Australia's Pivotal Role in First World War

Sometimes we can't see the wood for the trees. When we Australians commemorate ANZAC Day each 25 April, that's often how I feel. The big picture, 'macro' story can be lost within the mire of various platitudes and the deluge of  'micro' commentary.

Stephen & Nigel Boulton - Brothers in Arms

Should I confess that I was largely ignorant of Australia’s overall role in WW1 when I sat down in 2015 to ‘do something’ with the Great War letters written by my grandmother’s two brothers? The letters cover the whole war, from start to finish. They were saved by their recipient, my great grandmother, who had them typed in the 1920s. She presented a typed copy to the Australian War Memorial (AWM). The originals were immediately requested and have been preserved in Canberra ever since. As a serving Australian, Stephen Boulton's letters were deemed significant enough to be among the first digitised on the AWM website. (His brother Nigel's letters didn't qualify for digital release, as he served as a doctor with the British Army.)

The Boulton letters offer a wonderful primary resource for the times, largely free of today’s interpretations. Working with them I gained a dramatic new insight - that in the Spring of 1918 Germany's 'Spring Offensive' made a Big Push forward and Germany nearly won the Great War.

It was the Australians who played a major part in our side ‘winning’ in the end.

It’s an insight we rarely, if ever, hear in Australia, obsessed as we are with the Gallipoli story.

This week I discovered that I was not alone in my conclusions. The following statement by Dr Ross McMullin on the website of the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne refers:

The immense German onslaught in March 1918 led to Britain’s gravest crisis of World War I. The Australians were rushed to the rescue in this climax of the conflict. The significance of what they did in 1918 is under-recognised today, but they were influencing the destiny of the world more than Australians have done in any other year before or since.

Australians remain largely ignorant about the huge role played by the Australian First Division near Hazebrouck in Flanders in stopping Germany’s Spring advance on the crucial Channel ports, then holding and ‘shoving back’ that front line through the summer of 1918. My Brothers in Arms book referred several times to this practice as 'peaceful penetration', which is explained further below.

We Australians are generally more aware of events down in the Somme valley in 1918. On ANZAC Day that year, other Australian soldiers recaptured the crucial high ground at Villers-Bretonneux. In the late summer and autumn of 1918, with Monash at last in charge of all the Australian Divisions as a combined force, the Australian strategy turned the German advance into a rout in the Somme Valley, pushing them back well beyond St Quentin. Negotiations for the Armistice began.

Lucas Jordan - Stealth Raiders

Today, at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne, I heard yet more evidence about the under-recognised significance of the role played by Australian troops in 1918. The evidence came from historian Lucas Jordan, speaking about his new book Stealth Raiders, a descriptive term he picked up from researching the first-hand accounts written by soldiers directly involved in these raids.

Stealth raiders went far beyond the standard activities of the 'peaceful penetration' described in WW1 military history books.  Several hundred low-ranking Australian infantrymen took it upon themselves over many months in 1918 to seize the initiative, without any orders from above, and set forth in small groups, often in daylight, to seize enemy positions, guns and troops and push the German front line back.

To me their actions sounded like a prelude to the daring exploits of our highly-regarded SAS forces today, but Lucas Jordan did not make this specific claim in his talk.

Today, once again, I asked myself the question: why are we Australians so scared to claim credit within the 'big picture' narrative of the Great War? Why don’t we hear more big-picture stories at our Dawn Services on ANZAC Day? Why do we focus on the trees and not the wood, dwelling on the successes and more often the failures of individual battles? We continue to seek glory in defeats such as at Gallipoli, often paying scant attention to what various battles meant, strategically.

Maybe this year, one hundred years after 1918, we'll begin to change the narrative. Historians like McMullin are starting to make this point. Today I exhorted Lucas Jordan to do the same when next he gives his talk on Stealth Raiders, as he agrees with me that we've undersold the role we played in the final outcome of WW1.

Nearly everyone I know has made a pilgrimage to the war memorials on the Western Front. The terrain and the futile loss of life on individual battlefields, demonstrated so starkly by the endless rows of war graves, makes an indelible impression. No doubt this will also hit home to me when I visit the Western Front region for the first time next month. However those relentless rows of headstones won't come as a complete shock, as I lived in PNG for five years and at Bomana War Cemetery outside Port Moresby I cried over the thousands of young men's graves. Born just after WW2, I knew their story, I knew the strategic significance of what they had done.  When I visit France and Belgium soon, I'll be grateful that the Boulton letters jolted me into understanding the overall significance of the role played by other Australians in world history, exactly one hundred years ago.

Footnote: I wrote briefly about this topic, plus Australian mateship and Australian nationhood in a blog post two years ago. My website contains details of ‘Brothers in Arms: The Great War Letters of Captain Nigel Boulton, R.A.M.C. & Lieut Stephen Boulton, A.I.F.’  and the book can be purchased online through BookPOD and the usual international online outlets.

More 'Australiana' in London - Matthew Flinders & Trim

Café Trim in Sydney is well-known to researchers who spend a lot of time in libraries, like me. My visits to the State Library of New South Wales and Mitchell Library complex have usually included a coffee and a bite to eat at Café Trim, on the ground floor between both buildings. Named after Matthew Flinders' cat, Trim, the venue and the affection held for its name implies that the cat is almost more famous in Sydney than Flinders himself, the brilliant naval lieutenant, navigator and cartographer! Of course I exaggerate - a prominent statue of Matthew Flinders stands outside the Mitchell Library, which is the repository for his papers.

He was the first man to circumnavigate the continent of Australia in his trusty little H.M.S. Investigator, proving it to be one land mass. Trim was his faithful companion on the famous journey in 1801-1803 and during part of Flinders' subsequent detention by the French Governor of Mauritius, for more than six years, when Flinders called in en route to England. His achievements are well-acknowledged in other places in Australia, such as Flinders St in Melbourne, where there's another statue in his honour, and Flinders University and the Flinders Ranges in South Australia.

Beyond Australia I didn't expect to stumble across Matthew Flinders and his cat. Yet on a recent trip to London, outside Euston Station, I discovered a wonderful sculpture memorialising both of them in a very striking way. It's apparently a copy of a newly-unveiled sculpture at Port Lincoln in South Australia. I must say I admired the lean and agile depiction of this admirable naval officer. Afterwards I wondered at the strange coincidence that once again on this trip to the UK I had been unexpectedly Bumping into Joseph Banks. Like Banks, Flinders was a son of Lincolnshire and his naval expedition around Australia was championed by Banks, who was with Captain Cook when the east coast of Australia was 'discovered' by the British in 1770. George Bass, who with Flinders in 1798 proved the existence of Bass Strait, was also a son of Lincolnshire. What that English county has done for Australia!

My first visit to Euston Station happened to be at night. With people watching me suspiciously, I lurked nearby until various partakers of fast food meals stood up from their comfortable seat beside Trim and departed. Then I quickly deposited their left-behind rubbish in the bin so that I could take my photos. 

Trim and Matthew Flinders at night at Euston Station, London

Matthew Flinders (and Trim) at night at Euston Station, London

Next time I passed by it was daylight - and not so busy, or perhaps it was just colder. It was winter time, making the daylight shots pretty grey-toned, while at night the sheen of the lighting added gloss to the scene. I'm not sure which photos I prefer. 

Trim and Matthew Flinders in daytime at Euston Station, London

Matthew Flinders (and Trim) in daytime at Euston Station, London

Why is this statue located at Euston Station? Because Flinders was buried in the cemetery 'under' the station and because it was felt that the English needed to know more about this man, hitherto mostly unfamiliar to them. Read a Londoner's account of the history of this sculpture.

Here is more background about the life and achievements of Matthew Flinders.

Flinders first arrived in Sydney in September 1795 along with the incoming Governor, John Hunter, who already had a long association with Sydney, having been second-in-command to Arthur Phillip on the First Fleet of 1788.  Hunter had departed Sydney by the time my convict forebear Paul Bushell arrived with the infamous Second Fleet in June 1790, but after his return to Sydney in 1795 Hunter gained knowledge of upright citizen Paul Bushell and gave him special treatment. I know it's fanciful but, since Paul was living by Sydney Harbour in 1795, I like to imagine that Paul 'did but see Flinders passing by'.

My Fifty Year 'Journey of the Mind' Concerning Aborigines

Sketch by Julia Woodhouse, the author's mother

Growing up in Sydney’s Northern Beaches area as one of the first ‘Babyboomers’, the closest I came to an awareness of Aborigines was at my old secondary school, located at Narrabeen. The suburb's name has aboriginal origins, more than we realised as we were all ignorant, then, about 'Narrabeen man'. He is the oldest aboriginal skeleton yet found in Sydney, forensically diagnosed as a 4,000-yr-old murder victim, his story now forming a history module for schools. 

Narrabeen Girls High School no longer exists. It has morphed into a school with a different name, look and role, but our surprisingly inclusive school song with its 'call to arms' school motto in the last line, lives on in my memory:

Out amid the flannel flowers
Bare plains swept by sea winds clean
Newest, happiest of our high schools
Proudly rises Narrabeen

Where our native people gathered
Where they danced corroborees
Young Australians climb Parnassus
On the plains of Narrabeen

New Australians, old Australians
Proudly loyal to one queen
Work together, strive together
Facta Non Verba, Narrabeen

Without realising it, as kids we absorbed the ethos of our environment, the same environment which 'speaks' to our first peoples: the lake we crossed each day on our way to school, the creek behind our school which sometimes flooded us out, the craggy bushland behind our house where we played, the rhythmic sounds of the surf, the grit of the sand between our toes, the twittering, carolling and squawking of the birds, the ear-drum piercing locusts, the snakes we feared, goannas too, and the annoying ticks we dealt with. Not to mention the power of the sun (sunburn) and those brilliant, mind-blowing star-filled southern hemisphere skies on clear nights. We gradually absorbed the sense of ‘place’, of belonging to this land and its landscape, that indigenous citizens are born with.

We grew up taking for granted the cadence of the aboriginal language. Narrabeen and Bennelong rolled off our tongues. My parents lived for some years in Wallumatta Rd, Newport. In the 1970s I was co-founder of the Cameragal Montessori School at North Sydney – a deliberate choice of name by our committee. I quickly adapted to the renaming of Ayers Rock as Uluru. With my then-husband Bill we developed a paddock at Yea into a farm and we called it "Billalooa Farm". I've never been called 'Lou' in my life but we loved the sound of that name.

Aged 19, I graduated from the University of Sydney on the same day in May 1966 that Charlie Perkins graduated as one of the first indigenous Australians to obtain a university degree. I distinctly remember the huge applause for him. I also remember the claim, on the day itself, that he was ‘the first’ - not ‘one of the first’.

Dubbo Revisited, Jan 1987

The University of Sydney is a big place and I didn't know Charlie personally. I had my first direct contact with Aborigines the following year, teaching mathematics at South Dubbo High School in 1967. (Dubbo is yet another of the countless place names in Australia with aboriginal origins.)

At that time a child's IQ was recorded after their name on each teacher’s class roll and beside the name of an aboriginal girl in 1A was the rare high score of 135+. (As was my own, I discovered later.) I wish I hadn’t been so young (twenty) and inexperienced, both as a teacher and a human being. At the time I did pay extra attention to her, somehow recognising her vulnerability but, looking back, I see that she was completely stranded, expected to perform well intellectually in 1A while all of her social life as a young teenager was with her aboriginal friends in 1D. By the start of her second year of high school she’d stopped trying and was coasting along down in the D stream with her friends. She’d chosen emotional comfort over intellectual challenge and the possibilities of a bright future because she had no-one to help her take the leap out of her comfort zone. I left Dubbo at the end of 1968 and have always wondered what happened to that bright young girl.

Voting Poster, 1967

The three year electoral cycle meant that my voting life began during that first year in Dubbo, on this day back in 1967. Like so many others, I can remember being shocked, once it was drawn to our attention, that Aborigines were not counted as people in the census and that Federal Parliament was required to treat them differently and had to make special laws about them. These were the issues prompting the Referendum. One of the leading aboriginal activists for reform was Faith Bandler, who lived in a suburb not far from my childhood home. Regretfully, I never met her.

It was exhilarating to see the vote passed so resoundingly with just over 90% support, astounding to see that it didn’t have 100% support. We felt so proud of ourselves, overcoming that long-held prejudice. I think the most significant, and heartening, comment made on Stan Grant's ABC program ‘Counted’ last night came from Millie Ingram who said “and the 90% are still there”. That's true. We are.

Kainantu, PNG, c 1969

Subsequently I spent five years living at close quarters with a different indigenous population in Papua New Guinea, and I lived in England and Hong Kong for lengthy periods as well as Melbourne and several country towns in Victoria. These varied experiences have definitely pushed me out of my own comfort zone on a regular basis and I think the notion of ‘comfort zone’ is very relevant to progressing the aboriginal cause. Changes in your thinking and your habits come upon you gradually, as you make connections and the pieces start to slot together. Radical change is harder to accept.

Somehow the significance of the land rights movement passed me by, as the Wave Hill walk-off in 1966 and Whitlam's iconic actions in 1975 all happened when I was preoccupied with other major matters in my personal life. In the 1990s I became involved with Swinburne University and was exposed for the first time to the custom, at official functions, of paying respect to the elders of the land on which we stood.

Louise Wilson addresses the
Paul Bushell & David Brown Grave Restoration Event,
Wilberforce Cemetery, 22 Nov 2015

It seemed very strange at first, but now I’ve said similar words myself at a public function. My words meant something to me and my audience too, as we were standing on land at Wilberforce, NSW, site of many interactions between the incoming settlers and the indigenous population in the 1790s. The custom of acknowledging the original landholders has become well-entrenched and well-accepted in our society: two weeks ago my nephew was married at The Spit in Sydney and the celebrant paid our respects before the outdoor ceremony began.

Book published Jan 2009

The 1992 Mabo decision about native title preceded my astounding discovery that I was the descendant of a First Fleeter. Robert Forrester was one of the earliest recipients of a land grant at Windsor on the Hawkesbury River.

In the frontier war which followed, his experiences with the indigenous population are well-documented in my own book about him, and in other books. I had to think long and hard about his trial for the murder of an aboriginal boy in 1794. The discovery of this unpleasant historical fact had a profound effect on me.

Despite my own connections to what some call 'Invasion Day', I don’t harbour guilt and I don't agree with the notion that we should change the day we celebrate Australia Day. The large number of Australians descended from First Fleeters under the governorship of Arthur Phillip have a lot to be proud of too. I’ve written about this elsewhere so I won’t labour the point here. 

This week’s gathering at Uluru, a place I’d love to visit, has prompted me to focus again on the position of our First Peoples. Like everyone else I know, I’ve been dismayed for years at their situation, as reported in the media, and aboriginal politics are as fraught with unedifying division as every other kind of politics in this country. We don’t hear enough about the programmes which are working to improve the quality of aboriginal lives. In this, and so many other aspects of Australian life, we chop and change too much and don’t stick to anything long enough to make it work. Sometimes we need to persevere with a course of action for ten or twenty years to achieve noticeable results, but that timeframe far exceeds the political and funding cycle in this country.

Clearly some programmes are working well, as there is an obvious and growing middle class of educated Aborigines, many in positions of responsibility and effective community leadership. Education has unlocked the doors to opportunity. Aborigines are taken seriously in many fields of endeavour, as state governor, politicians and public servants, doctors, lawyers, writers and journalists, and sporting stars, for example, and have carved a much more visible place in our society. Who could forget Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Olympic Games? Once heard, how could you ever forget the sound of the didgeridoo reverberating around Westminster Abbey in London?  Art, fashion, music, the performing arts and Landcare schemes now have distinctive themes in Australia because of the creative input of people with indigenous heritage.

For their kinsmen who are still at the margins of modern Australian society, I believe it’s a mistake to have special departments responsible for aboriginal affairs. Doesn't it just perpetuate the original divide in the Australian constitution? If mainstream departments of health, education, housing, social welfare and justice had to be held fully accountable for the welfare of everyone, regardless of their background, we could possibly make more progress in allocating better resources to isolated and disadvantaged indigenous groups. As it is, it seems to be too easy to palm off their problems onto someone else, some other agency.

I have to say that I share what's reported to be 'white' Australia's general agreement with Noel Pearson, who's been saying for years that Aborigines need to take personal responsibility for their lives. ‘Woe is me’ is not the answer. As a woman growing up and surviving in chauvinistic Australia, I’m very familiar with that feeling of disadvantage and unfairness, but it doesn’t get you anywhere. Nor does whingeing about it. You just have to take practical steps, when and where you can, to overcome it.

Reconciliation Walk

The Reconciliation Walk by 250,000 people across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in May 2000 proved that people care about the indigenous population of this nation.

Prime Minister Rudd’s ‘Sorry’ speech of 2008 was long overdue and smoothed a balm over many troubled spirits.

Our history is being re-written. Amazing books like The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia by Bill Gammage, and Dark Emu by Bruce Pascoe, are changing our thinking on the true history of this country. Films like the ABC's screening of The Secret River have made me angry at the careless distortions of our history since 1788 which keep old wounds festering. Broad-ranging scholarship is re-examining other aspects of our colonial history and I'll be incorporating the correct name for the aboriginal tribes of the Hawkesbury, the Darkiñung, when my Forrester book is next reprinted.

As I look back over fifty years of my own 'journey of the mind', I see that our First Peoples have made giant strides forward in gaining both community acceptance and community recognition of, and pride in, their impressive achievements. Australians generally have embraced the aboriginal 'story'. But for further progress to be made with closing various socio-economic gaps in life outcomes experienced by sections of our indigenous population, the old motto from my Narrabeen days continues to apply – Facta non verba. Deeds, not words. 

Sydney's Orgy Myth - 6 February 1788

All writers of history know how hard it is to swim against the tide of a conventional wisdom repeated over and over in a range of books. Once something is committed to the page, people tend to think of it as gospel.

Take for instance, that famous ‘foundation story’ of Sydney – the story of what supposedly happened on the night the female convicts of the First Fleet set foot on the shores of New South Wales, on 6 February 1788. The orgy story.

In its original form it goes like this, thanks to the transcription of pp 94-96 of the journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth, on the website of the State Library of New South Wales:

abt. 6 O'Clock p.m. we had the long wish'd for pleasure of seeing the last of them

[Page 95]

leave the Ship -- They were dress'd in general very clean & some few amongst them might be sd. to be well dress'd. The Men Convicts got to them very soon after they landed, & it is beyond my abilities to give a just discription of the Scene of Debauchery & Riot that ensued during the night --

They had not been landed more than an hour before they had all got their Tents pitched or anything in order to receive them, but there came on the most violent storm of thunder, lighteng. & rain I ever saw. The lighteng. was incessant during the whole night & I never heard it rain faster --

Abt. 12 o'Clock in the night one severe flash of Lightg. struck a very large tree in the centre of the Camp under wh. some places were constructed to keep the Sheep & Hogs in: it split the tree from top to bottom; kill'd 5 Sheep belonging to Major Ross & a pig of one of the Lieuts. -- The severity of the Lighteng. this & the 2 preceeding nights leaves no room to doubt but many of the trees wh. appear burnt up to the tops of them were the Effect of Lightening --

The Sailors in our Ship requested to have some Grog to make merry wt. upon the Women quitting the Ship indeed the Capt. himself had no small reason to rejoice upon their being all safely landed &: given into the Care of the Governor, as he was under the penalty of 40£ for every Convict that was missing -- for wh. reason he comply'd wt. the Sailor's request, & abt. the time they began to be elevated, the Tempest came on -- The Scene wh. presented itself at this time & during the greater part of the night, beggars every discription; some swearing, others quarrelling others singing, not in the least regarding the Tempest, tho' so violent

[Page 96]

that the thunder shook the Ship exceeded anything I ever before had a conception of. I never before experienced so uncomfortable a night expectg. every moment the Ship wd. be struck wt. the Lighteng. -- The Sailors almost all drunk & incapable of rendering much assistance had an accident happen'd & the heat was almost suffocating.

It never occurred to me, prior to publishing my book in January 2009, to look further than that quote and the orgy story enlivening the myriad of books already published about the early days of Sydney. Accordingly, this is what I said on page 43 of my book ‘Robert Forrester, First Fleeter’. I’m glad I pretty much stuck to the original source and did not embellish it, as most other writers have done:

Within ten days of the arrival of the newcomers, Sydney’s erratic summer weather made its first dramatic statement. A violent electrical storm on Monday 4 February struck a tree and split it down the middle.[1]

Two days later, in the evening of Wednesday 6 February, another of Sydney's violent electrical storms broke. This second storm arrived on the day the women convicts were allowed on shore for the first time. The storm erupted around 7pm, about an hour after the last of the women convicts were disembarked into longboats.[2] The women had left the transports ‘dress’d in general very clean & some few amongst them might be s’d to be well dressed [but the] men convicts got to them very soon after they landed’.[3]

For all intents and purposes, the two sexes had been segregated for months, and as the men pursued the women with but one thought on their minds, the wild storm illuminated a ‘scene of debauchery and riot that ensued during the night’.[4] It was the most violent storm of thunder, lightning and rain ever seen by one informed spectator.[5] About midnight lightning struck another tree in the centre of the camp, splitting it from top to bottom and killing five sheep and a pig housed in a shelter below it.[6]

Recently I had the pleasure of the company of Patricia Kennedy and her husband John at the annual lunch (in Melbourne) of the Australian Institute of Genealogical Studies. We don’t meet often as they live on the Central Coast of NSW and I live in Melbourne. But as descendants of First Fleeters, we have plenty to talk about when we are together. While researching her recently-published book ‘Legacy of Andrew Goodwin and Lydia Monro’ she was forced to confront an important question. Was Lydia a prostitute, as the female convicts on the First Fleet are routinely portrayed? Over lunch, Patricia alerted me to a startling idea – the orgy story is not true.

Trying to understand Lydia, Patricia delved deeply into this orgy story, about which she subsequently wrote (but has not published) a paper entitled ‘Fact or Fiction’. She referred me to the work of historian Grace Karskens (recently published online as ‘The Myth of Sydney’s Foundational Orgy’), who says that the orgy myth was demolished years ago by historian Marian Quartly, the independent thinker from Monash University in Melbourne. When so many officers and men on the First Fleet kept journals, from Governor Arthur Phillip down to John Easty, a seaman on the Scarborough, Marian wondered why only one of them ever thought to mention such a dramatic and salacious event as an orgy. That single diarist was the surgeon responsible for the welfare of the female convicts, Arthur Bowes Smyth, who spent the night of 6 February 1788 aboard the Lady Penrhyn.

Patricia informed me that this ship was not moored in Sydney Cove but well out in the harbour, so the surgeon could not possibly have been an eye witness. His journal entry attests to swearing, quarrelling and singing aboard his ship, but not to any sounds from the shore. No women screaming. (Although such a violent storm might have frightened anyone into screaming. ) Likewise, the surgeon made no reference to drunken convicts  - because they were not drunk - they were not issued with any alcohol until June 1788, as a special treat to celebrate the King’s birthday. It was the sailors aboard his ship who were drunk.

Sigh. I try to be accurate in what I write. This small section of my Forrester book (get your copy here) will now need to be amended, should I ever produce a second edition. Thank you, Patricia Kennedy, for being an interesting and enlightening lunch companion.

---

[1] Easty, First Fleet Journal, p 95

[2] Smyth, Journal of Arthur Bowes Smyth, p 67

[3] Ibid, p 67

[4] Ibid, p 67

[5] Ibid, p 67

[6] Ibid, p 67

Did you know Germany nearly won the First World War?

Sometimes we can't see the wood for the trees. When we Australians commemorate ANZAC Day each 25 April, that's often how I feel. The big picture, 'macro' story can be lost within the mire of various platitudes and 'micro' commentary.

Craving to understand more of the big picture, I was very interested in the latest issue of the Sydney Review of Books, featuring Greg Lockhart’s article Gallipoli Reckoning. It examines two books about Gallipoli, books whose authors were driven by ‘the strong impulse to follow primary evidence and build their subjects from the bottom up’.  This was music to my ears. It’s how I like to work too. Last week, in Churchill’s Silver Bullet, Lockhart reviewed a book using primary resources, rather than conventional wisdom and self-serving books, to examine how the disastrous Gallipoli decisions were made in England, decisions which ultimately led to what Lockhart describes as the ‘heroism in defeat’ narrative in Australia.

Weblinks this year led me to last year's offering, under the heading Imperial Romance,  Greg Lockhart reviewed two other ‘war’ books and argued that ‘Australian histories of the Great War are generally part of an imperial romance that floats free from any workable Australian national framework’. 

Stephen & Nigel Boulton - Brothers in Arms

After reading Lockhart’s commentary on the general shortcomings of WW1 military history books, I felt greatly relieved that my own recent book on this topic offers the reader almost entirely a primary resource document. It cites Bean’s Official History of Australia in the War of 1914-18 only once – in a quote on pp 339-340 covering specific events at the end of March 1918.

Should I confess that I was largely ignorant of Australia’s overall role in WW1 when I sat down to ‘do something’ with the Great War letters written by my Boulton grandmother’s two brothers? The letters were saved by their recipient, my great grandmother, who had them typed in the 1920s. She presented a typed copy to the Australian War Memorial. The originals were immediately requested and they have been preserved in Canberra ever since.

It was those Boulton letters which taught me the history of that appalling war. They offer a wonderful primary resource for the times, largely free of today’s interpretations. Some may be disappointed that my book simply orders the letters, introduces them where necessary and ‘presents the story’. But women readers of my book, in particular, have responded well to this approach because it’s a narrative account of that war, personalised, with intelligent characters whose lives the readers can follow.

I was limited by space, time deadlines and publishing costs from delving much further into the military, political and social history beyond what is revealed within the text of these letters.  The book would have been too long. Thus, the several hundred letters are offered up as an original source for professional historians and general readers who are invited to draw their own conclusions.

Here follow several of mine.

The letters cover the whole war, including the Gallipoli campaign, but do not support the view that the events of 25 April 1915 saw the birth of Australian ‘nationhood’. As Lockhart points out, this happened in the lead up to Federation in 1901, and afterwards too. A sense of nationhood saw the establishment of citizen military forces from 1901 and the building of our own naval fleet, which sailed proudly into Sydney Harbour in 1913.

Nor was Gallipoli the initial generator of Australian ‘mateship’, as we hear so often on ANZAC Day. I'm glad that this claim is morphing into something I can support - that it's the (existing) quality of Australian mateship which helped us survive adversity at Gallipoli and in later battlefronts. My own three books about early convict settlers (listed below) show that Australian mateship dates from 1788 and the convict era. Mateship was an outcome of the long journeys on the transport ships and the ensuing years of struggling to survive physically and psychologically in a land of flood, fire and drought. From 1794 the Hawkesbury district, food bowl for the colony, saw numerous examples of mateship: local residents helped each other with food, shelter & labour and more distant residents donated money following the numerous floods which devastated that district over the next 25 years.

By 1820, community self-help was well-established in Australia. And, as free settlers flooded in after the Napoleonic wars ended, mateship became well-entrenched among the lower echelons of Australian society, the emancipist convicts. I have no doubt that close analysis would prove that a good proportion of the physically tough, stoic, bravely reckless, laconic, larrikin survivors we laud on ANZAC Day could trace their roots and their attitudes back to convict forebears.

The Boulton letters support the argument that it was our ‘self-identity’ as Australians that was forged during the Great War, a process which began at Gallipoli and intensified on the Western Front. The Boulton brothers, born in Australia of English parents, were clearly ambivalent about their own national identity at the start of the war. As Nigel wrote on 19 Sep 1914, ‘How glorious it is to feel one is a Britisher at a time like this. What a wonderful country England is, and what a wonderful nation. I quite agree with you. Mum, I thank God I was born of English parents every time I think of it.’

Over the next four years the brothers rubbed shoulders with men and women from other states; they compared the performance of Australian soldiers against those from other countries; they observed living conditions and cultures in many other countries. They began to feel proud of the strengths of their own countrymen and to think of Australia as ‘home’.  They became Australians, in their minds, as part of a gradual process.

Western Front, 1918. © John Newland, 2015

The other insight I gained from compiling this book was also significant. And it’s something we rarely, if ever, hear in Australia, obsessed as we are with the Gallipoli story. I discovered that in the spring of 1918 Germany's 'Spring Offensive' made a Big Push forward and Germany nearly won the Great War. The map shows how far the German front line extended into France at this time.

The Boulton letters taught me a huge history lesson, that it was the Australians who played a major part in our side ‘winning’ in the end. I learned about the role of the Australian First Division near Hazebrouck in stopping Germany’s spring advance on the crucial Channel ports, then holding and ‘shoving back’ that front line through the summer of 1918.  Down in the Somme valley, on ANZAC Day in 1918, other Australian soldiers recaptured the crucial high ground at Villers-Bretonneux. In the late summer and autumn of 1918, with Monash at last in charge of all the Australian Divisions as a combined force, the Australian strategy turned the German advance into a rout in the Somme Valley, pushing them back well beyond St Quentin, Negotiations for the Armistice began.

I ssk myself, was this 'victory' story I extracted from the Boulton brothers’ letters true? If so, why don’t we hear more of this story in Australia? Why are we so scared to claim credit for part of the big picture narrative of the Great War on the Western Front? Instead, we dwell on the successes and more often the failures of individual battles. We continue to seek glory in defeat. This year I expect we’ll hear much more about how many men we lost in 1916 (huge numbers in the costly disaster at Fromelles in July and in the brilliant victory at Pozières in July & August) than we'll hear about what these battles meant, strategically.

Recently I attended an event at the Shrine of Remembrance in Melbourne. It was a large crowd and everyone I spoke to had made a pilgrimage to the war memorials on the Western Front. Many of my personal friends have too. But the impact made on them focused on the terrain and the futile loss of life on individual battlefields, demonstrated so starkly by the endless rows of war graves. When I get to visit the Western Front region, it will mean much more than that to me. The Boulton letters have jolted me into an understanding of the overall significance of the role played by Australians on the Western Front, one hundred years ago.

Footnote: My three books about early convict settlers are 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter' (2009), 'Paul Bushell, Second Fleeter' (2010) and 'Southwark Luck; the Story of Charles Homer Martin, Ann Forrester and their Children' (2012), with details listed on my website.

Also see my website for details of how to purchase ‘Brothers in Arms: The Great War Letters of Captain Nigel Boulton, R.A.M.C. & Lieut Stephen Boulton, A.I.F.’

Starting from Scratch

Today is Australia Day and I’ve been pondering the idea of building a nation, starting from scratch. 

On 26 January 1788 the built environment did not exist anywhere in the vast continent on Australia, save for the flimsy shelters of the Aborigines. It’s a stunning thought … every structure we see around us today has been built in the last 228 years, with us able to pinpoint the exact day when Australia’s gigantic construction project got underway. It stirs my imagination because my forebears were here at the start.

Aborigines, Julia Woodhouse

The building of Australia began with not-so-simple tasks – the felling of the trees around Sydney Cove was the first indication of the unexpected challenges facing the incoming settlers, whose axes were no match for Australian hardwood. Their tent encampment slowly gave way to bark huts and brick buildings. 

Sydney Cove, 1788, State Library of NSW Collection

Soon they faced the destruction wrought by Australia’s geographic exposure to the El Nino/La Nina climate phenomena. Aborigines knew about our droughts and floods and European settlers quickly encountered them too. Sydney suffered severe drought conditions in 1789. In 1794 the fledgling Hawkesbury settlement and food bowl experienced the first of the numerous floods which swept down that river over the next 25 years, taking houses and crops with them. Bushfires raged too. It all comes into sharp focus in 'Robert Forrester, First Fleeter', an archetypal tale of the little Aussie battler coping with the harsh realities of farming life in this country. 

As well as building farms to produce food, schools and churches were needed, and Robert’s friend Paul Bushell, a tough survivor among the Second Fleet convicts, stepped in to help. He played his part in the establishment of two schools and two churches at the Hawkesbury. Both churches survive, with Ebenezer Church the oldest continuously-functioning church in Australia. 

Ebenezer Church & Schoolhouse

The arrival of convict architect Francis Greenway in 1814 saw the flowering of architectural gems in Sydney and surrounds. Greenway's masterpiece was St James Church in King Street, Sydney, where my grandparents were married in 1916. The historian Dan Cruickshank selected this church as one of his 80 man-made treasures defining the civilizations of the world. 

St James, Sydney

Another of Greenway’s churches, the famous St Matthew’s Church at Windsor, fell prey to the type of building scam which dogs our construction sites to this day. Charles Homer Martin and others were punished for filching building materials from the site, the story told in my book ‘Southwark Luck’. Charley later redeemed himself as a sawyer in the bush, producing timber to feed the housing boom of colonial Australia. 

St Matthew's, Windsor NSW

To preserve the evidence of our convict era, which ended in 1868 with the last convicts arriving in Western Australia, the convict sites at Port Arthur in Tasmania were added to UNESCO's World Heritage List in 2010. 

Port Arthur, 1843, State Library of NSW Collection

Within 100 years of the First Fleet's arrival the impressive city of Melbourne emerged from the wealth created by the frenzy of Victoria’s 1850s gold rush. The first European settlers had only arrived on the site of Melbourne in 1835 yet by 1888, when it hosted the Centennial International Exhibition, it was one of the great and stylish cities of the world with an international reputation as ‘marvellous Melbourne’.

Melbourne in 1888, from Fitzroy Gardens, State Libary of Victoria

The ambitious Federal Capital Design Competition was launched in 1911, famously won in 1912 by Walter Burley Griffin and the panoramic inland city of Canberra gradually came into being, with stunning vistas everywhere you look. Even the trees have been planted with an eye to design. 

Walter Burley Griffin's Plan for Canberra

There’ve been some grand building projects in Sydney too. The Sydney Harbour Bridge which opened in 1932 has worldwide recognition and I'm proud that my great uncle Spenser Dennis was a designing engineer. (There's a chapter about him in 'From Buryan to Bondi'.)

Sydney Harbour Bridge under Construction, c 1930, State Library of NSW Collection

Even more iconic and spectacular is the Sydney Opera House, officially opened in 1973 and now on UNESCO's World Heritage List. 

Sydney Opera House, 2015

Throughout, Australia has been lucky. We’ve had our share of drought, flood, fire and storm damage but we’ve not suffered the widespread destruction of seismic activity or war. The Japanese bombing raids over Darwin and Broome and a minor attack on Sydney by Japanese midget submarines in WW2 do not compare with the horrendous artillery battles fought by our soldiers (including my Boulton great uncles) on the Western Front in France and Belgium in WW1. We've never suffered the Blitz, like the Londoners in WW2, bombing lives, structures and cultural treasures out of existence.

Pozières Village, c 1914

Pozières Village, 1916

In keeping with the grand scale of our country, we’ve created big things, including the world’s leading long-distance airline, Qantas which began humbly in 1920. The dams and tunnels of the transformational Snowy Mountains Hydro Electric Scheme were constructed after WW2 using the labour of another influx of migrants, this time voluntary and mostly refugees from Europe. By contrast, the massive mining sites, railway lines and bulk handling ports in Queensland and Western Australia now depend largely on ‘fly in, fly out’ workers. 

We boast several of the great train journeys of the world, the ‘Indian Pacific’ connecting Sydney and Perth (4,352km), ‘The Ghan’, connecting Adelaide and Darwin (2,979km) and the Spirit of Queensland, connecting Brisbane and Cairns (1,681km). Making endless changes then, because of the different railway gauges in each state, my adventurous grandmother travelled by train from Sydney to Perth when it first became possible in 1917, before the new rails across the Nullarbor had bedded down.

Indian Pacific Route

As I think about my forebear on the First Fleet, it gives me a thrill to compare then and now, to see what we’ve all created.

Sydney Cove from Kirribilli, 2015

Ah Hah! Lightbulb Moment - Monash

Knowing very little about John Monash until recently, it was a revelation to read Grantlee Kieza’s biography of the man.

I can’t say we learned much (if anything) about Monash in my home state of NSW – but in more recent years as a resident of Victoria I’ve at least picked up on the Monash University and Shrine of Remembrance connections. Lately, research for my own book Brothers in Arms during 2015 startled me into awareness of some of Monash’s wartime achievements.

His story reminded me all over again of the Governor Arthur Phillip story – Phillip’s 'never' mentioned as the perfect role model for citizenship on Australia Day, as he should be, and Monash is 'never' mentioned as the archetypal good citizen on Anzac Day, as he should be. I love the fact that both men were such independent and clear thinkers with such a constructive approach. I’m very tired of the lauding of rebelliousness in our culture -  with Ned Kelly and Peter Lalor (Eureka Stockade) and sporting personalities and selected politicians usually presented as our archetypal national heroes.

As an Australian military history, the book had gigantic holes, because it focused only on Monash and the units in which he served while skimming over the military achievements of others, such as the 1st and 2nd Divisions of the AIF. However the book was an eye-opener to the appalling leadership of the Great War - all those wartime military leaders jockeying for position, so lacking in ideas and so careless of the men they sent to be slaughtered. And I marvelled at Monash’s ability to rise above his Germanic background, an obvious cause for suspicion of him as a loyal soldier during WW1.

It must have been wonderful for Kieza to have so  much original source material to work from, plus numerous comments from a diverse range of people who knew Monash well while he was alive, providing plenty of scope for fleshing out a personality. Although the dense layer of detail in the book was sometimes overwhelming and I found myself skimming much of it, unable to keep exact track of so many ‘players’, I found the book interesting from start to finish and couldn’t put it down.

The author’s use of present and future tense was annoying, especially references such as to Bradfield in 1926 as ‘the man who will build the Sydney Harbour Bridge’ (the construction project had been underway since around 1912). However I enjoyed his focus on the societal contribution of an engineer, which took me back decades to the time in my own youth when engineers were ‘king’ in Australia. I recalled my grandfather Engr Lieut Cleon Dennis (a founding officer in the RAN and personally involved in building naval cruisers and the Emden battle) and his engineer brother Spenser Dennis (involved in building the Sydney Harbour Bridge and about 700 other bridges in NSW). (See my book From Buryan to Bondi for their stories.) Then there was the impressive Snowy River Scheme, constructed during my childhood. My first husband was a telecommunications engineer. I guess I was more than ready to embrace Monash as an engineer.

Monash’s family background as a Prussian Jew, his socioeconomic status as a child in Australia, his Jerilderie and bushwalking life experiences, his wonderful obsession with education in its broadest sense, his own particular brand of womanising – all showed fascinating aspects of his character, providing great insights into why he was so creatively different as a general in WW1.

Although the author tried to make a case that Monash suffered significantly from discrimination against Jews, my 'take' on the book was that his real problem as a soldier and citizen was the prevailing and very patronising English attitude to ‘colonials’, no matter what their religion, combined with the good old Australian habit of cutting down tall poppies, especially egotistical tall poppies. WW1 turned society on its head and, with so many suffering victims afterwards, Australia's tall poppy syndrome flourished post-war, with Monash treated disgracefully by officialdom.

But before, during and after that appalling war he steadfastly continued to make an outstanding contribution as an engineer. I’m very glad I read this book and gained an understanding of a great man.