Book Review - Slim the Standardbearer by Ronald Lewin

 Slim the Standardbearer: a biography of Field-Marshall The Viscount Slim by Ronald Lewin

Ware, Herts.: Wordsworth Editions, 1999 (first published 1976)  ISBN 184022214X

This is a workmanlike biography of an interesting man. The major part of the book focusses on Slims' Burma Campaign, which in a sense is right and proper, but I when I finished the book I felt a little short-changed, as Slim has written so well about that himself. I was hoping for a little more insight into the man than this book delivered, but it was still worth reading to remind oneself of what an extraordinary life he led.

The son of a failed businessman, Slim dreamed of an early age of joining the army, but funds (lack of) seemed to scupper that wish, until the advent of war in 1914. Despite the myth that Slim became a Field-Marshall from the ranks, he was actually commissioned immediately as a second lieutenant owing to his time spend before the war in the Birmingham University OTC (despite not being a student at the University - the first example of "Slim's luck"). He was sent to Gallipoli, where he was wounded: after his recovery he was sent to Mesopotamia to assist in the relief of Kut, where he was wounded a second time. 

After the war he was transferred to the Indian Army where he served with Gurkhas. It seems that this was one of the happiest times of his life - there was much low-level action against rebellious tribes, he met and married his wife, and slowly made his way through the ranks, impressing at Staff College in Delhi and at the Imperial Defence College.

Interestingly he also spent these years writing short stories for money (even though Lewin's book is only just short of a hagiography, Slim's nose for cash runs through the book, from ensuring expense accounts were suitably large, to augmenting his pension in any way he thought he could), which I think is a fascinating insight, although one that Lewin doesn't ponder too much.

Although he is famous for his campaigning in Burma in World War Two, he also served in Ethiopia against the Italians (where he was wounded yet again), and in Iraq, before being sent East. There, in Burma, he famously led the retreat back to India, and then the advance back to Rangoon, through a series of excellent strategic and tactical manoeuvres, and (with the close support of Louis Mountbatten, Supreme Commander of the South East Asian Theatre) working his way through the politics of logistics, supply and recalcitrant commanders (Wingate, Stilwell).

This is the major part of Lewin's work, and he describes well what is required of someone commanding an Army, and how the fighting is just one part. It was in Burma that Slim's ability to get people to follow him, his ability to listen, to plan on the run, and to connect with the average soldier were so much on display. Burma in many ways was (and is) a forgotten campaign, and so Slim's capability has been lost in time as the European and Pacific Campaigns have garnered most of the glory. He was probably the best British field commander of the War.

After the War Slim finally got the job for which he had been destined for a long time - Chief of General Staff. It was a difficult time to undertake the role, with the Army moving from a wartime footing to understanding what it's role would be during the Cold War. Slim instituted many reforms during this time.

Then seemingly out of the blue he was asked to be Governor-General of Australia. He took on the role with gusto, and was again a trailblazer, being the first of the "modern" G-Gs, touring the country and being a force for unification, while trying to stay outside of politics.

His final years as Constable of Windsor Castle were ones of enjoyment and social activities, before his decline and death in 1970.

Lewin's book covers this all in appropriate detail, but with little verve or insight - there is a later biography by Robert Lyman which may be better than this one.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Gatton Man by Merv Lilley

 Gatton Man by Merv Lilley

Ringwood, Vic.: McPhee Gribble Publishers, 1994       ISBN 0869143344

I first read Gatton Man many years ago, not long after it was published. I had at the time just read Rodney Hall's Captivity Captive which had begun my long-term fascination with the Gatton murders. On my first reading of Gatton Man I was convinced that Lilley may have indeed been the son of the murderer, but on this re-reading many years later it seems to me a much thinner claim.

Which is not to dismiss this book as a waste of a reader's time. Part memoir, part biography of his father, Gatton Man is a story of the other Australia that doesn't make it into what we tell ourselves of our white beginnings - no pastoral stations and glorious cattle runs, no comfortable suburban life with weekends at the beach or the footy, but a life of hard scrabble on small acreages, scratching the barest of livings, and growing up with little education and fated to live a hard life amongst hard people.

In Lilley's case, the small acreage he grew up on was near Rockhampton in Queensland. He was the youngest of four children, who all worked (slaved) for their psychopathic father, W.J. Lilley. W.J. was extremely violent, a schemer who charmed his way into and out of trouble, and was a pederast and a rapist. Merv Lilley's tales (the memoir is more a series of vignettes than a chronological narrative) are about the drudgery of work mixed with fear of what W.J. might do, a world in which each child looked out for themselves before anything or anyone else. Lilley's mother did what she could, always at the risk of a thrashing from W.J., which could (and did) occur at any moment.

The other characters around the farm, itinerant workers, tramps, tin scratchers and gold miners and other farmers, created an ever-changing dynamic of people who could help, might need help themselves, who could be a friend or an enemy depending on the situation. Merv managed to extract himself from the situation entirely by joining up in World War Two. The "skills" he learned from growing up, both with his fists and his brain, served him well during his stint in uniform, and later when he became a communist and committed union activist around Queensland (Merv Lilley eventually married the author Dorothy Hewett and became a member of the left-wing literary scene in Australia).

All of this is fascinating and worth reading in and of itself but what of Lilley's central claim about his father, that he was the perpetrator of the triple murder of the Murphy siblings at Christmas time 1898 near the town of Gatton? The first section of the book provides the reader with a study of a man who could certainly be capable of such a crime. The second section attempts to prove the case.

This section of the book quotes verbatim quite a lot of evidential statements made to the commission of enquiry into the murders. Lilley is very interested in a man called William Day, who arrived in the Gatton area just before the murders, gaining work with Clarke, the butcher. Day left soon after the murders. He was, as they would say now, a "person of interest" at the time, and as Lilley lays out the various statements of detectives and others at Gatton, it does seem to a reader that he would indeed be a prime suspect in the case. After Day moved on, he eventually disappeared into history, although there were people who said he joined up to fight in South Africa and was killed there.

Lilley suggests that it was in fact his father that was William Day. He explains how he may have come up with the nom-de-plume, links the witnesses statements as to Day's cantankerous character to his father's own ways, and lets us know that his father did join up to fight the Boers. Lilley posits that W.J. did so to escape any heat that might be lingering in the investigation, and to cover his tracks. On his return, so Merv writes, he was careful for quite a few years with how and where he presented himself, until he was sure that he no longer could be linked to William Day or to Gatton.

While this all seems plausible, Merv has no hard evidence to back up any of his claims. On this re-reading, I see much more clearly the straw men that Lilley has set up so that he can knock them down all the more easily. He has no confession, he really has nothing to hang his hat on which could be accepted in a court of law as proof, beyond the fact that his father was working itinerantly around Queensland at the time, vaguely fits the description given by (some of) the witnesses who may have seen the killer, and that he soon joined up to go to South Africa. There would have been many young men who could fit that bill.

So, while Gatton Man fails in its main premise, it is still a wonderful insight into pioneering Australia, as well as into one of the most notorious crimes of the Nineteenth Century, which to this day remains unsolved.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Henry Lawson: the Man and the Legend by Manning Clark

 Henry Lawson: the Man and the Legend by Manning Clark

Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1995  (first published 1978 as In search of Henry Lawson)

ISBN 0522846955

There is no doubt that Henry Lawson is one of the formative figures in the great flowering of Australian literature that bloomed from the 1880s through to the early years of the Twentieth Century, and one of the writers to describe what it was like to actually live in Australia during this time, especially in the Bush.

His life in many ways was a long drawn out tragedy - the life of an alcoholic writer - early promise, a period of intense successful activity, and a long decline to an inevitable early death. Although their stories are different, the arc of Lawson's life is similar to other such writers such as Hemingway, Faulkner and Fitzgerald (You can read my review of The Thirsty Muse, which goes into detail about these three writers and others, here).

Lawson very much saw himself in his moments of grandeur as the voice of Australia, as did the author of this biography of him. Manning Clark saw himself as an oracular historian of our land, with his theories of "enlargers" and "straighteners" and a view of Australian history that was intensely nationalist. These views, aligned with Clark's orotund and florid prose style, mean that this book is at times lop-sided, more difficult to read than it needs to be, and conclusions reached that don't necessarily follow the known facts.

Firstly I have to address misogynism - not Lawson's, but Clark's. He consistently downplays or slurs the women in Lawson's life, particularly his mother Louisa. Louisa Lawson was a pioneer for the rights of women in Australia, a successful businesswoman, and a litterateur in her own right (there is a great biography of her written by Brian Matthews, which I have reviewed here), but Clark paints her as the ultimate straightener in Lawson's life. On the other hand, Clark praises Lawson's father, who was an itinerant drunk. He doesn't describe Lawson's wife Bertha in a kind light either, although she worked hard as she could for Henry and especially their children. It's very noticeable and very odd, and an indication that Clark has a particular story to he wishes to tell, rather than necessarily following where the story leads him.

Clark sees Lawson in this book as a genius with a terrible flaw (the "monster" - alcohol). In terms of literary output, Clark sees the short stories - especially those written in the 1890s about the Bush - as the pinnacle of his achievements, comparing them in some ways to Chekhov and Dostoyevsky in their insights into human nature and the struggle to survive. He also shows how they reveal a developing purely Australian character type, which Lawson's stories helped solidify as the mythical "true Aussie" - phlegmatic, tough, and always ready to help his mates in their times of trouble.

His poetry gets less praise from Clark: although he lauds the sentiments, he notes that in terms of craftsmanship he was somewhat lacking - his disease meant that he quite often would dash off verse (especially later in his life) for money.

Indeed for his whole life money (the lack of it) was a problem for Lawson. He was unable to hold down any "normal" job, and as he continually pointed out there was not enough money in poetry and prose in Australia to make a living. This led him to write for newspapers both as a regular job (with The Boomerang in Queensland) and also to contribute to muck sheets such as The Truth. As he descended into full-blown alcoholism he took to begging and borrowing from friends and strangers to not only pay for the drink, but maintenance for his wife and children (the failure to do so landed him in jail on more than one occasion).

Clark is desperate in this biography to portray Lawson as a true great, a gifted genius with real insight into the human condition. I think that he fails to make the case, even though he has skewed this version of Lawson's life to try and do so. Which is not to state that Lawson was a minor figure - far from it.

Is this book a successful biography of Henry Lawson? On so many levels it isn't... yet, it has given me the desire to go back and read his stories and poetry again, so it isn't all bad.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Wings of the Kite-Hawk by Nicolas Rothwell

 Wings of the Kite-Hawk: a Journey into the Heart of Australia by Nicolas Rothwell

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2009* (first published 2003)               ISBN 9781863954457

Recently, in a book of essays by Tim Parks, I read of his contention that all great literature is trying to come to terms with death, and that all great writers tend to return to one great over-arching theme throughout their works, however varied they may seem to be on the surface.

If that is the case, then Wings of the Kite-Hawk is great literature, and Nicolas Rothwell is a great writer. Many years ago I read his book Quicksilver and felt I didn't really grasp what he was getting at, but after reading Wings of the Kite-Hawk I feel that I have moved closer to what Rothwell is trying to express in his writing.

Rothwell enters the desert country of Australia on a search for meaning: "... the desert always gives those who search in its emptiness the dream, at least, of their desires." Rothwell's dream is to reconcile his life with the never changing rhythms of the desert. He wishes the desert to enter him (as all those who have spent time there wish).

Particularly, as an emigrant to Australia, he tries to find his way into the country through his fellow emigrants, the explorers. Through long meditations on the lives and explorations of Leichhardt, Sturt, Strehlow and Giles, Rothwell muses on life, on dreams of success and the reality of failure, and on the certainty of death - "[y]ou're much closer to death out here than in the city; you can feel it bending humanity to its will." 

The four explorers Rothwell chooses to focus on had a desire for death haunting their lives: Leichhardt, that strange visionary who has haunted the minds of white Australia for over a century and a half, actually did meet his demise in the back country - a demise that one feels he was actively seeking.

Sturt's voyage to the Inland Sea - a romantic folly that ennobled those that undertook it - was a doomed voyage that seemed made for the times. What was Sturt seeking? It surely wasn't an actual sea, which it seems he knew wasn't there: in leaving his wife and child, what was he doing? Rothwell speculates - "[w]here was he bound? Like every noble or beautiful thing, to the kingdom of death - that kingdom he longed to see with his own eyes, to endure, and to return from, with golden words upon his lips." He of course did return, unsuccessful, and with no golden words for recompense.

Strehlow was an explorer of culture rather than land, famously working his way through the traditions of the Aranda people. He eventually saw himself as the keeper of their traditions and (in)famously collected and photographed many sacred objects and events. He spent his life amongst the Aranda, but in the end completely failed to understand the culture he felt he was a part of. Rothwell describes in his recollection of the sale of the Strehlow Collection how Strehlow's efforts to preserve a people and their culture led only to fracture and decay. 

Rothwell himself as represented in Wings of the Kite-Hawk mainly interacts with white residents of the Outback, all the while understanding that it is the Aboriginal people who fully understand the country and its dreaming. In the cast of characters that cross his path, it is those who have absorbed some of the ancient learning that connect most with the spirit of the country which, for Rothwell, is embodied in the Kite-Hawk.

These birds permeate the story of Rothwell's journey: from being a sign of good fortune to a presager of death when his colleague Esterline hits and kills a Kite-Hawk with his car and bewails the bird's and his own demise (when he perished in the desert soon after killing the bird).

I think it is in the story of Giles that Rothwell finds a character most in tune with his own quest. Late to the country, Giles never gets to make a discovery that others would recognise as great or useful "...for in its last phases exploration, like life, becomes a retreat, a silence, a turning in."

In the end, despite his hopes, Rothwell does not find the answer to his quest in the lives and deaths of the explorers as he had hoped. Like him, they traversed across the country rather than into it. It is rather the encounters that Rothwell has on his journeys with those that have embedded themselves into the desert that show him the way. Enlightenment and peace will come if you let them, but not if you chase them.

A deservedly praised book: history, philosophy and a life-lesson. Highly recommended.

* The 2009 edition of this book has new foreword by Pico Iyer and preface by Rothwell that both shed light on what Rothwell was hoping to achieve with this book

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A Concise History of Australia by Stuart Macintyre

 A Concise History of Australia by Stuart Macintyre

Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 2016 (4th edition)        ISBN 9781107562431

About a third of the text in this book covers events in my lifetime, which I guess says two things - one, that I am getting old, and two, that this book is a "front-forward" history. Macintyre is a well-known Australian historian, who was part of the famous "History Wars" that occurred in this country early this century.

This book, part of a series of concise histories commissioned by Cambridge University Press, breezes through thousands of years of Aboriginal occupation of the country before covering the history of the European conquest, colonization and development of the country.

This book is mostly a political history - it glosses over the social - I felt as a reader that I didn't get a sense of how people were living on a day-to-day basis. For instance, the central role of sport in the social make-up of the country is hardly mentioned, and the churches are more often mentioned as sources of division than of inclusion and provision of welfare.

As a political history, it seems to me that Macintyre's personal politics are on display too much in what is meant to be a general history for the average reader. One comes away from this book feeling that there is and has been nothing good produced by the conservative side of politics, or by business interests, and that the left, and the working class, have been nothing but noble in their pursuits.

This bias cruels the history in a few ways: Macintyre gives too much emphasis on events and movements that were peripheral to mainstream Australia, such as the Unemployed Workers Movement and the New Guard in the Depression. He also fails to explain why the conservatives have been so successful throughout Australia's political history if they were such a reprehensible group of people - is he suggesting that Australia's polity is irredeemably stupid? Or could it be that the majority of people, for the majority of the time have on the whole preferred what the right has to offer them? This seems to be a conclusion that Macintyre cannot accept.

Generally speaking, Macintyre's history paints Australia as a plaything of Empire (Britain or the USA) or of greedy elites, either Liberal or Labor. He seems to belittle the hard work of those everyday people who actually built the country that we know today, and who sacrificed themselves in so many ways to create a better life for their successors. While he details the many mis-steps that have been made along the way, he does not describe the successes in as much detail.

If I was someone who knew nothing of Australian history and I had only read this book, I would look around at today's Australia and wonder how we got to where we are, given what Macintyre has described. This is not a history that can be read as a stand-alone tome. Alternative views must be sought to get a rounded view of the singular history of this country.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Who is Wallace? the Enigma of the World's Oldest Prisoner by Gideon Haigh

 Who is Wallace? the Enigma of the World's Oldest Prisoner by Gideon Haigh

[Melbourne]: Archives Liberation Front, 2025      ISBN 9780646726922

What a fascinating book! While Gideon Haigh is best known as a cricket writer, he is at heart a journalist, is obviously a man who is interested in much more than cricket, and who not only has a sharp analytical mind, but also a fine investigative sense.

Who is Wallace? grew from a question asked of Haigh by his daughter - "who was the oldest ever prisoner?" Haigh was surprised to find that not only was it an Australian, but that he was incarcerated at Ararat - the infamous J Ward - a mere two hundred kilometres from Haigh's hometown of Melbourne.

As well as the story of Wallace's life, Haigh tells the story of Australia's attitude to those suffering mental illness, and how that changed over the 107 years that William Wallace spent on this earth. Of Wallace's life before Ararat, Haigh writes of his service in the Boer War (he came to be the last surviving Australian soldier from that conflict), success as a selector, his querulous relationship with the Dorrigo council in New South Wales (a precursor of what was to come?), and his time institutionalized in Gladesville and Kenmore when he thought that "the influence" were trying to hypnotize him to get his money.

On release, he disappeared from view until, in September 1925 he had an altercation over smoking in a King Street café in Melbourne, which became a brawl during which Wallace shot dead one of his attackers.

He was deemed unfit to stand trial after refusing to co-operate with the police, was detained at His Majesty's pleasure and sent to J Ward, eventually moving to Aradale in the 1970s, but never set foot outside the institution until his death in 1989. He was not a violent inmate, but was generally taciturn apart from complaining about perceived slights. He wrote letters to the head of the department which Haigh quotes at length, which give insight into his illness, weaving small events into his conspiracy narrative.

When Wallace was originally sent to Ararat, diagnoses of mental illness was in its infancy, but as psychological medicine advanced, he was eventually diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. His delusion, that there was a conspiracy against him, seemed to remain remarkably stable over the years, although those behind the conspiracy changed from "the influence" to "the Jews" as he got older.

When Wallace arrived at Ararat in the 1920s, mental institutions were literally just holding pens for the insane - no clinical assistance was provided for inmates, and conditions, particularly in J Ward, were extremely poor. Inmates were literally kept in cells, as the Ward was previously the Ararat Jail.

Aradale was slightly better, but was still not adequately equipped to really help those who were ill. There was never enough money for improvements despite multiple inquiries into the provision of mental health services in Victoria. The long battle between those who were invested in the idea of asylums (which included the City of Ararat, the workers and unions, and those who managed the institution) and those of a more progressive bent who were trying to improve treatment by de-institutionalizing provision of services was eventually won by the latter party. These changes were billowing around Wallace during the latter part of his life - he was oblivious to them, and by that time he was completely institutionalized and had no desire to leave Aradale.

Who is Wallace? is a fascinating insight into a strange story, full of interesting facts and insights into a part of our history that mostly goes unrecorded.

Haigh has published this book under his own imprint, which he uses when he has a story to tell that is too un-commercial for trade publishers. It's well-presented, with good illustrations, a useful bibliography but unfortunately no index. 

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Frontier by Henry Reynolds

 Frontier: Aborigines, Settlers and Land by Henry Reynolds

Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996 (first published 1987)       ISBN 1864481919

Henry Reynolds has been working in the field of Aboriginal History for a long time, and was a force in the push to gain recognition for Aboriginal land rights in Australia. His book The Other Side of the Frontier was one of the first histories to investigate interactions between Aboriginal Australians and the first settlers. Frontier, the book under review, is a look at not only the settlers view, but a dive into how it came to be that Aboriginal rights to land had (at the time of its publication) never been recognised here.

It's mainstream knowledge now that the colonization and settlement of Australia by the British came at the expense of the blood of Aboriginals, and that land was expropriated from them in the process. However, when Reynolds began publishing, the opinion held generally in the wider Australian polity was that Aboriginals didn't have a concept of land ownership, and that any loss of life was due to regrettable incidents of misunderstanding.

Reynolds clearly shows from the European perspective that the early settlers knew quite clearly that Aboriginals did have a concept of ownership of the land, and that they were prepared to fight for their right to continue to live on and utilise their tribal territories. Many of those early settlers and Government officials also knew that the settlers were in many cases killing the inhabitants of land they were taking up rather than acknowledging that it was they that were stealing.

Reynolds shows how notions such as the "noble savage" and "Social Darwinism" were used as a post facto justification of dispossession and murder. He also explains how the British idea that property was sacred under law and was seen as inalienably arrogated to the owner - totally counter to Aboriginal ideas - led to Aboriginals being sidelined in their own land.

Some people tried to ameliorate the situation, and indeed tried to ensure that the original inhabitants of Australia could have rights to access and continue to own the land that was theirs, but were stymied time and time again essentially by the land greed of the settlers.

What is surprising to the reader of this work in 2025 is that for a large period of White Australia's history much of this had been "forgotten" in the official narrative of settlement and colonization of the country. Reynolds shows that the concept of "terra nullius" was not ever espoused by the first settlers - in fact there was very little official documentation of land rights, and what little there was recognised Aboriginal rights to use land, at least for traditional activities. He points out that other colonial jurisdictions had worked through the implications of settlement in law, but Australia for many reasons never did.

Of course it was not long after this work was published that Australia finally did acknowledge the concept of continuing Native Title to land, and there has been much development in that area since.

This book is pretty easy to read - it is a polemic in some senses, but rooted in sources, although I found the way the notes were printed in this edition somewhat hard to follow. There is a good bibliography.

Many other historians have built on Reynold's legacy - while Frontier might have been seen as ground-breaking in its day, much of what is discussed in this book is now a commonplace of discussion in the history of this country.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Markham and Ramu Valleys 1943-1944 (Australians in the Pacific War)

 The Markham and Ramu Valleys 1943-1944 (Australians in the Pacific War)

Researched and written by Dr. Mark Johnston, Text and photo editing by Courtney Page-Allen

Canberra: Department of Veteran's Affairs, 2005       ISBN 9781920720490

This little book is part of a wonderful series printed by the Australian Department of Veteran's Affairs on the sixtieth anniversary of the end of World War Two. They consist of a short section of text and a carefully curated collection of photographs which illustrate a particular piece of Australian activity in the Pacific War. The books were distributed freely to libraries and schools to help to keep memory alive.

This particular volume describes the actions that led to the taking of Lae and the campaign up the Markham Valley through Nadzab, Kaiapit, and on to Shaggy Ridge, a name that rings through the history of Australia in World War Two. Battalions of the Seventh Division fought their way up into the Finisterre Ranges and along the ridge (which was often only wide enough for one man to walk along), fighting hand-to-hand battles to take features such as Johnson's Knoll and the famous Pimple.

The text, while very brief is crisp and accurate, and is wonderfully complemented by the photographs, which show the difficulty and danger of this campaign which lasted from September 1943 through to February 1944. The photos are especially poignant for me, as one of my Great Uncles with whom I used to spend my Summer holidays, fought in that campaign.

We will remember them.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Hell's Gates: the Terrible Journey of Alexander Pearce, Van Diemen's Land Cannibal by Paul Collins

 Hell's Gates: the Terrible Journey of Alexander Pearce Van Diemen's Land Cannibal by Paul Collins

South Yarra Vic.: Hardie Grant Books, 2002                          ISBN 1740640837

I've been trying to remember the first time I heard about Alexander Pearce. Certainly it wasn't in my schooldays, when Australia's convict past was glossed over quite quickly in our history classes. I think it was probably when I got to university, where one of my new friends introduced me to the music of Weddings Parties Anything and specifically their song A Tale They Won't Believe, which deals with this macabre and tragic snippet of Australian history (and is well worth listening to).

In my reading life since then I have come across mentions of Pearce's exploits from time-to-time, but this is the first book I have read that specifically deals with Pearce. Written by someone with an interest in Tasmanian history, Collins (who is also a Roman Catholic priest) was initially drawn to this story through the landscape of South West Tasmania. What he and many other people see these days as a beautiful wilderness, the original white settlers and convicts saw as a harsh and dangerous landscape that should be tamed as much as possible. The very country that Collins and his friends traversed with joy led Pearce and his fellow escapees to murder and cannibalism. The moral revulsion that Collins and others feel about such acts was also something that he wanted to explore... what drove these convicts to this ultimate end?

Drawing on much contemporary material (there is a good bibliographic essay at the end of the book, but unfortunately no index), Collins describes Pearce's journey from Ireland to Australia, and the conditions for convicts in Tasmania on his arrival. While most people might think that convicts spent their time in leg-irons, working on chain-gangs and spending each night in a cell, for many life could be very different. Pearce was assigned to a free settler north of Hobart, where he worked for a time as a shepherd. Many other convicts undertook similar roles, helping to build the colony: if their behaviour was acceptable they could hope to earn a ticket-of-leave before the end of their sentence and start to begin life as a free person.

Unfortunately for Pearce his behaviour was far from acceptable: originally transported for theft, his nefarious deeds continued in Tasmania, absconding from service and forging documents leading him to receive a sentence of lashes and an order to be sent to a "place of secondary punishment". 

When your whole colony is effectively a prison, what do you do with those prisoners that will not or cannot toe the line? You could build some kind of "supermax" prison, but that costs a lot of money, something His Majesty's Government was not prepared to do. Lieutenant Governor Sorrell came with an ingenious solution: send the recalcitrant prisoners to Macquarie Harbour in the South West of Tasmania, where they could be employed cutting down the great stands of Huon Pine, an excellent shipbuilding timber. It was a harsh and brutal experience; escape was deemed impossible, with hundreds of kilometres of trackless wilderness between the convict barracks on Sarah Island and the settled parts of the colony.

Collins makes clear that Pearce was not only a criminal, but impulsive and violent at times. It was certainly an impulsive act to join the escape led by Robert Greenhill. With no planning and only the small amount of food they had on them at the time, they proceeded into the rainforest that surrounded the penal settlement with only a vague idea of where they were headed. The going was extremely hard, the escapees had little food, and after months of harsh conditions at Macquarie Harbour they were not in peak physical condition to start with.

Greenhill, the de-facto leader of the group (as an ex-sailor he was the only one with navigation skills, and he took control of the one axe they had) broached the subject of killing and eating one of the party, mentioning the custom of shipwrecked sailors as a precedent. Dalton was the first to be killed, and the group then spent the next weeks in a hell of starvation, physical distress and paranoia. Two members of the group decided to turn back and surrender (they did make it back, but died of exhaustion soon after) and slowly the others were killed and devoured, until only Greenhill and Pearce remained. Pearce killed Greenhill before eventually reaching the fringe of the settled area, where he took up with some other convicts before he was captured soon after. He told his tale to his captors, who didn't believe him: they thought he was creating a cover story for his fellow escapees so that the authorities wouldn't search for them. Pearce was sent back to Macquarie Harbour.

While there are a few versions of Pearce's tale extant, it is well to remember that they all come from Pearce himself, and he was always careful to exclude himself from any acts of killing (apart from Greenhill, which he claimed was an act of self-defence). We will never know what truly went on between those men during their time in the bush, and how much Pearce was involved in the decisions to kill and cannibalize the others.

What is known is that not long after his return to Macquarie Harbour he absconded again with a young convict Cox, whom he killed in a fit of rage after learning that Cox couldn't swim, dismembering and eating part of him before continuing his escape with the remainder of Cox's body as provision. For some reason his courage failed him and he returned and got himself apprehended. His previous exploits were well-known on Sarah Island, and having been found with a piece of Cox's flesh in his pocket, this time his story was believed. He was hanged in Hobart several months later (pedant alert - another quibble with Collins - he continually uses the term hung to describe hangings - animals are hung, people are hanged).

Collins has written a comprehensive account - some may think too comprehensive. The final twenty-six page chapter is a "Personal Postscript" which discusses the destruction of Lake Pedder, the tragic history of the Tasmanian Aborigines and Collins' speculation on whether it was the tribulation of his escape that drove Pearce to madness, or whether it was the privations of life as a convict, or whether it was his upbringing in Ireland that was to blame.

I imagine it was probably a combination of factors that led Pearce to his tragic end, and to being one small piece in the unbelievable story of Australian history. This book is not a bad way to find out more about him.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - The Rush that Never Ended by Geoffrey Blainey

 The Rush that Never Ended : a History of Australian Mining by Geoffrey Blainey

Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1978 (3rd edition)     ISBN 0522841457

When the first edition of this book was published in 1961, export of iron ore from Australia was only just beginning, after the lifting of a ban imposed in 1938. The Rush that Never Ended was the first comprehensive history of Australian mining, which, given the place mining held in the formation and development of colonial Australia, is actually quite astounding. Since this third edition was published in 1978 mining in this country has moved to another level, but Blainey's book is still a worthwhile read, full of interesting facts about the development of the industry.

Blainey explains quite simply the differing rushes for metals throughout our white history... he doesn't quite call it out as greed, but essentially greed is the reason behind all the different phases of our mining history. Gold was "discovered" once the Crown no longer automatically owned what a prospector found, and all the metals were discovered as and when they became valuable and payable commodities - famously Lang Hancock knew about the huge Hamersley iron deposit but kept it secret from 1952 until 1961 when export markets finally opened up for that commodity.

Blainey starts at the beginning with the first and most precious metal sought by prospectors, gold. He clearly maps the incredible effect the gold finds, first in New South Wales and then in Victoria, had on the young colony: the population exploded, and huge economic effort went in to developing the industry. The romantic image of a prospector making it rich by panning some creek or digging up some quartz with a shovel has stuck in our collective memory, but in the history of gold mining in Australia, that era was quickly over, to be replaced by capital and large workforces. 

This change was more painful than it had to be - mining law was skewed to support individual prospectors: mining leases were too small to be developed properly for deep mining. Once this was changed the drawback became the lack of experience of the miners in deep-lead mining. In fact a certain scorn for science and geology was the bugbear for Australian mining for a lot longer than it should have been.

After gold, the most-sought mineral was copper, which was being mined early on in South Australia. Blainey well describes the discovery and development of Broken Hill, with its massive lodes of silver and lead and the share frenzy that accompanied the discovery. To mine on such scale massive capital inflows are required - the various frenzies, scams and massive windfalls that washed over people who invested in mines are covered comprehensively by Blainey - money is just as important as metal in the ground for a successful mine.

As the gold-fields close to "civilization" were mined out, prospectors moved farther afield to try and make their fortune, Blainey describes the move north to the Queensland tropics, west to the bonanza of Kalgoorlie and surrounds, and all the trials and tribulations that went with prospecting in jungles and deserts. Again some people made a fortune, but most barely got by, and usually ended up working for a big company and hoping that they might make a bundle speculating in shares...most people didn't.

Let's not forget Tasmania - perhaps Australia's largest mine up until the 1970s, Mount Lyell and surrounds were a story of triumph over nature and finance to unleash a huge cache of wealth for savvy investors.

With a good bibliography and index, The Rush that Never Ended is a fine introduction to one of Australia's founding, and greatest industries.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Good for the Soul: John Curtin's life with poetry by Toby Davidson

 Good for the Soul: John Curtin's life with poetry by Toby Davidson

Crawley, Western Australia: UWA Publishing, 2021      ISBN 9781760801564

This book has been with me for a couple of months, which is a long time for me. There are all sorts of reasons why it has taken me so long to finish it, one of which is that this is a book very much of two halves, the first of which is fascinating and interesting, the second which wanders and to my mind at least, loses focus.

John Curtin led the life of an activist - from an early age he worked for the socialist cause, first in Melbourne and then in Perth before he became a Federal politician and eventually Prime Minister of Australia during World War Two. Toby Davidson, the author of this book, happens to be Curtin's grandson but also is an academic and a published poet.

With this background, Davidson would seem to be very qualified to write this book and, where the evidence is abundant, he does a very good job of showing the reader how Curtin felt about poetry, and how he actively promoted it as a guide and stimulus for proper human development. The problem is that as Curtin became more involved in politics, the evidence for his poetic activity is less abundant, and this leads Davidson to more speculation, and to veering off-topic to wonder at things such as Curtin's views on Aborigines, the White Australia policy, and other such subjects which to this reader didn't seem to have much relevance to the ostensible subject matter of the book.

It's fair to state that the idea behind this book is audacious and ambitious. Writing about Australian politics is usually concerned with anything but literature and the life of the mind, so to set out to show how one of Australia's great political figures found great inspiration and spiritual sustenance in poetry is a bold undertaking.

Fortunately, for Curtin's earliest years, Davidson has access to much evidence to show that Curtin was very much as involved in literature as he was with socialism. Spending his early years in Creswick meant that Curtin's family would have know the Lindsays, and it was this connection that surely got him his first job as a printer's devil on the Rambler, their short lived periodical. Therefore as a young man he was in the company of poets, authors and artists. He also came under the wings of Victoria's socialists, including the poet and visionary Bernard O'Dowd. We know through Davidson's research that Curtin learned much from these connections, and read poetry to educate himself and inform his world views.

The chapters that deal with Curtin's early years in Melbourne, and when he moved to Perth to edit the Westralian Worker are the best in this book - the evidence from Curtin's own letters, and from the pages of the journal he edited, clearly show us what poetry meant to him, and which poetry he preferred.

The second half of the book, which deals with Curtin's life after he moved to Canberra, is less satisfactory - Davidson has to rely more on excerpts from Hansard, newspaper clippings and other sources of information to try and draw out Curtin's life with poetry during this stage of his life. The lack of personal information means that this section is more speculative, and filled with much other than a direct link to poetry - it's less personal and more political. There is a long chapter at the end of the book about Dame Mary Gilmore and poetry that she wrote during World War Two, some of which she sent to Curtin. From the evidence, it's clear that Gilmore and Curtin's wife Elsie were correspondents and friends, but less so in the case of John and Mary. I felt this chapter was too long.

Overall, Good for the Soul is a noble attempt to delve into the intellectual life of one of Australia's great figures. It's a flawed book in some ways, but I'm glad I read it.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - This Accursed Land by Lennard Bickel

 This Accursed Land by Lennard Bickel

Melbourne: Sun Books, 1989 (First published 1977)      ISBN 0725103027

Douglas Mawson, and his fellow Antarctic explorers that formed the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914, are arguably the most unsung of all the brave explorers of the Earth's uncharted territories. Mawson's face is on the Australian $100 note and several places have been named after him, but I am sure many Australians and most of the world know little of his exploits apart from the fact he went to Antarctica.

It is true that events conspired against his story being more well-known. The Australian expedition travelled to Antarctica at the same time as Amundsen and Scott, and Mawson's exploits were overshadowed by the triumph and tragedy of those two expeditions. The outbreak of World War One then meant that tales of explorers were no longer the news they once were.

Mawson's book Home of the Blizzard was, until the publication of Bickel's book, the only written record of the expedition (in fact the final editing of the Mawson papers wasn't completed until 1975). Mawson's book documented the entire expedition, whereas in This Accursed Land Bickel focusses solely on the extraordinary journey of Mawson, Ninnis and Mertz. Bickel used material from the expedition to flesh out this story: as he writes in an Author's Note "Mawson's account of that journey [in Home of the Blizzard] has been the only writing on the epic during the last sixty years; and typically - and perhaps necessarily - modest, it was a tightly controlled narrative which precluded heroics."

And there were plenty of heroics. Simply to move anywhere in what came to be known as King George V Land was a feat of heroism. Due to the Katabatic winds that build up over the internal ice-sheets, the area in which the Mawson expedition operated is one of the windiest in the World. Even in the summer months the men were often confined to their tents by winds well in excess of 60 kilometres per hour, which often blew continuously for a week at a time. This weather was to have a catastrophic effect on Mawson, Ninnis and Mertz as they attempted to journey from Commonwealth Bay through King George V Land to connect with work done by the previous Nimrod Expedition that Mawson took part in.

As they struggled across the rugged terrain, they were often trapped in their tents for days on end, and when Ninnis died after falling down a crevasse, an accident in which Mertz and Mawson lost nearly all their food and much of their equipment, they had not much time to try and return to base before the departure of the supply ship Aurora. Due to the lack of food, Mawson and Mertz began to eat their sledge dogs, unwittingly poisoning themselves by eating the dog's livers, which contain toxic doses of Vitamin A. Mertz eventually succumbed to this, which left Mawson on his own, with little food and with 160 kilometres of country to traverse before making it back to the expedition hut and safety.

The rest of the expedition did send out a party to search for the missing men - they travelled as far as they could in the time they had before the Aurora had to leave or risk being crushed by the ice, leaving a cairn with food at their furthermost searching point before turning back. It was later on the same day that Mawson found the cairn - the food saved his life, but he was too weak to catch the retreating search party.

Mawson eventually got to "Aladdin's Cave", where he was able to shelter from a storm for several days before the last stretch to the huts. As he crested the rise to head down to Commonwealth Bay, he could see on the horizon the black smudge that was the Aurora leaving the bay. Fortunately a small party had been left behind in case Mawson's party returned, and although the Aurora was contacted by radio, it was unable to make it back into the Bay owing to the weather, so Mawson and his rescuer's were doomed to spend another winter in Antarctica. Bickel explains that this enforced period without activity may have actually been beneficial for Mawson for his recovery.

It was not beneficial for Sidney Jeffryes, who was the radio operator who stayed behind to help find Mawson: he went mad that last winter, and never fully recovered from the experience of being stuck in Antarctica for the winter. Owing to the extra winter, Mawson found he made it back to Australia in debt, which the writing of Home of the Blizzard cleared.

Bickel's telling of Mawson's adventure is well researched, well written and gripping. There is an afterword by the (then) last surviving member of the expedition, which well describes Mawson's qualities, and how his ordeal changed him. As for apparatus, that's about as good as it gets, as there is no index, and the maps are useless (although the photos are not too bad).

If you want to know more about Mawson, the awesome challenges that he faced, and his and his companions bravery in the face of peril, I can highly recommend This Accursed Land.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - A Game of Our Own by Geoffrey Blainey

 A Game of Our Own: the Origins of Australian Football by Geoffrey Blainey

Melbourne: Black Inc., 2003                                              ISBN 1863953477

Well another season of the greatest football code has been run and won, this year by the Brisbane Lions, formerly Fitzroy. It's yet another season in which my team the Carlton Blues have failed to reach the last Saturday in September, the traditional date for the hosting of the Grand Final. While both Fitzroy and Carlton feature in Geoffrey Blainey's history of Australian Rules Football up to 1900, the Grand Final doesn't, as there was no such thing in the first forty-odd years of the code.

In fact there is much about today's game that didn't feature in the early years of what became known as the 'Victorian rules'. For a start the field of play was rectangular rather than oval, there was no handpassing, the game started with a kick-off rather than a bounce, and much of the play was scrummage, rather like Rugby.

That English schoolboy version of football indeed was the precursor to the development of Aussie Rules, as it was a group of cricketers and school masters who got together to adapt the rules that they knew from England to suit an Australian setting. Blainey explains that other ideas of the origin of our game, such as it being derived from Gaelic Football or coming from watching an Aboriginal game, are not supported by any evidence. Gaelic Football was not codified until well after Victoria began playing a distinct style of football, and the similarities that exist between the codes today were not in evidence in the 1800s. Blainey also points out that most of the progenitors of the early game in Melbourne were not Irish, and it seemed to be more popular with the Protestant section of society in the beginning, for lots of social reasons. In fact the first recorded games were between Protestant schools (Blainey explains that the first game was between St. Kilda Grammar and Melbourne Grammar in June 1858, approximately six weeks before the famous "first game of Australian Rules" that was played by Melbourne Grammar and Scotch College in Yarra Park). The links to any Aboriginal form of the game are also tenuous, although Blainey does posit that the distinctive high-marking style of play may have been imported into the game from watching Aboriginals at play in southwestern Victoria.

There are a few things that strike the modern reader and barracker about the history of our game as espoused in this book (the origin of the term barracker is an interesting aside - a Melbourne term, it referred to the military regiments who often played early club football, and the men from the barracks were known for not only their vocal support of their own men, but also disparagement of the opposition). The first is the age of Australian Rules compared to other codes of football. Australians do not often think of things in this country as being old apart from the land itself and Aboriginal culture, yet only Rugby is older as a codified game than Aussie Rules. Of the five oldest major football clubs in the world, three of them are Victorian (Melbourne 1858, Geelong 1859, Notts County 1862, Stoke City 1863, Carlton 1864). The rapidity of the growth in crowds is also notable: Blainey writes "[i]n 1880 in England the final of the FA Cup drew 6,000 people but as many as 15,000 then attended the important matches of the season in Melbourne." In Geelong as much as 10% of the population was turning out to watch games in the 1870s.

The greatest difficulty in trying to understand the early history of Australian Rules is to gather how the game was actually played. There were only ten "laws" of the game when they were first written down, and the newspapers of the day did not expend much print or paper on reporting matches in any great detail. What we do know (and what Blainey describes well), is that the field of play could be up to 500 yards long, often contained trees within the boundaries (trees must have often stood for goalposts), and games could run over several days. It was very much a defensive game of scrummage, with goals hard to come by. It took several decades for the game to open up and become a spectacle of kicking and marking that would look more familiar to modern viewers of the game.

The first games, held in parks, were a free spectacle, but after a time grounds were fenced and admission charged. Money changed the game - players were paid under the table, professional umpires were hired (previously the opposing captains ensured the rules were followed), and some clubs grew strong while others began to wither on the vine.

In 1877 the Victorian Football Association (VFA) was created, with a view to encourage intercolonial games. This met with limited success, as a trip to Ballarat or Bendigo to play the strong and thriving teams there was quite an expense, let alone travelling to Adelaide, Hobart, Sydney or Perth. Blainey suggests that the divide between the Australian Rules States and Rugby League States comes down to a couple of factors: many Victorians moved to South Australia and Western Australia, Hobart always had a strong connexion to Victoria, but Sydney did not, in fact it resented anything Victorian and so spurned the game. Blainey also points out in the case of Sydney the city was much more developed, and so struggled to provide the expanse of turf required to play the Victorian game. Interstate football has had peaks and troughs since the early days, and is now effectively dead in this era of nationwide teams.

Toward the end of Blainey's history, he goes into the creation of the Victorian Football League, the precursor to today's Australian Football League. This breakaway from the VFA, composed mainly of the most financially secure clubs (although Blainey points out that the "selection of the inaugural eight clubs was not completely logical"), the first season of VFL football marked a revolution in the game, inspired in fact by the VFA. To try to stay relevant in the face of the upstart league, the VFA introduced several innovations, such as an eighteen man side, the banishment of "little marks" (the ball now had to travel 10 yards before a mark could be called) and the huge change that kicking behind the goal counted in the score (1 point, versus 6 points for a goal). These major changes presaged the development of the modern game, with fixtures, finals, and that one day in September.

So if you are looking for an interesting and well-written history of the early days of Aussie Rules, I can recommend A Game of Our Own.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Lasseter's Gold by Warren Brown

 Lasseter's Gold by Warren Brown

Sydney, Hachette Australia, 2015         ISBN 9780733631603

The Lasseter story is never-ending: so much has been written about the man and the expedition to find his gold over the years; films have been made (Lasseter's Bones is well-worth watching), all trying to unravel the mystery that surrounds Lasseter's claim of a reef of gold over ten miles long in the middle of the Australian desert.

I have reviewed Dream Millions, the book written by the first leader of the Central Australian Gold Exploration Syndicate (CAGE) Fred Blakely, and read bits and pieces over the years, but this book by Warren Brown is a well-written entertaining and up-to-date exposition of the entire saga, taking into account current knowledge.

Harold Lasseter (who went by several names) was an interesting man. He enlisted twice in the AIF in World War One, and was discharged as medically unfit both times - once for "mental deficiency", with the Army claiming he was delusional. This may in fact be the key to everything that comes after.

His claim, sent to the government just as the Great Depression was beginning to bite in Australia (and it bit hard) that as a young man he had discovered a gold-bearing reef in Central Australia that was unimaginably rich, hit a chord in trying times. Although the Government did not act on his claim, a report that didn't completely damn it was picked up by the head of the Australian Worker's Union John Bailey, who quickly formed the CAGE and planned how to spend his millions.

Fred Blakely was chosen as the leader of the CAGE not only because he was an experienced bushman, but also because his brother was a minister in the Federal Government. Brown explains that he was not temperamentally cut out to lead a disparate group, especially when both Lasseter and Errol Coote, the pilot, almost immediately set out to discredit him with the shareholders of the company.

Brown explains that the CAGE was the first such expedition into the Centre that relied exclusively on motorized transport - a Moth biplane, and Thornycroft and Chevrolet trucks were made available to transport people and equipment to the site of the reef. Blakely was proven right when he suggested that a properly sorted camel train would be far more effective. The Thornycroft truck in particular proved troublesome, and the 'plane was worse than useless.

In the end, Blakely had enough evidence to convince himself that Lasseter's claims were fraudulent, and he left him to find the reef himself, in the company of Paul Johns, a mysterious German-born bushman, who happened to turn up at the CAGE base camp with a camel train. Brown spends quite a bit of the latter part of the book trying to delve into the mysteries of who was doing what, and suggests quite plausibly, that Lasseter had ensured Johns would appear at the right time with camels to help him continue his quest - it seems likely at any rate that Johns knew where to find him.

What is clear to me from reading this book, and from other sources, is that Lasseter's claims were completely baseless. Brown shows through the evidence that it was simply not possible for Lasseter's story about how he originally found the reef to be true. He may have heard stories about other claims to have found a reef (the mysterious Johansen enters the picture here) and decided to try it on. What is unclear, even after reading this book, is Lasseter's motivation. As a con-man, getting a regular wage from CAGE while he was out searching was something, but then why he continued on after Blakely left him is a mystery. Most people who dealt with him in the Centre realised that he was not an experienced bushman, so why he put himself in such a dangerous position is the over-riding mystery. Did he in the end finally delude himself? We'll never know.

Why have so many people spent so much treasure and time following Lasseter's trail, at the time and even into the present? Brown sums it up in one word: greed. The lure of gold has an effect on men that is hard to credit, and Lasseter's claim of a reef worth a king's ransom was something that people couldn't just leave be.

Brown's book is a comprehensive story of both Lasseter, and the story of the CAGE syndicate. It is a worthy addition to the bibliography of Lasseter (although this is the first book I've read where the bibliography is in alphabetical order by title....not useful!).

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Codename Iago by John Friedrich with Richard Flanagan

 Codename Iago: the Story of John Friedrich by John Friedrich with Richard Flanagan

Melbourne: William Heinemann Australia, 1991                               ISBN 0855614528

Some time ago, I read and reviewed Richard Flanagan's book First Person, a fictionalized account of his experience ghost writing the memoirs of John Friedrich, the man who defrauded Australian banks of well over one hundred million dollars to fund the NSCA, and who ended up taking his own life before the authorities could get to the bottom of why he did it.

So, when I saw the actual book that is the basis of Flanagan's novel for sale at my local second-hand bookshop for the equivalent of the price of a cup of coffee, I naturally picked it up, and it has turned out to be just as fascinating and frustrating as Flanagan's novel.

This book was published not long after Friedrich's suicide (in fact Flanagan met Friedrich for the final time two days before he shot himself), and so was quite newsworthy at the time. People bought the book no doubt hoping to find out not only how Friedrich committed his fraud, but also why he did it.

In essence, the fraud was simple. Friedrich borrowed money by putting up fake assets as collateral. It worked because the 1980s was a time of financial excess, and lenders were desperate to lend. For many years banks and auditors believed that the assets Friedrich claimed to have were real. The scam came undone purely because the NSCA's auditors became more suspicious over time about the existence of these assets, which Friedrich had to keep inflating to meet the payments on the fraudulent loans that he had already taken out. Friedrich explains this simply and clearly in this book.

What is almost impossible to garner from reading these pages is why he did it. Unlike a lot of fraudsters, it seems it was not for personal gain - there is little evidence he skimmed any money off the top for himself. Of course he did have a good job with good pay and perks (cars, trips etc.), but it seems he didn't enrich himself. He doesn't explicitly say so, but certainly the idea of being a man running a big operation was appealing to him, and running an operation that was quasi-military added to that appeal.

What is almost certainly false is what he actually claims in the book - that he worked for the CIA, and that the NSCA was a front organization that did work for government that the government didn't want to do. The second allegation is patently false - while the NSCA did engage in safety training for some defence force personnel, it certainly did not engage in any undercover or surreptitious activities. The first is just as absurd. Friedrich circles around his early life and alleges that he spent time in South-East Asia and Vietnam. Of course he claims that he can't talk about it, but the things he does "reveal" are so vague and unclear that I could have written them (and I certainly have never done anything he claims to have done...). His very vague statements about his time in Vietnam also sit oddly with the almost encyclopaedic recollection he has of his past activities when they show him in a good light. There is no doubt that Friedrich was a brilliant con-man, and one can see how he managed it if you read the personality that comes through this book, rather than the story he is trying to tell.

We still haven't got to the why - and to be honest I'm not sure if Friedrich even knew. In an afterword from his lawyer, it is revealed that even while awaiting trial he defrauded his friends and family once more, with a fake "contract" with the Queensland government to map Cape York. It seems that it was his compulsion to aggrandize himself that was his continuing downfall. His claims of CIA involvement helped in the sense that he could explain away why he had to hold his cards close to his chest.

In many ways this is a boring book - Friedrich spends much time explaining the history and activities of the NSCA, and a few cryptic chapters where he tries to insinuate that he was working for the CIA and doing things to help them, as well as ASIO and ASIS. As I explained above, once the reader gets some way into this book they realise that when detail is scant, so is truth.

I wrote of First Person that Flanagan wrote about identity, truth and evil. Certainly Friedrich's story is about identity and truth. I'm not sure that the real Friedrich was evil, but he certainly was a manipulator of other people, and an accomplished liar. One can feel, while reading Codename Iago, that Friedrich is trying to drag you into his world, dropping hints here, questions there, that make you wonder if after all he was part of a big "system" that used him and the NSCA to do things that needed to be done. Of course the real world doesn't work that way, and Friedrich uses this book to try and present himself as something other than he was.

Ultimately the story of Friedrich is of someone who was a victim of his time, a victim of his own personality, and who preyed on others who were too gullible, or too lazy to question the convincing story he sold them.

If you are a Richard Flanagan fan, this book might be worth hunting out. Otherwise, probably not worth the time and effort to read. It is a most unreliable memoir....

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell

Book Review - Crossing the Dead Heart by C.T. Madigan

 Crossing the Dead Heart by C.T. Madigan

Melbourne: Georgian House, 1946 (1948 reprint)

As the author states in the first lines of the Preface, "This book is a popular narrative of the Simpson Desert Expedition, 1939." And it's quite a good read. Cecil Madigan had spent quite a bit of time in the country skirting the Simpson Desert, and had even organised to fly over it in an airplane in 1929. He had longed to cross what was to the white man (and quite possibly the black) untracked country, and when A.A. Simpson, former president of the South Australian branch of the Royal Geographical Society of Australasia (and the person who's name has been given to the desert) offered to fund a crossing, Madigan jumped at the chance.

1939 was a propitious year for an attempt, as it was particularly wet in the Eyre Basin area. It's ironic that a description of crossing one of Australia's harshest deserts is beset with descriptions of bogs and cold weather, but that was the truth of it during this winter crossing. The aim of the Expedition was to be the first to cross the Simpson, taking note of the geography, botany and fauna of this extremely remote area of Australia.

As we now know the Simpson desert is covered in huge sand dunes that run parallel with each other for hundreds of kilometres. Any crossing from East to West requires the explorers to cross over these dunes, which is a tiring and sometimes dangerous task. The expedition travelled with camels, which in 1939 was the only feasible way to go. Travel by camel is slow, but steady, and, depending on how many dunes needed crossing, the group did not travel huge distances each day - it took approximately two weeks to cross the Simpson, although to get the camels back to Marree took the best part of another month, travelling down the Diamantina River and alongside the Eastern shores of Lake Eyre.

For me, it was the descriptions of the Channel Country that were more interesting than the crossing of the Desert itself. To read about so many deserted cattle and sheep stations was an insight into how this country can fool the traveller: if you arrive during a wetter season, as opposed to the usual drier ones, you might be convinced that you can run a decent amount of stock over the country, which of course is not the case.

This is, of course, a book of its time. Many birds are shot for food, or killed to be taken back to be studied. There are no women on the expedition. The Aboriginals are treated as novelties, although highly valued for their skills, and their stories about the country.

That stated, for those of us who haven't been to or traversed this country, this book gives a good description of the desert itself, travelling by camel (the wet weather didn't help - camels don't like damp or muddy going), how (white) people lived out in this country, as well as vignettes about way-finding and water supply (there is a lot of information about water, as you would imagine - Madigan writes a lot about the quality of the water across their journey, and in an informative and useful appendix, discusses in detail the variability of rainfall across the Eyre Basin and the inability of the country to provide permanent feed for stock).

Nowadays of course, many people have traversed the Simpson. Even with motor vehicles it's still a tough trek, although it can now be measured in days rather than weeks. One day, maybe, I'll do it, and see with my own eyes what Madigan describes in this book.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell