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Freda and Me: The Birth of CAAMA, Imparja and Indigenous media in Australia

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By Philip Batty

In this extract from our new book Kin, a co-founder of the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association (CAAMA), Philip Batty, recalls its roots, and the integral role of fellow co-founder Freda Glynn. CAAMA went on to operate Australia’s only Aboriginal-owned satellite television service, Imparja Television, and trained a generation of young Indigenous people who went on to form the nucleus of today’s Indigenous media culture in Australia. 

* * *

(above, From Left: John Macumba, FReda Glynn, Philip Batty)

 

I first met Freda Glynn in 1979, at a demonstration in Alice Springs. At the time, Central Australia was a politically fractured place. The Whitlam Labor Government’s Land Rights Bill had inflamed pastoralists throughout the Northern Territory; the new Aboriginal Legal Aid service threatened the old local judicial system; bigoted police had come under investigation and missions had been abolished and their property handed over to Aboriginal organisations. In this fraught atmosphere it was not unusual to find oneself at demonstrations.

Eight months passed before I met Freda again; this time, at an event that would change both of us irrevocably. It was a tentative public meeting held in Alice Springs to discuss the formation of an organisation that proposed to work towards the establishment of an Aboriginal voice in the media.

The meeting was organised by me and a gregarious Aboriginal man from Oodnadatta, John Macumba. Our first few attempts to hold the meeting failed but on the third try, a number of Aboriginal people attended, including Freda, who voted with the majority to form a new organisation, tentatively named the Central Australian Aboriginal Media Association.

At the time, Freda was a single mother with five children: Sue, Erica, Scott, Robert and Warwick (then a ten-year-old boy). She had separated from her husband, Bob Thornton, and was cleaning hotels to support her family as sole breadwinner.

This made any full time involvement in CAAMA impossible. Although she attended CAAMA committee meetings and helped where she could, it would be another 18 months before Freda took up the position of co-director of the new organisation.

* * *

Freda was born on Woodgreen station, north of Alice Springs, in 1939. Her mother, Topsy Glynn, was a traditional Kaytetye woman who spoke several Aboriginal languages before English. Topsy received training at the station as a cook and subsequently worked for the owners.

Freda’s father, Alfred Price, was the son of Frederick Price, the second last postmaster of the Overland Telegraph Station in Alice Springs. Freda, or more correctly, Alfreda, was given the female version of her father’s name, Alfred. Freda’s only sibling, her older sister, Rona, was fathered by Alfred’s brother, Ronald.

As an infant, Freda was afflicted with a life-threatening illness and was sent, tucked up in a wooden egg box, to the ‘Bungalow’ (aka ‘The Half-caste Institution’) in Alice Springs to receive urgent medical care, accompanied by Rona and her mother. As Freda required prolonged care, her mother was allowed to stay at the Bungalow where she was later employed as housekeeper and head cook. Freda says that this was ‘the best thing that could have happened to me and my family’ as it opened up the possibility of education, employment and a better life in Alice Springs.

After leaving school in the mid-1950s, Freda was immediately offered training and a job at the only photographic studio in Alice Springs, and for 17 years she captured practically every baptism, wedding and birthday in the town. Working alone in the studio’s darkroom, Freda enjoyed listening to the ABC, then the only radio service available in Alice Springs. She says that this gave her a ‘great education’ about the world beyond the confines of Central Australia.

With the election of the federal Labor Government in 1972 and the creation of the first federal Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA), people like Freda were in demand. Employed by the Department in the mid-1970s, she received training in development management at the South Australian Institute of Technology in the Task Force program. She was subsequently offered work back in Alice Springs as a Community Development Officer, assisting people living on the town’s fringe camps.

It was during this period that I first met Freda.

* * *

In mid-February 1980, we presented a written submission to the Department of Aboriginal Affairs announcing the formation of CAAMA and seeking financial support. The Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Liberal Fraser Government, Fred Chaney, was receptive but felt that his colleague, Minster for Communications Tony Staley, should fund CAAMA.

While the ministers debated their respective responsibilities, the Institute for Aboriginal Development (IAD) in Alice Springs offered their support. They hired filmmaker Clive Scollay to organise a CAAMA media tour of public broadcasting stations in Canberra, Sydney and Melbourne and, more significantly, to arrange meetings with Chaney and Staley (then a Cabinet minister) to push CAAMA’s case.

Obligingly, the ministers agreed to meet the CAAMA delegation at Parliament House in early April. While Chaney was somewhat equivocal, offering little support for CAAMA, the opposite was true of Staley. When we entered his office, he said, with his feet on his ministerial desk, ‘The government would like to offer you a gift: the old ABC studios and broadcasting facilities in Alice Springs,’ and with that, he lit up a cigar. Stunned at such generosity, we thanked Staley and headed back to Alice Springs. In the meantime, he issued a press release notifying the public of his magnanimous offer. However, on inspecting the ‘studios’ we discovered that they were in a ruinous state and devoid of any equipment. Contact was immediately made with Staley’s office to alert him to the real state of the ‘gift’.

Six weeks later, on 28 May, Staley and Chaney flew to Alice Springs to speak with us. During this critically important meeting, it was resolved that the old studios would be renovated and production equipment installed for CAAMA’s use; that the new ABC studios and offices in Alice Springs would be made available to CAAMA while the renovations to the old studios were completed; and that DAA would consider funding CAAMA’s production and operational costs. I still find it surprising, if not astonishing, that a small, untested group from the desert was able to extract support from some of the most powerful political figures in the nation, including a Cabinet minister. Such, perhaps, was the goodwill that then existed towards Aboriginal people.

At about the same time, the federal government established a committee of inquiry into the ABC (the Dix Committee) and it happened to be holding a hearing in Alice Springs. This represented an unprecedented opportunity for CAAMA, then the only Aboriginal media organisation in the country. John delivered a powerful speech at the hearing, pointing out that the ABC was providing no Aboriginal programming in the country and that it must immediately rectify this ‘appalling oversight’. Two ABC executives present at the hearing – John Newsome and John Hartley – later recalled that John’s speech hit them ‘like a ton of bricks’.

Within a matter of months, CAAMA was contracted to produce radio programming on the local ABC outlet (8AL) and the ABC itself planned to launch its own pilot Aboriginal radio program through the same station and on a national basis. This had major repercussions for Freda. The ABC offered her training and a full-time position at the ABC producing and presenting their local program, which she accepted.

Much else was undertaken during this brief, hectic period: CAAMA played a role in establishing Alice Spring’s first public radio station, 8CCC; the first Indigenous media training programs were created; licence applications were submitted; radio programs were produced; building and equipment were installed; and much more. Indeed, from

January 1980 to June 1981, CAAMA went from nothing but an idea through to a burgeoning organisation, producing and broadcasting daily radio programming in four Aboriginal languages through three outlets: the public station, 8CCC, the regional ABC station, 8AL and the commercial station, 8HA.

In May 1981, John decided to leave CAAMA and Alice Springs. He had been offered a substantial managerial position that he could not refuse in his home town, Oodnadatta. I was concerned that if someone could not be found to replace John, CAAMA might falter. Fortunately, Freda, who was now employed full-time at the ABC but continued to attend CAAMA meetings, readily agreed to leave the ABC and take up the position of co-director, in July 1981.

(ABOVE: Freda Glynn at CAAMA Studios, 1984)

 

A good start had been made in laying the foundations of CAAMA, but the work of turning it into an organisation with its own independent radio and television services, with a strong production capability and well-resourced training program was yet to be achieved.

One of our most important submissions at this time (presented to the federal government in 1983) focused on Australia’s forthcoming national satellite, AUSSAT, due to be launched in 1985. We pointed out in the submission that the satellite would, for the first time, make available a wide range of telecommunication services, including TV, to hundreds of remote Aboriginal communities. We insisted that these communities should be afforded some measure of control over what we described as the ‘avalanche’ of television about to pour into their homes. We also argued that Aboriginal people should be given the ability to produce television programming on their own terms and in their own languages as a way of moderating this forthcoming ‘cultural televisual dominance’.

To back up these arguments, Freda and I attended a number of conferences and seminars in the southern capitals where Freda made impassioned speeches about the potential impact of the satellite. At this point, the federal government was still making up its mind about how AUSSAT would be regulated and who would have access to it.

Our arguments concerning the need for Aboriginal production of Aboriginal programming in the face of the impending satellite were also put to the Australian Film Commission (AFC). Responding positively, the AFC, then headed up by Cathy Robinson, and later Kim Williams, provided CAAMA with enough funding to establish the CAAMA Video Unit at the end of 1983 (later, CAAMA Productions Pty Ltd). Clive Scollay was re-engaged to set up the Unit with four Aboriginal trainees. While technically ‘trainees’, they were thrown into intensive production work, including a number of contracts for government departments. One of the trainees was Erica Glynn.

Moves were also made in 1983 to establish CAAMA’s own independent radio broadcasting network. A detailed application was made late that year to the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal (ABT) for a licence to operate a public radio station in Alice Springs with repeaters at the Aboriginal communities of Hermannsburg, Ali Curung and Santa Teresa. A year later, the ABT convened a public hearing in Alice Springs at which Aboriginal organisations and people throughout the Northern Territory came to speak in support of the application, including Pat Dodson, then director of the Central Land Council. After a brief deliberation, the ABT officially awarded CAAMA its long-awaited broadcasting licence in September 1984; the first ever awarded to an Aboriginal organisation. In making its decision, the chairman of the ABT, David Jones, said it was ‘an historic occasion in Australian broadcasting’.

The new station was located in Little Sisters, a renovated former Catholic convent on the southern outskirts of Alice Springs, next to a town camp, also named Little Sisters, which could sometimes become extremely rowdy. On occasion, when one of the radio announcers failed to turn up, Freda would grab her teenage son Warwick to fill in. This experience later formed the basis of Warwick’s award-winning short, Green Bush (2005).

The old convent also accommodated the CAAMA video unit, audio-visual library, administrative offices and other facilities. In 1984, a recording studio was constructed next to the convent and a recording label, CAAMA Music, created. Within three years the label had grown into a substantial business, selling more than 30,000 cassettes and CDs annually, from a catalogue of some 40 albums. The recording studio was managed by music producer Bill Davis, working with Aboriginal trainees including Mark Manolis, who later found work in the recording industry. Bill and his team later produced a series of award-winning radio programs for schools located in Aboriginal communities throughout the Northern Territory known as Bushfire Radio.

In 1984, the federal government finally made a decision about who would have access to the national satellite, AUSSAT. Briefly, Minister for Communications Michael Duffy decided that licences would only be granted to commercial television operators to provide services from the satellite. Further, the Australian Broadcasting Tribunal would decide who was to be awarded these licences through a competitive process after public hearings. If anyone else wanted access to the satellite, they would have to negotiate with the successful licensees.

This meant that community-based bodies like CAAMA would have to beg these commercial operators for access with no guarantee of success. It seemed, at the time, as if we were completely locked out. There was however one small chink in this seemingly impenetrable armour. CAAMA could create its own commercial TV company and bid for one of the licences in its own right and thus obtain unfettered access. Indeed, one of the satellite’s service areas covered all of those towns and regions that CAAMA had always wished to reach.

This created a huge dilemma. CAAMA had no interest in operating a commercial TV service, but if it did not submit a licence application, it would have no guaranteed access to the satellite. I remember having long, anxious discussions with Freda and the CAAMA committee about whether to apply for the licence. We would have to broadcast predominantly commercial television programming, yet CAAMA was established to counter such material. In short, we would be forced to sup with the devil. In the end, we decided to apply for the licence as there was no alternative.

We created, on paper, a television company, Imparja (meaning ‘track’ in the Arrernte language) to facilitate the bid. One small problem remained, however: CAAMA had no money to actually establish the service. Freda and I conducted a tour of Indigenous television satellite services in North America. In Canada, we visited the remote Arctic Circle, where satellite technology had been delivering TV programming in the Inuit language for many years. Here, we were warmly welcomed by representatives of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation who offered to appear at the hearing (via satellite) in support our application.

The first hearing was held on 6 August 1985 in Alice Springs. Two contenders had applied for the licence, CAAMA and the Darwin-based commercial TV station, Channel 8, which was acquired in the middle of the hearing by media magnate and Australia’s richest man, Kerry Packer. We had 24 Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal witnesses to support our case, including eye surgeon, Fred Hollows; the former head of the reserve bank, H.C. ‘Nugget’ Coombs; Minister for Education in the South Australian government, Lynn Arnold, (later premier of that state); Rosemarie Kuptana, head of the Inuit Broadcasting Corporation (via satellite); and many Aboriginal community representatives.

While we were able to put forward a convincing case in terms of our Aboriginal programming and special audience needs, we did not of course have experience in operating a television station. More problematically, we had been unable to secure financial support, despite several funding submissions to the federal government. In sharp contrast, Channel 8 had the required funds and the technical experience. They planned to relay their existing commercial television material through the new satellite service, together with some local news, but there would be no programming for the substantial Aboriginal audience.

Freda and I held out little hope of winning the bid. In fact, our whole team did. We were therefore astonished when the ABT decided that neither CAAMA nor Channel 8 qualified for the licence and that another hearing would be called to decide the matter. In short, CAAMA had ‘impressive’ programming, but zero finance, while Channel 8 possessed the finance, but no Aboriginal programming. The next hearing was set down for 17 March 1986, giving both parties six months to re-boot their applications. As the communications academic Eric Michaels suggested, the ABT sent both applicants on a ‘treasure hunt’: ‘CAAMA had to come back with six million dollars’, while Channel 8 had ‘to find some Aboriginal content’.

With the real prospect of winning the licence, Freda, myself and other CAAMA staff (including ‘Shorty’ O’Neil, formerly of the North Queensland Land Council), organised an intensive round of new meetings with government funding bodies. In the end, we were able to obtain an undertaking that if CAAMA won the licence, the funds would be forthcoming, subject to ministerial approval.

About 30% of this money was to come from the Australian Bicentennial Authority, which had been established to celebrate, in 1988, the 200th anniversary of European settlement in Australia. The Authority had substantial funding for ‘nationally focused’ Aboriginal projects and an Aboriginal-owned satellite television service appeared to fit the bill. Some city-based Aboriginal groups protested against CAAMA accepting the bicentennial ‘blood money’ and, on several occasions, Freda fronted up to these groups to argue that all government funding to Aboriginal organisations could be described as ‘blood money’. Indeed, at a particularly hostile meeting, I remember thinking back to the first time I met Freda when she was confronted by the all-white Citizens for Civilised Living. On this occasion, it was an all-Aboriginal crowd she faced with the same bravery.

Following the second, tumultuous hearing, the ABT awarded the licence to CAAMA in August 1986, stating that ‘on balance’, CAAMA could provide a more ‘comprehensive’ service. Channel 8 had made some limited attempt to develop Aboriginal programming but it failed to impress the ABT. Miraculously, once we had secured the license, the funding bodies made good on their promise to provide the required $6 million funds. The decision produced a near hysterical response from the conservative Northern Territory Government. As recorded in Hansard, Chief Minister Ian Tuxworth thundered, ‘This is a joke … giving a television signal that covers one-third of the Australian continent to a group … that is incapable, incompetent and unfinancial (sic), is madness.’ Channel 8 launched an appeal against the decision, but that too failed. By the end of 1986, CAAMA was ready to build its own satellite service, Imparja Television.

* * *

Along with the licence came $3.5 million in promised funding to train over 30 Aboriginal ‘media cadets’ in association with the Australian Film Television and Radio School, to be coordinated by the School’s Julie Wiggins. Two of these trainees were Warwick Thornton and Rachel Perkins.

One could say that Warwick grew up with CAAMA. Indeed, Freda used to refer to him and his sister Erica as her ‘CAAMA babies’. As a 12-year-old, Warwick could often be found riding his BMX bike around the CAAMA radio studios, pestering his mother. As we have seen, his initial role at CAAMA was that of a ‘fill-in’ radio announcer, up until he had his own program. When he took up one of the new traineeships after the license victory, he received on-the-job training, using the CAAMA video unit’s new camera equipment. It was clear from the outset that he had a particularly acute ‘eye’ and aesthetic sensibility, which would lead him onto a successful career. Rachel Perkins had grown up in the southern cities, but she too had close ties with Central Australia. Her famous activist father, Charlie Perkins, was born in the region and, like Freda, had spent time as a child at the Bungalow home in Alice Springs.

Rachel had quite different interests to Warwick. When I first met her, she was halfway through a Dostoevsky novel and already talking about films she planned to make. My immediate thought was, this young woman will go far.

With the training program underway, work began on the establishment of Imparja TV, and after a frantic 12 months or so, Imparja went to air on 15 January 1988.

Rachel’s father, then head of the Aboriginal Development Commission, officially launched the station before a crowd of some 500 guests. In a subsequent press interview, Freda said: ‘After all the hard work, this is a proud moment for our mob.’ And, indeed, it was.

 

This is an edited extract from Philip Batty’s essay ‘Freda Glynn and the evolution of CAAMA: a personal reflection’, in Kin: An extraordinary Australian filmmaking family (Wakefield Press).

The art of Nicholas Folland

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Over the last two weeks we’ve been sharing summaries of and extracts from some Wakefield Press gems, in blog posts put together by work experience student Maddy. (And yes, we briefly had two Maddys in the office! Never enough Maddys, we say.) This is the last post of the series.

 

Cover of Nicholas Folland by Lisa Slade

 

Nicholas Folland follows the life and work of the well-known artist. This book displays Folland’s passion for jewels and other miscellaneous translucent glassware, and how artfully he works an ambience into a piece. Stunning to look at, this book allows one to explore their taste in polished crystal and how they could work it into the atmosphere.

Folland’s talent for transforming attractive objects into even more glamorous artworks transcends all expectations and leaves you breathless. Repurposing once-useless crystalware into pieces of history and identity which speak to the audience, Folland’s journey is set throughout the pages in an essay format, easy to pore over and digest.

 

Found crystal vases, LED lights, by Nicholas Folland

Untitled (10-14) (2013)

 

Found crystal vases, LED lights, by Nicholas Folland

Untitled (1-6) (2013)

 

Taxidermy deer, chandelier, by Nicholas Folland

Dear (2013)

 

Chandelier, refrigeration unit, 12W lighting, by Nicholas Folland

The Door Was Open … (2005)

 

Crystal and glassware, table, lightbox, cinefoil, by Nicholas Folland

Goodnight Sweetheart (2011)

 

Under construction, by Nicholas Folland

Fides (2012)

 

Crystal decanters, polyester resin, timber, aluminium, lightbox, by Nicholas Folland

Untitled (boat 5) (2008)

 

Cast crystal, timber, lightbox, by Nicholas Folland

Reclining Nude (2011)

 

Mixed media installation, by Nicholas Folland

Raft 2 (detail) (2009)

 

About the author

Lisa Slade spent her childhood in Hunter Valley, New South Whales, before moving to Newcastle to be a university lecturer. Relocating to Adelaide, Slade spent her time being Project Curator at the Art Gallery of South Australia, additionally curating exhibits whilst lecturing in art history between The University of Adelaide and The Art Gallery of South Australia. Slade has written many books before, a self proclaimed expert on art and writing, she skillfully weaves between words and pictures in a balance to let readers fully understand Folland’s art.

 

This book is available at our bookshop on 16 Rose Street, Mile End, or online.

We hope you’ve enjoyed this series by Maddy, and happy browsing!

Baudin’s Voyagers and The Art of Science

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Over two weeks we’re sharing summaries of and extracts from some Wakefield Press gems, in blog posts put together by work experience student Maddy. (And yes, we briefly had two Maddys in the office! Never enough Maddys, we say.)

 

Cover of The Art of Science by Jean Fornasiero, Lindl Lawton and John West-Sooby

 

The Art of Science tells of the rich history around Nicholas Baudin’s Voyagers from 1800 to 1804. Flip through the pages and join explorers as they discover and chart Australia. Beautiful scientific drawings illustrate exquisite flora and fauna, as Baudin’s voyagers collected over 100,000 specimens.

One of the most lavishly equipped scientific explorations to ever leave Europe, Baudin’s expedition uncovered the beauty in the Australian outback.

 

View of our anchorage in North West Bay, D’Entrecasteaux Channel, 29 Nivose, Year 10 (19 January 1802) Archives nationales de France, série Marine – 5JJ51

View of Anchorage in North West Bay

 

From The Art of Science

Red-necked pademelon by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur

 

From The Art of Science by Jean Fornasiero, Lindl Lawton and John West-Sooby

Grey Stinkwood from a drawing by Pierre-Joseph Redouté

 

From The Art of Science by Jean Fornasiero, Lindl Lawton and John West-Sooby

Aracana sp. (? ornata) by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur

About the authors

Jean Fornasiero is Emeritus Professor of French Studies at the University of Adelaide and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Lindl Lawton is Senior Curator at the South Australian Maritime Museum. John West-Sooby is Professor of French Studies at the University of Adelaide.

About the book

This book was published to coincide with the touring exhibition The Art of Science: Baudin’s Voyagers 1800–1804. This exhibition showcases more than 350 works from the Lesueur Collection held by the Museum of Natural History in Le Havre, Normandy, France. The exhibition has toured nationally, visiting Adelaide, Launceston, Hobart, Sydney and Canberra, before finishing up in Perth. It opened at the Western Australian Museum in September and runs until 9 December 2018. See more here.

The book is available at our bookshop on 16 Rose Street, Mile End or online.

Click here to view an extract.

Happy browsing.

An extract from The Hounded by Simon Butters

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Over two weeks we’re sharing summaries of and extracts from some Wakefield Press gems, in blog posts put together by work experience student Maddy. (And yes, we briefly had two Maddys in the office! Never enough Maddys, we say.)

In this extract from The Hounded, Monty finds himself alone with beautiful Eliza from next door, and in her bedroom no less …

 

“You enjoyed it, didn’t you? Watching her suffer like that?”

The Hounded

“What if I did?” she grinned.

What if she did? She was not going to hide it. She’d accepted her nature long ago. It was now up to me to accept the darkness. I’d got her so wrong.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “It was my fault.”

Her look softened and she shook her head in disdain, refusing my apology. A knock on the door startled us.

“Quick! Get in there,” she ordered.

I hurried into her bathroom. She closed the door on me, and I stood in the dark, trying not to move. Blood gushed through my veins. The noise was a roaring loudspeaker in my ears. I was sure the sound would give me away. Wasn’t there some Voodoo guy in Haiti who could stop his heartbeat, just by thinking about it? Now, that was control. I thought I’d give it a go and held my breath. I concentrated on my heart, willing it to stop, or at least slow down a bit. It didn’t work. I just made myself dizzy.

“Eliza, dinner’s ready.”

“Thanks Doreen,” Eliza replied. “But I’m not hungry.”

I pictured the scene in the bedroom. Doreen would have the door open just enough to peer in tentatively. Eliza would be seated on the end of her bed, bolt upright with not a thing out of place. By the tension in her throat, I could hear Doreen was unnerved.

“But your father won’t like that,” she whimpered.

“I don’t care what he likes,” Eliza said calmly.

The door closed. A few seconds later, Eliza came into the bathroom to find me holding my breath. I gasped. I began to wobble. A floating gaseousness invaded my feet. I reached out for the shower curtain but missed and passed out. I woke to find myself upside down behind the toilet.

“Why are you such an idiot?” she asked.

“Just the way I am,” I replied.

 

Blurb

On his fifteenth birthday, Monty is at rock bottom. Ignored by his parents, bullied at school, and with a brain that’s prone to going walkabout, he’s all by himself.

Until he meets the black dog for the first time.

It’s just like any other dog, except that only Monty can see it. And it talks. And Monty’s not sure whether it’s a friend – or a foe.

The black dog gets him talking to pretty, popular Eliza Robertson for the first time. It takes him to places he’s never been.

Eventually it will take Monty, and the people around him, to the very edge.

 

Notable achievements

The Children’s Book of the Year Awards: Notable Book

Queensland Literary Awards finalist

Shortlisted for the 2014 Adelaide Festival Unpublished Manuscript Award

 

About the author

Simon Butters is a screenwriter in film and television, living in the Adelaide Hills with his two hilarious kids, a very busy wife, and a scruffy little dog that definitely doesn’t talk but does do a weird grunt when patted behind the ear. Simon’s credits include Wicked Science, H20 Just Add Water, Maiko: Island of Secrets, and others.

 

We hope you enjoyed this extract from The Hounded. The book is available at our bookshop on 16 Rose Street, Mile End or online.

Discovering William Dobell with Christopher Heathcote

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Over the next two weeks we’ll be sharing summaries of and extracts from some Wakefield Press gems, put together by work experience student Maddy. (And yes, we briefly had two Maddys in the office! Never enough Maddys, we say.)

 

Discovering Dobell by Christopher Heathcote

 

Discovering Dobell delves into the riveting, yet humble, narrative of an aspiring artist hailing from New South Wales. Sir William Dobell challenges mediums and pushes the boundaries of his works, captured beautifully in this inspiring text. Although Dobell’s pieces reflect a theme of tragedy and loss, Heathcote is able to draw out the beauty and truly capture the essence of his works. Dobell has the unique ability to adapt his technique when creating the character in subject, seizing the crux of said subject and letting it flourish into his art. This talent allows viewers to really see the emotion and meaning behind his works.
From concepts and sketches to fully developed pieces poured over for months or years, Dobell pursued art until the end of his life. He thrived every second of it.

 

Oil on hardboard, William Dobell

Abstract – Three figures (1960, detail)

 

About the author/book:

Heathcote’s passionate analysis into the world of Sir WIlliam Dobell provides fresh insight to Dobell’s pieces. His exploration of Dobell, among others, prove that he is willing to go in depth to prove to others the gripping true tales of what it takes to become someone. Heathcote’s distinct talent for weaving together a stunning narrative from scraps of knowledge show time and time again that cinderella stories can spring from anywhere.

 

Oil on hardboard, William Dobell

The Torrent (1952)

 

This book is available at our bookshop at 16 Rose Street Mile End or online here.

Happy browsing.

On eagle-eyed librarians and a changing back cover

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This is a guest blog by Rhondda Harris and Beth Robertson on the very intriguing case of Ashton’s Hotel’s new back cover …

 

Ashton's Hotel by Rhondda Harris, original front and back cover

Original full cover for Ashton’s Hotel

Ashton's Hotel by Rhondda Harris, new front and back cover

New full cover for Ashton’s Hotel

 

From Rhonda Harris, author of Ashton’s Hotel:

Why the new back cover? Well, a bit of detective work by the State Library of South Australia (SLSA) has changed everything. The photograph of William Baker Ashton originally gracing the back cover of my book Ashton’s Hotel: The journal of William Baker Ashton, first governor of Adelaide Gaol turns out not to be him after all! And I was so happy when I found it.

 

Ashton's Hotel by Rhondda Harris, original back cover image

Original image from the back cover of Ashton’s Hotel

The more famous images of William Baker Ashton are some beautiful paintings by Henry Glover dated c. 1850, however Ashton’s journal was written in 1839–1845 so I was looking for something earlier. I first saw the image on the internet with a date of 1840 and never could find it again or be sure of it in any way, so I was delighted when I saw that along with the Glover paintings, the State Library of South Australia had this one as well, listed as a photograph of ‘William B. Ashton’ and an explanation of his time as governor of the gaol. The date offered was 1854. This was the year he died, but it was obviously a much younger version of the exceedingly wide man Glover depicted in 1850. A drawing of William, also in the SLSA collection, with the beginnings of his stout stature and with a date of 1841 seemed to provide a link to an 1840 date. Not so.

 

Illustration caption: A Governor! ay every inch a Governor!

Drawing of W.B. Ashton

 

Enter Beth Robertson, Manager of Preservation at the State Library of South Australia:

SLSA’s South Australian collections include several hundred thousand photographs. The oldest we have identified so far is a daguerreotype of a group of actors in about 1850. After attending an excellent talk by Rhondda, which included the ambrotype of William with the date 1840, I knew I had to investigate further. I confirmed that the tiny original (only 5.2 x 3.8 cm) is an ambrotype, a photographic technique that was invented in the 1850s. The immutable history of photography means that the image cannot be of William Baker Ashton in his youth, or a contender for the oldest known photograph in the library. I went back to the original accessions record. The photograph was donated to SLSA on 7 November 1958 when it was indeed identified as ‘Portrait of Wm Baker Ashton’. It came from the ‘Estate of late Henry Ashton’. Henry was a son of Henry Hamilton Ashton, 1833–1923, and a grandson of William Baker Ashton. I gather that Henry Hamilton Ashton was at the Victorian goldfields in the mid 1850s. The image could have been taken by a travelling photographer. This would explain the untidy labourer’s clothing as well as the luxurious, untrimmed hair and beard. I wrote to Rhondda after gently breaking the news to her on the phone,

As discussed, I am sorry to raise the likelihood that the photograph held by the State Library at B 25769 identified as William Baker Ashton is of his son Henry Hamilton Ashton.

We are both now in touch with Ashton’s descendants to positively identify the image. Is it Henry Hamilton Ashton? Or is it his older brother William James Ashton, 1830–1893, who was with him at the goldfields? If you know, please get in touch. When we have an answer the catalogue record will be changed, with a nod to the previous identification.

Meanwhile the lovely people at Wakefield Press have come up with a new back cover for Ashton’s Hotel. It is of course stunning and will mean this interesting mistake stops here. Thank you all from the heart.

 

Rhondda Harris

 

Beth M. Robertson

Manager Preservation, State Library of South Australia

www.slsa.sa.gov.au

Antarctic Ideas: Hot Reads for Cold Nights

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A good book is, in many ways, like a good conversation. It engages with ideas in a way that leaves you energised, knowing more than you did when you began – but still thinking and questioning. Maybe that’s why we at Wakefield feel a special affinity with the Adelaide Festival of Ideas.

In the lead-up to the full festival program announcement in a few weeks, we’re remembering an event from this time last year that shone a spotlight on the home of the blizzard: Antarctica: Past, Present and Futures. Paleontologist John Long, writer Sean Williams and director of the Royal Society of South Australia, Paul Willis, each shared their experiences in Antarctica.

 

To discover more about Antarctica for yourself, why not burrow into one of our gripping true Antarctic stories? Preferably under a blanket or by the fire!

 

Home of the Blizzard

Sir Douglas Mawson

A classic tale of discovery and adventure by a bona fide Australian hero, this has been called ‘one of the greatest accounts of polar survival in history’ by Sir Ranulph Fiennes.

This is Mawson’s own account of his years spent in sub-zero temperatures and gale-force winds, of pioneering deeds, great courage, heart-stopping rescues and heroic endurance. At its heart is the epic journey of 1912-13, during which both his companions perished.

 

Shackleton’s Boat Journey

F.A. Worsley

This is the classic account of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Antarctic expedition of 1914-16, told by Frank Worsley, captain of the expedition ship, Endurance.

First trapped then crushed by ice, the Endurance drifted in an ice floe for five months before reaching the barren and inhospitable Elephant Island, leaving 22 men there while Shackleton, Worsley and four others made the 800-mile journey to get help.

Braving hurricane-force winds, fifty-foot waves and sub-zero temperatures, this is an extraordinary story of survival.

 

Body at the Melbourne Club

David Burke

This fascinating biography of the first Australian-born member of an Antarctic expedition gives a new perspective on one of the great polar expeditions.

As an expert horseman, Bertram Armytage was given charge of the ponies in Ernest Shackleton’s great 1907-1909 polar expedition, during which he narrowly escaped the jaws of killer whales. In London, he was decorated by royalty for his achievements. But then, aged just 41, back on home ground, he shot himself in his part-time residence of the Melbourne Club. This is his story.

 

South by Northwest: The Magnetic Crusade and the Contest for Antarctica

Granville Allen Mawer

The race for the South Magnetic Pole started in the fabled Northwest Passage, when rival French, American and British expeditions were sent to find it in 1840-41. At the turn of the century, it defeated their successors, Shackleton and Mawson. It wasn’t until 1986 that Australian scientists finally found it, after a marathon, multi-expedition hunt that collectively unveiled much of Greater Antarctica along the way.

Books available at www.wakefieldpress.com.au and from good bookshops everywhere.

 

Special Event: Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries

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Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries

Cover of the book

France bewitched Barbara Santich as a student in the early 1970s. She vowed to return, and soon enough she did – with husband and infant twins in tow.

Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries tells the story of the magical two years that followed. Buoyed by naive enthusiasm, Barbara and her husband launched themselves into French village life, a world of winemaking, rabbit raising, cherry picking and exuberant 14 Juillet celebrations.

Here we see the awakening of Barbara Santich’s lifelong love affair with food history, and also a lost France, ‘when the 19th century almost touched hands with the 21st’. Shepherds still led their flocks to pasture each day and, even near the bustling towns, wild strawberries hid at the forest’s edge.

 

 

I drank Normandy farmhouse cider, ate strawberries dipped in red wine then sugar, and tasted truffles and soft goat cheeses for the first time. I returned to Australia inspired to become a food writer.

Join us for the launch of Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries: Two years in France at the Wakefield Press bookshop on Saturday May 5. The afternoon will begin at 2 pm and end at 5pm, with the book being launched by Amanda McInerny early in the afternoon.

Drinks and light nibbles will be provided, and you can enjoy 20% off all Wakefield Press titles (excluding Wild Asparagus, Wild Strawberries).

Please RSVP by Monday April 30 to maddy@wakefieldpress.com.au

If you are unable to attend the launch, but wish to purchase a copy of the book, you can visit us at our Mile End bookshop or find the book online.

Thanks to Coriole Vineyards and Woodside Cheese Wrights for their kind donations and support of Wakefield Press.

Peat Island: Dreaming and desecration

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Book Extract

Peat Island cover

Cover of the book

For just over 100 years an institution for the mentally ill has stood on little Peat Island, in the lower Hawkesbury.

It was decommissioned in 2010; quite empty now, it remains a locked facility just as it had always been. And eerie.

The last residents were dispersed into the wider community. In this, they echoed the fate of the Darkinjung people, original custodians of this country – their community was scattered just as intentionally, and effectively, if not quite so brutally. It is not one of the New South Wales government’s finest accomplishments.

For all the unhappiness associated with it, Peat Island was home for more than 3000 residents, males only for the first half of its modern history. Over time, it became a happier place, even as the facility itself aged, fell into disrepair, and became a bureaucratic nightmare and a political football.

This is its sorry story.

 

Read an extract:

With the cessation of hospital care at Milson Island, everything devolved to Peat Island; so the hospital became Peat Island Hospital, plain and simple. Nothing whatsoever about identifying its purpose, nothing about mental care. As though not saying what service it performed disguised what in fact it was. Was this another of the Peter Pan episodes, breaking away from the shadows, expunging them?

With that closure, plans were drawn up to modernise the wards on Peat Island. Which is more public service speak. It meant that somehow even more beds had to be fitted in to help with the accommodation. Not everyone from Milson stayed on Peat, though, not by a long shot. Residents were sent here, there and everywhere. In cohesive groups, admittedly, not sprinkled throughout institutions all over the state. But in different directions nevertheless.

One consequence of the dispersal of the patients was that those parents who had taken an interest in the Parents and Citizens Association followed their sons to wherever their new placement was, and as it happened that took away the most active and interested members. Their bimonthly journal, News and Views, ceased. So too did the regular news sheet, The Islander. These had been making a very real difference to the range and quality of experience available to their children, and to the communal spirit of those connected with the hospital; but those who had been most productive had gone their separate ways.

A different kind of dispersal was also under way. It did not involve large numbers, but the Health Department was intent upon returning patients to care in the community – to their parents if that were possible, or to small-scale specialist hostels. That is what Dr Lindsay had been foreshadowing to the parent groups. Cottages with improved plumbing, and warm showers. At least these residents would have their own room, and some privacy. That, it might be recalled, was the way it should have been right from the beginning at Rabbit Island, for precisely that element had been designed into the original arrangement of the wards. But it had never eventuated. The powers that be had ridden roughshod over those enlightened plans. From day one the authorities had failed their own brief.

The dispersal of patients back into the community was not a triumph of rehabilitation, however. Years later David Richmond was quite frank about that. ‘Contrary to the misconceptions of some, a significant exodus from institutional care through bed number reductions had already occurred in the 1960s and 1970s, well before the report, largely to meet budget pressure on the institutions’. Not, it is to be noted, because of an impulse towards humane reform. The bottom line was the budget, not the needs of those in the government’s care. To him and the other bureaucrats they were ‘beds’, not people. Beans to be counted.

The year 1973 was a pivotal one for many people. Minister Jago, for example, forgot to nominate for his own seat, Gordon, in time for the state election. He was replaced as minister by John Waddy, member for Kirribilli for only the next two years; because Waddy resigned when his own constituency denied him preselection.

Jago had set in place a reform which came into effect in that same year, 1973, consequent upon an act passed in parliament in the preceding year. A Health Commission would resume the responsibilities of the Health Department, the Hospitals Commission and the Ambulance Service. Dr Barclay was elevated to the role of Commissioner for Personal Health Services, meaning the combination of mental health and public health. With this ongoing restructuring and renaming, the wonder is that anyone could make sense of what was going on. The endless changes implied instability rather than progressive reform. Nobody seemed quite able to make up their mind. Head Office indeed.

Peat Island: Dreaming and desecration will launch in Sydney on April 29. For more information about the launch, you can get in touch with us here. To purchase the book, visit us in our Mile End book shop or find it online.

Book Extract: Big Rough Stones

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Big Rough Stones

front cover of Big Rough Stones

Cover of the book

They surged across King William Street, around and up onto the bronze Boer War horseman at the corner of North Terrace. Ro linked arms with the woman next to her. ‘Take the toys from the boys’, they sang. The hero almost disappeared under a festoon of women, but clung valiantly to his rifle, bronze upper lip stiff. It was his horse who looked most horrified.

Meet Ro at thirty-something. She is committed to cures for every ill from monogamy to orange armpit fungus. Her ambitions are passionate, her energy boundless, her intentions generally good …

Thirty years later, are the edges any smoother?

‘You thought feminism would stop violence against women,’ said Julia. ‘And that would stop war. And stop people trashing the Earth. You tried.’

‘Not alone,’ said Ro modestly. ‘I had help.’

This is a story of community, friendship, sisterhood, and the coming of age that continues all our lives.

Read an extract of Big Rough Stones below.

The Farm

The road was narrower now and soon began to twist. Trees met overhead. Valleys, green with tree ferns, fell away beside the car. They turned off onto a dirt road that became little more than a track through a gap in the towering forest. Gerry stopped the ute in front of a battered wooden gate.

‘I’ll do it,’ said Ro, reaching for the door handle.

‘I’d better. It’s a bit temperamental.’ Gerry jumped out and Ro watched as she unlatched the gate and lifted it slightly so that it could swing. The gate posts stuck out at odd angles. Ro wound down her window and breathed in the late afternoon air, eucalypt, a touch of smoke and a dark coolness that would be mist in the hollows by nightfall.

‘I’ll have to go straight over to Steve’s and see what’s happening with Lark. Might have to borrow Steve’s float to bring her back.’ Gerry looked up at the sky, gauging the angle of the sun. ‘Or maybe wait till morning for that. But I have to go and see. Thought you could stay here and get the fire going. It’ll be cold tonight.’

‘Okay.’

The track wound round the side of a steep hill through orchard trees, bright green against the dark background of the forest. They passed a clutter of sheds and curved round to a cup-shaped hollow in the hillside.

‘Here we are,’ Gerry said, voice nervous. ‘I’m still working on it.’

It was a small fibro shack with a chimney pipe sticking out the top. Nothing was square or symmetrical. On one side a lean-to slid down into an apple tree. On the other side a smaller shack was connected by a roofed-in walkway. All three structures were propped up by tanks. The overall effect was fungal, a strange grey mushroom that had sprung from the hillside and was now subsiding back into it again.

But this was not an abandoned ruin. When Ro looked more closely she could see evidence of loving attention. One side of the main shack had been opened out, the wall replaced with stained glass windows at various heights. In front of the house one of the few flat areas had been paved with old bricks. Garden table and chairs had been painted a neat green.

‘It’s beautiful,’ Ro said, moved by the signs of careful work, prepared to embrace any amount of rustic charm.

Gerry eased the tarp off the back of the ute and lifted their packs out.

‘Dot and Maria live the other side of the hill. There a track to their place further along the road. You’ll see tomorrow.’

The house was not locked. Gerry pointed out a basket of kindling, chopped wood and the old Metters stove.

‘What say you light the stove? I won’t be long,’ she said. ‘Oh, and I’ll bring Hester back. Okay?’

Without waiting for an answer she backed out. Ro heard the engine cough into life and the ute recede up the track. She sank into the one armchair. Hester? She, Ro, must have made a mistake. This wasn’t a seduction scene at all, not with someone called Hester staying here as well. The space was tiny.

Surely she hadn’t made the live-in girlfriend mistake? One of the worst in the available range of seduction mistakes, most of which Ro had made. The very worst was to come on to a woman, assuming she was a dyke, and find she was straight. The discovery of a live-in girlfriend wasn’t as bad as that, but disappointing enough.

Her radar couldn’t be that faulty. She and Gerry hadn’t actually discussed it, but none of the signs pointed to a live-in lover. And everyone she’d asked had spoken of Gerry as if she was single.

Now that she came to think about it, Ro wasn’t sure that she herself had mentioned Sascha. That would have to be dealt with. She dismissed the idea quickly. Tomorrow.

Another thought struck her. Could Hester be a daughter? Ro’s heart sank. That would be worse than anything. Gerry looked an unlikely sort for a mother, but who could tell?

Ro jumped to her feet and pushed open the door of the lean-to. Bathroom. And a window in the right place so that you could sit in the bath and look out into the branches of a tree. A chip heater, but no toilet. Must be outside.

She crossed the main room to the walkway and passed through into the one bedroom. The bed was a chipboard platform on milk crates with a mattress on top. No sign of toys or kids’ clothes. Oh well. She’d find out soon enough.

Big Rough Stones is Margaret’s third book with Wakefield Press. Margaret’s previous novel, The First Week (2013) won the Unpublished Manuscript Award at Adelaide Writers’ Week, and then was shortlisted for the Barbara Jefferis Award, the NSW Premier’s Award and the Onkaparinga People’s Choice Award. In 2014, Wakefield Press published her Fables Queer and Familiar, illustrated by Chia Moan. The ‘Fables’ started out as an online serial and they have also been broadcast around the country as a radio serial.

Join us for the launch of Big Rough Stones by Chia Moan at The Joinery on Friday 13 April from 6pm. If you are unable to attend the launch, but would like a copy of the book, visit us at our Rose street bookshop or find it online.