Colonial Melbourne

This book accompanied the exhibition Free, Secular and Democratic: building the Public Library 1853-1913 held at the Murdoch Gallery, State Library of Victoria 2013-2014. It combined a chronological account of the built history of the Library, Gallery and Museum complex with a survey of the collections held therein.
The book is online  http://building-a-new-world.slv.vic.gov.au

2022 marks the 150 Jubilee of the first recorded Scandinavian language service in Queensland. It was held on 26 June 1872 in the Lutheran Chapel on Wickham Terrace, Brisbane, by a Norwegian, Christopher Gaustad. To honour the occasion I am reposting the following article. It is a slightly amended version of what appeared in the annual 'Journal of Friends of Lutheran Archives' in December 2012, edited by emeritus Professor and historian Maurice Schild. Some of the images here do not appear in the published version. The 1934 letter indicates that there are still documents which reveal aspects of Lutheran historiography in Australia. My attention was drawn to this letter by Bernie Muller, the Archives Liaison Officer  in Queensland, who copied the letter from  the original held by Dr. Meg Noack (nee Bjelke-Petersen). Dr. Noack gave permission for the letter to be published. The letter was written by Jens Christian Pedersen (1856-1940), to Dr. Noack’s  grandfather, Pastor Carl Georg Bjelke-Petersen (1870-1954) in Queensland . My extensive explanatory endnotes are to encourage further research; to enlarge on Pedersen's context;  to make some corrections on what has previously been written on the Scandinavian Lutherans in Queensland; and to fill out some gaps in the area of bibliographical material.

Between 1847 and 1853, Charles Brentani was a noticeable character around Melbourne. Today, few have heard of him. There are occasional references, usually in relation to an 1849 gold discovery, or to silverware supplied by his retail jewellery business, but none gives comprehensive details of his life. He was one of those extraordinary ‘ordinary men’ whose story is lost in a history that tends to concentrate on ‘big people’. In telling Brentani’s story, this article supports the vision of the Royal Historical Society of Victoria that ‘knowing the individual stories of past inhabitants gives present and future generations, links with local place and local community, bolstering a sense of identity and belonging, and enriching our cultural heritage’.

ABSTRACT
Alexandra Avenue, designed by Florentine immigrant Carlo Catani, was declared open in 1901 in Melbourne by the Duke and Duchess of York, as part of the celebrations marking the Federation of Australia. The ornamental boulevard was an object of wonder. Following the European tradition, counter to English ideas of propriety, it was to be a promenade where people would go to see and be seen. In the mould of American
landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, Catani was an expert generalist, responsible for a wide range of landscape and engineering projects in Victoria, on whom little scholarship exists. The Avenue greatly influenced street aesthetics in inner Melbourne and was later used as an exemplar of urban streetscape at the inaugural Australian Town Planning Conference in 1918. It provides an insight into how urban landscapes were formed before specialist planners and demonstrates the way in which colonial cities such as Melbourne created an identity through their public spaces. This article enriches current scholarship on Catani – a significant influence on the city of Melbourne at theturn of last century.

Australians of European origin might be forgiven for thinking that music history is, as the well-known saying goes, 'something that happens to other people'-specifically, people in Europe. The majority culture in Australia is, after all, commonly described as a 'transplanted' one. Moreover, the principal source of that culture is England, a country that the German social commentator Oscar A.H. Schmitz (in)famously described in 1914 as being inhabited by 'das einzige Kulturvolk ohne eigene Musik' (the only cultured people without its own music).

Well known in Australian history are the arrivals of Greeks. Less acknowledged are the attempts of Greeks to define themselves within the contours of the Australian nation and the implications of such endeavours. In 1898, a group of ‘Greek Gypsies’ arrived in South Australia. Coincidentally their arrival coincided with the establishment of the Greek community of Melbourne and the emergent politics of Australian nation-building. As a group of semi-nomadic, questionably “Greek” migrants they were treated in contradictory ways. They received charitable assistance from some settlers while others – predominantly immigration restrictionists and the Greek-Melbournians – regarded them as a burden to colonial progress. How and why the Greek community of Melbourne chose to discredit these people was linked to the colonial ideal of respectability, which fostered the social traits of independence and permanent settlement. Positioning themselves within the attainable confines of respectability vindicated the Greeks of Melbourne as valued settlers.

This study represents the first substantial investigation of the human resource management practices within the Victorian Railways over the period 1864-1921. The employment and management strategies of the organisation are examined using a range of models and theories drawn from labour economics, new institutional economics and human resource management.

This article demonstrates the importance of aurality and speech in law and governance in Melbourne, the capital of the British settler colony of Victoria, Australia. It does so via tracking the role of England-born Chinese Interpreter, Charles Powell Hodges, across Melbourne spaces, notably the Supreme Court and the so-called ‘Chinese Quarter’. By examining Hodges’ involvement in the surrounding racial politics of urban labour, and of carpentry in particular, this article highlights the spatially dependent ways in which power was verbally negotiated in and between colonial state actors, Hodges, and the Chinese merchant and working classes. It further examines Hodges’ role as an advocate for Chinese interests in the context of the 1890s Depression. Hodges spoke against popular anti-Chinese sentiments at a time when white settler linguistic identity was being formulated, and in the lead up to the 1901 Federation of the Australian colonies. A focus on acts of speaking, hearing, and listening, I argue, is a way to deepen historical understandings of governance, and of resistance thereto.

The story of wages in nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century Australia has largely been told through official published statistics and the experiences of skilled artisans and construction labourers. Utilising wage book data from an early successful manufacturing plant – a biscuit factory – we reveal the earning histories of several neglected groups of Australian workers. We specifically investigate the effects of the 1890s depression, the introduction of a wages board, and shifting demographics on the wages of unskilled factory hands, women, juvenile workers, and commercial clerks. We demonstrate that typical Australian wage series studies have misinterpreted the impact of these phenomena.

This is a sample. The full thesis can be purchased from: http://au.blurb.com/b/6266545-deconstruction-of-a-convict-past

Much of the history of early colonial Victoria has been overlooked with many historians and readers of history assuming not much of importance happened before the gold rushes of 1851. Similarly much of the story of those who came to the Port Phillip district as ex-convicts before 1851 has also been overlooked, or even deliberately forgotten. Many late 20th century studies of both the period and the convicts have tended towards generalization in the telling of the historical story, and towards conclusions based upon statistics. The brief and vague treatment so often given to this period, and these people, has sometimes been attributed to the apparent difficulty in obtaining suitable and sufficient source materials.

This project tells the life stories of two men who were convicted of robbery in England and transported to Van Diemen’s Land, one in 1829 and the other in 1835, and follows their attempts to create a respectable life for themselves through a variety of business, marriage, family and social relationships, first in Van Diemen’s Land and then in Port Phillip. The project investigates these men’s motivations and methods in concealing and deconstructing their prior identity as a convict, an identity that was imposed upon them as punishment for the crimes they committed.

The study demonstrates that the life of the period, and in particular the lives of those who were convicts, can be recovered in great detail through diligent research largely using sources that have been made available in digitized or online form.
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Lisa Lang’s award-winning Australian novel Utopian Man (2010) reimagines E.W. Cole and his famous Book Arcade in Melbourne in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Running in its central Melbourne location from 1883-1929, in popular discourses Cole’s Book Arcade was, and is, synonymous with nineteenth-century Melbourne itself; its vibrant, eclectic atmosphere seemed to capture the essence of the booming nineteenth-century metropolis. In Lang’s biofiction, the Arcade becomes a lens through which to view Melbourne itself. Cole is sympathetically drawn and his characteristics – his eccentricities, entrepreneurism, philanthropy and idealism – provide a critical contrast with a city increasingly suspicious toward immigrants, as Australia moves toward federation, and toward establishing the White Australia policy. While it is set entirely in the past, the novel’s structural nostalgia – the Arcade and its values are always already lost in this narrative – speaks to a present in which Australia is once again closing its borders. The novel positions itself as witness to Australia’s lost alternative of a tolerant society, one that embraced other views and welcomed a range of immigrants, and which exists today only as memory.

Michael 'Big Mick' O'Grady was a notorious character in Melbourne's early days. He was both a criminal and a constable, and at one point considered entering politics. His misdemeanours were celebrated in the newspapers of the day; however, since his death, his story has been lost to history. I intend to resurrect this figure so that modern audiences can appreciate the combination of criminality and larrikinism that helped to build the character of our city and nation.

Published in Provenance 2018 here: https://www.prov.vic.gov.au/explore-collection/provenance-journal/provenance-2018/notorious-michael-ogrady

In her journal, Georgiana McCrae described many events that took place in Melbourne between 1841 and 1850. One episode narrates how, during the celebrations following news of the Port Phillip District's impending separation from New South Wales, she was asked by her friend, Sophie La Trobe, wife of district Superintendent Charles La Trobe, to accompany her husband and children in their carriage during the procession through Melbourne's streets and across the newly completed bridge across the Yarra River. Sophie was unwell and thought Georgiana would make a suitable substitute in the carriage. Georgiana describes the procession and mentions the La Trobe children by name - Nelly, Cecily and Charles. But she also mentions somebody named Agnes. Readers of Georgiana's journal have assumed she made a mistake and included the La Trobe's eldest daughter, Agnes, who was actually not in Melbourne in 1850 but was in Switzerland. Gerogiana had revised her journal during the 1880s and it was assumed she had forgotten exactly who was there in November 1850. However, she was not mistaken for there was a person named Agnes in the carriage on that day.

For nearly 180 years, between the early nineteenth and early twenty-first century, many art historians believed that Federico Barocci’s 1589 masterpiece variously titled Aeneas and his family fleeing Troy or simply The Burning of Troy, was last seen in London at an auction of paintings from the Orléans Collection in February 1800. We know what the painting looked like, and why it was created, and we know the details of the journey taken by the painting: from Italy to Prague; from Prague to Sweden; from Sweden back to Italy; then to France and to London. But for most who have written about the painting it disappeared from public sight after the auction of February 1800.
This is the story of how the painting in fact was not lost after the 1800 auction but was sold on several more occasions and went from London to Scotland and ultimately ended up in Australia where it was exhibited by Dr Farquhar McCrae. This is also the story of Farquhar McCrae, perhaps better known to Australian readers through his sister-in-law, Georgiana Huntly Gordon McCrae and the journal she wrote describing life in Melbourne during the 1840s. But Farquhar's life story is at least as interesting as that of Georgiana's, yet it has previously not been told, at least not in this detail.
But this story is not a mere list of dates and facts documenting a sequence of auctions and the sellers and buyers who traded in art works. They are the mere dots of history. The data points. And in joining those data points this story narrates the journey taken by Barocci’s lost painting. During the search, like Alice following the White Rabbit, we encounter clues that entice us to enter pathways that sometimes turn out to be dead ends. And, at the end of the journey, we may, or may not, have found the treasure we seek, but, either way, we can look back at the journey with a sense of great reward.

The 478 page, fully illustrated in colour, softcover edition, and an equivalent eBook/iPad version are available for purchase here: https://au.blurb.com/b/10604160-farquhar-mccrae-and-the-burning-of-troy

or through my Historia Incognita site here: https://historiaincognita.net/2020/02/16/the-search-for-federico-baroccis-lost-1589-painting-aeneas-flight-from-troy/

This study assembles long term data from 1855 to the present about annual bushfire season severity and annual damage toll over three policy eras to test three nominated theories: It finds that Theory A applies to all policy eras - that bushfire season severity has a direct causal influence on annual damage potential. It finds that Theory B also applies to all policy eras - that bushfire protection strategies that mitigate damage potential have the capability to reduce the damage toll in proportion to their effectiveness. This was proven by the Stretton reforms.  Theory C detected a worrying return to pre Stretton era tolls in severe weather. The outcome is an unacceptable deterioration that is worthy of urgent investigation and rectification.

Three mitigation influences are examined for effect on the frequency of damage toll years during higher severity years.  Government policy change, Suppression capability using the Plan A model, and control burning.

The case is made for long overdue policy reform, a Plan B policy that aims to prevent the life and house loss damage toll in severe weather with targeted application of passive and active defence measures before the bushfire strikes.

For nearly 180 years, between the early nineteenth and early twenty-first century, many art historians believed that Federico Barocci’s 1589 masterpiece variously titled Aeneas and his family fleeing Troy or simply The Burning of Troy, was last seen in London at an auction of paintings from the Orléans Collection in February 1800. We know what the painting looked like, and why it was created, and we know the details of the journey taken by the painting: from Italy to Prague; from Prague to Sweden; from Sweden back to Italy; then to France and to London. But for most who have written about the painting it disappeared from public sight after the auction of February 1800.
This is the story of how the painting in fact was not lost after the 1800 auction but was sold on several more occasions and went from London to Scotland and ultimately ended up in Australia where it was exhibited by Dr Farquhar McCrae. This is also the story of Farquhar McCrae, perhaps better known to Australian readers through his sister-in-law, Georgiana Huntly Gordon McCrae and the journal she wrote describing life in Melbourne during the 1840s. But Farquhar's life story is at least as interesting as that of Georgiana's, yet it has previously not been told, at least not in this detail.
But this story is not a mere list of dates and facts documenting a sequence of auctions and the sellers and buyers who traded in art works. They are the mere dots of history. The data points. And in joining those data points this story narrates the journey taken by Barocci’s lost painting. During the search, like Alice following the White Rabbit, we encounter clues that entice us to enter pathways that sometimes turn out to be dead ends. And, at the end of the journey, we may, or may not, have found the treasure we seek, but, either way, we can look back at the journey with a sense of great reward.


The 480 page, softcover edition, and a downloadable PDF eBook version are available for purchase here: https://au.blurb.com/b/10767176-farquhar-mccrae-and-the-burning-of-troy


Also through my Historia Incognita site here: https://historiaincognita.net/2020/02/16/the-search-for-federico-baroccis-lost-1589-painting-aeneas-flight-from-troy/

This note provides biographical information about Ada Cambridge's satiric novel about marriage, bigamy and Aesthetic enthusiasm.  It draws attention to the way Cambridge's 'forgotten' novella is placed precisely in a Melbourne setting in the last of the Land Boom years, including references to the then fashionable St Kilda and its Esplanade Hotel. It suggests that this novel marks a turning point in Cambridge's career as she shifted from conventional novels about love and marriage to more satirical and ambitious work.