Adrian Mitchell has released two books this year, The Profilist on S.T. Gill (or someone very like him) and From Corner to Corner on Henry Colless.

Adrian’s written a wonderful meditation on these two characters, and he’s given us kind permission to share this insightful essay with you all —

Our past is full of old stories, the kind that go wandering about and are very often just out of sight, or memory. There’s a delight in retrieving these, whenever we come across them; and another in determining how to re-present them.

Samuel Thomas Gill and Henry Colless then: two figures who couldn’t be more disparate if they tried. They both inhabited an all too recognisable Australia, the colonial Australia that gave rise to our culture, our ideas and stories about ourselves. Gill observed the colonial world closely, and drew his conclusions. Henry Colless lived right inside the culture of the outback, the Australia of Russel Ward’s Australian legend. In part, he helped to make it.

Sturt’s overland expedition leaving Adelaide, 10th August 1844 by S.T. Gill

Gill was an onlooker, Colless was a doer. They both took a lively interest in their country, and neither was disheartened by adversity or downturns of luck. Indeed, that was part and parcel of the colonial experience. That is why in The Profilist I give prominence to the theme of the adventitious, not just in Ethan Dibble’s/S.T. Gill’s fortunes, but also in the lives of governors, explorers, entrepreneurs of all cuts of cloth. Henry Colless took a gamble and made his fortune; then the hard times of the Federation drought withered it away. But what a heady ride he had along the way.

One of the things I like about Gill is that he is remarkably verbal in his sketches. Which is not quite the same thing as narrative art, though he does that too. The details of his scenes are explained when we translate them for ourselves, the reason for the arrangement becomes clear. The tensions between the different parts declare themselves conceptually just as much as visually.

And there are all those punning titles to encourage us down that tricky path too.

The Profilist by Adrian Mitchell

Gill saw his world in precise and colourful detail. He took it all in, and delighted in it. That is where he is so out of the ordinary. He was not interested in doing those grand heavily varnished quarter-acre sketches in our major galleries, and before which we are meant to genuflect – the ones that gave rise to Marcus Clarke’s view that weird melancholy is the keynote of the Australian landscape. Gill is all about light and life and energy. He had his own view of what to draw – people, all sorts of people, people on goldfields or in burgeoning towns, or people in landscapes. What we see through his eyes is what he thought about it all. He had a very intriguing sense of wry amusement.

Henry Colless on the other hand was as large as life and twice as busy. He was one of the Cornstalk boys from along the Hawkesbury who evolved the type of colonial independence that gave grief to officers and officials – not just from being curmudgeonly (undoubtedly a touch of that though) but from refusing to be bossed about. At quite a young age he was moving large herds of cattle about, trying to dodge the worst extremes of drought. Eventually he took a large mob across the Corner country to establish Innamincka station, and build the first stone building anywhere in that country. And the cattle he raised and fattened there were amongst the best on the market.

From Corner to Corner by Adrian Mitchell

In Bourke, where he had been mine host at the Tattersall’s Hotel, he busied himself in the town’s affairs, a leading figure at the times of the various floods, a councillor, a pastoralist and a respected appointee to the Pastures Board. And a long serving member of the local Jockey Club. He loved his horses, even when they kicked him, bit off his finger, rolled on top of him. He was a complete pioneer, and was buried with his swag and stockwhip.

Both were worn out by life.  Gill died on the steps of the GPO, Melbourne, and the deposition at the coronial enquiry makes for sorry reading. Henry Colless outlasted all his many siblings but died equally impoverished, of what used to be called senile decay.  There wasn’t enough money in the family to put up a headstone; which makes his ending comparable with Gill’s pauper’s grave.  Death the great leveller indeed.
…

The Profilist is available here and From Corner to Corner is available here.