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 - The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

 The Oxford History of Ireland edited by R.F. Foster

Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992              ISBN 019285271X

(The text of this edition first published 1989 in The Oxford Illustrated History of Ireland)

If I check out my DNA profile on Ancestry, it tells me that I'm more than fifty percent Irish. My father's family is almost completely Irish (with a little Danish), while my mother is Scottish, English and Welsh. Because I grew up in my mother's home town rather than my father's, it is the Scottish connections that I absorbed growing up, so I know more history of Scotland than I do of Ireland. In fact the only Irish history I've absorbed is the internecine battles between Catholic and Protestant in Ulster which have been in the news, and the Dublin of James Joyce which has been in my books.

I mean to set out to correct that, and I have started (as you would) with the Oxford history. It's a relatively short book into which to pack a few thousand years of history, and so it's fair to say that parts of the book can seem like a list of "kings" rather than a true history. In fact in many ways, despite attempts by the authors to move away from an "old fashioned" history that focusses on political and military machinations, that's mostly what the reader gets, sometimes to their confusion as the roll-call of petty rulers adds up as one turns the pages.

History is what happens from day-to-day, and it's the job of the historian to try and knock events into shape to tell us a story - particularly in a book like this; a narrative of the creation of a people and a state. The authors in this book question the hackneyed themes of Irish history - the perfidy of the English and the iron control of the Catholic Church over the faithful, and the inevitability of sectarian conflict.

Rather than iron control from over the Irish Sea, this book portrays an England that, while seeking profit for sure, rarely had a coherent strategy for dealing with the land and the people that it had taken centuries to control. It was the internecine warfare between rival chieftains (probably a more appropriate term than kings) that led to the intervention in Irish affairs by the English, who arrived initially with thought of plunder and ongoing riches.

Once the English realised that Ireland was not as rich as was thought, it rapidly became an afterthought in English affairs, only brought to the forefront when rebellion threatened. The Irish began the long process of trying to accommodate themselves to English norms, if they lived East of the Shannon. The more unproductive lands of the West were, generally speaking, left to themselves, which created a wealth and status divide that existed well into the modern era.

It was really only after the Act of Union in 1800 that Irish nationalism began to grow, and that sectarianism became an issue. The Catholics looked for equality, and when moves were made in that direction the Protestants began to fear for their privileged place in society, and the downward spiral of English rule began, culminating in the creation of a "two-state solution" in the twentieth century, which left many of the festering issues unresolved.

This book is clear, but very dry and formal in style, which for me as a neophyte had too much detail without enough explicatory material to make full sense of it. That said, I now feel that I have an overall structure in my mind of Irish history with which to continue my journey.

 

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 - 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