by Anne Summers
9 Martin Boyd, The Cardboard Crown, 1952; A Difficult Young Man, 1955; Outbreak ofLove, 1957; When Blackbirds Sing, 1962. (These are now published by Lansdowne Press, Melbourne.)
10 Hazel de Berg, taped interview with Dame Mary Gilmore, tape no. 84. I wish to thank Ms de Berg for her kind permission to quote from this interview.
11 de Berg, taped interview with Dame Mary Gilmore .
12 The Bulletin, 9 March 1889.
13 For a more detailed exposition of this argument, one that is enhanced by supporting textual material, see Anne Summers, ‘The self denied: Australian women writers, their image of women’, Refractory Girl, no. 2, Autumn 1973, pp. 4–11.
14 Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own, Penguin Books, London, 1965, pp. 102–3.
15 John Docker, ‘Sex and nature in modern poetry’, Arena, no. 22, 1970, pp. 20, 23.
16 Frank Moorhouse, The Americans, Baby, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1972.
17 Helen Garner, ‘Where’s women in the worlds men create?’ The Digger, 10–24 March 1973, p. 9.
18 Kevon Kemp, ‘Dorothy Hewett writes the roles she would love to play’, TheNational Times, 4–9 September 1972.
19 Dorothy Hewett, The Chapel Perilous, Currency Press, Sydney, 1972, p. 18.
20 Hewett, p. 84.
21 Hewett, p. 88.
22 Christina Stead, For Love Alone, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1966 (1945), p. 76.
23 Christina Stead was denied the Encyclopaedia Britannica prize of £10 000 for outstanding contributions to Australian literature because she did not live in Australia. The fact that her books have been published abroad has always counted against their being favourably received in Australia, as it has also meant that Elizabeth Harrower has remained comparatively unknown even though she lives in Sydney. By contrast, the fact that The Tree of Man was first published in London did not prevent its being critically treated as an Australian work. Thus the fact of being female would seem to be more decisive than the status of expatriate. The case of Henry Handel Richardson does not constitute an exception because her reputation was secure before her sex was revealed.
24 Kylie Tennant, Ride on Stranger, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1943, p. 9.
25 Margaret Dick, The Novels of Kylie Tennant, Rigby, Adelaide, 1966, p. 67.
26 In a lecture entitled ‘Rooms of their own’ delivered at the University of Sydney in October 1972, Humphrey McQueen pointed out that a similar fate has befallen Eleanor Dark’s ‘feminist’ novels, those early books, principally Preludeto Christopher, in which Dark delineated for women an alternative lifestyle where freedom to choose one’s destiny was a paramount concern. These early books are forgotten and Dark is remembered mainly for her nation-building trilogy.
27 ‘The novels of Elizabeth Harrower’, Australian Letters, vol. 4, no. 2, January 1961, pp. 16, 18.
28 The best of her works, in my view, are The Long Prospect and The Watch Tower, Macmillan, London, 1966.
29 For instance, Juliet Rolleston, Pink is for Girls, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1960, and the many female contributors to Anne O’Donovan, Jayne Sanderson & Shane Porteous (eds), Under Twenty-five, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane, n.d. (1967). Suzanne Holly Jones published Harry’s Child, Jacaranda Press, Brisbane, in 1964. She has now published another, Crying in the Garden, Outback Press, Melbourne, 1974, but only after an interval of ten years.
30 Gwen Harwood, Poems, Volume Two, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1968, p. 29.
31 Hazel de Berg, taped interview with Charmian Clift, 8 June 1965.
32 de Berg, taped interview with Charmian Clift.
2 Manzone country
1 For example, Kylie Tennant, Australia: Her story, Macmillan, London, 1953; Donald Horne, The Lucky Country, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1965; Craig McGregor, Profile of Australia, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1968; John Hallows, The Dreamtime Society, Collins, Sydney, 1970; Ronald Conway, The Great Australian Stupor, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1971; Robin Boyd, The Great Australian Dream, Pergamon Press, Sydney, 1972; Ian Moffitt, The U-Jack Society, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1972. These are in contrast to the more scholarly works such as AA Phillips, The Australian Tradition, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1958; Russel Ward, Australia, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1967; Anatomy of Australia, HRH the Duke of Edinburgh’s Third Commonwealth Study Conference, revised edition, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1970.
2 RW Connell, ‘Images of Australia’, Quadrant, no. 52, March–April 1968, p. 15.
3 Connell, ‘Images of Australia’, pp. 16–17.
4 McGregor, Profile of Australia, p. 10. This example has also been used by Max Harris, Donald Horne and DH Lawrence.
5 Tennant, Australia .
6 For an account of how this book came to be written and its rather chequered publishing history, see Kylie Tennant, ‘A moral story’, The Australian Author, vol. 1, no. 4, October 1969, pp. 11–13.
7 For instance, Mary Gallati, My Low-down on Down-under, Hutchinson, London, 1953; and Jeanne McKenzie, Australian Paradox, Cheshire, Melbourne, 1961.
8 Cited in Marjory R Cassan & WRC Hirst, Loxton, Hawthorn Press, Melbourne, 1972, p. 87.
9 Frances Fraser & Nettie Palmer (eds), Centenary Gift Book, Robertson and Mullens, Melbourne, 1934; Louise Brown et al (eds), A Book of South Australia, Women in the first hundred years, Rigby, Adelaide, 1936; FSP Eldershaw (ed.), The Peaceful Army, A memorial to the pioneer women of Australia 1788–1938, The Women’s Executive Committee and Advisory Council of Australia’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations, Sydney, 1938.
10 This information was provided by Ms Ruby Rich, one of those who made representations for the women’s library.
11 This bibliography has been published in the Autumn and Winter 1973 issues of Refractory Girl.
12 Humphrey McQueen, A New Britannia, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1970; CD Rowley, The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1972; Outcasts in White Australia, 1972; The Remote Aborigines, 1972; Peter Biskup, Not Slaves nor Citizens, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 1973; Lorna Lippmann, Words not Blows, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1973.
13 Ure Smith, Sydney, 1972.
14 Oz, March 1964, cover.
15 Cartoon by Martin Sharp, Oz, no. 6, February 1964.
16 Michael Byrne, ‘The alternative press is alive …’, The National Times, 1–6 January 1973.
17 Christina Stead, Seven Poor Men of Sydney, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, I971, (1934), p. 214.
18 Mejane, a women’s liberation newspaper, available from Box 221, PO Glebe, 2037. Subscriptions: $3 a year for six issues. Refractory Girl, a women’s studies journal, available from 25 Alberta Street, Sydney, 2000. Subscriptions: $3.50 a year for four issues. There have been, and are, other women’s liberation publications pursuing similar ends. Shrew, a journal produced from Brisbane, lived for about a year. A Melbourne group began another paper, Vashti’s Voice in 1972 and several issues have appeared so far, while women’s liberation groups in each state produce newsletters that contain articles, letters etc. in which women discuss their alienation from our male-dominated culture.
19 Nation Review, 25–31 May, 1973.
3 The sporting wife
1 Donald Horne, The Lucky Country, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1965, p. 40.
2 Craig McGregor, Profile of Australia, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1968, p. 135.
3 Ian Moffitt, The U-Jack Society, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1972, p. 112.
4 Article by Pat Farrell, Daily Mirror, Sydney, 30 March 1973.
5 Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, 1972, p. 532. The amounts invested with starting price bookmakers, wagered in private card games and expended in various illegal gambling clubs cannot begin to be estimated.
6 In 1970–71 the Commonwealth Government spent a total of $1 060 461,000 in welfare cash payments. This included money paid in the form of age and invalid pensions, child endowment, maternity allowances, widows’ pensions, unemployment benefits, emergency assistance to wool-growers as well as other categories of assistance. Official Year Book of
the Commonwealth of Australia, 1972, p. 392.
7 Official Year Book of the Commonwealth of Australia, p. 531.
8 Information provided by Chief Secretary’s Department, State Public Service, New South Wales.
9 All information in this section on horse-racing, unless otherwise acknowledged, was supplied by Reg Byrne, formerly a racing writer for Nation Review.
10 Keith Dunstan, Wowsers, Cassell, Melbourne, 1968, p. 277.
11 There are some women operating as illegal SP bookmakers, all of whom conduct phone rather than hotel businesses. Most of them are widows who seem to have simply carried on businesses begun by their husbands.
12 Lesley Gray, ‘Casual workers’, Mejane, no. 6, February 1972, p. 5.
13 Gray, ‘Casual workers’. A further hazard of this job, which is not compensated for in any way, is the increasing risk that these women will be subjected to armed hold-ups and incur severe shock, if not physical injury.
14 When the Hogan Government introduced a Bill into the Victorian Parliament to legalise the Tote in 1928, it proscribed the use of the Tote by women: the belief was that mothers would teach their children to gamble. Dunstan, Wowsers, p. 277.
15 Reported in The Australian, 8 May 1973.
16 There are sometimes games between opposing teams of men and women, usually organised by university colleges or similar groups, but the jocular way in which these are conducted simply serves to emphasise that this is pre-eminently a man’s sport, and that a match involving men and women must necessarily be a comical occasion.
17 Barry Oakley, A Salute to the Great McCarthy, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1971, p. 89.
18 The Sun, Sydney, 30 March 1973.
19 By contrast, in 1973 the Australian Government announced its intention to hold an inquiry into boxing on the grounds that it is a sport that causes injuries and deaths! In 200 years of boxing in Australia, there have been ninety-eight deaths. (Figures supplied by boxing authority, Ray Mitchell.) Football authorities refuse to provide figures on deaths and serious injuries incurred by football players, but it is likely that football has taken many more lives than this. Yet no-one has proposed an investigation into the violent nature of this game.
20 Oakley, A Salute to the Great McCarthy, p. 88.
21 John Hurst & Ian Moffitt, ‘Not tonight Josephine – it’s the big game tomorrow’, The Australian, 7 April 1973.
22 Ian Moffitt, ‘To do or die’, The Australian, 18 September 1971.
23 Hurst & Moffit, ‘Not tonight Josephine’.
24 Hurst & Moffit, ‘Not tonight Josephine’.
25 This lecture, the Ron Barassi Memorial Lecture, is divided into four quarters; during the intervals Turner sips from a can of Carlton Draught, and the lecture generally closes to wild cheering from the crowd/lecture theatre.
26 Reported in The Australian, 31 December 1973.
27 Thea Astley, The Slow Natives, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1966, p. 32.
28 Horne, The Lucky Country, p. 84.
29 Horne, The Lucky Country, p. 85.
30 In February 1972, the Sydney Morning Herald’s women’s section underwent a dramatic change of face; adopting a new name, Look, its editor Suzanne Baker promised a livelier and more stimulating section, one that recognised that women were interested in things other than who wore what to some exclusive gathering of the bourgeoisie and how to prepare exotic foods. Its first few months were exciting ones in which well-researched and seriously written articles explored issues such as abortion, battered babies, the fate of children in children’s courts as well as conducting in-depth interviews with local or visiting women of some repute. However, Look’s demise was apparently inevitable. In spite of very favourable readership response to its new format and its new focus, gradually it began to revert to the old formula: the articles got shorter, certain topics became – apparently – taboo, bylines disappeared (thus discouraging contributors from writing feature articles) and the cooking and social notes sections expanded. The same editor remains and she has not changed her ideas about what the section should be doing, so a reader can only conclude that the proprietors of the newspaper have insisted on this return to the practice of catering to the specialised interests of the idle rich. (She has since resigned. January 1973.)
31 See account in Mejane, no. 10, March 1973.
32 Caddie, Autobiography of a Sydney Barmaid, Sun Books, Melbourne, 1966, (1953).
33 S Encel & K Kotowicz, ‘Heavy drinking and alcoholism, preliminary report’, Medical Journal of Australia, I, 21 March 1970, p. 609.
34 Encel & Kotowicz, ‘Heavy drinking and alcoholism’.
35 Statistics of In-Patients in Psychiatric Centres, Bureau of Census and Statistics, Sydney, 1973, p. 5.
36 Cited in Craig McGregor, People, Politics and Pop: Australians in the sixties, Ure Smith, Sydney, 1968, p. 118.
4 The ravaged self
1 Raymond Williams, Culture and Society, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1963; TheLong Revolution, Penguin Books, Melbourne, 1965.
2 Jerzy Krupinski & Alan Stoller, The Family in Australia: Social, demographic and psychological aspects, Pergamon Press, Sydney, 1974, pp. 1–2.
3 John Maze, ‘The family and the state’, Search, July 1974, pp. 339–42.
4 Maze, ‘The family and the state’, p. 340, original emphasis.
5 Phyllis Chesler, Women and Madness, Avon, New York, 1972, pp. 19–20. Also published in Allen Lane, London, 1974.
6 In 1971–72 there was a total of 10 911 men and 10 076 women admitted to psychiatric hospitals in New South Wales. Statistics of In-Patients in Psychiatric Centres, Bureau of Census and Statistics, Sydney, 1973.
7 All figures from Statistics of In-Patients in Psychiatric Centres.
8 BL Hennessy, WJ Bruen & J Cullen, ‘The Canberra Mental Health Survey. Preliminary results’, n.p., n.d., Table Three.
9 Hennessy, Bruen & Cullen, ‘The Canberra Mental Health Survey’.
10 Statistics of In-Patients.
11 Chesler, Women and Madness, p. 41.
12 Chesler, Women and Madness, p. 45.
13 Chesler, Women and Madness, p. 35.
14 Frieda Schaechter, ‘A study of psychoses in female migrants’, Medical Journal ofAustralia, II, 22 September 1962, p. 459.
15 Schaechter, ‘A study of psychoses in female migrants’, p. 461.
16 Drug Trafficking and Drug Abuse, Report from the Senate Select Committee, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra, 1971, p. 35. As a result of this report, bromureides are no longer available without a prescription.
17 Drug Trafficking and Drug Abuse, p. 37.
18 Drug Trafficking and Drug Abuse, p. 19.
19 Drug Trafficking and Drug Abuse, p. 17.
20 Reported Sydney Morning Herald, 6 May 1972.
21 Reported Sydney Morning Herald, 13 June 1972.
22 Hennessy, Bruen & Cullen, ‘The Canberra Mental Health Survey’, Table Twelve.
23 Reported in The Australian, 14 May 1973.
24 Ian L Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’, MedicalJournal of Australia, I, 24 March 1973, p. 589. Psychotropic drugs are those capable of altering a person’s emotional state. They include anti-depressants, tranquillisers and neuroleptics.
25 Anne Winkler, ‘Incidence of analgesic usage in Australia’, unpublished paper, Macquarie University, May 1973.
26 Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’, p. 590.
27 Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’.
28 Reproduced from Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’.
29 Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’, p. 591.
30 Anthony Adams, Alan Chancellor & Charles Kerr, ‘Medical care in Western Sydney: A report on the utilization of health services by a defined population’, Medical Journal of Australia, I, 6 March 1971, p. 509.
31 Hennessy, Bruen & Cullen, ‘The Canb
erra Mental Health Survey’, p. 6.
32 David S Watson, ‘Some factors influencing general practitioner prescribing’, Australian Journal of Pharmacy, November 1973, p. 789.
33 Reported Sydney Morning Herald, 21 March 1973.
34 Trevor Hawkins, ‘The most prescribed drug in Australia is a tranquilliser’, NationalTimes, 19–24 March 1973.
35 Medical Journal of Australia, I, 21 March 1970.
36 For instance, an advertisement for Tofranil (use ‘In an emotional crisis’) shows a woman similarly overwrought, neglected children crying in the background, while she is saying, ‘I was so wretched I burst into tears. And I couldn’t stop crying. I felt so irritable. It wasn’t as if he’d shouted at me. He only asked me to iron his blue shirt. But at that moment anything was too much for me. Lately I keep getting these headaches. And I wake up so early. I’d give anything for a good night’s sleep. It makes me so tired and short-tempered during the day. The children get on my nerves. Yet really they’re good kids. Financially things are a bit rough at the moment. But we’ve had problems before and I’ve always been able to cope. I just wish I could pull myself together’. Medical Journal of Australia, I, 21 March 1970.
37 Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’, p. 591.
38 Rowe, ‘Prescription of psychotropic drugs by general practitioners’, p. 592.
39 Hawkins, ‘The most prescribed drug in Australia is a tranquilliser’.
40 Trevor Hawkins, ‘Australia, the nervous nation of pill poppers – and paying for it’, The National Times, 11–16 November 1974.
41 LE Hollister, ‘The clinical use of psychotherapeutic drugs, anti-anxiety drugs and special problems in the use of psychotherapeutic drugs’, Current Therapeutics, November 1972, p. 76.
42 Australian Drug Compendium 1972–73, ADC Publications, Seaforth, NSW, 1973. A copy of this is issued free to every doctor. It contains the various dosages of Valium but says nothing about its possible side-effects.
43 MIMS, April 1973, p. 61.
44 MIMS, p. 58.
45 GB Chesher, ‘The pharmacology of psychotropic drugs’, New Ethicals, April 1967, p. 252.