cottage in 13 Sylvania and certainly the only remaining evidence of the Holt Sutherland House Estate – all other buildings having been demolished. The significance of the place is embodied in the associations and historical nature of the existing cottage, how it addresses the street being offset, its extant original and early fabric and mature landscaping, all of which provides tangible historical evidence of the State Significant Holt Sutherland House occupation”. In conclusion, the report suggested a possible candidacy for state significance, identifying the historic links to the Thomas Holt Estate and the rarity of the building within its own geographic environment. In 2007 a comprehensive Historical Assessment of the house was undertaken by Dr. Annable who presented a glowing report to council for the preservation of the cottage. “Historical research confirms the importance of the Sutherland House Estate in the history of the Sutherland Shire and its association with Thomas Holt. Historical research and physical analysis also confirm the historical significance and rarity of No. 5 Evelyn Street at a local level and highlight the ability of the fabric of the place to demonstrate the way of life, domestic amenities and tastes of its late 19th and early 20th century occupants and owners… Much of the fabric of the original cottage is intact, as are early 20th century additions to the decoration and finishes. The cottage demonstrates the domestic amenities of estate workers in the late 19th century, a pattern of domestic life that was little changed until the advent of a piped water supply and sewerage in the mid-20th century. Much early 20th century decoration is preserved in the cottage, demonstrating the tastes and financial resources of its owners and is likely to be rare. The essence of the place resides in its simple form and scale, its materials and its modest decoration. Its owners and occupants were ordinary people.” She continued, “The cottage has the ability to demonstrate a way of life that is now virtually extinct in the Shire. Its materials, method of construction, number and size of rooms, decoration, floor cover-ings, domestic facilities, simple garden and neat unpretentious appearance have considerable power to evoke a way of life that is now gone.” The Holt Estate with (perhaps) Thomas Holt in the foreground. In conclusion, Dr. Annable insisted council take urgent action to preserve the cottage in its original form, and prepare a Conservation Management plan to guide its full restoration and adaptive re-use as a private residence. Her findings were discussed 14 by the council’s heritage sub-committee in 2008, who concurred the necessity to preserve the building, and a report was presented to council in February 2009. Questions are now being raised as a result of council’s total disregard for previous heritage assessments that clearly convey the importance of the house at a local and possible state level. The originality of the structure, the intact fabric of its construction inside and out, and its historical context relating to the Thomas Holt Estate all show with blinding light the significance of such a building to the very make-up and culture of the area and indeed the early years of Sydney’s expansion. Sutherland Council nominates the prohibitive costs of restoring the house as the reason for proposed demolition. Originally it was slated to cost somewhere in the order of $200,000, now it is claimed that those costs have blown out to $495,000. "In its current state it is derelict, it would be irresponsible to invest more council funds in this property" said Mayor Kent Johns (in fact it is only derelict because council allowed it to become so). With the land and property being acquired several years ago for the sake of preservation and restoration, monetary sources should have been allocated long before this point in time. The fact council wants to demolish the building before the sale also raises questions as to their real motives… Why demolish rather than sell as is and offer potential buyers the opportunity to restore one of the oldest buildings in the area and own a piece of historically significant real estate? Most private vendors always sell their land with a house in tact, no matter whether it is to be restored or offered as a potential development site – what the buyer then does with the property thereafter is up to them. It seems clear in this case the council wants this house off the LEP and gone from sight, perhaps to increase the base value of the land it sits on. I personally believe the house is far too important to let go so easily. I would like to see the cottage remain in public hands, and restored, as historian Edward Duyker has suggested, in collaboration with local TAFE trade schools. Once restored the cottage could serve unlimited potential as a working museum, art studio or classroom, perhaps focussing on the crafts of the late 19th century. There would also be room for a period vegetable garden outside serving gastronomic fair of the era and educating modern day students how the lives of working families were once lived in the Shire. Its proximity to historic Botany Bay could position the Sutherland Shire as a place not only to associate with the early days of settlement but also a place to see it in palpable action. A rare opportunity indeed to uphold some of the original character of the area that may be taken away once and for all if the current crop of cash hungry councillors get their way. We all know just how important it is to keep things like this alive, the question is, do we have the necessary will, the tenacity and determination that those early settlers had, in order to maintain this tiny piece of early pioneering heritage in the middle of an upper-middle class Australian suburban ideal – the kind of place that this very cottage helped create. http://inheritanceorg.wordpress.com 15 THE CHAPEL BUI LDER Merle Kavanagh When, on 2 June 1797, the Ganges sailed into the harbour of the convict settlement established nine years previously at Sydney, New South Wales, she carried a collection of about 190 convicts, ragged involuntary immigrants from the gaols and hulks of the mother country, England.6 But she also carried a detachment of the New South Wales Corps, soldiers posted to this remote shore to maintain order in the community, control the convicts and protect the colony from the native aborigines as it spread further into the surrounding bushland. Amongst these soldiers was John Lees, a native of Stoke, Staffordshire, who had enlisted at Chatham in October 1796. The Corps had only been formed in 1789, the War Office having been ordered by the King to do so “with the particular view of being stationed in the settlement of New South Wales” Over the years the Corps had built up a reputation, though not always a desirable one.7 Hard drinking was a way of life for many of the men and John was no exception. This isolated colony gave the men plenty of opportunities to indulge. The re-interment of John Lees John served in the Corps until 24 April 1803 but had made plans to stay in the colony, having formed a relationship with a convict, Mary Stevens. She had arrived on the Earl Cornwallis on 12 June 1801 after seven months at sea. The ship carried 193 male and 95 female convicts but 27 male and 8 females had died on the voyage.8 Mary had been sentenced at the Somerset Lent Circuit for stealing goods to the value of thirty shillings ($3) from Thomas Andrews – 17 yards of printed cotton had earned her seven years transportation. She was 21 years old when sentenced and 23 when she landed in the settlement.9 It was rumoured that the Officers and soldiers chose their women from the arriving female convicts, there being very few unattached free women in the colony. This is how John and Mary began their lifelong association. Their first child, Maria was born on 7 September 1802 and baptized on 3 October, the Church at Castlereagh today record showing just the mother’s name.10 This was the year that Governor King divided the colony into two parishes –Sydneytown as St. Phillips and Parramatta as St. Johns. 6 Bateson, Charles The Convict Ships 1787-1868, p.157 Public Record Office, war Office 4 845 Out letters, Secretary at War, N.S.W. Corps 8 Archives Office of N.S.W. Reel 392, Indent Earl Cornwallis No. 442; Bateson, Charles, p.381. 9 Calendar of prisoners for Lent Assizes 1799. 10 Archives Office NSW Reel 5001 (Vol.1 Entry 1563), Reel 5002 (Vol.4 Entry 728) p. 171. 7 16 John had established a temporary residence on the Nepean River at a place called Birds Eye Corner (second bend of the river), part of the Hawkesbury system. Disaster struck in 1804 when the Sydney Gazette reported on 26 February “A few days since a temporary residence on the Nepean Belonging to John Lees, lately discharged from the New South Wales Corps and among the number that embraced the offer of becoming settlers, unfortunately took fire, and was shortly consumed, together with every article of wearing apparel and its various other contents.” It usually didn’t take a disaster such as this to increase John’s consumption of alcohol and he turned to the bottle. Fortunately he was able to procure some clothing and other necessities from the Store. The land on which John’s residence was situated had been granted to him on 4 June 1804 in the area where several other soldiers had received grants. It was a piece of 90 acres in the District of Evan, with a creek and lagoon. John & Mary’s second child, Hannah, was born there just four months after the fire.11 A few more children would be born to them there. John rebuilt his home, planted wheat and corn and waited for the next disaster. In March 1806 there was massive flooding on the Hawkesbury River, destroying crops, sheds and anything else the raging waters could reach. A report by Samuel Marsden and Thomas Arndell said in part “Where the soldiers are settled, the river overflowed the banks and if we may judge from appearances, the whole of the settlement will be destroyed at some future period.”12 An enclosed letter listed John, wife and three children holding five bushels of wheat, lost four acres of corn. His acreage at that time was 146, well over the size of his granted land. Unfortunately the river continued to flood every few years and John’s response always included the bottle. When the new St. Phillips Church was opened in Sydney in August 1809 John and Mary gave thought to legalizing their partnership. There were many couples in the same circumstances and a number of reasons why marriages in the colony were not a priority – everyday struggles, lack of clergy and the constant work to keep families fed and cared for. But John and Mary decided it was time and became the 11th couple to be married in the new Church. Baby Mary had been baptized the previous day under ‘illegitimate children’, just one day too soon to be legal.13 The following year Lachlan Macquarie was sworn in as Governor on 1 January 1810. The colony had almost been in state of collapse, but Macquarie’s new approach would see it progress. Mary would at last receive her Certificate of Freedom on 5 January 1811, though it had been due in 1806.14 Life for John returned to normal everyday hard work, the problems of caring for and feeding a large family, the arrival of the occasional new child and some drinking to ease the pain. But a strange experience for John would bring big changes. The Rev. Alexander Strachan recorded it in “The Life of Rev. Samuel Leigh – “But his (John’s) former propensity for strong drink, checked for a while by industry again developed itself and grew on him till he bore all the marks of a reckless confirmed drunkard… 11 Archives Office of NSW, Reel 501 (Vol. 1 Entry 1564) Mitchell Library. A/1980-2; King papers Vol. 8 Crops in hand and losses in 1806. 13 Fraser, Bryce, Macquarie Book of Events, p.572; Archives Office NSW Reel 5002 (Vol.5, Entry 11). 14 Archives Office NSW Reel 601 4/4427 p.522/3 Cert. of Freedom. 12 17 The unhappy man was contemplating the sale of his last pig to pay off a debt which he had contracted for spirituous liquors when a circumstance occurred which changed the whole course of his life and we believe his final destiny. While in bed one night in a sound sleep his mind wandered to the usual place of conviviality. He was in the act of grasping a spirit bottle to fill another glass when to his terror he observed the snake rising out of the bottle with expanded jaws and striking its fangs in all directions. Its deadly eye flashing fire was fixed upon him and occasioned a convulsive horror which awoke him. He thanked God that it was but a dream yet the impression then made upon his mind could never be obliterated … His distress of mind so increased that he resolved to go over to Windsor a distance of 12 miles to consult the assistant Colonial Chaplain, the Rev. W. Cartwright. That gentleman spoke earnestly and kindly to him recommending the reading of the scriptures, much prayer, and a belief in the appropriation of the promised mercy of God in Christ Jesus.” The plaque in the Church at Castlereagh, Placed in the church in 1921 Benjamin Carvosso, a Wesleyan missionary who came to the colony in 1820 and knew John very well, wrote an article some years later for the Christian Missionary and Family Visitor in1850 and the Christian Advocate and Wesleyan Record in 1859 – “Stepping out of his hut one night for a log of wood to lay on his fire, while in the act of laying hold to lift it from the ground, he accidentally grasped in his hand a DEADLY SNAKE! The fearful reptile instantly bit him on the wrist. As death often ensues shortly after a bite of this kind, he was seized with violent alarm for his life. Eternity, and the ‘wrath to come’ opened before him. He hastened to Windsor, a neighbouring township to seek relief. On entering the house of the Rev. Mr. Cartwright, he fell fainting on the threshold. Recovering from insensibility, medical aid was obtained and by a gracious providence he was saved from dying in his sins.”15 Whatever version is nearer the truth, the result was the same. John had taken religion to his heart and gave up his drinking entirely. The Rev. Samuel Leigh arrived in the colony in 1815 on the Hebe and made a visit to Castlereagh where he was initially rebuffed by one resident when he asked to be able to preach, and also to sleep in his barn and leave his horse in the yard. This man referred him to John Lees and there he was welcomed by John’s young son John. That evening he took family worship for the family, reading Isiah 35 on the ‘Wilderness and solitary’ places. The next day John revealed to the Missionary the manner of his conversion. Samuel Leigh made many visits to Castlereagh and conducted services in John’s home for some time until John built a small room attached to his home where services were held.16 15 Strachan, Rev. Alexander, Remarkable Incidents in the Life of the Rev. Samuel Leigh, Missionar yto the Settlers and savages of Australia and New Zealand. Published. 1853, new ed. 1863. 16 Austn. Dictionary of Biography 1788-1850, Vol 2 p. 105. 18 In November 1816 John’s eldest daughter, Maria, just over 14 years old, married Charles Molston Gordon at Castlereagh. Charles was 25 years old and from 1 January he would act as Superintendant of Agriculture for three years at the Rev. Samuel Marsden’s Mission in New Zealand. The couple left for the Bay of Islands on the Active in April 1817.17 The arrival of Samuel Leigh spurred John to action and he built a small room beside his dwelling to be The memorial plaque honouring used exclusively as a chapel. On 7 October 1817 the First Church. Samuel Leigh conducted the opening ceremony for what would become known as the first Methodist Chapel in Australia.18 When the Rev. Walter Lawry visited the settlement at Castlereagh after his arrival in May 1818, he recorded “Good congregation, lively people, little society, shocking accommodation (so back to Windsor and Parramatta).” As time passed, there was a need for a larger chapel and John acted on this, building a second chapel. The Methodist Magazine of London in September 1820 gave a report from Leigh on the second chapel at Castlereagh – “This is the second place built for Divine Worship by Mr. John Lees of the same place, and will be given like unto the other to the Mission, free of expense. Mr. John Lees has been very much blest. When I first knew him, he was very poorly and much afflicted but of late God has blest him with health.” At the time of the opening John also gave one acre of his best land, promising to plough it, sow it, reap it, thresh and sell any produce giving the proceeds to the church. The original chapel became a sleeping room for the visiting preachers. In November 1840, James Rutledge described both chapels – “Looking round again towards the right, on the road leading from Emu to Richmond, we see a neat weatherboard Chapel, 28 feet by 16, in good repair with a board over the door on which we observe the words, painted in large letters ‘Prepare to meet thy God’. This was the Wesleyan Chapel, but just on the other side of the creek and near a fig tree is a dwelling house fronting us, and another building attached to it, standing with the end towards us, in which is a large window. That is the FIRST WESLEYAN CHAPEL BUILT IN AUSTRALIA. The dwelling is that in which Mr. John Lees lived and died.”19 After 2½ years in New Zealand, Charles and Maria arrived home on the Active from the Bay of Islands with their young daughter Ann. They told of hardships, danger and gun-trading. Maria was pregnant again, and not in the best of health – exhausted and ill from her experiences. Three weeks later she died in childbirth, aged 17 years and 3 months. It was a sad family reunion, to gain a grandchild and lose a daughter.20 17 Archives Office NSW, Reel 5002 (Vol. 3 Entry 1982). Methodist Magazine (London) 1818 p.877 Missionary Intelligence. 19 Christian Advocate, April 1860, p.126. Reminiscences of a revival of religion at Castlereagh in 1840-41. 20 Archives Office NSW Reel 5002 (Vol 8 Entry 157). 18 19 In February 1819 John’s standing in the community was such that he had been assessed as fit to be a Juror. Without the need for liquor he was a law-abiding citizen and a good family man. This John was not slow to act when his son, John, then not quite 14 years old in March 1821 had banns called for his marriage to Charlotte Byfield, listing him as 21 years old. It was ‘Forbid by John Lees’.21 John received another land grant of 80 acres in 1821 which he called ‘Stoke’ and the 1822 Muster revealed that he had 102 acres with 100 acres cleared and that he raised mainly wheat, with smaller quantities of vegetables, seeds and orchard produce. He also had four horses, 4 horned cattle and 32 hogs. In 1824 he became a member of the Committee for Castlereagh in the Wesleyan Auxiliary Mission Society. In the following years he applied for another grant and was given 284 acres east of his 1820 grant. He called it ‘Pankle’ and this is possibly a corruption of ‘Penkhull’ a village in the parish of Stoke-on-Trent, John’s native place. He already had four government servants off the stores and applied for two more. He was a successful farmer and diligent church worker, involved is many church affairs.22 As a farmer, John had worked hard for many years and as he aged he made the decision to leave the farm. It was rented out and the family moved to Sydney and settled in a house in Castlereagh Street purchased on 23 February 1827. In mid 1828 he advertised a new cottage at the rear of his home for sale or rent.23 Son Richard was reported in the Sydney Gazette of 15 August 1828 as being charged with ‘furious driving’, described as being ‘in the wind’ and in an ‘O be joyful’ kind of manner. He was undoubtedly drunk and was fined ten shillings. It was not good publicity for the family. John felt it deeply knowing from his own experience how strong drink can take hold of a person. Some time after that John had a stoke and the decision was made to return to the farm. Somehow John drifted back into his old habits. His ‘propensity for drink had been awakened’. The Rev. Joseph Orton had recorded in October 1832 that he found John “in a state of bodily agony and spiritual depression’.24 James Rutledge asked that ‘some allowance ought to be made for the circumstances’.25 John died on 28 August 1836 and was buried in the Church of England Cemetery at Lower Castlereagh. His sons jointly inherited the farm. Wife Mary died aged 64 on 26 July 1839. When the Centenary of the Church’s establishment was celebrated on 15 October 21 Mutch Index (St. James Banns Book Sydney). Sydney Gazette, 7 Oct. 1824. 23 Sydney Gazette, 21 July 1828. 24 Journal of Rev. Joseph Orton. Mitchell Library A1714 25 Recollections of Early Methodism in NSW. Michell Library A 1324. 22 20 John Lee’s Headstone 1917, suggestions were made that the tombstone of John should be placed in the church grounds and also that a commemorative brass tablet should be placed on the church walls.26 Just over one hundred years later a pilgrimage to the site of the first chapel was advised in The Methodist of 27 August 1921. There, on the Saturday of the weekend of 15/16 October 1921, before a group of about 500 people a memorial tablet was unveiled by a descendant of John and Mary, Mrs. A. Wright. Then to the strains of Chopin’s Funeral March played by a small orchestra, four relatives bore the remains of John and Mary Lees in a new casket to be buried in the acre which he cultivated and given the proceeds of to the Church. It was a fitting memorial to a man who had become a legend in the early annals of the Wesleyan Church.27 William Freame, Historian, wrote – “I have always contended that the true pioneers of this State were the industrious brave old settlers, who in spite of many grave disadvantages went out into the bush and founded happy homes and made the wilderness blossom like a rose. And first and foremost among these was John Lees, and in honoring him the Methodists have laid us all under an obligation. In years to come, when the earnest few who have been collating our early history, have passed hence, the name of Lees will be well remembered…” 26 27 Archives Office NSW Reel 5005 (Vol. 23 Entry 1027). The Methodist, 22 October 1821. 21 The Real: A shor t st or y Colin Ryan Curtis had the idea at the height of summer, at midnight, when sleep had not yet come. The idea was not original, but it was inviting, transgressive, full of retrospective possibilities. He mentioned it later to his wife: Mirelle sighed and looked out at the garden, which was also full of possibilities: they had recently moved house. Minor artists of the 19th century were Curtis’ specialty: major themes, vast vistas were unappealing: he sensed his inability to rise to the sublime. He sought out the lesser: earnest daubers of some talent, outliers of a school. He was known at conferences, had published articles, would soon retire: Mirelle earned more than he did. Francis Ainslie Eaton. Curtis thought of him with approval, though he did not in fact exist. He had (Curtis decided) been born in 1864, in Ireland; he had studied at the Slade and later in France; he had known Monet and Pissarro and had been mentioned in a letter or two. He had emigrated to Australia in 1892 with a talent for landscape and had turned to portraiture; none of his work appeared to have survived. Curtis’ article about Eaton (a playful homage to the non-existent) appeared in Paysage, a lesserknown journal of the arts. Curtis, it was understood, had seen papers in the possession of Emily Stasio, the artist’s daughter. At a decent interval another note, purportedly by Beck Trainor, appeared in Image on Image; still another, by Rick Pressor, appeared in Mirrored: these added little, but made Eaton part of the atmosphere, a name vaguely remembered. Over the next few years other articles appeared, mostly under other names: a small colloquium of scholars, not always dealing directly with Eaton, but never failing to mention him. Curtis would have left it at that, and felt he could afford to. It relieved him of the burden of invention: an end to evocative detail and noms-de-plume (of which he had now a dozen). Now Eaton could live or die as Eaton wished. Curtis saw with pleasure that Eaton’s name began to appear in retrospectives of the period, a pointilliste dot in the general picture. It was felt to be a pity that nothing by him had survived, though who knew? Perhaps in some attic, on some shadowed wall, in some dealer’s store-room, a surprise awaited. Curtis looked out now at the last slow days of summer, a prelude to the autumn of his repose. Mirelle’s wide yellow hat moved among the bushes: an artist at work. He wished he could paint her and regretted his lack of talent: he wondered what she really thought of him. They slept apart, no longer quarrelled, were content with cohabitation and separate lives. Their daughter was doing her PhD at Cambridge and would return to eclipse him. Eaton would, perhaps, be his last moment of excitement. Looking back at his life, he saw that not even dream could change it; but dream would have to do. Eaton grew stronger as his creator faded: some spark in him had set imaginations alight. He began to be mentioned at conferences, and Curtis was twice invited to give a paper. He declined gracefully, on grounds of health. Tess Marot, one of the more ebullient of the cultural commentators (she sparkled in week-end magazines and on TV) saw fit to write about ‘our lost master’ and asked Curtis if he knew where a photograph could be found. He did (it was the picture of an un-named great-uncle of his own – a handsome, dark young man with a neat moustache). Curtis began to be mentioned as an authority on the man and the period: that rare thing, a discoverer. 22 -Well, said Mirelle. -Famous at last. -I serve a greater talent, said Curtis, her equal in irony. They looked together at the splendid garden. -Sooner or later, said Mirelle, substantiation will be required. -If I time it well, said Curtis, that won’t be until the day of my funeral. The young woman who came to interview him was tall, dark, elegant in a negligent way. Her name was Jaz D’Souza, and she smiled through Mirelle’s formidable scrutiny. -I think this may have been a mistake, said Mirelle to him privately in the kitchen. Curtis agreed, but the excitement of invention was once more at work in him; he felt that Eaton deserved a partisan, deserved someone who would illuminate his life (even his work) after that long oblivion. He no longer felt himself to be a liar. Was any creator a liar? Pissarro? Eaton? He faced his interlocutor with equanimity. She saw a man of middle height with a short, silvered beard, a paunch, and pleasant, tired, evasive eyes. She asked about Emily Stasio; Emily, said Curtis, was dead (the last years of her very long life had been spent in France) and the ownership of the papers was in dispute. He had first come across Eaton in L’Explorateur, an ephemeral French journal of the 1880s. Jaz smiled and nodded, slipping into French: ephemera, she said – the true mirror of a time. She referred to the photograph – such a lucky find. Indeed it was, said Curtis, practised now in verisimilitude; he didn’t mind admitting that Eaton had become something of an obsession and it was astonishing what turned up: it went beyond coincidence; you could call it fate. Eaton, of course, was still seen as a minor figure; but then, no sketches or paintings had been recovered. It was, they agreed, simply a matter of time, though even then one would have to be prepared for disappointment. Better though to be a footnote than to be nothing. (Curtis knew that he himself would be no more than a footnote.) Jaz rose, took a photograph, smiled and said goodbye. They watched her go: poised, negligent, dangerous. Jaz had scented something: an uneasy beast in the thickets, cautious, not quite real. She went home, sat down and began to write: the words flowed, then faltered. -I need (she said to herself) to discuss this. She went out again, drove off and knocked at a door: when it opened a strong smell of paint poured forth. The owner – a short, handsome redhead – smiled. -Sorry, she said. –Stinks, doesn’t it? I’m still looking for a studio. They made their way past a living-room filled with easels, pictures, the pungency of a painter’s life, and sat in the kitchen with tea between them. -You haven’t heard of Frank Eaton, have you? asked Jaz. -Yes, I have, said Libby. –Sort of. A remittance man. Waving a brush. -It’s odd, said Jaz, that absolutely nothing he did has survived. He knew the Impressionists but was conservative enough to make a dull splash here. Apparently he did portraits. I’ve read the 23 articles but I’ve only been able to find one of the authors. The others have gone abroad or to heaven. It’s almost as though he had been invented. Suppose it happened to you? I’d live on, said Libby, smiling. -As an influence. The article hardly mentioned Eaton: the scholar was there, his life, the wonderful garden; Mirelle could not be excluded, a sceptical presence at the edge of the frame. Six months later the first Eaton appeared, a small landscape of 1897. The dealer (late of Sothebys) said that the paints, the canvas used, the frame, all were true to period. Dr Curtis, a known authority, had viewed it. It was likely, he had said, that other works would come to light. Curtis had felt no astonishment. The painting was the vindication of a life (even, perhaps, his own). Over the next few years there were other discoveries: a portrait of a woman in blue, a larger landscape, some small paintings on wood. All seemed the sum of their influences, but with an indefinable addition: Eaton’s individual touch. A small exhibition was proposed and Curtis was asked to open it: he could not refuse. There were, of course, occasional forgeries: Curtis denounced these, pointing out inconsistencies, vulgarities. Jaz, drifting through a gallery in search of Eaton, encountered Libby. -Don’t you feel like a criminal? she asked. Libby shrugged. -Why should I? I only did one painting of his – the first. You’re to blame for that. You planted the idea. -I didn’t tell you to be a forger. -It was a homage. But Eaton would have taken me over, wouldn’t have let me go. Once was enough. -Who did the others? asked Jaz, examining her friend as she had examined Curtis. -Not me. No one I know. Eaton did them, I suppose. -And if Eaton never existed? Libby looked at Jaz inscrutably: -Who are you to say? And Jaz moved thoughtfully on. The oeuvre swelled: Eaton was now worth the ire of certain critics, his delicacy derided as mere facility, his power of dreamy evocation as vacuity. Curtis and others dismissed these murmurings; Eaton, though not among the giants, was unique in his fusion of styles, of temperaments, of worlds. Curtis had now separated from Mirelle and her disillusioned gaze: he lived in a modest flat, surrounded by books, allowing himself a moderate squalor. His daughter, now back in Melbourne, visited him from time to time, opening windows which her father closed again. Curtis did not know how much Mirelle had told her and cared little: he had brought an artist back to history, to the memory of the world. 24 Jaz came once more to interview him. She had hardly changed; she saw before her an old man, smiling but exhausted. Knowing she was coming, he had opened the windows, but the flat still smelt of retreat, the stuffiness of a closed and failing life. -So many scholars have written of Eaton, she said. –I look for them and they don’t exist. -If you say so, said Curtis. –But I exist. Still. -And Francis Ainslie Eaton. Does he exist? -The evidence is there. The pictures, the marvellous pictures. I had no hand in their creation. Jaz looked at him, his books, at the sky beyond the windows. -Suppose, said Jaz smiling, that he never existed. -If he didn’t, then I don’t, said Curtis. He smiled tiredly, looking at her and then beyond her, at something which was to come. She rose, took a last photograph, shook his hand. -You know, he said, I can’t afford an Eaton now. I should have bought one at the beginning. But I thought: he belongs to the world now, not to me. Outside the sky had grown colder; the clouds in their beauty, the streets in their subdued colouring, all reminded her of other landscapes: ones painted by a delicate, indecisive hand, mindful of immortality, resigned to universal loss. She walked away from Curtis into that other world, which she could not have known if Francis Ainslie Eaton had not painted, had not (in his own way) lived, had not (in his own way) risen from the dead. Biographical note: Colin Ryan is a Melbourne writer who was born in central Victoria and spent twenty-four years as a public servant. He was an Irish-language broadcaster on SBS Radio until 2004. He began his writing career as a playwright and has published stories, poetry and articles in Irish and English. 25 Camden Par k spr ings int o bloom Ian Willis Camden Par k Nur ser y Gr oup The nursery group has undertaken the restoration, conservation and preservation of the 19th century garden of colonial identity and horticulturalist William Macarthur. This is a significant heritage project in the historically important Australian colonial property of Camden Park. Heritage Importance The New South Wales heritage branch inventory states that parts of the garden are of unusual industrial and historical archaeological significance and have the potential to reveal much about the 19th century practice of nursery gardening and horticulture on a large scale. The Nursery Group The group was established in 2005 with a grant from the Camden Park Preservation Committee. The work of the group and its volunteers is supplemented through the sale of heritage plants propagated on site. The group was led by Colin Mills, until his untimely death in late 2012, and has regular monthly working bees of volunteers who undertake a variety of projects in the garden Immediately above: Colin Mills leading a tour on Camden Park Garden on Open Day 2010 26 The nursery group won the 2011 NSW Government Heritage Volunteers Award for their ground-breaking effort in the restoration of this important colonial garden. Camden Park Open day The work of this voluntary group has meant that in recent years the colonial gardens have become an important part of the Camden Park open days where the members of the general public can gain an understanding and appreciation of this historic asset. Members of the nursery group lead tours of the colonial garden on open days and other occasions and explain their work and the historic, social, economic, technological and archaeological importance of the conservation and restoration work of the garden. Hortus Camdensus, A web-based catalogue The work of the Camden Park Nursery Group has been supported by Colin Mills’s ground breaking work in developing the website Hortus Camdensus, An illustrated catalogue of plants grown by Sir William Macarthur at Camden Park NSW Australia between 1820 and 1861. http://hortuscamden.com/ Reference Ian Willis, Reference Supporting Nomination for NSW Government Heritage Volunteer Awards 2011, Submission, Camden, 2011 http://camdenparkhouse.com.au/index.htm Figure 1. Colin Mills leading a garden tour on Camden Park Open Day 2010 (IWillis) 27 Sydney Harbour welcomes an earlier ‘Aust ralian f leet ’ By Dean Boyce The arrival of the first Royal Australian Navy fleet into Sydney Harbour in 1913 allayed what had for more than a century been fears in Sydney of an attack or invasion. Much was written during the recent naval review celebrations of the spectacular 1913 fleet arrival, but the interesting background to this event went unremarked. It had its origins in Sydney’s fears of a Russian attack. From first settlement it had been the Royal Navy which had been the Australian colonies’ first line of defence from the enemies of the British Empire. But the British warships of the tiny Australia Station based in Sydney was required to operate over a huge area of the southern and Pacific oceans. Colonists were voicing the view that the British navy could probably not be able to prevent attackers—privateers or enemy warships—laying waste to the harbour city and making off with the gold bullion in its bank vaults. There had always been anxiety throughout the nineteenth century about Sydney’s inadequate defences, and well-justified fears of attack from European powers (even, at the time of the Civil War, from American cruisers). There was a potential high cost of being a distant part of Britain; a weak outpost faced the threat of being a collateral victim of Empire membership. An informed three-part examination in the Sydney Morning Herald of 7 February 1885 of the colonial defences foresaw dangers in reliance on Britain during such troubled times28. An anonymous author, bylined “An Australian”, wrote: That ‘mother country’ of which we are all so proud, to whose traditions we are all so loyal, and on whose naval ascendancy we are all so dependent, happens just now to be herself engaged in a general review of her colonial resources. Under the Gladstone régime, the colonies of Britain have been regarded as the British ratepayers’ betes noirs, tolerated principally because British moneylenders have not yet ceased to believe in our securities. We are too far away to expect much from a parent to whom we, in her time of need, could give but the feeblest help; and we are thought to be old enough to be out of the nursery. ... Any day European complications may arise, and a telegram may come from the Admiralty ordering, if not the whole of the squadron to rendezvous within three months at Plymouth or Malta, yet such of the vessels as may be most serviceable. The [Australia Station’s warship HMS] Nelson, of course, would be taken away; nay, England might want her last ship, her last sailor, and her last shilling to defend her own coast. The writer concluded that the manifest weakness of the existing arrangement of imperial protection was that ‘the protecting squadron would be ridiculously incapable of carrying out its enormous responsibilities in times of need, and that when the emergency occurs the “protectors” would almost certainly be required elsewhere’. There had been many defence scares in the colony, but in 1885, with Russophobia rampant, rumours circulated in Sydney that a Russian fleet intent on invading the colony 28 Sydney Morning Herald, 7 February 1885, p, 5. 28 was on its way. ‘Sir Galahad’ in the Town and Country Journal warned that ‘before we are a month older [we] may possibly hear the unwelcome roar of Russian cannon along our coast’. And, looking at what he saw as the defenceless state of Sydney, he continued: although the harbor of Port Jackson is probably amply defended with its double line of batteries and sunken torpedos, yet on the coast side, save at the South Head and La Perouse, not a solitary gun could be brought to bear against a fleet. Consequently a hostile fleet could lay at its leisure, and bombard Sydney from the safe shelter of Bondi or Maroubra bays, holding the city to ransom, or destroying it, as suited the sovereign will of its commander. Or again, a force could be landed at Coogee under cover of the ships, and seizing the water works, starve the city into submission.29 A week later, under the blunt heading ‘War’, the Town and Country Journal explained that ‘[Russia’s] tactics, it is believed, includes sending a flood of privateers, backed by a squadron, to loot the colonies’. But it added comfortingly, ‘Britain is ready and willing, all the world over, to give her [Russia] the chastisement which her encroachments and sneaking policy so richly deserve’.30 These fears of an attack were taken seriously by the colonial government in Sydney. Cabinet ministers met with military and naval advisers in what was described as a ‘council of war’ from 31 March 1885 and continued to meet almost daily to prepare a complete plan of defence for the coast and chief harbours. Under the heading “Preparing for the Enemy” the Sydney Morning Herald reported, ‘The prospect of war appeared so serious in the early part of the week, that the Government sent a warning to the banks suggesting that bullion should not be mailed away in steamers until the crisis is over’.31 No attack eventuated, of course, but the fears continued, along with protests about the state of Sydney’s defences. In 1886, Admiral Sir George Tryon, then commander-in-chief of the Australian naval station, warned that military preparedness would show that the people of Sydney ‘recognise that when war breaks out no one can foresee the consequences. There is no escape from it. There is no land so distant as to be free from its direful influences or from its effects.’ It was a fact that ‘vessels 1,000 miles away on a Monday are with you on a Friday’.32 Australia’s concerns were discussed at length when the mutual defence of the Empire was examined by the First Colonial Conference which opened in London in April 1887. Sir Henry Holland presiding said little had been done to modernise the external defences of the Empire and the matter was considered seriously only ‘when apprehensions of war awoke this country and the colonies to the unguarded state of outlying parts of the Empire’.33 Admiral Tryon had sent reports on the state of shore defences in the colonies and surprisingly these reports, according to an official minute, were the first authentic information which the Admiralty had obtained on the defences. As the conference convened, it seemed there was little knowledge in Britain of the Australian colonies’ efforts at fortification. The Secretary of War, Edward Stanhope, told the conference: 29 30 31 32 33 Town and Country Journal, 4 April 1885, p. 691. Town and Country Journal, 11 April 185, p. 746. Town and Country Journal, 18 April 185, p. 798. Memorandum of Colonial Naval Defence, Admiral Tryon, 24 April 1886, NSW Defence Papers 1858-91,p.19 [4/7054A, SRNSW]. Donald Gordon, ‘The Colonial Defence Committee and Imperial Collaboration, 1885-1904’, in Political Science Quarterly, Vol.77, No. 4, December 1962, p. 529. 29 I had no idea, and I do not believe that the people of this county had any idea, of the very large sums of money that have been spent in the Australian Colonies for the purposes of defence, or of the thoroughly efficient manner in which they are endeavouring in so many cases to preserve themselves against hostile attack.34 In fact, as The Times reported, the New South Wales Government had spent the huge amount of £1,500,000 in defending Sydney.35 The newspaper pointed out: ‘The colonies cannot be accused of any indisposition to provide in a liberal spirit for their own land defence, but they have hitherto regarded the defence of the vast British Australian commerce and of the Australasian seas as an exclusively Imperial concern. This arduous duty has been undertaken by the Australian Squadron, which has been maintained from the Imperial Exchequer at a cost of £160,000 a year.’ Given the vast extent of the station and the squadron’s manifold duties there were limits to its abilities. The Times report gave as an example: ‘If the Australian Squadron were deluded by false information into sailing for New Zealand—and the possibility is contemplated by Admiral Tryon—the mischief that might be worked by an active enemy before the British fleet could return would be incalculable.’ Admiral Tryon had proposed that, in order to resolve the deficiency of a fleet able to chase and capture the enemy on the open sea, an Australasian auxiliary fleet be constituted, comprising fast ‘cruiser-catchers’ and sea-going torpedo boats. Arising from the conference was the Australasian Naval Defence Act, under which, in return for the colonies paying an annual contribution of £126,000 to help maintain the Royal Navy, the existing small British Squadron in Australasian waters would be supplemented by an Auxiliary Squadron of five fast cruisers and two torpedo gunboats. Importantly, these warships would be under the sole command of the commander-in-chief of the Australia Station and could not be removed from Australasian waters without the consent of the colonial governments. It took nearly five years, but there was great excitement when on 5 September 1891 the auxiliary fleet finally sailed into Sydney Harbour. Newspaper headlines declared ‘Australia’s First Fleet. Seven swift and powerful warships. The nucleus of a navy. Built at a total cost of £1,000,000. Their arrival to-day in Farm Cove.’ 36 The Herald trumpeted, ‘The arrival of the [Auxilliary] Australian Squadron in Port Jackson to-day will mark a distinct epoch in the onward march of Australian identity. Hitherto we have been content to rely on the mother country for our first line of defence—the navy. ... we are at last placed in an independent position, able to defend ourselves with our own vessels.’ Heavy rain clouds and occasional claps of thunder cleared to bright sunshine as the new Australian Squadron steamed into the harbour, and the Admiral received a thirteen-gun salute by the squadron’s tired old wooden steam corvette Wolverine. The new ships were named the Katoomba, Mildura, Wallaroo, Tauranga, Ringarooma, 34 35 36 Colonial Conference papers cited in Daniel Spence, ‘Australian Naval Defence and the 1887 Colonial Conference: Context, Policy and Reaction’, in International Journal of Naval History, Vol. 6, No. 1 April 2007, p. 6. The Times, 16 April 1887, p. 4. Sydney Morning Herald, 5 September 1891, p. 7. 30 Boomerang and Karakatta. Sydney, as the naval headquarters in Australasia, the Herald boasted, now had ‘the swiftest and best-equipped squadron ever sent on colonial service’. Dean Boyce is the author of Invasion: Colonial Sydney’s fears of attack, One-Off Press, Sydney, 2010. [email protected] Xant horrhoeas and t heir uses Dawn Emerson st Talk given at the SSHS Seminar : Amazing Stories: Innovation and Invention, Heritage Festival, 2012 on Saturday, 21 April, 2012 at the Sutherland Shire Historical Society, Stapleton Centre, Stapleton St., Sutherland, NSW. The grasstree or X. australis is widespread from Brisbane, to southern Tasmania, and is found in well-drained soils in association with woodlands and forests of Eucalyptus spp. (Lee 1966: 35-54) Altitude has little effect as it can be found from near sea level to an ecoline of about 1200m in the Great Dividing Range, as well as on the western slopes of the Range, but not on the semi-arid plains. (Gill & Ingwersen). A moderate to high rainfall is required, with the soil being well–drained, but poor soils can be tolerated, such as yellow podzolics. (Stace et al, 1968) In Western Australia some “trees” have a diameter from 5 inches to half a metre, and weigh as much as 15 cwt. or ¾ of a ton! It has been estimated that a grasstree grows only 3.2mms a year or 30 cms. a century, so that a specimen 3 metres high might be over 1,000 years old. (Aust. Enc.v.3, p 212,b) The National Trust Theme for 2012 was: “Amazing Stories: Innovation and invention”. The SSHS museum has a copy of a licence issued to a grasstree gum gatherer during the Depression, setting me upon the path of research for the uses for this gum, in Australia and overseas, and why it was collected from this living fossil. The grasstree or Xanthorrhoea spp. it is not a grass, and Australia is the only known habitat of this member of the lily family, which is closely related to the Sagg (Lomandra longifolia). Plants within the genus may range from acaulescent, rhizomatous plants with a sheaf of many long blades of grass with a tough cutting edge, to thick-stemmed trees up to 7 metres in height. Aboriginal use of the plant was varied. The white tender sections of the leaf bases, the growing points of the stem and succulent roots were regularly eaten. When the seeds had formed, they were collected and the green unripe seeds could be eaten raw, whilst the mature seeds were ground into flour and cooked into a type of damper, using the ashes of a wattle wood fire. Edible grubs were found at the base of the grasstree trunk, evidenced by dead leaves in the centre of the crown. The carpenter bee makes a cellular nest in the soft pith of the flower stalk, and small sweet pockets of honey could be extracted. When it was in flower with its little cream flowers ranged all over the end of the flower spike for the top half a metre or so, the Aboriginal people used to dip it into a coolamon of water to make a sweet citrus-flavoured drink, which if left to ferment for 3-5 days was mildly intoxicating. For extra “tang” a few formic ants could be crushed into the beverage. (Watson: 2) Kellett notes that mature leaves could be woven into baskets but I think there may have been 31 some very lacerated fingers in the process, so I do not believe this use was common! He notes further that the leaves could be used, like cheese-wire, to cut meat, which is a little more credible, as the leaves have a sharp cutting edge. (Kellett, M: p16.) There are about 30 species of Xanthorroea recorded in Australia now, compared to only 14 being known in the 1970’s and the resin can be either yellow or red in colour, depending on the species. After the seed end of the dead flower spike had been broken off, depending on whether it was to be a hunting spear or a fishing spear, a sharpened stone would be cemented on to the end, with warmed gum from the base of the grasstree, and wrapped with kangaroo grass to keep it in situ until it had solidified, or fish bones or shell fragments would be cemented similarly. Another length of stick might also be added and cemented on to make the spear longer, until it reached 3-4 metres. It has been noted that a tip section of tea tree could be attached to the end of the spear and hardened in the fire, but these have not been seen personally. (Watson:2) In some cases, it has been noted even echidna spikes were used and cemented on to the end of the fishing spear, using sand or wood-shavings to give the melted gum rigidity. (Kellett: 17) According to Thomas Watling’s drawings in the British Museum of Natural History, our early settlers called them “fish gigs” which may have led later led to our Aussie slang for a “Fiz-gig” (or Phiz-gig which term my grandfather [5th generation from a Third Fleet convict] used if he were trying to name something difficult to describe!) The smaller pieces of the stem were often used in fire-making as it produced its own tinder when a firedrill was used on it. The resin from the base of the grasstree, was highly revered in the 20th century, both in Australia and overseas which was why it was avidly collected. The gum is known by many names: yacka, or yucca gum, gum accroides, Botany Bay gum, and the politically incorrect: Blackboy Gum. (One must distinguish here between the garden plant: the yucca, a type of aloe, which reputedly flowers once every 30 years, which is no relation to the grass tree.) In the late 19th century collecting the grasstree resin was known as the Yucca gum industry, because in South Australia where grasstrees are plentiful they are known as yuccas or yaccas, (possibly their Aboriginal dialect name?). How did the Aboriginals and our early settlers produce this gum? Recently I came across a pamphlet printed by the Govt. Printer in 1931 by A.R. Penfold, a chemist at the Sydney Technological Museum, stating: “The literature on this subject is widely scattered…and not readily accessible to the layman.” I could not agree more! Penfold goes on to say that he has written his pamphlet: “for those residents of NSW seeking temporary occupation whilst unemployed, --what grass tree resin is,--how it may be collected, what it is used for and its current market value.” If you have ever been clearing land around Sydney, and had to chop a grass tree out, or seen a grasstree break open after a bushfire, you would have seen the small reddish-brown leaf bases or leaf ends which jacket the “trunk” of the grass tree, and look as if they have been varnished, as they are so red and shiny, as these are coated with flakes of resin. This resin, or “gum” is the substance sought from the grasstree which is so highly prized. The resin is highly flammable. Perhaps the plant is deliberately encouraging combustion, during a bushfire, as some species flower profusely after being burnt to ground level. (Specht, Rayson and Jackman 1958; Gill, A.M. & Ingwersen 2003) The resin is insoluable in water but soluable in alcohol; so it is not a gum, as such, but definitely a resin, or the results would have been reversed. These leaf ends are about 3 to 4 inches long and are covered with flakes of resin which melt with heat and harden upon cooling. The Aboriginal people 32 were the first to discover this property and made good use of it for their tools, hafting axes and making hunting spears and fishing spears by cementing sharp ends on them and joining lengths together. Shells found in middens at Bundeena, amongst other places, suggest that these shells may have been hafted to the end of spear throwers. Shells with the resin attached have been found at Balmoral Beach, 2,500 years old. It has been noted that Aboriginal women collected the gum, using it to fasten objects in their hair, but also storing it in their hair, until it was required for use. The shiny basal leaf-meristems were used as part of an initiate’s headdress in a 1795 initiation ceremony. (Kavanagh, M: 1974) The women often carried large lumps of resin in their bags to be used as a waterproof adhesive.(Kellett: 17) Apparently there is less resin in a grasstree in winter than in summer, so collecting was best done during the hot summer months. (Penfold: 1931:6) A watercolour painting in the National Library of Australia by S.T.Gill, in the 1850’s (nla.pic.an2377241) shows Aboriginals lighting a fire drilling with the shaft of the grass tree, so this property was also well known to them. When I visited Cambridge University in 2001, I saw five of some 50 spears that Banks and Cook had removed from the huts of the Gweagals at Kurnell in April, 1770. The ends had been broken off as they were too long to ship, and after bringing them to England, several of the spears were given by Banks to the Earl of Sandwich in October, 1771. They were kept in his family until about 1912 when five of them were presented to Trinity College in Dublin. The College decided that they would be better preserved in a museum and gave them to the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University, where I saw them on Thursday, 5th August, 2001. I, at the time being the Deputy Mayor, had letters of authority from Sutherland Shire Council and the Gweagal elders, to negotiate on their behalf with Cambridge University in a bid to repatriate some or all of the spears. Council wrote ahead and asked if I may inspect them, as I would shortly be in England visiting relatives. We drove to Cambridge and I was ushered into a lecture room and the spears were brought up from storage (they were not on display) and handed to me. I was given some white cotton gloves with which to handle the spears. There were 4 fishing spears and one hunting spear. The shafts were about 2 metres long, unjoined, and made of the grass tree or Xanthorroea flower stems, and in excellent condition. I had been told by some of the Gweagal elders that the shafts would be made of turpentine wood, with a ti-tree shaft at the top—but they were not, and I could even see a couple of microscopic holes in the grasstree stem where some two hundred years ago a little insect had bored its way either into or out of the wooden stem! The spears were made exactly as I described earlier, and as I held those spears in my hand, I felt considerable elation to be holding such historic items--- I was holding the spears, taken from our Gweagal Aboriginals, that Banks and Cook had also held, when Cook made his historic voyage to Botany Bay in April, 1770--- 231 years previously! My husband took a photo and it was printed in The Leader. Bruce Baird and Danna Vale, Members of Parliament, at the time, vowed they would get the spears back for us, but of course there was a sad outcome. Cambridge University referred my Council’s request to Trinity College, and Trinity College, in a 3-sentence letter “declined the offer” to take them back to Australia! Our government’s ensuing official request also was declined, despite Baird’s and Vale’s efforts. The fact remains that Cambridge University does not even have them on display; they merely want to keep them for the sake of owning them. They have no cultural ownership rights, and refuse to relinquish these spears to their rightful owners, the Gweagals and their place of origin, Sutherland Shire. I, like several before me, and others since, failed in repatriating these spears to their spiritual home. Now our first settlers, noting how Aboriginal people used this gum, as evidenced in these spears, saw what a useful bonding agent this grasstree resin was, and quickly noted its 33 industrial uses. Settlers knew it could always be relied upon to start their fires, even in wet weather, and the peculiar resinous smell it gives off when lit is very aromatic and distinctive. Burned resin produced a pleasant scent which was common in early churches in lieu of incense. Again if you have ever walked through bushland after a bushfire, and smelt a burnt grasstree you would remember the smell all your life. The resin was used as the basis for a low cost spirit to manufacture varnishes, used on furniture and floors in settler’s houses, and a stove polish to shine up the black fuel stoves. Our settlers also noted that cattle eating the flower spikes of the plant developed a loss of condition known as “wamps”, and apiarists soon found that the honey made from these flower spikes was very bland and unappetizing. (Kellett: 17) However the fibrous wood from the trunk of the grasstree was sometimes used to line the brakes of their horse-drawn waggons. To remove the grasstree resin, a licence was required in Australia. Gum cutters had to apply for a Fuel Licence “to remove dead timber from Crown Lands”, issued by the Forestry Commission of NSW for a period of one month, and costing 2/6d , together with paying a royalty of 2 Pounds per ton of grasstree resin collected. The fact that the grasstrees were living and not dead, and not even timber, although it was called a “tree”, and could regenerate, providing it was expertly cut, did not seem to occur to the authorities. Grass trees can tolerate cropping of their sides, but removing the point of growth at the top is fatal to the plant. Kellett: 17) The quantity of resin collected by one man in a working day varied from 20 to 40 lbs., but in WA where the resin was plentiful a man could collect about 2 and a half kgs. per hour, or about 40 kgs. per day. Locally, if the licence were issued in Helensburgh, it was operative in the Parish of Heathcote in the County of Cumberland, and the locality of Woronora. During the Depression years when jobs were hard to find, but men had to have income to feed their families, many camped out into the bush for weeks at a time, with their families bringing them food and supplies. How were the grasstrees harvested? They culled the grasstrees, digging them up to get at the resin underneath, crushing the stumps and supplying it in flakes. Fred Midgely noted that in the Menai District the resin was usually dug out from the soil under the plant, and not collected from the plant itself. (Midgley, F: SSHS Qtly Bull. Oct, 1974, No.10 p81-82) Then the leaf bases at the core of the grasstree were separated by breaking them with an axe, and the resinous mass is disintegrated by means of a stout stick, and the resin sieved from the leaf debris by winnowing in the prevailing breeze or by using a blower. The operation required some skill. It was found that the grass trees did not have to be destroyed and if harvested carefully, could go on being harvested 2-3 times over several years. However a large amount of the gum must remain on the core to protect it and allow the grasstree to live. A hessian framework was placed around the plant and it was found that the axe cut must go right to the centre of the core where the leaf bases are cemented together with the resin, separating them out so they do not cake together in large masses. It was collected in a hessian bag, and sieved in a jigger, which sorted it into two grades, rejecting any of the leaf bases and any large clumps still caked together with gum. The sieve was shaken laterally whilst being fed through a hopper at the top. Then the waste material was passed into a waste dump. The jigger had two grates : the top consisting of wire netting ½ inch to ¾ inch mesh, and the lower made of finer perforated sheet metal. (Penfold 1931: 6-7) In the Kempsey area, the resin was cut with an axe like the above, but the top was lopped off and the whole plant used. It was then steamed, until the resin ran down into kerosene tins over campfires by the Harrison steaming process, which was far more efficient than the 34 winnowing method used in Menai. I spoke with an elderly lady in Kempsey, where we lived in the 1970’s, Mrs. Ady De Vere whose husband, Herbert, worked for the Kempsey Post Office in 1916, and she said at weekends he went out and collected the yucca gum, transporting it by horse and cart to Kempsey for dispatch to markets, either in Sydney or in Queensland. She said he steamed it, by placing it on sieves over a vat, thereby steamheating them. The gum melted and ran down into longitudinally cut-down kerosene tin trays and was allowed to cool. This process ensures over a third more gum is recovered, without any leaf debris. Penfold notes that the practice was becoming more popular in southern NSW, and he had had many enquiries from the County of Cumberland. (Penfold: 1931 : 9) (Footnote: Ady, too, had an interesting history. She was a seamstress for Queen Victoria, and was very proud of the fact that she had embroidered a footstool, upon which Queen Victoria, being quite diminutive, rested her foot. Ady used to buy remnants from Barsby’s and make teacloths with rickrack braid and I still use one of her cloths for afternoon tea to this day. Her husband, Herbert, a favourite in amateur theatre productions, had died many years ago, and whenever we were having a baked dinner I always made an extra one for Ady and my husband would jump in the car and run it around to her in her little flat. The poor darling died in Kempsey hospital about 10 years ago, and the notes I made on her oral history were unfortunately tossed out by the Kempsey library in a recent move, and no one thought to toss them to the Macleay Valley Historical Society who would have greatly appreciated them.) Clr. Verlie Fowler from Campbelltown City Council gave a talk to the Sutherland Shire Historical Society on 15th August, 1997 when I was President, telling us about James Heffernan who lived at Eckersley supplementing his income by crushing the trunks of grasstrees to extract the resin used in the manufacture of shellac. Fred Midgley noted in the SSHS Qtly Bull.,Oct 1974 that the early residents of Menai first commenced “gumcutting” on 21st February, 1902. There had been a severe drought and high temperatures that summer and farmers had been forced off their land when crops failed and the creeks dried up. Then on the 16th December, 1901 a fire began in the Little Forest area and quickly swept through Bangor, raging through the properties of the Webbs, and the Midgleys, and on to properties in Thorpe’s Forest. The fire devoured all in its path: homesteads, fencing, fruit trees and sheds. For 3 days and nights it raged, finally burning itself out on the banks of the Woronora River. Fred Midgley noted that men camped out in the Eckersley Ranges, as well as south in Darke’s Forest, and around Mill Creek, and west towards Liverpool, seeking the grasstree resin. Alf Midgley recorded that Lily Dawson once a week used to bake provisions and take them out to her brother who was cutting gum in the Eckersley Ranges. The concentrated resin was very flammable stuff as a team of yucca gummers was to discover, when one of them carelessly tossed a tray of it into a campfire. The resulting explosion of flame nearly engulfed the entire camp! (Kellett: p.17) It was noted that the Aboriginals had found that the gum was very useful in waterproofing bark canoes and their water-carrying coolamons. (Note: I wondered if it tasted unpleasant, but was a necessary evil— or why wasn’t beeswax used instead?) Shipwrights used the resin mixed with tallow, and found it was an excellent sealing agent in the seams of planking. It was made into low-cost lacquers, a substitute for rosin and shellac, paints and stains for timber, varnish for coating timber and preserving it, polishes, linoleums, a binder in the manufacture of wall-boards, a sizing agent in paper, soapmaking, and perfumery and so it became a significant export industry. It was also used as a metal coating for tins used in meat canning and on brass instruments. (Watson, 2001) 35 The gathering of yucca gum by residents supplementing their income in Menai continued, until the beginning of the Second World War. This arduous job performed in the heat of summer was described by one elderly yucca gummer as “the dirtiest and hardest work” he had ever done in his life! “The gum in its flake form was bagged, weighed and delivered to an agent, usually W. Mofflin & Co. of Kent St, Sydney, who had agencies in Queensland in Brisbane, Townsville and Rockhampton, as well as interstate in Adelaide, and Melbourne, and Fremantle, and Albany, in Western Australia, as well as in London.” Fred Midgley notes that in March 1903 Charles Bentley of Menai forwarded 20 bags of gum weighing just over 12 hundredweight or almost ¾ of a ton. At the time yucca was bringing 9 Pounds ten shillings a ton, so Bentley’s earnings were a princely 5 Pounds 14 shillings and threepence, (minus 12 shillings royalty to the government)! Germany was originally the largest market for grass tree resin, though trade was interrupted by the blockade at the outbreak of the Great War. In the 1920’s and 1930’s grass tree resin was also sold to the United States and Britain, and France also purchased modest quantities. (Kellett:17) The Melbourne Argus records in 1916: “Experiments with the fibre of the tree have yielded a dye …strangely the most easily obtained colour is khaki, although different colours…can be obtained, and goes on to record that: “patents for the processes in some instances had been obtained. Alcohol has been obtained from the plant, which often contains up to 15% of sugars. Stockholm tar (obtained)…is said to be of commercial value for road-making…More valuable than any of the other products is the resin (from which) is obtained picric acid, the basis for the manufacture of lyddite one of the most powerful high explosives known. ..The exact finding of the chemists is confidential but it is believed that the prospects are sufficiently promising to warrant further inquiry…it is hoped that before long the Advisory Council will be able to present a report to the Prime Minister of Australia, Mr. Hughes.” Then the newspaper goes on to say, naively, “Before the war Germany imported very large quantities of the resin of the grass tree from Australia, though what use has been made of it is not known. The export of the gum from Kangaroo Island was practically a German monopoly, nearly 1,000 tons going direct to Germany during 1913, while much of that which was shipped to other countries, probably reached Germany by a devious way.” Germany was the largest market for the resin though trade was interrupted by the blockade at the outbreak of WWI. One is left to speculate that our unemployed slaved away in the backblocks of Australia to export the resin to Germany,-- so that the wily Germans could make it into munitions to fire back at the men who had gathered it, as many had now joined the army due to lack of employment! In the 1920’s and 1930’s grass tree resin was also sold to the United States, with Britain and France purchasing modest amounts. Between 1927-1928 49,381 cwt. of resin was exported from Australia and in 1928-1929 it had risen to 55,377 cwt., whilst South Australia alone exported 2,848 tons in 1928-1929. However it seems that finally the Government became aware of the explosive potential of the grasstree gum. The Cairns Post states: “Australian grass tree gum is being used in the manufacture of many materials ranging from floor polish to explosives. A Federal proclamation issued yesterday prohibits its export.” It seems it took a Second World War and another 29 years before the Govt. latched on to the idea that they were sending possible raw materials for the Germans to make explosives with which to kill our troops! 36 Prior to WWII more than 2,000 tons were exported annually, while about one tenth was used in the domestic market. During WWII the red resin was used as a binder and fuel in pyrotechnic compositions, and the yellow resin found some use as a substitute for benzoin, storax and tolu in perfumery. The Cairns Post notes that a common solution of grass tree gum resin in alcohol was replacing the ordinary gold lacquer used in covering brass parts of scientific instruments, and reiterated that in combination with other materials it produced wood varnishes. It also noted that it was possible to use the gum in plastic materials used in the manufacture of gramophone records. Although the production of grasstree gum was a one-time substantial industry in Australia, only relatively small quantities were produced in the mid 1970’s and only about 300 tons were exported annually. I contacted the CSIRO to ascertain recent figures, but was told that their library had been disbanded, as had the NSW Forestry Library, and that their pamphlets were no longer in existence detailing this information. Today only a small industry on Kangaroo Island continues the practice, harvesting from stock-piled dead stumps. The powdered resin is still used in fireworks and explosives and in the formulation of high-quality resin varnish. From science and chemistry, we have now gone to artistic and decorative uses for the grasstree—woodturners use the trunks for their unusual texture and colour, and their foliage is used by florists, tied and twisted into graceful shapes, and gardeners prize the seeds as well as the mature plants for their gardens, reflecting an Australian native theme. Truly the Australian grass tree has indeed survived some innovative and inventive uses for its products. Sadly, land clearing, land improvements, and the spread of phytophthora fungal disease is taking its toll on our grasstree. Despite the ravages by humankind over the centuries, the grassree deserves to survive, not only for its variety of uses, but now for its unique beauty, standing statuesque in the bushland and in our gardens. Bibliography: Argus, (Melb., Vic.:1848-1956) Sat.14th Oct., 1916: 5:”The Grass tree: its valuable products. Manufacture of Lyddite.” Australian Encyclopaedia, Grasstrees Vol. 3: 212b Cairns Post Qld.:1901-1954):“Grass tree gum used for many materials” Mon, 16th Nov, 1942:p. 1 Gil,A.M.& Ingwerson, F. Growth of Xanthorrhoea Australis R.Br.in relation to fire.2003. Ebsco pub. Kavanagh, Merle: SSHS Qtly Bull. Oct., 1974 No. 10 p.81-82. Kellett,M: Grass trees: spikey characters of the Australian bush” Australian Heritage, 2003. Lee, A.T. (1966) Notes on Xanthorrhoea in Eastern Australia. Contrib.. NSW. Nat Herb. 4, 35-54. Penfold,A.R.: Grass tree resin. Bull.No. 16. Syd., Govt, Pr., 1951 1931. Specht, R.L., Rayson, P. & and Jackman, M.E. (1958) Dark Island heath (Ninety Mile Plain, South Australia). VI. Pyric succession: changes in composition, coverage, dry weight and mineral nutrient status. Aust. J. Bot. 6, 59-89. Stace, H.C.T. Habble, G.D., Brewer, R., Northcote, K.H., Sleeman, J.R., Mulcahy, M.J. & Hallsworth,E.G.,(1968)A Handbook of Australian soils.Rellim tech.Pubs., Glenside, Sth Aus. SSHS Qtly Bull., Oct. 1974: Midgely, Fred. Watson, Phil: Australian plants: on line: grasstree: its uses and abuses. ASGAP’s Wildlife and native plants study group, Summer 2001-02: 1-3 37 Luke’s Chr ist mas Census. Garriock Duncan November is, of course, Doryanthes’ Christmas issue. This year, I thought it appropriate to have a Christmas article, of a sort. We are all familiar with the Christmas story. It is a great pity that it is not entirely scriptural.37 The image of Joseph and Mary’s being forced to uproot themselves from Nazareth and visit, even if temporarily, family in Bethlehem is an essential part of the Christmas tradition. That census has always intrigued me (i) Luke’s Census: The significance of the census in Luke (2.1) is its use as a mechanism to date the birth of Jesus. Matthew (2.1) directly states that Jesus was born in the last years of Herod’s reign.38 The narrative in Luke implies the same but by a somewhat circuitous route. Luke (1.5) place the birth of John, the Baptist, in the last year(s) of the reign of Herod the Great, with Jesus being born six months later (1.26). However, Luke provides a far more detailed date in 2.1, when he uses the notice of a census to anchor Jesus’ birth to a precise year, i.e. the year of the census carried out by Publius Sulpicius Quirinius, Governor (legatus propraetore Augusti) of Syria: And it came to pass in those days that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus, that all the world should be taxed. And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius39 was governor of Syria (Luke, 2.1-2 [RSV]). Later Christian writers accepted the account of Luke, i.e. placing Jesus’ birth in the year of the Roman census, undertaken by Quirinius. In the 2nd century CE, In his address to the emperor, Antoninus Pius, Justin Martyr stated: Now there is a village in the land of the Jews, thirty-five stadia from Jerusalem, in which Jesus Christ was born, as you can ascertain also from the registers of the taxing made under Quirinius, your first procurator in Judaea. (Apology, 1.3). 40 Approximately two centuries Later, Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea Maritima, thought the same: It was then in the forty-second year of the reign of Augustus, and the twenty-eighth year after the submission of Antony…our lord and Saviour Jesus Christ …was born 37 The full Christmas story is only found n the apocryphal Protoevangelium of James (www.newadvent.org/fathers/0847.htm). For a discussion of the Christmas tradition, see: M J Borg & J D Crossan, The First Christmas, HarperOne, 2007; G Vermes, The Nativity, Penguin, 2006, . 38 The “slaughter of the innocents” episode (Matthew, 2.16) means that birth of Jesus may have occurred at least two years before Herod’s death. Luke is unaware of this incident and, hence, omits the “flight into Egypt (Matthew 2. 13-15). Instead, he has the family fulfilling the various requirements of the “law of Moses” pertaining to the birth of a male child (2.21-24) and later returning to Nazareth (2.39). The differences cannot be reconciled (B D Erhman, Jesus, Interrupted, HarperOne, 2009, 29-35; E P Sanders, The Historical Figure of Jesus, Penguin, 1993, 85-86). 39 Older translations will have the form Cyrenius. This is just an older transliteration of Kyrenios, the Greek form of Quirinius. On Quirinius, see; G Vermes, 2005. Who’s Who in the Age of Jesus, Penguin, 218-219. 40 Translation from: www./ccel/org/ccel/schaff/anfO1.viii.ii.xxxiv.html 38 in Bethlehem of Judaea at the time of the census which then first took place, while Quirinius was Governor of Syria (HE,1.5.2).41 Luke has resorted to a verifiable date in Roman history to fix the date of Jesus’ birth. The question is, of course, how accurate was he.42 (ii) the Roman Census: A census was a major event in the Roman world. The purpose was much the same as a modern census – to determine the number of citizens for the levying of specific charges, i.e. taxes. Augustus recorded three censuses of Roman citizens in his political memoir (RG, 8.2-4).43 Within Italy, citizens were only liable to what we call indirect taxation. Not so in the provinces. In fact, provincial censuses were first regulated and given over to the authority of the central government only in Augustus’ reign.44 In 48 CE, the emperor, Claudius, outlined the issues of the census, even among the Romans, themselves: When my father Drusus was subjugating Germany, they (the inhabitants of Gallia Comata [i.e. Italy n. of the Po River]) provided for him quietly with a safe and secure place in his rear, indeed even when he had been called away to that war from the census, which was at the time a new procedure to which the Gauls were unaccustomed. How arduous or even now is the census, although nothing more than recording our required, we all know from all too vivid experience.45 Individuals were required to provide full name, age, place of residence, name of their father or patronus, occupation and the amount of property owned. (i) in Egypt: The mechanics of the census in Roman Egypt are well known. For, from 5/ 6 to 257/ 8 CE, every fourteen years, district officials, i.e. nomarchs, were required to carry out a household census of the whole population, for the purposes of taxation. 46 The process as a whole, was the responsibility of the governor, the Prefect of Egypt: Gaius Vibius Maximus, Prefect of Egypt, declares: The house by house census, having begun, it is essential that all persons who for any reason at all are absent from their nomes be notified to return to their own hearths in order that they may fulfil the customary procedure of registration …47 The return would include details of all those resident in the house when the census was taken. A census return from the village of Tebtynis (papyrus Tebtynis) lists not only the 41 HE is the standard abbreviation of the Latin title, Historia Ecclesiae, of the Greek title of Eusebius’ history . The translation is that of the of the Loeb Classical Library. Eusebius, thus, dates the birth of Jesus to c. 1BCE. This corresponds to the equally precise date in Luke, 3.1. 42 R L Fox, The Unauthorized Version, Penguin, 1992, 27-31. 43 See: P A Brunt & J M Moore, Res Gestae Divi Augusti, OUP, 1967, 50-51; A E Cooley, ed., Res Gestae Divi Augusti, CUP, 2009, 138-142. 44 P S Derow, “census”, Oxford Classical Dictionary3, OUP, 1996, q.v., 308a-b. 45 “Claudius’ Speech to the Senate in 48 AD” (CIL 13 1668; ILS 212), ll. 36-41 (R Sherk, ed, The Roman Empire: Augustus to Hadrian, CUP, 1988, 56. 46 D Baker, “Some Findings from the Census Returns of Roman Egypt”, Ancient Resources: Resources for Teachers, 15(3), 1985, 138. D Noy, “Interpreting Scripture”, in C A Evans, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, Routledge, 2010, 302a. 47 N Lewis & M Reinhold, Roman Civilization, Sourcebook II: The Empire, Harper Torchbooks, 1966, 389. See, also, B W Jones & R D Milns, The Use of Documentary Evidence in the Study of Roman Imperial History, Sydney UP, 1984, n. 89 (140-141); Sherk, 1986, n. 114 (157), The document dates to 104 CE. 39 names and ages of all those resident, but their familial relationships. 48 I n this return, a married son has returned to his father’s house for the purpose of the census. The Egyptian census assembled the data for two taxes in particular, a poll tax (tributum capitis) and a property tax. Given the Roman interest in regulatory consistency, we can assume that the implementation of the census was the same across the Roman world.49 As a result, these census returns raise questions, for the historian if not the theologian, about Luke’s census. Since Luke (2.5) makes it quite clear that Joseph and Mary were not married 50, would Mary have been required t o accompany Joseph to Bethlehem? The putative census was being held to determine the tax revenues of Judaea. Since Joseph lived in Galilee (Luke, 2. 3-4), then not part of Judaea and, therefore, not liable to be subject to any resultant tax levy, why would he have been required to register in Bethlehem?51 Just what did the Vibius Maximus mean by “their own hearth” and how many generations back did he reckon? I n the case of papyrus Tebtynis, the married son returned to his father’s house, i.e. the house he had been born in, encompassing only one generation. What gap separated Joseph from David? According to Mathew (1.76-16), it was 28 generations; in the case of Luke (3.23-38), it was 42 generations. 52 (ii) in Judaea: Judaea entered the Roman consciousness in 63 BCE. In 40 BCE, Mark Anthony presented Judaea to the Idumaean, Herod, later Herod the Great. (Jos., AJ, 14. 384-389).53 Herod was again confirmed in his position in 30 BCE by Augustus (ibid., 15.194-198). At his death, Herod was succeed by his son Archelaus (ibid., 17.194) but only with the title, Ethnarch (ibid., 317).54 Archelaus governed till dismissed by Augustus in 6 CE.(ibid., 339344). Judaea, then, became a Roman [province with a governor, Coponius55, with the rank, Prefect, whose immediate superior was the Legate of Syria, Quirinius. Courtesy of the Romans, Judaea also suffered a census.56 (1) Now Cyrenius, a Roman senator, and one who had gone through other magistracies, and had passed through them until he had been consul, and one who, on other accounts, was of great dignity, came at this time into Syria, with a few others, being sent by Caesar to be a judge of that nation and to take an account of their substance. (2) Coponius also, a man of the equestrian order, was sent together with him, to have the supreme power over the Jews. Moreover. Cyrenius came himself into Judaea , which was now added to the province of 48 Baker, 1985, 138. Apographe is the Greek word used in the Egyptian documents. It is the same word Luke uses for his tax (W F Arndt & F W Gingrich, An English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, Chicago UP, 1957, q.v., 88b).. 50 Cf. Matthew, 1.24-25. 51 Matthew, 2.1, does not mention the census and has the family moving to Nazareth only after the return from Egypt (2.22-23). On the status of Galilee, ruled by Herod Antipas, see: Sanders, 1993, 20-22, 27, 31. 52 What is the length of a biblical generation? Traditionally 40 years. Even if only 25 years, the gaps between David and Joseph would still have been quite impressive. For a discussion of this discrepancy and other issues related to Jesus’ birth, see: Borg & Crossan, 2007, 245-250; Ehrman, 2009, 29-39; Sanders, 1993, 85-91; Vermes, 2006, 26-47. 53 On Josephus, see: Vermes, 2005, 159-163. AJ is the standard abbreviation of Josephus’ work, The Jewish Antiquities, whereas BJ is that of The Jewish War. Both abbreviations are the first letters of each word of the Latin title. All citations of Josephus are from: The New Complete Works of Josephus, transl. W Whiston, Kregel 1999. This is a revised edition of Whiston’s translation, originally published in 1737. 54 Matthew, 2.22, is aware of the succession of Archelaus but mistakenly titles his as “King”. For Archelaus, see: Vermes, 2005, 51-52. 55 Vermes, 2005, 74-75 56 For a list of all known Augustan censuses, see: P A Brunt, Roman Imperial Themes, OUP, 1990, 345-346. Brunt lists only one census for Judaea and links it with the census held in Syria in 6CE, i.e. during the Legateship of Quirinius. 49 40 Syria, to take an account of their substance, and to dispose of Archelaus’ money (Jos, AJ, 18.1-2).57 Judaea remained a province till 41 CE, when Claudius re-instated the Jewish kingdom under his friend, Herod Agrippa (Jos, AJ, 19.274). This new Jewish kingdom was short lived. Agrippa died suddenly in 44 CE, and Judaea became a province again (Jos., BJ, 2.220). For people being assessed for the first time, the census was proof of their recent subjection to Roman power. Surprisingly the Jews initially co-operated with the Roman authorities.58 However, ultimately the census caused fierce resentment among the Jews and spawned the resistance movement, commonly called the Zealots. (ibid., 3-10).59 (III) the Problem: Jesus was born while Herod, the Great, was still alive (Matthew, 2.1; Luke, 1.5, 26). Since several years separate the traditional dates for the death of Herod and the birth of Jesus, there is immediately a chronological problem (though not entirely of Luke’s making).60 However, disregarding this problem does not acquit Luke of potentially a major historical error, since irrespective of the date of Jesus’ birth, it and the census cannot have taken place in the same year, unless the traditional date of Jesus’ birth is wrong.61 Justin Martyr knew enough history to realise that there needed to be at least two censuses (cf. the mention of the first census), one about 6-4 BCE (the date of Herod’s death) and the known one of Quirinius in 6 CE.62 Hence, a simple solution was to read Luke, 2.2 (RSV), as: this taxing was made when Quirinius was governor of Syria for the first time. Unfortunately, this interpretation does considerable damage to the Greek text. For, the text makes it quite cleat that for the first time describes the census not the governorship.63 This approach also contradict0s Acts, 5.37, which makes it quite cleat that there was only one census, i.e. the census.64 (IV) the Inscription from Tivoli: There was no possible solution until 1764 with the discovery of an anacephalous four line inscription at Tivoli (ancient Tibur), the so called titulus Tiburtinus.65 57 Josephus mentions the census on two other occasions, both in the context of Quirinius’ Legateship of Syria (AJ, 17.354; BJ, 7.253). 58 There were biblical admonitions against participating in a census. See: J Court, The Bible, Penguin, 2007, 50. 59 On the origins of the Zealots, see: N Faulkner, Apocalypse, Tempus Publishing, 2007, 146-147; M Goodman, Rome and Jerusalem, Penguin, 2008, 211-212. 60 th As a result of the calculations of Dionysus Exiguus, of the 6 century CE (see: D Feeney, Caesar’s Calendar, California UP, 2007, 7-42), we date the birth of Jesus to 1 CE. By the same chronology, the death of Herod occurs in 4 BCE and the deposition of Archelaus in 6 CE 61 See: L L Grabbe, “Historiography” in C A Evans, ed., The Routledge Encyclopedia of the Historical Jesus, Routledge, 2010, 288a-b. 62 However, Eusebius’ account continues (1.5.3-4) to make it clear that he thought all the censuses, that in Luke, Acts (5.37) and Josephus, AJ, are the same one, which occurred, by our dating, in 1 CE. See the note on Eusebius, HE, 1.5.2 (LCL, vol. 1, n. 2 [pp. 46-47]). There is independent evidence for Quirinius’ census taking, not in Bethlehem, but in Apamea, in Syria, in 6 CE (Sherk, 1988, n. 22 [22]). 63 Cf. Fox, 1992, 29-30, More recent translations make the force of the Greek more obvious: This was the first registration of its kind; it took place when Quirinius was governor of Syria. (NEB). The mention of Quirinius occurs in a genitive absolute, essentially a noun with accompanying participle (in this instance, a present participle) in the genitive case. For the construction, see: J C Duff, The Elements of New Testament Greek, 3ed., CUP, 2005, 228-230; B H McLean, New Testament Greek: an Introduction, CUP, 2011, 172-173. The genitive absolute is more or less equivalent to the ablative absolute in Latin. 64 See: R Wallace & W Williams, edd., The Acts of the Apostles, Bristol Classical Press, 1993, 42. 65 For major discussions of the matters relating to the inscription, see: E Schurer, The History of the Jewish People in he Age of Jesus Christ, 2ed., edd. By G Vermes & F Millar, T & T Clark, 1973, vol. I, 399-427; and that of Ronald Syme. First published as: “The titulus Tiburtinus”, Akten de VI. Internationalen Kongresses fur Grieschische und Lateinische 41 The four lines (with an unknown number of lines missing from both before and after the fragment) are part of a funerary monument; acephalous because the name of the deceased man is missing. the translation: … the [k]ing, after the tribe had been brought under [the power of Imperator Caesar] Augustus and the Roman people, the senate[decreed to the immortal gods] two thanksgivings for [successful achievements] and triumphal ornaments to himself. As proconsul he [held] the province of Asia [as legatus propraetore] of the divine Augustus, a second time;[he held] Syria and [Phoenicia.] (E&J 199; author’s translation).66 Those with a religious bent seized on the inscription as the answer to the Lukan problem. For, it could be read as honouring a Roman official, who had twice been Legate of Syria. If the subject of the inscription could be identified as Quirinius, any issue with Luke’s text would be resolved. Indeed, the inscription now stands in the Vatican identifying Publius Sulpicius Quirinius as the deceased with Mommsen’s suggested first line: He waged war against the nation of the Homonadenses, who had killed King Amyntas, linking with regem, the first surviving word of the Latin text.67 As to be expected, the inscription has been subjected to intense study. It soon became apparent that the phrase for a second time referred to the subject’s holding two proconsular commands: the first as Proconsul of Asia; the second as Legate of Syria. So, no two Syrian governorships for Quirinius. Even worse, for, while there is still no consensus as to who the subject was, there is a definite consensus that it was not Quirinius.68 (V) the First Solution – Luke got the Name Wrong: There is, of course, a very simple solution. Assume that Luke has the event right but the name wrong. This is the solution adopted by Tertullian, Bishop of North Africa (2nd –3rd century CE). Tertullian knew enough Roman history to find a legate of Syria c. 6 BCE, the probable date of Jesus’ birth: Also, it is well known that a census had just been taken in Judaea by Sentius Saturninus (To Marcion, 4.19.10).69 At first sight, Terrtullian’s choice of C. Sentius Saturninus appears to be an inspired one.70 He was Legate of Syria c. 10/9 – 7/6 BCE, i.e. while Herod the Great was still alive.71 Additionally, with the elimination of Quirinius, Saturninus is one of the remaining contenders to be the subject of the titulus Tiburtinus.72 Unfortunately, Terullian’s solution is no answer. Epigraphik, Munchen, 1972 (Vestigia xvii, 1973), 585-601, it was republished in: R Syme, Roman Papers, III, ed. A R Birley, OUP, 1984, 869-884. 66 V Ehrenberg & A H M Jones, Documents illustrating the Reigns of Augustus and Tiberius, 2ed., OUP, 1976, p. 107 67 th Theodor Mommsen, was the greatest ancient historian of the 19 century. He revolutionised the study of Latin inscriptions and was largely responsible for the production of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum), first published by the Berlin Academy in1863 with new volumes still being published today . See: J E Sandys, Latin Epigraphy, 2ed, CUP, 1927, 30-31). 68 Quirinius had been in the east before c.1 BCE-3/4 CE but only as advisor to Gaius Caesar. This posting is mentioned by Augustus (RG, 27.2). and Tacitus (Annals, 3.48.2) but only in connection with Greater Armenia, not Syria. 69 Tertullian, Adversus Marcionem, ed. E Evans, OUP, 1972. 70 Saturninus was consul in 19 BCE (Dio, 54.10.1 [Cassius Dio, The Roman History: the Reign of Augustus, transl. I ScottKilvert, Penguin, 1987]). 71 Saturninus’ Legateship of Syria is mentioned several times by Josephus (AJ, 16.344; 17.6; BJ, 1.538). For the date, see Shurer, 1973, 257. 72 See: N Kokkinos, “The Honorand of the Titulus Tiburtinus :C Sentius Saturninus?”, Zeitschrift fur Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 105, 1995, 21-36 (www.uni-koeln.de/phil-fak/ifa/zpe/downloads/1995/105pdf/105021.pdf 42 For, during Saturninus’ Legateship of Syria, Judaea was a client kingdom of the Roman Empire, autonomous in terms of taxation. There would have been no census. Tertullian’s solution posits at least two censuses in Judaea. Yet, there is still that mention of the census (Acts, 5.37). Additionally, the choice of Saturninus, thereby dating the census to no later than c. 6 BCE, cannot be reconciled with the statement in Luke (3..23) of Jesus’ age at the beginning of his ministry.73 (VI) the Second Solution – Luke got the Date Wrong: The date concerned is not that of the census but that of the date of Jesus’ birth. We live in a world awash with dates. For simplicity our world has adopted a common dating system (BC/AD, or the less sensitive BCE/CE). Luke lived in a world of a multiplicity of dating systems, for which there was no easy synchronicity.74 Witness the cumbersome method Luke uses to fix the date of the start of John the Baptist’s ministry. A number was insufficient precision; there are another five dating markers (Luke, 3.1). So has Luke just got the date of Jesus’ birth wrong? Events surrounding the death of Herod were not dissimilar from those at the deposition of Archelaus. Falsely assuming that Herod was already dead, a certain Judas and one Matthias got together a band of young men, who tore down the golden eagle erected by Herod over the gate to the Temple (Jos., AJ, 17.149-154). Judas and Mathias’ fate was to be burnt alive (167). The eventual death of Herod in 4 BCE triggered a disturbance, which saw the city of Sepphoris seized by brigands (Jos, AJ, 17.271; BJ, 2.56).. The situation required the intervention of the legate of Syria, P. Quinctilius Varus, the so-called Varan War (Jos., AJ, 17. 286-289; BJ, 2. 68-69).75 On the deposition of Archelaus, the legate of Syria, P. Sulpicius Quirinius held that census (Luke, 2.2). It, too, led to a significant disturbance and was instrumental in the emergence of the 4th Philosophy of Judaism, presumably the Zealots (Jos., AJ, 18.1-9).76 Surely, you might say, Luke could not confuse Herod the Great with Archelaus?. The answer is not that simple For, there is no consensus among ancient sources (particularly among New Testament writers) on how to address members of the dynasty.77 For some, Herod is added to their name to indicate the familial connection, much the same as Caesar is so used in Roman History. The founder of the dynasty is addressed as Herod I,e, Herod the Great (Matthew, 2.1-22; Luke, 1.5). Josephus, for the principal members of the dynasty, does not use Herod in their names. Thereafter, consistency breaks down. Herod Antipas, who ordered the execution of John the Baptist (Matthew, 14.3-12) and interrogated Jesus during his trial (Luke, 23. 6-12) is simply called Herod.78 However, Marcus Iulius Agrippa, i.e. King Herod Agrippa I, is called Agrippa in Acts (12, 1, 6, 19, 21).79 His son of the same name, Marcus Iulius Agrippa, i.e. King Herod Agrippa II, is called Herod (Acts, 25. 13, 23, 26; 26., 1, 2, 19-20, 73 Tertullian’s solution is partially adopted by the editors of the Catholic New American Bible (Thomas Nelson [US], 1970, 1135a, n. to Luke, 2.1-5). They accept a first Legateship of Quirinius, c. 10-8 BCE (on the evidence of the titulus Tiburtinus) but have the census completed by Saturninus. This scheme would still result in a 40 yr old Jesus at the beginning of his public ministry. 74 The first major attempt to provide this synchronicity was the Chronicon of Eusebius, which survives in the copy by Jerome (Feeney, 2007, 30-36). 75 M Grant, The Jews in the Roman World, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1973, 86; E M Smallwood, The Jews under Roman Rule: Pompey to Diocletian, Brill, 1981, 106-113 76 S G F Brandon, Jesus and the Zealots, Manchester UP, 1967, 26-64. For a dissenting view, see: Goodman, 2008, 211212, 414-415. 77 For the stemma of the Herodians, see: Goodman, 2008, 4-5; Kregel edition of Josephus, 567-568. Sanders (1993, n. 8 to ch. 3 [294]) lists the principal members of the dynasty with corresponding NT references. 78 See: T Rajak, “Herod (2) Antipas”, OCD3, 694b-695a. 79 T Rajak, “Iulius Agrippa (1) I, Marcus”, OCD3, 778b-779a. 43 27-28, 32).80 While Archelaus is only mentioned once in the New Testament as Archelaus (Matthew, 2. 22), he is called “Herod of Palestine” by Dio Cassius.81 (VII) Conclusion: A careful reader will have realised that I favour Luke’s getting the date wrong over any other solution. Finding another Roman Legate of Syria to replace Quirinuus does not solve the major historical problems associated with dating the census to 1 CE. Feeney provides a fascinating example of the problem facing classical writers when it came to dates. In the mid 2nd century CE, Aulus Gellius compiled a work, The Attic Nights, a compendium of interesting stories he had picked up in conversations with friends. He included a section on synchronicity.82 He begins with the following passage: In order to have a kind of considered overview of very ancient eras and correspondingly of the illustrious men, who have been born in these times, so as to avoids by chance blurting out in conversation some un-considered remark about the era of life of men, who are quite well known, as those uneducated sophist did who recently gave a public lecture in which he said that Carneades, the philosopher, had been given some money by King Alexander, the son of Philip and that Panaetius, the Stoic, had been in the circle of the elder Africanus…(17.21.1 [Feeney’s translation, 11]). The unknown sophist has got his dates badly wrong. We could easily ascertain that Carneades visited Rome c. 155 BCE, whereas King Alexander, i.e. Alexander, the Great, died in 323 BCE. Likewise, Africanus, the elder, i.e. Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Maior, died when Panaetius was a baby. The Africanus Panaetius was a familiaris of was Publius Cornelius Scipio Aemilianus Africanus Minor, who died in 129 BCE. Luke’s conflating events at the death of Herod with those at the deposition of Archelaus, is an error by a writer otherwise keen to get his facts right.83 Yet, it is a relatively minor historical error. However, it remains a major theological issue.84 80 3 T Rajak, “Iulius Agrippa (2) II, Marcus”, OCD , 779a. Dio, 56.27 (Scott-Kilvert, 217 and n. 64, 293). 82 Feeney, 2007, 31-42. 83 Luke was concerned to describe events as they had happened (Luke, 1.1-4). However, he did not always succeed. In Acts, 5, Luke mentions the activities of a Theudas (36) and then the later activities of Judas, the Galilaean (37). Presumably, Theudas is the Theudas mentioned by Josephus (AJ, 20.96-97). This Theudas was active several years after the date of this point in the narrative of Acts, and some forty years after the revolt of Judas, the Galilaean in 6 CE [Wallace & Williams, 1993, 42]). 84 Were the writers of the Gospels “divinely inspired”? The divine inspiration of scripture, or the infallibility of scripture, entered Protestantism as a reaction to the Catholic declaration of papal infallibility in1870. (A McGrath, Christianity’s Dangerous Idea, HarperOne, 2007, 205, 220-221). If scripture is inerrant, how can the discrepancies found in both Old and New Testament be explained? On this issue, see: Erhman,, 2009. 81 44 Scat t ered Seeds The legacies of ‘t he last paradise’ Garry Wotherspoon Kuta Beach - Bali In 1979, a magnificent cremation ceremony took place in Bali, the finale in the lives of two men whose story might be read on one level as a classic ‘love story’. The two were the Dutch-born artist Rudolf Bonnet and the Balinese prince Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati. Bonnet had died in Holland in late 1978, and was buried there. The prince died in Bali early in 1979, and a few months later, Bonnet’s body was dug up from its grave in Holland and flown to Ubud, and together their remains were part of one of the most elaborate ceremonies that had been seen on the island in living memory, as they went together on their journey to what the Balinese refer to as ‘the realm of the gods’.i Today, Bali is a tourist paradise, and the town of Ubud, roughly in the centre of the island, is known as the cultural capital of Indonesia. Ubud hosts writers’ festivals and is renowned for its galleries, and as the place where the Pita Maha Art Movement began. And involved in the processes that led to these developments were a group of western artists, most of them homosexual, who came to the island of Bali from the early decades of the 20th century, and who fell in love with the place (and / or its people) and stayed to pursue their artistic and cultural visions and their emotional lives. It was around the end of the 19th century that many European artists began to be influenced by artistic styles outside of the West. Some, like Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Paul Gauguin and Amedeo Modigliani, became aware of and were inspired by African art. Another major influence on European art then was Japan: various European artists, among them many Impressionists, as well as the post-impressionist Vincent van Gogh and others as different as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and James McNeill Whistler, all came in contact with and admired the works of traditional Japanese artists, and their own works often reflected this. 45 Many fin de siècle European artists chose to leave Europe and follow their ‘muse’, often travelling to various European colonies around the world. While there were undoubtedly ‘artistic’ interests at play here, many of these destinations were places where men of dissident sexualities could live in peace.ii And Bali soon became such a destination. Despite being nominally part of the Dutch East Indies, Bali’s conquest was not fully realized until the end of the first decade of the 20th century.iii And it had been a violent process. Over the second half of the 19th century, various vicious campaigns had been fought against the local princes, but these campaigns only brought the northern parts of the island under effective Dutch control. But it was the brutal campaign of 1906 that saw the beginning of the end. The morning of 20th September that year saw the massacres of thousands of Balinese, in what has become memorialized as ‘Badang Puputan’. The equally brutal campaigns of 1908 finalized the conquest.iv After the Dutch took control of the island, what the West knew about Bali changed rapidly. The Dutch photographer W O J Niewenkamp had first come to Bali in 1904, and then again in 1906, where he witnessed at first hand the massacres of Badang Puputan. He was an artist-illustrator of the island’s culture, documenting not only its landscapes, temples and other buildings, but also its people and their ceremonies and artefacts. He was followed by Gregor Krause, a young German medical doctor who entered the Dutch Colonial Indonesian Service in 1912, and published his book Bali, a collection of original photographs, later that year. Niewenkamp’s book, Wandering in Bali, was published in 1922. The Dutch encouraged the development of tourism in Bali, as the island had few other resources.v But it was only when the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company added the island of Bali to its itinerary in the early 1920s that westerners became more easily able to visit.vi That decade saw the arrival of several influential western artists, such as Willem Dooijewaard and Roland Strasser in the early 1920s, followed in 1925 by Marius Bauer. Then came Walter Spies and Charles Sayers in 1927, and Rudolf Bonnet in 1929, and it was from then that Bali began to develop an international reputation as an enclave for artists and other ‘cultural practitioners’ such as musicologists, sculptors and writers. What stands out about this collection is just how many of them were homosexually-inclined, with their sexuality now well documented. And over the years, men with a dissident sexuality continued to come to Bali, their access facilitated by an everlasting thread – the first arrivals would provide a base for the next arrivals, introduce them around, and so on – with the process continuing over much of the 20th century. This tale really begins with Walter Spies. Walter Spies was born in Moscow in September 1895, the son of a German diplomat. Growing up, he developed a great interest in music and dance, painting, and nature. After studying in Dresden, he moved to Berlin to devote himself to film and music, this latter a talent that was later to pay off well. It was in Berlin, after World War I, that he met some influential artists, such as Oskar Kokoschka and Otto Dix. He is also said to have admired the works of Marc Chagall and Paul Klee. In the summer of 1919 he had his first exhibition, and his paintings were well received. He also became the lover of film director Fritz Murnau,vii receiving a major legacy in Murnau’s will after the latter’s death in 1931; as the authors of Bali: The Imaginary Museum noted discreetly of Murnau’s bequest, ‘his generosity towards Walter may indicate an especially strong attachment’.viii 46 But in 1923 Spies decided to leave Europe and sailed to Java, where he travelled first to Bandung, and then on to Yogyakarta, where he managed to find employment with the local sultan, as leader of the sultan’s European orchestra. He was much taken by the gamelan, and invented a way to transcribe onto paper the gamelan music, previously only taught by individual mentoring tuition. In 1925 he paid a visit to Bali, and was attracted at once, particularly to the island’s unspoilt natural beauty. According to local prince Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, it was his elder brother Tjokorda Gde Raka Sukawati who invited Spies to come and live in Ubud,ix and in 1927 Spies left the sultan's employment and moved to Bali permanently. And it was in Ubud that Spies ‘encountered a culture as graceful and refined as any in the world, where everyone, it seemed, was an artist of one sort or another, and child dancers in mystic trances enacted the fables of the Hindu classic Ramayana to the exuberant, clangorous accompaniment of a gamelan’.x Spies was a homosexual who took little trouble to hide his inclinations, and as one writer has noted, ‘Spies homosexuality may not necessarily have added to his own sensitivity and cultural awareness, but it did contribute to the positive openness in his relations with Balinese, particularly Balinese men’.xi But Spies had not been the first homoerotically-inclined westerner to arrive. He had been preceded by Willem Dooijewaard and Roland Strasser. Dooijewaard had arrived in Bali in the early 1920s, settled there for a while, and often returned to the island. According to one informant, “it has been suggested by several knowledgeable sources that, despite both men having been married, Dooijewaard and Roland Strasser shared ‘more than a common artistic vision’“.xii Strasser was a Viennese-born artist who had left his homeland in 1920. He travelled to Asia, where he journeyed through Siam and Indonesia, then New Guinea, China, India, Mongolia, Tibet, and Japan. It is possible that it was on this trip, while in Indonesia, that he first met Willem Dooijewaard. Next to arrive was Rudolf Bonnet. He was born in 1895 in Amsterdam, and in 1920 he left Holland for Italy, where he would spend the best part of the next eight years, mostly in the village of Anticoli Corrado near Rome. It was in Italy too that he first heard of Bali, from Nieuwenkamp, who was living nearby. In 1928, a family visit to the Dutch East Indies gave Bonnet his first experience of what is now Indonesia. Once in Java, however, the memory of the Bali photographs that Nieuwenkamp had shown him in Italy drew him further east, and he decided to visit Bali, arriving there at the end of January 1929. Bonnet, also openly homosexual, was fascinated by the Balinese dance and pageantry, and so decided to stay. After two months in Tampaksiring, he moved to a pavilion rented from the punggawa (the hereditary vassal lord of a district, subservient to the raja) of Peliatan, through whom Bonnet was introduced to many locals, including both Walter Spies and two princes, Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati and Tjokorda Gde Raka Sukawati. A close friendship grew up between Bonnet and Gde Agung, and later that year Bonnet was invited by Tjokorde Raka Sukawati to live in Ubud.xiii When Spies moved to a new house in Campuhan, Bonnet took over Spies’s water palace in Ubud, and set up his studio there. Over the next few years, other homosexuals came. One was the American dancer and artist Hubert Stowitts, who had been ‘discovered’ by Anna Pavlova in 1915 when she was touring North America, and he danced with her there and in South America, and then on to Europe. In the late 1920s he left Europe, and traveled through the Far East, living and painting in Indonesia for a year. Apparently the people and culture were ‘agreeable to him’.xiv Indeed, 47 according to Stowitts’ biographer, it was there that he ‘found freedoms and opportunities unthinkable in his native US or Europe’, especially the ‘personal freedoms’ that he allowed himself.xv Another source shows a photo of him years later, with a bronze sculpture described as depicting his “Balinese lover.” xvi Another ‘visitor’ was Colin McPhee, the Canadian ethno-musicologist, composer, and promoter in the West of gamelan music. He first arrived in Bali in 1931 with his American wife Jane Bello, a disciple of Margaret Mead. McPhee spent most of the next seven years in Bali, researching and recording Balinese music, and while there he ‘came out’, divorcing his wife in 1937. The Dutch textile designer Auke Sonnega, born in 1901, who had been working in Batavia in 1935, had first come to Bali in the late 1930s, where he initially wrote newspaper travel stories. Also homosexual,xvii he settled in Ubud in Rudolf Bonnet’s old studio in Puri Kaleran, where he worked at his paintings, initially influenced by Art Deco styles. Known locally as ‘The Group’, artists such as Spies and Bonnet and the musicologist McPhee, and later Sonnega and certain other ‘visitors’, were to be prominent residents there for years, but living perhaps on a thin fault-line, between acceptance and scandal:xviii Bali was, after all, a colonial outpost of the Calvinist Dutch. Spies’s house – and hospitality – became ‘the doorway to Bali’ for many travelers. And there were many short-term visitors who came to visit the ‘artistic’ colony that had emerged around Spies and Bonnet. In 1931 Spies' house in Campuhan was packed with the crew of a German film company. Viktor Baron von Plessen was making what was to become the ‘classic’ film about Bali, Insel der Dämonen (Island of Demons): “Spies's name was the guarantee for a scenario faultlessly faithful to Bali with the right actors and effective choreography. This was the occasion for which Spies remodelled the kecak , the so-called monkey-dance. He increased the number of participants to more than a hundred young men sitting in a circle, and also introduced the figure of the dancer-narrator who recites, in the light of a central standing lamp, tales from the Ramayana involving the exploits of Hanoman, the monkey-general”xix. The movie, with its blatantly homoerotic kecak dance, was released in 1933 and had a great influence on the way the world saw Balinese art and culture. Responding to the local princes’ concerns about the type of paintings that were seen as ‘typical’ of Balinese art, which was being purchased by the increasing number of visitors, Spies and Bonnet were instrumental in setting up the Pita Maha Art Cooperative, although according to Gde Agung Sukawati, it was Bonnet who “was the prime mover to create our art society”.xx Previously the local paintings served primarily religious or ceremonial functions. Such paintings were used as decorative cloths to be hung in temples and important houses, or as calendars to determine children's horoscopes. Spies and Bonnet, along with local artist I Gusti Nyoman Lempad and the two princes, set about creating the artists' association Pita Maha, which means "great vitality". Although relatively short-lived – far short of a decade – the movement was credited with the modernization of traditional Balinese painting styles. Spies and Bonnet provided painting materials and introduced western painting concepts, such as depth perspectives and techniques concerning picture and color composition. More importantly, they acted as agents of change by encouraging individual freedom of expression and departures from the confines of Balinese painting traditions.xxi The result was an explosion of individual expression that led to the birth of modern ‘traditional’ Balinese painting. Evident changes included the shifting of the choice of subject matter from the narration of religious epics to the depiction of daily Balinese life and its dramas; ‘patrons’ became western tourists/collectors, rather than the religious temples and 48 royal houses as in the past; and the picture composition shifted from multiple to single focus. This latter aspect is most evident in the works of these Ubud artists, xxii and their work was sold even in Europe, with two shops in Holland.xxiii As well as paintings, there were sculptures, silverwork and craft objects created, and sold.xxiv Another artist to visit sporadically was Charles Sayers, who first visited Bali in 1927-28, and the again over the years 1932 to 1934. Sayers, with Hendrik Paulides, was chosen to do the murals that decorated the walls of the Netherlands Indies Pavilion at the International Colonial Exhibition in Paris in 1931; Spies was the curator of the Balinese section of that same Exhibition,xxv and Gde Raka Sukawati ‘was the leader of the first dance group to go to Paris for that Exhibition’.xxvi The Bali artists and their community were becoming increasingly well-known in Europe. Strasser, after the end of his affair with Willem Dooijewaard, continued his travels, returning to Bali in 1934, where he lived and painted for ten years in his studio in the mountainous area of Kintamani, just above Lake Batur. Some of those who came were just visitors, while others stayed for anything from a month to years. And many broadcast Bali’s charms to the world. Among them were Hickman Powell, whose The Last Paradise was published in 1930, and its title soon became synonymous with Bali. Then there was George Collins’ Twin Flower, A Story of Bali, published in 1934. The novelist Vicki Baum came briefly in 1935 and collected material for her book A Tale from Bali, published in 1937. The Mexican artist and writer and Vanity Fair's cartoonist Miguel Covarrubias, who had first arrived at Ubud in 1931 with his wife Rosa Rolando, returned again in 1933 and wrote The Island of Bali, an account of life in Bali and Balinese culture in general; it was published in 1939. It was largely through such books that the wider world initially got to know about Bali. Such books began to tantalize westerners, and helped to increase the trickle of visitors – during the 1930s roughly a hundred tourists a month came to the island. Insel der Dämonen wasn’t the only movie to draw attention to Bali, nor was it the first: this was probably Calon Arang, released in 1927.xxvii Then in 1935 there appeared the Hollywood-produced film, Legong: dance of the Virgins, shot in Bali in 1933 and starring local girl Poutou as an island beauty. It was followed in 1937 by The Hurricane, directed by John Ford and starring Dorothy Lamour, also as an island beauty. In 1938, renowned Hollywood director Busby Berkeley included in his Gold Diggers in Paris a Bali-based production number - “I wanna go back to Bali, they don’t have a word for no”.xxviii As well, there was the James A Fitzpatrick’s famous Traveltalk travel documentary, Beautiful Bali, released in 1940; it was “a look at Bali, in the Dutch East Indies, 90 miles long, 45 miles wide, and home to a million people.”xxix Gradually, Bali was becoming seen as ‘the ideal of the romantic paradise’.xxx Despite being somewhat ‘off the map’, even after the Royal Dutch Steam Packet Company had regularized travel to Bali in the 1920s, from the early 1930s the place did become a ‘mecca’ for visiting ‘celebrities’ and researchers. The occasional steamship would dock at Singaraja on the north coast, and tourists would then motor down to Denpasar, staying at Louise Garret and Bob Koke’s Bali Hotel there, visiting Ubud on the way: Garrett and surfboard rider Koke (later her husband) had moved to Bali in 1936, and had set up a small tourist hotel on a then fairly deserted but promising beach - Kuta. But it was more by word of mouth that the cognoscenti got to know about the homosexual enclave in Bali and its attractions. The ‘homintern’ spread the word, and in the 1930s Bali was known in ‘gay’ circles around the world as a place tolerant of homosexuality, and where a little money could buy a grand lifestyle. New York at the time even boasted a gay 49 nightclub called ‘The Sins of Bali’xxxi. Among the many visitors to Spies and his ménage were such notables as heiresses Doris Duke and Barbara Hutton, the latter giving Spies a Leica camera. German sexologist and homosexual emancipist Magnus Hirschfeld, Swiss artist Theo Meier, conductor Leopold Stokowski, composer Cole Porter, anthropologist Margaret Mead with her husband and fellow anthropologist Gregory Bateson,xxxii and dancers and ethnologists Ted and Katharene Merson also visited. It was Balinese dance that drew many of these visitors, especially musicologists and ethnographers, after the release of Insel der Dämonen. It was often the graphic performance of the exotic Legong dancers that attracted attention: ‘Legong dancers were very young… lending weight to the belief that the Balinese could dance before they could walk’,xxxiii and Noel Coward, who came to Bali with Charlie Chaplin in 1935, penned some delightful doggerel, gently mocking the cultural aura of the island: As I mentioned this morning to Charlie There is far too much music in Bali And altho' as a place it's entrancing There is also a thought too much dancing. It appears that each Balinese native From the womb to the tomb is creative, From sunrise till long after sundown, Without getting nervy or rundown They sculpt and they paint and they practise their songs, They run through their dances and bang on their gongs, Each writhe and each wriggle, Each glamorous wriggle Each sinuous action, Is timed to a fraction. And altho' the results are quite charming, If sometimes a trifle alarming! And altho' all the 'Lovelies' and 'Pretties' Unblushingly brandish their titties The whole thing's a little too clever And there's too much artistic endeavour! Forgive the above mentioned Charlie, I had to rhyme something with Bali. The interwar period had been a time of increasing turmoil in the west; the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange had occurred in 1929; the Great Depression had spread its damages around the world by the early 1930s; and fascist dictatorships were emerging across Europe. And it was perhaps this that encouraged many of the homosexual European artists to seek refuge far away from the dark clouds of intolerance spreading across their homelands. But by late in that decade and in this unsettled context, not everyone was impressed by the stream of ‘bohemian’ western visitors to Bali and their antics. The Calvinist Dutch, perhaps anxious to be seen as preserving western moral standards, were growing uneasy at, and increasingly offended by, the coming and going of all these visitors and their free and loose ‘immoral’ lifestyles. As the 1930s progressed, a series of homosexual scandals involving localsxxxiv - and Spies’s close friendship with some of these men - led to him being arrested for so-called indecent behaviour. He was charged and found guilty, and sent to prison in December 50 1938, where he remained until September 1939; his Balinese lover is said to have sung to him to the accompaniment of a gamelan orchestra outside the prison walls.xxxv It is also possible that another underlying factor in the crackdown was the Dutch administration’s concern that tolerance of such ‘degeneracy’ would discourage the equally puritanical Americans from providing protection from a possible impending Japanese threat. Not that it did any good; the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and Indonesia, with its rubber and oil, was clearly on their agenda, and was invaded soon after. Spies had been released from prison, but his freedom was brief. As a German national, he was arrested by the Dutch authorities at the outbreak of war, and in 1942 when, with other German civilian internees sailing from Padang in Sumatra to Sri Lanka, the ship was bombed by a Japanese plane and sank near Nias Island. Spies was among those who died.xxxvi The Japanese attack of the Dutch East Indies, despite the obvious value of such envied prizes of rubber and oil, went almost unopposed. On 17 February 1942 the Japanese invaded the island of Bali, and two days later they bombed Darwin in northern Australia, rendering it useless as a supply and naval base to support Allied operations in the East Indies. With the Japanese occupation, Pita Maha came to an end, and most westerners with Allied passports fled the Indonesian islands. Several of them ended up in Sydney, in Merioola, a boarding house in the suburb of Woollahra, run by artist Chica Lowe.xxxvii Although Japanese rule was relatively brief – less than four years - its brutality and the harsh treatment of the Balinese people led to ongoing unrest and a radicalizing of Balinese youth. So even when the Japanese surrendered and left the island in August 1945, there was little in the way of a welcoming mat for the returning Dutch, who soon found themselves involved in guerrilla warfare in their old colonies, which were seeking independence. A ‘Republic of Indonesia’ was declared in 1945, although the Dutch, hoping to maintain control, created a new state of Eastern Indonesia, which they hoped to later merge into a pro-Dutch federation, but this did little to quell revolutionary fervour, and the Dutch were forced to formally grant independence in 1949. After the war, there was both continuity and change in Bali. Some of the old guard returned. Bonnet had been captured by the Japanese early in World War II and interned in Makassar (Ujung Pandang) in the Celebes (Sulawesi) in East Indonesia, and he returned to Bali in 1946, but efforts to revive the Pita Maha Association failed. He helped to found a new group, the Golongan Pelukis Ubud (Ubud Painters’ Group) in 1953, but it did not have the impact of the former Pita Maha group. He was also involved in setting up the Museum Puri Lukisan (Royal Museum of Painting) in 1956, also in Ubud. Along with Bonnet, Auke Sonnega was still there, but over the years his interests and painting style changed, attributed to the spiritual visions brought on by conversations with his intimate friend Husein Rofe, mainly about Javanese mysticismxxxviii, and he turned increasingly to portraiture, “usually of doe-eyed young men (he was, in the words of a long time Ubud expatriate euphemism, a member of the ‘club”).xxxix Sonnega stayed in Bali until 1957, when authorities forced him to leave, for political reasons. How had all this very open homosexual behaviour of the westerners affected the selfperceptions of the various young Balinese men who came into close contact with them and knew about their habits and sexual preferences? And also, how did the young Balinese men who might themselves have entered into same-sex relations with these interesting and 51 exotic westerners see themselves? Here the differences between homosexuality as an ‘act’ and homosexual as an ‘identity’ is a critical distinction, one that even Alfred Kinsey had noted, when he argued that the word 'homosexual' should be used only as an adjective, not as a noun: there were no ‘homosexuals’; but there were clearly homosexual acts. Kinsey was rejecting the notion 'that homosexual males and females are discretely different from people who merely have homosexual experience, who react sometimes to homosexual stimuli'.xl This distinction is specifically relevant to the Balinese. Underpinning Balinese culture is its religion, a composite belief and value system that has its roots in Buddhism and Indian Hinduism, and has also integrated the animistic traditions of the indigenous people. It embraces ancestor worship, animism and magic, an amalgam in which Hindu gods and demigods are worshipped together with Buddhist heroes and the spirits of ancestors, indigenous agricultural deities and sacred places. Most significantly, Balinese religion did not demonize ‘homosexual acts among men’ – this was simply something that men did, usually – but not exclusively - before they married. If searching for a western counterpart, probably the closest we might come to it is that of those ‘special friendships’ that existed in Anglo-Saxon cultures over several centuries, before the emergence of a specific sexualized identity, as occurred in Europe from the late nineteenth century, when the 'homosexual' was created, as ...a personage, a past, a case history, and a childhood, in addition to being a type of life, a life form, and a morphology, with an indiscreet anatomy and possibly a mysterious physiology. Nothing that went into his total composition was unaffected by his sexuality. It was everywhere present in him: at the root of all his actions because it was their insidious and indefinitely active principle; written immodestly on his face and body because it was a secret that always gave itself away. It was consubstantial with him, less as a habitual sin than as a singular nature.xli Evidence of how Balinese men, without this western conceptual baggage, might have seen themselves in this context of contrasting values and perceptions, is difficult to find, partly because of the lack of documentation, itself a result of the island’s largely oral cultural traditions. As Tom Boellstorff points out in The Gay Archipelago: sexuality and nation in Indonesia, any “available documentation is often so minimal that one is forced to make do with limited sources and craft the best possible narrative”.xlii And this is in the context of what one authority has noted: “For the Balinese, homosexuality was merely a pastime to be enjoyed by young unmarried men and not a matter for moral condemnation.”xliii Indeed, according to Jane Belo, the sudden surge of anti-homosexual activity that resulted in Spies’s arrest made the Balinese think that “the whole ‘white caste’ had gone stark raving mad”.xliv The only real example we have for that period of crafting what Boellstorff calls ‘the best possible narrative’, is a case study of those two people whose deaths began this story – Rudolf Bonnet and Prince Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati. Their story begins in 1929 when Bonnet arrived in Bali, but we know little about the ‘special friendship’ between the two men. The Spies scandal and its impact would certainly have led to a need for discretion: Gde Agung’s own Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, published in 1979, contains several pages detailing the establishment of the Pita Maha Art Movement, and the later setting up of the Art Museum in Ubud, in which there are several innocuous references to ‘my friend, Mr Bonnet’.xlv 52 Bonnet, after his release from a prisoner-of-war camp in 1945, had returned to Ubud and spent much of his time and energy for the rest of his life dealing with the legacy of the Pita Maha years, and clearly had close contact with Gde Agung. As the Reminiscences tell us, in 1947 Bonnet was urging Gde Agung to take in paying guests, to help deal with their money problems;xlvi and in 1949, Gde Agung suggested to Bonnet that “we start a guest book” to record the well-known persons who were staying with them.xlvii But Bonnet was forced to leave Bali in 1957, after he refused to sell a painting to President Sukarno, although he was able to return to the island several times in the 1970s, to continue his work and see old friendsxlviii. Eventually, he passed away peacefully in 1978 in Laren in Holland, where he had gone for medical treatment. Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, as was appropriate for a man of his position in his society, was married several times and had several children, and in his Reminiscences he is the essence of discretion, and mentions Bonnet only occasionally, merely referring to him as a good and close friend. xlix He did, however, acknowledge that on Bonnet’s release from the prisoner-of-war camp Bonnet “wanted very much to see me’.l Such discretion might well be understandable, since the post-war decades were dominated by the Cold War, a time of persecution in parts of the West of homosexuals and others perceived as ‘different’, as evidenced by the McCarthy hearings in the USA, and the crackdown on homosexuals in Britain, where a police drive against 'male vice' gathered pace over the years from 1951 to the late-1950s. And in Australia, the NSW Police Commissioner, Colin Delaney, declared in the 1950s that the two greatest threats facing Australia at the time were communism and homosexuality.li It was hardly a time anywhere in the world conducive to any open declarations of a dissident sexuality. But there was renewed interest in Bali. More books had come out, such as Frank Nunn’s Java Sea Mystery, published in Sydney in 1941. More influential was Mead and Bateson’s Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis, published in 1942, the fruition of their research in Bali between 1936 and 1939.lii After the war came Colin McPhee’s A House in Bali in 1947, which described Bali as ‘an enchanted land of aesthetes at peace with themselves and nature’. McPhee’s ex-wife Jane Bello’s Bali: Temple Festival followed in 1953; then Revolt in Paradise, by K’tut Tantri, was published in 1960,liii and Stranger in Paradise, by Made Wijaya (formerly Michael White of Sydney) came out in 1979. Louise Koke’s reminiscences, Our Hotel in Bali, was not published until 1987; over two decades later, books were still coming, as with Nigel Barley’s Island of Demons in 2010. And new films also drew the world’s attention to Bali and its attractions. In the 1949 musical South Pacific, Bali Ha’I – like Bali - is a volcanic island, and ‘Bali Ha'I’ is its most haunting tune. And Dorothy Lamour reprised her role as an island beauty in the popular 1952 comedy Road to Bali, with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. Also in Bali was Arie Smit. Smit had first come to Indonesia in 1938 on a military contract, assigned to the Topographical Service as a lithographer.liv But he only arrived in Bali in 1956, and settled initially in the Sanur area. By applying for Indonesia citizenship in 1951, Smit managed to avoid being expelled with his friends Sonnega and Bonnet in 1957.lv Smit moved many times around the island to different locales, and finally settled near Ubud in the village of Sanggingan, under the patronage of Pande Suteja Neka, founder of the Neka Museum. Smit, like his counterparts two decades earlier, started a ‘Young Artists’ school in Bali, and his works often show attractive lithe, brown-skinned Balinese youths; one recurring image is of a particularly handsome young man, named only as ‘Balinese Youth’ in the many paintings of him.lvi 53 But the decades had passed, and although Bali continued to attract men with an ‘artistic’ bent, searching perhaps for that ‘last paradise’ – people like Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears, who visited in January 1956, and met Bonnet several timeslvii - time took its toll. Bonnet spent much of his time and energy dealing with the legacy of the Pita Maha years: collecting and researching the works, looking for funds for what was to be the Museum Puri Lukisan in Ubud, planning its construction, making its inventory, and preparing its catalogue. Despite having been forced to leave Bali in 1957, he was able to return to the island in 1972, 1973, 1975 and 1976 to continue his worklviii. Eventually, burdened by sickness but also by age, he returned to Holland in 1978. Bali, of course, is no longer ‘the ideal of the romantic paradise’, isolated and secluded. The modern world has encroached, and Bali is now an established tourist destination.lix And while Homoséks and hémong continued to arrive, as tourists - or artists, landscape gardeners, painters, translators, designers, sculptors, writers, or musicologists. - they are merely some among many. Over the decades, the legacy of those who chose to seek sanctuary in ‘the last paradise’’ has been paid to the Balinese people. Balinese art has been radically transformed, from a static traditional focus on demons and magical figures taken from old Bali folklore and Hindu legends, to a wide range of styles. Indeed, ‘painting’ as known in the West is not a very old art in Bali. While the European artists in Indonesia in the early 1900s might have been strongly influenced by an Orientalism that was inextricably tied to the prevailing colonial viewpoint, the work of ‘The Group’ influenced a new style in Bali, and it can still be seen today, despite Indonesian visual art from around the 1950s being largely informed by independence and the subsequent development of a nationalist cultural policy. And despite its rich ‘gay’ history, evident even in changes to languagelx, Bali – unlike other iconic sites with a long association with the homosexual world – is not one of today’s major gay destinations – yet. As one writer has commented, ‘Bali has not yet achieved any significant status as a gay tourist destination…notwithstanding the recent emergence of some limited gay accommodation and nightclubs’.lxi And that would be of little concern to the artists and others – ‘gay’ or otherwise - who make their pilgrimage to Ubud, either to pay homage or to continue the tradition. Nor would it have been of concern to either of those two men with whom we opened this tale - Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati and Rudolf Bonnet - who first met as young men in Ubud in 1929, and who together went to the ‘realm of the gods’ a half century later. i http://www.rovinginsight.org/library/index.php?content=goe-article-067 As Robert Aldrich notes in Colonialism and homosexuality, “Colonial lands, which in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century included most of Africa, South and Southeast Asia, and the islands of the Pacific and Indian Oceans and the Caribbean, provided a haven for Europeans whose sexuality did not fit neatly the constraints of European society”. See his Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003, back cover. iii Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p3. iv Michael B. Bakan, Music of Death and New Creation: University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 1999, pp91-92. v Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p3. vi See Adrian Vickers, Bali: a paradise created, Periplus, Berkeley, 1989, pp95-98 for details of the early development of tourism in Bali. vii https://baliwww.com/bali/arts/spies.htm ii 54 viii Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p5 ix Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p16. x Jamie James, ‘Ubud, the Heart of Bali’, The Atlantic Monthly, August 1999. xi Adrian Vickers, Bali: a paradise created, Periplus, Berkeley, 1989, p106. xii Roland Strasser, at http://baliwww.com/bali/arts/roland.htm xiii Rudolf Bonnet, at http://baliwww.com/bali/arts/bonnet.htm xiv http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/collections/gaybears/stowitts/ xv Anne Holliday, personal communication to Robert Aldrich, 28 August 2000; as quoted in Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003. xvi http://www.queer-arts.org/archive/jan_98/stowitts/biography.html xvii John Moyle, Donald Friend in Bali, at http://www.nla.gov.au/events/donaldfriend/papers/jmoyle.html xviii John Moyle, Donald Friend in Bali, at http://www.nla.gov.au/events/donaldfriend/papers/jmoyle.html xix Michelle Chin, ‘Bali in Film’, at http://www.michellechin.net/writings/04.html xx Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p15 xxi Claire Holt, Art in Indonesia: continuities and change, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, New York, 1967, pp179-180. xxii Helena Spanjaard, Pioneers of Balinese painting: the Rudolf Bonnet Collection, Rijksuniversiteit te Leiden and the Rudolf Bonnet Foundation, Udud, 2007, chapters II and III. xxiii Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p80. xxiv For an excellent discussion on the impact of these westerners on perceptions of Bali, see Adrian Vickers, Bali: a paradise created, Periplus, Berkeley, 1989, pp105-130. xxv Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p68. xxvi Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p15. xxvii Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p59. xxviii Jeffrey Spivak, Buzz: The Life and Art of Busby Berkeley, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, 2011, pp154-155; and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_Diggers_in_Paris) xxix http://www.milestonefilms.com/pdf/LegongPK.pdf xxx Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p52. xxxi John Moyle, Donald Friend in Bali, at http://www.nla.gov.au/events/donaldfriend/papers/jmoyle.html xxxii Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003, p163 xxxiii Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p9. xxxiv Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003, pp163-164, 198-201 xxxv Tom Boellstorff, The Gay Archipelago: sexuality and nation in Indonesia, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005, p54. xxxvi Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003, p164 xxxvii See Garry Wotherspoon, ‘The flight of the “exiles of the spirit”: male homosexual artists and the onset of the Cold War’, in S Fitzgerald and G Wotherspoon, Minorities: cultural diversity in Sydney (State Library of NSW Press, Sydney, 1995), pp124-139, for details of the Merioola household.. xxxviii Auke Sonnega, at http://www.xs4all.nl/~wichm/sonnega.html xxxix Auke Sonnega, at http://baliwww.com/bali/arts/auke.htm xl A. Kinsey, Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male (W B Saunders, Philadelphia, 1948), p616. xli M. Foucault, A History of Sexuality, Vol. 1, An Introduction (Vintage Books, 1980), p. 43. xlii Tom Boellstorff, The Gay Archipelago: sexuality and nation in Indonesia, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2005, p37 xliii See Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p29. xliv As quoted in Frances Gouda, Dutch Culture Overseas: Colonial Practice in the Netherlands Indies, 19001942, Amsterdam University Press, Amsterdam, 1995, p181. 55 xlv Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, pp20, 21, 80-84, 92. xlvi Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p40 xlvii Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p41 xlviii Rudolf Bonnet, at http://baliwww.com/bali/arts/bonnet.htm xlix Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979. l Tjokorda Gde Agung Sukawati, Reminiscences of a Balinese Prince, (as dictated to Rosemary Hilbery), Southeast Asia Paper No 14, Southeast Asian Studies, University of Hawaii, 1979, p39 li G. Wotherspoon, City of the Plain’: history of a gay subculture, Hale and Iremonger, Sydney, 1991, p113. lii Michael Hitchcock and Lucy Norris, Bali: The Imaginary Museum, Oxford University Press, New York, 1995, p64. liii Obituary, Thursday, 4 September 1997, at http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/obituary--ktut-tantri1237369.html liv Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003, p165 lv http://baliwww.com/bali/arts/arie.htm lvi See Robert Aldrich, Colonialism and homosexuality, Routledge, London, 2003, p165; and http://www.asiafoto.com/article1.htm. For reproductions of the painting of this particular ‘Balinese Youth’, see See Ruud Spruit, Artists on Bali, The Pepin Press, Amsterdam, 1997, p116-119. lvii Peter Pears, The Travel Diaries of Peter Pears: 1936-1978 (edited by Philip Reed), The Britten-Pears Foundation, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, 1995, pp49-51 lviii Rudolf Bonnet, at http://baliwww.com/bali/arts/bonnet.htm lix See Adrian Vickers, ‘Modernity and Being Moderen: An Introduction’, in A. Vickers (ed), Being Modern in Bali: Image and Change, Yale University Southeast Asia Studies, New Haven, 1996. lx Tom Boellstorff, ‘Gay Language and Indonesia: Registering Belonging’, at http://www.anthro.uci.edu/faculty_bios/boellstorff/Boellstorff-JLA.pdf, accessed 20 August 2010 lxi Gordon Waitt and Kevin Markwell, Gay Tourism: Culture and Context, Hayworth Hospitality Press, New York, 2006, p53. 56 Not ice t o Cont r ibut or s Doryanthes welcomes contributions, on any subject from members and non members, alike. Preference may be given to articles relating to Southern Sydney or to articles written by authors who live in southern Sydney. Unless by prior arrangement, the maximum length for formal articles is 3000 words. Any annotation must be in the form of footnotes. The editors also seek short notes, book and film reviews. The text should be formatted as full justified in 13 point Arial and the page margins should be set as “narrow”. Headings will be formatted as Comic Sans and will be generally 20 to 28 points depending on word length or heading length. Copyright of material published in Doryanthes is retained by the author. In the case of any subsequent publication, the editors of Doryanthes merely seek a statement of the prior publication in Doryanthes. Contributions (articles, notes or reviews) may be sent to the publisher on disk or as email attachment (in both cases as Word files) to the publisher Les Bursill (les.bursill.gmail.com). Membership Doryanthes Inc. has two classes of membership: (i) Subscription Members. The Doryanthes year runs from November till October. The annual subscription is $35 per year. In addition to the online version, subscription members are entitled to receive, per year, four hard copy editions of Doryanthes. Subscriptions should be forwarded to the Hon. 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