Eureka to the Diggers

by Thomas Keneally

  Left: Brilliant young lawyer and Federationist Isaac Isaacs was capable of running a law practice and a distinguished parliamentary career both in the Victorian Parliament and, after Federation, in the national house. Deakin wrote of him that ‘his will was indomitable, his courage inexhaustible and his ambition immeasurable’. (National Library of Australia, nla.pican21399820-34) Right: While other premiers watch bemused from a distance, plump and opportunistic George Reid of Free Trade New South Wales claims all the Murray, along which Protectionist Victoria had its customs houses and on which it depended for irrigation. (State Library of South Australia, The Critic, 5 February 1898)

  George Reid, Prime Minister Edmund Barton, Sir William Lyne, Alfred Deakin and other members of the House toast robust Australian woman, who holds high the franchise she has achieved. (National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an 6222116)

  The Womanhood Suffrage League of New South Wales organised at the Protestant Hall in Sydney a September 1902 demonstration of women’s gratitude to Sir William Lyne and Sir John See, parliamentarians who had been active in the federal campaign to provide the franchise to women. See would also achieve some note as a slum landlord. (State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library, a928828 /MPG 149)

  Federation was a matter of passion for these citizens who marched in its favour at Summer Hill in Sydney in 1898 on the evening before the first New South Wales referendum, which would fail to reach the 80 000 Yes votes the New South Wales Parliament had insisted on. (State Library of NSW, Sydney Mail, Saturday 11 June, 1898, p. 1229)

  A poster urging Western Australians to choose Federation. On 31 July 1900, the state was the last to hold a poll on Federation, and it was won overwhelmingly by over 44 000 to 19 000. There would ever after be a tendency to blame the Easterners on the goldfields for the Yes vote, for they had loudly threatened to secede from Western Australia if Federation was defeated. But in fact, people in Perth and Fremantle voted solidly in favour as well. (National Library of Australia, nla.pic vn3302372)

  Big states feared that under Federation they would need to support smaller ones, especially since smaller states would have as many senators as they did. But this South Australian anti-Federation cartoon in the magazine The Critic was concerned that New South Wales, within whose boundaries the federal capital was to lie, would dominate and squeeze the smaller states. (State Library of South Australia, The Critic 18 March 1899)

  To accommodate an amended Constitution Bill, which needed a second referendum, the South Australians (like the Victorians, Tasmanians and New South Welshmen) voted again in April 1899 and gathered here outside the Advertiser office waiting on the figures. The number of ‘Yes’ votes in South Australia exceeded ‘No’ by 48 000. (State Library of South Australia B8821)

  The three federal champions, clear-eyed Deakin, hard-up but determined Barton and rambunctious Kingston take the Constitution Bill to England where Secretary for the Colonies Joseph Chamberlain, harbouring ideas of his own and with amendments in mind, awaits their arrival. He would find that these three, however, could not be ‘duchessed’ into compliance. (State Library of South Australia, Quiz, 8 February1900)

  On the hot night of 1 January 1901, the Sydney Town Hall was illuminated by fireworks boasting ‘One People, One Destiny’, while on the other side of the city the frail Lord Hopetoun recovered at Government House. (State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library,a186005h /PXD 760, 62)

  The Imperial pharmacist, Secretary of State Chamberlain, accepts a prescription written by ‘my doctor at home’, the Australian electorate, but would prefer to change a clause to give the British government, by way of the Privy Council, a form of direct control over Australian High Court decisions. (National Library of Australia, London Punch, 23 May 1900 p 371)

  In Brisbane an Aboriginal arch was built outside the Lamington Hotel to celebrate federal events, to which native men with spears and shields added their presence. Since many of those who passed beneath the arch believed, on evidence offered by popular science, that the Aborigines were regrettably but inevitably a dying race, Federation would fail to deliver any added status or leverage to Australia’s indigenes. (State Library of Queensland, 149581)

  The Chinese citizens of Melbourne were very much in the sights of White Australia legislation likely to be passed during the first session of the new parliament in May 1901. Nonetheless, they raised one of the ornamental arches so loved by Melbournians to celebrate the opening of the session by the Duke of Cornwall and York. (State Library of Victoria, H96.160/651)

  This photograph of the Centennial Park Pavilion where, on a sweltering New Years Day, the Federation was instituted, conveys little of the furnace-breath wind which blew commission and constitution documents off the table, and grit into bystanders’ eyes. But the woman on the right, sisterly hand on another’s shoulder, and the cane chairs moved awry, give the picture a humane informality. (National Library of Australia, nla.pic-an13 117)

  Women Aboriginal stockriders, Warramungu and Walpiri, at Alexandria Station on the Barkly Tablelands in the Northern Territory in 1916. Nicknamed ‘drover’s boys’, ‘lady stockmen’ were described as riding all day in the saddle and working all night in the swag. (State Library of NSW, Mitchell Library, ML PXB 81, 47b)

  A group of forty-three Chinese men about to be shipped home from Darwin in June 1914. White Australia’s intentions in this case were bolstered by unsanitary conditions in Darwin’s Chinatown. Some observers would claim that the removal of such men as these, and especially of their more entrepreneurial fellow Chinese, brought stagnation to Northern Australia. (National Archives of Australia, A3, NT1915/1028)

  Sir William Lyne, so nearly first prime minister, gets temporarily stuck on a fence while showing a 1902 touring group of parliamentarians the suitability of his electorate around Albury for a national capital. On the left, in a bowler, Deakin seems a little amused, while on the immediate right Billy Hughes and Chris Watson gather themselves to follow Sir William. (National Library of Australia, nla.pican24553118)

  This is the first recruiting poster produced in Australia, designed by an illustrator named Jim Hannan. It contrasts the dilemma of an Australian soldier on Gallipoli with a heedless football crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Ground. The idea that sport caused young men to tarry at home was one pursued not only by posters but by politicians and generals in two world wars. (Australian War Memorial, ARTV07583)

  This Melbourne recruiting poster of 1915 carries the face of Lieutenant Albert Jacka, who won the Victoria Cross on Gallipoli in July 1915 for his exploits at Courtney’s Post. The idea of a Sportsmen’s 1000 (which did not exist as a military unit) would revive after the defeat of the first conscription referendum and be used, for example, to urge footballers to be in for the last quarter, and tennis players to let their racquets stand. (State Library of Victora, H2001.34/3a)

  On the Island of Lemnos to which Gallipoli’s wounded came and where survivors had occasional rest, Nurse Clarice Daley marries the light horseman Sergeant Ernest Alfred Lawrence. Nurses who married were meant to resign and go perhaps to nurse with the Red Cross as volunteers. (Australian War Memorial, P01360.001)

  Private William Sing, light horseman, photographed here in Egypt after Gallipoli was evacuated. He had been decorated for being a pioneer of sniping on Gallipoli. The Turks he was confirmed as shooting numbered 150 but probably exceeded 200. The marriage of his Chinese father and English mother had not been as highly approved of as was the marksmanship of their son. (Australian War Memorial, P08403.001)

  Left: At Number 1 Australian Auxiliary Hospital in Harefield, north-west of London, a recuperating digger does his best, perhaps jokingly, to write a letter. Both hands and one leg are gone, and the gameness of his features, and his willingness to be in on the joke, do him honour. (Australian War Memorial H16947) Right: Australian wounded from Gallipoli reach W
andsworth Hospital where Tom Roberts, Arthur Streeton and George Coates, who painted this well-ordered scene, were medical orderlies. Though Wandsworth was far from the shock and anguish of their original wounding, the patients were not yet necessarily free of the risk of septicaemia or gangrene, and the shock of battle that still reverberated in their dreams. (Australian War Memorial)

  Jovial mutineers, obvious veterans, who believed that the Australians had been over-used and been asked to ‘do other men’s work’ on the Western Front in 1918. The card they sent is addressed to the Assistant Provost Marshal. ‘Nous jamais regardez vous encore (We will never see you again.),’ they say. ‘Au revoir. Nous.’ It was believed none of these men were caught, or if caught, they were unofficially returned to their units for minor punishment. (Australian War Memorial, A03862)

  Left: Near Gueudecourt on the Somme in the winter of 1916–17, the war historian Captain C.E.W. Bean encounters the mud in Gird Trench. Mud at its worst delayed the movement not only of supplies but of wounded, and could swallow men alive. It also caused casualties from the condition called trenchfoot, against which soldiers were urged to anoint their feet with whale oil. (Australian War Memorial E00572) Right: Vera Deakin founded and administered the Wounded and Missing Inquiry Bureau. Since its purpose was to provide families with greater information about the fate of their men, the military did not approve of her. But the thoroughness of her investigations gave great comfort to families. (Australian War Memorial, P02119.001)

  Iso Rae, Melbourne artist caught in Étaples in France by the war, worked as a volunteer in the huge British camp through which many Australian and British troops passed. For lack of materials, she used pastels. This 1915 work shows a soldier guarding a clump of tents occupied either by German prisoners or soldiers charged with indiscipline. (Australian War Memorial ART 19594)

  Jesse Traill is said to have become an artist after meeting Tom Roberts painting on a Melbourne beach. An indomitable spirit, while still a young woman in 1911 she was one of the first Australians to go to the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) to investigate Asian art, and would later be perhaps the first Australian artist to discover ‘the Centre’. In World War I she worked for more than three years as a volunteer in a military hospital in Rouen where her chances to paint were limited by work hours and scarcity of materials. (State Library of Victoria, H2000.63/6)

  John Monash, citizen soldier, his battles brilliantly won, poses for his post-war portrait in a London studio. His appointment as commander of the Australian Corps had been opposed by such notable men as C.E.W. Bean and Keith Murdoch, both of whom thought him opportunistic and self-promoting. But as he poses here, he has become a man of national renown and international repute. At home awaits high civil offices and an ambiguous marriage. (State Library of Victoria, H32848)

  Left: Private Douglas Grant, left, discharged in 1916 under regulations restricting Aboriginal enlistment, re-enlisted in the 13th Batallion and was captured at Bullecourt in April 1917. Visited and prodded by German scientists and anthropologists, he was respected by fellow POWs who elected him to supervise the distribution of relief parcels. (Australian War Memorial P01692.001) Right: In the River Somme sector in Picardy on 20 September 1918, Australians of the 5th Division’s 59th Battalion, recruited from rural Victoria, play Australian Rules football. Seven days later they would go into the line, be shelled with high explosive and gas for two nights, then fight their last battle along the St Quentin Canal. By their withdrawal from the line on 2 October, they would lose a further 202 men. (Australian War Memorial, E03354)

  Standing on a supply box, Billy Hughes addresses men of the 4th Division at Daours east of Amiens. It is 3 July 1918, and although Billy does not know it, these men are about to go into Monash’s highly planned ‘model’ battle at Hamel, in which more ground was gained in less than an hour than had been acquired in many other days, weeks and months-long campaigns. (Australian War Memorial E02651)

  General Chauvel, Light Horse corps commander second from the left, visits airmen of Number 1 Squadron near Jaffa in February 1918. The young airmen will range far ahead of Chauvel’s mounted infantry in the drive for Damascus and Beirut, and in many cases demoralise and harry the Turks before the British, Australians and New Zealanders of the ground forces reach them. (Australian War Memorial P03631.042)

  Families waiting for their returned men as truckloads of soldiers from troopships roll up to the Anzac Buffet in Hyde Park, Sydney. The uncertainty has clearly been sufficient to put frowns on the faces of those awaiting reunion. (Australian War Memorial H11576)

  The war is over, the Peace Treaty signed, and diggers awaiting transport home carry Billy Hughes, the Little Digger, shoulder-high along a London Street near Victoria Station, possibly Horseferry Road, Australian headquarters and site of the War Chest Club. He has been torn from his official vehicle for this rough but affectionate salute. (National Library of Australia, nla.pican23150756)

  In Australian memory the war in France is seen as a series of tragedies fought in a hellish, shell-hole-dimpled morass. It was, as Siegfried Sassoon, the British soldier-poet, wrote, ‘The place where youth and laughter go.’

  For many Australian troops, though, it began as an idyll. Marseilles and the south of France were a delight after the blasted landscapes of Egypt and Gallipoli. It was, said the Australian Medical Corps man W.C. Watson, a ‘treat to be greeted by our own kind, the girls and women do give us a hearty reception’. In Marseilles the Fort Saint-Jean and Notre-Dame de la Garde seemed prodigiously grand and old to boys from a new country, as was the Chateau d’If, which was the setting for Dumas’ still massively popular The Count of Monte Cristo. ‘My eyes are sore,’ Watson wrote on the troop train heading north, ‘trying to see too much of this lovely southern France.’ But the sight of German prisoners at the railway junction of Laroche was sobering as well as fascinating; ‘it is really cruel to see the train loads of wounded coming in and their broken limbs etc. Nearly every woman here is in mourning for a relative of some sort.’

  Settled into billets (barns, stables) behind the lines at Steenbecque in the north of France, George R. Faulkner of the 15th Field Ambulance attended the saying of the rosary every evening at the village church, until on 7 July the unit was marched out to a position closer to the front. Here a barrage of gas shells was laid down and they were ordered to move through it quickly, wearing their masks. And now death arrived. The first experience of it for Faulkner was when Captain McKenzie of the 8th Field Ambulance came out from his first-aid post to look at a German bombardment and was immediately blown to pieces. It was an early lesson that the impersonal outweighed the personal in France. But they were young and it was payday and what had happened to McKenzie was just bad luck. Faulkner and three other boys celebrated their pay with a bottle of champagne, for which they pooled five shillings each.

  Such was one side of the French experience.

  Despite many superb modern histories, for the lay reader the various battles blur, separated by ill-defined stretches of churned French and Belgian countryside, involving foul trenches, inhuman bombardment, satanic gas and night-hour raids on enemy lines, some involving an entire battalion, others a company, often a platoon. Even these raids left young men dead out there in the enemy trenches, or in intervening earth and mud. In histories of World War I, the mud rises, the impersonal torrent of shells fall, and geography is swamped. In the trench line stretching from the north coast of Belgium down to the Swiss border—a trench line five hundred miles long—the British sector was less than one hundred and fifty miles, a minute distance by Australian standards. The British sector, in which the Australians would fight at various points and at various times, ran up from south of the Somme River, skirting Paris to run north-east up into Flanders—the lethal western province of Belgium—and thence to the North Sea.

  Even though it was written of a specific battle, Pozières, in late July
1916, perhaps the best generic Australian evocation of the dismay of participation in that loathsome business was produced by Lieutenant J.A. Raws of the 23rd Battalion, a Victorian battalion of the 2nd Division. Raws was an English immigrant and Melbourne Age journalist who would be killed by the end of August 1916. His brother would also be killed in the furious and bloody mess of Pozières. The region of Pozières was, said Raws:

  nothing but a churned mass of debris with bricks, stones and girders, and bodies pounded to nothing. And forest! There are not even tree trunks left, not a leaf or a twig. All is buried and churned up again and buried again. The sad part is that one can see no end of this. If we live tonight, we have to go through tomorrow night, and next week and next month. Poor wounded devils you meet on the stretchers are laughing with glee. One cannot blame them—they are getting out of this . . . we are lousy, stinking, ragged, unshaven, sleepless . . . I have one puttee, a dead man’s helmet, another dead man’s gas protector, a dead man’s bayonet. My tunic is rotten with other men’s blood and partly splattered with a comrade’s brains. I have had much luck and kept my nerve so far. The awful difficulty is to keep it. The bravest of all often lose it—one becomes a gibbering maniac. Only the men you would have trusted and believed in before proved equal to it.