Volume 4, Number 4, November 2011
A
Southern Sydney Journal
of
History, Heritage and the Arts
ISSN 1835-9817 (Print) ISSN 1835-9825 (Online)
Price $7.00 ( Aus)
1
Doryanthes
Exec. Editor: Les Bursill OAM
Doryanthes
.
The Gymea Lily (spec. Doryanthes excelsa) From Greek “dory”: a spear and “anthos”: a flower, referring to the
spear-like flowering stems; excelsa: from Latin excelsus: elevated, high, referring to the tall flower spikes.
Go to www.doryanthes.info
Editorial Policy;
Editorial Committee
Chair/Editor/Publisher: Les Bursill, OAM, BA
M.Litt UNE JP.
V/Chair: Garriock Duncan, BA(Hons) DipEd.
Syd MA Macq GradDipEdStud NSW MEd
DipLangStud Syd.
Treasurer: Mary Jacobs, BEd Macq DipNat
Nutr AustCollNaturalTherapies.
Film Review Editor: Michael Cooke, BEc LaT
GradDipEd BA Melb MB VU.
Book Review Editor and Secretary: Adj. Prof.
Edward Duyker,
OAM, BA(Hons) LaT PhD
Melb FAHA JP.
Committee Members:
Sue Duyker, BEc BA(Asian Studies) ANU
BSc(Arch.) B Arch Syd.
Merle Kavanagh, DipFamHistStud
SocAustGenealogists AssDipLocAppHist UNE.
John Low, BA, DipEd. Syd DipLib CSU.
Bruce Howell, BSc, DipEd. Syd
Index of Articles
Page
Number
Editorial – Adj. Prof. Edward Duyker
3
Gleanings - Sue Duyker
4
1. All views expressed are those of the
individual authors.
2. It is the Policy of this Journal that material
published will meet the requirements of the
Editorial Committee for content and style.
3. Appeals concerning non-publication will be
considered. However decisions of the
Editorial Committee will be final.
Les Bursill OAM on behalf of the Editorial
Committee
Index of Articles
Page
Number
Péron & the Birth of the Science
of Invertebrates - Dr Gabriel Bittar
22
Exploring the Web - John Low
30
Scattered Seeds - Adj. Prof. Edward Duyker
33
Man’s Best Friend – Merle Kavanagh 10
Book Note - Adj. Prof. Edward Duyker
38
Goannas, Whales and Wallabies
Part 5 – Hand Stencils (and
Grinding Grooves) – Bruce Howell 15
Music Reviews - Michael Cooke
39
Film Reviews - Michael Cooke
41
Palenque - W H Nethery
Notice to Contributors -
44
The Road to Palestinian State
Hood – Marc Finaud
7
19
The articles published herein are copyright © and may not be reproduced without permission of the author.
ISSN 1835-9817 (Print) - ISSN 1835-9825 (Online)
The publishers of this Journal known as “Doryanthes” are Leslie Bursill and Mary Jacobs trading as
“Dharawal Publishers Inc. 2009”
The business address of this publication is 10 Porter Road Engadine NSW, 2233.
Les.bursill@gmail.com www.doryanthes.info
2
The Email Address (until further notice) of this Journal is lesbursill@tpg.com.au
Editorial –
In this issue of Doryanthes we welcome Bruce Howell as the newest member of our editorial
committee. He is already well-known for his contributions on the rock art of the Sutherland
Shire. We also have an article on the Mayan site of Palenque, southern Mexico, by Canadianborn shire resident William Nethery, a specialist in cultural landscapes. Our good friend Marc
Finaud, former French Consul-General in Sydney, offers his personal reflections on the recent
Palestinian declaration of statehood. We also begin a two-part article by Swiss scientist,
Buddhist and Kangaroo Island resident, Dr Gabriel Bittar, on the French naturalist François
Péron who visited many parts of Australia–including the shores of Botany Bay in 1802. Last
December marked the bicentenary of Péron’s death and our readers will remember Maryse
Duyker’s translation of Péron’s secret report on New South Wales. And there are still more
offerings, including Susan Duyker’s ‘Gleanings’, an article by Merle Kavanagh on the Antarctic
explorer Captain Robert Falcon Scott and his dogs, another ‘Scattered Seeds’ travel letter
and the second part of Michael Cooke’s three-part series ‘Glimpses of Empire’. The latter is
an essay entitled ‘On the Margins of Empire’, a review of Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker.
I take this opportunity to congratulate Garriock Duncan for bringing to fruition our previous
issue which marked the 2500th anniversary of the Battle of Marathon. We are proud to have
gained the Ian McLeod Award for the Promotion of Classical Studies in 2011. The August
issue was very well received. One hundred additional copies of Doryanthes have been
distributed to high schools in New South Wales and one is on its way to the Εθνική
Βιβλιοθήκη της Ελλάδος (National Library of Greece). And many thanks to Pierre Duyker for
establishing a Doryanthes Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/doryanthes which now
highlights our broader commitment as a southern Sydney journal of history, heritage and the
arts.
In my previous guest editorial (November 2010), I raised hopes that books by local authors
would soon be sold in the Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery shop. Sadly, I was wrong. Despite
a disappointing lack of inclusiveness on the part of the board of Hazelhurst, Sutherland Shire
Library Service is to be commended for its proposal to develop a showcase for local authors
in time for the ‘Year of The Reader’ in 2012. Nevertheless, the library will probably need help
identifying such writers. It seems to me that our authors are a mirror of the multicultural
diversity of the shire. Yet the true breadth of that literary diversity is yet to be gathered for
future generations. For example, Dr Ragbir Bhathal, a Gymea Bay resident (see St George
and Sutherland Shire Leader, 12 September 2006, p. 5), is the respected author of six books
on astronomy and Australian astronomical history, yet only one is in our local collection. At
present, if you search the catalogue for books by French-born scholar Dr Françoise Grauby, a
long time Cronulla resident who has written on the creative process and on symbolist
literature, you will not find her listed at all. Nor will you find any books in the catalogue by the
distinguished Coptic scholar Professor Rifaat Ebied, another shire resident of many years
standing. I have no doubt that there are others who have been overlooked and need to be
identified, sometimes with books in languages other than English. We also need to ensure the
retention of particular works. For example, although a book such as Imants Tillers: One
World Many Visions is currently held in the Sutherland quarto, reference quarto and
Caringbah collections, it should be earmarked for the local studies collection, since the
Latvian-Australian Tillers grew up in Sylvania. Otherwise, it might eventually be culled.
Clearly there is a need to broaden the parameters of our local studies collection. Doryanthes
remains committed to helping identify, record and celebrate local cultural diversity and
heritage. Vive la difference!
Edward Duyker, Australian Catholic University/University of Sydney
3
Gleanings
With Sue Duyker
Eryldene Christmas Fair
Saturday 26 & Sunday 27 November 10am–4pm, Eryldene Historic House and Garden, 17 McIntosh
Street, Gordon
New stallholders and many old favourites with a wide selection of unusual and quality gifts will make your
Christmas shopping easy. Enjoy choosing your presents in the beauty of Eryldene’s late spring garden with its
flowering Jacarandas. Over 50 stalls, selling antiques, jewellery, Christmas hampers, cakes and puddings,
silkware, garden ornaments, plants, homewares, children and women’s clothing, pearls, paper products and
much, much more. Special offer from the Garden Café—complimentary tea/coffee and a Christmas treat for
entry from 1–3pm Sunday.
Cost: $5 for everyone. Contact: Anne Davey on (02) 9498 2636
www.nationaltrust.com.au/events/
Jeffrey Smart: Unspoken
Until 27 November 2011, University Art Gallery, University of Sydney, Northern entrance to The
Quadrangle, Science Rd, Camperdown. Monday to Friday 10am–4.30pm, Sunday 12pm–4pm (closed
public holidays)
A visually intriguing group of works from his time in Sydney in the early ‘60s shows Smart exploring the world of
the beach, baths, and bodies. In this group of works desire is ever present among his trademark architectural
forms. In second coherent group in the exhibition, mostly painted in Italy, Smart’s visual vocabulary—his
sweeping highways, traffic markers and road signage—are not signs of existential angst but celebrations of form.
Free.
www.sydney.edu.au/museums/events_exhibitions/art_gallery_exhibitions.shtml
Coogee Baths—Winter by Jeffrey Smart (1962), donated through the Alan Richard Renshaw bequest © Jeffrey Smart.
4
Free Walking Tour: “Walking Through History”
Monthly until 6 December, 12.15pm–1.30pm, Ultimo College
As part of its 120th anniversary celebrations, Ultimo College (part of TAFE NSW—Sydney Institute) is giving
lovers of history and architecture the chance to join small personal tours of its historical campus. Taking about
60 minutes, the tour is filled with interesting anecdotes of the times, of politics and past students and will be led
by expert historian, Norm Neill
Free. Bookings essential. Email SydneyTAFE.120years@tafensw.edu.au or call 9217 3380.
www.historycouncilnsw.org.au/history-week/history-week
Carols by Candlelight at Elizabeth Farm
6pm for 7.30pm, 10 December 2011, Elizabeth Farm, 70 Alice Street, Rosehill, NSW
Bring your family, friends, a picnic rug and your festive spirit for a traditional night of carols by candlelight at
Elizabeth Farm. A full brass band and a choir will perform on the night. Candles, song sheets, barbecued food
and light refreshments will be on sale.
Arrive early and let the children enjoy the Christmas crafts and games while you relax on the lawn with friends.
Gifts will be accepted as part of the Smith Family Christmas Appeal. Gifts should be marked with the relevant
gender and age.
Free. www.hht.net.au/whats_on
The Quest for Red
Until 11 December 2011, Macleay Museum, Macleay Building Gosper Lane, off Science Road, The
University of Sydney
Piracy, war, espionage, exploration and international intrigue are all brought into play at the Macleay Museum in
this exhibition, which explores the ways humans have exploited pigments to make the colour red.
10am–4.30pm Monday to Friday;12noon–4pm Sunday.
Free http://sydney.edu.au/museums/whatson/exhibitions/macleay_current.shtml
Finding Antarctica: Mapping the Last Continent
3 December 2011–19 February, 2012, Exhibition Galleries, State Library of NSW
It is one hundred years since Douglas Mawson led the 1911 to 1914 Australasian Antarctic Expedition (AAE),
arriving on Macquarie Island on 11 December 1911.
In celebration of this centenary, this exhibition will focus on the mapping of Antarctica from the 15th to the 21st
century, from crude woodcut maps of the known world through to the latest satellite imagery. The exhibition will
tell the story of the gradual discovery, exploration and charting of this significant land mass.
The exhibition will showcase the magnificent collection of rare maps and charts held by the State Library,
accompanied by rare published accounts and original sketches from Antarctica exploration by Cook, d'Urville,
the United State Exploring Expeditions and the Australasian Antarctic Expedition.
Free.
www.sl.nsw.gov.au/events/exhibitions/future.html
5
Inside: Life in Children’s Homes and Institutions
16 November 2011–26 February 2012, National Museum of Australia, Canberra
Inside features the words, voices and objects of the Forgotten Australians, Former Child Migrants and those who
experienced institutional care as children.
About half a million children spent time in Children's Homes and institutions, mostly run by state governments,
charities and churches from the 1920s to the 1980s.
Inside examines how children were committed to 'care', what it was like to grow up on the inside, life on the
outside and reactions to the Australian Government's 2009 National Apology to Forgotten Australians and
Former Child Migrants.
Inside provides a chance for all Australians to understand something of a history that affected so many people
and was hidden for so long.
Free.
www.nma.gov.au/exhibitions/inside/
Handwritten: Ten centuries of manuscript treasures from Staatsbibliotek zu Berlin
26 November 2011–18 March 2012, National Library of Australia, Canberra
The exhibition includes the handwriting of Erasmus, Bach, Galileo, Napoleon, Newton, Mozart, Machiavelli,
Luther, Kafka and many others.
Free
www.nla.gov.au/library-news-and-events
Picasso: masterpieces from the Musée National Picasso, Paris
12 November 2011–25 March 2012, Art Gallery of NSW
See every phase of Picasso's seven-decade career, including masterpieces from his Blue, Rose, cubist,
neoclassical and surrealist periods. These are ‘Picasso’s Picassos’, deeply personal and revealing works that he
kept to shape his own legacy. This exhibition has only been made possible because the Musée National Picasso
in Paris is closed for renovations. Don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to discover the genius of Picasso.
Tickets for Picasso online at www.ticketek.com.au/picasso or call Ticketek on 132 849 or become an Art Gallery
member and see the exhibition free
.
www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au
Australian Women's History Month, March 2012. Women with a Plan: Australian women architects and
town planners
The history of women's professional involvement in architecture and town planning in Australia is a fascinating
one. We hope you will join us with your own Women’s History Month event to commemorate the history of
Australia's women architects and town planners. Check out the events closer to March at:
www.womenshistory.com.au/events.asp
6
The Road to Palestinian Statehood
By Marc Finaud, Former Consul-General of France, Sydney,
now Special Advisor to the Director, Geneva Centre for
Security Policy.
NB: This paper solely expresses the view of its author and
does not necessarily reflect that of the GCSP or any
government.
The Palestinians may not have a state yet, but they surely
have a statesman. Mahmoud Abbas, the head of the
Palestinian National Authority, was greeted like a hero
when he returned to Ramallah after claiming statehood at
the United Nations on 23 September 2011. He demonstrated his diplomatic skills and personal boldness by
Marc Finaud
refusing to yield to all kinds of pressure aimed at
discouraging his initiative. Not only was his credibility as a
“partner” for making peace with Israel strengthened but also his international prestige,
and more importantly his popularity vis-à-vis Hamas within Palestine. The “realists”,
beginning with the Obama administration, opposed that approach by stressing that
UN Photo/Marco Castro
President of Palestinian Authority Addresses General Assembly: Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian
Authority, shows a copy of the application for full UN membership which he submitted only moments before to
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon - 23 September 2011, United Nations, New York
7
statehood should result from peace negotiations with Israel, that nothing would change
on the ground after recognition, that it may provoke violence, etc. Yet President
Obama had told the United Nations General Assembly in 2010: “When we come back
here next year, we can have an agreement that can lead to a new member of the
United Nations, an independent, sovereign state of Palestine living in peace with
Israel.” In the meantime, the US, like the European Union, had dedicated sizeable
resources to help building the future Palestinian state, developing its economy and its
institutions. The US administration had even supported for a while the Palestinian
precondition of an Israeli settlement freeze as a requirement to resume meaningful
negotiations.
Since 2010, because of mutually unacceptable preconditions,
negotiations remained stalled. The Palestinian claim at the United Nations has
already achieved one of its goals: negotiations are back on the agenda again, pushed
by various American or European initiatives, and statehood is no longer a distant hope
(“the light at the end of the tunnel”) but closer to reality than ever.
What a change when looking back at the history of the Palestinian national movement!
As in many conflicts, an organisation initially only preoccupied with military action and
armed violence gradually became a political structure and the embryo of a state. The
1964 Arab League Cairo summit declared “liberation of Palestine” through armed
struggle as its goal and in the 1964 Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization
(PLO) the Palestinian people aimed “to exercise their right to self-determination and
sovereignty over [Mandate Palestine]”. After the 1967 War and the Israeli occupation
of the West Bank and Gaza, Palestinian fighters moved to Jordan to pursue their
struggle against Israel. The 1970 Black September clashes with the Jordanian armed
forces led the PLO to seek refuge in Lebanon, where they continued their activities,
including terrorist attacks on civilians. The Rabat Arab Summit of 1974 espoused the
cause of the establishment of a Palestinian state. Because of the involvement of
Palestinian fighters in the Lebanese civil war from 1975, the 1982 Israeli invasion of
Lebanon resulted in their expulsion to Tunis. In the meantime, the Palestinian National
Council, led by Yasser Arafat, called in 1974 for an independent state in Palestine.
Following the First Intifada, the PLO’s Declaration on the establishment of the state of
Palestine in 1988 indirectly recognized Israel’s right to exist on the basis of UN
Security Council resolutions 242 and 338. Support for Palestinian self-determination
had already been expressed by the precursor of the European Union in the 1980
Venice Declaration, and French President François Mitterrand had advocated a
Palestinian state in his address to the Israeli Knesset in 1982. The 1993 Olso
agreement and the formal cancellation of the clauses of the PLO Charter on the
destruction of Israel paved the way for a two-state solution to be achieved by nonviolent means. That solution was supported in the 2002 Arab Peace Plan and UN
Security Council Resolution 1397. Establishing a Palestinian state within borders
based on the 1967 lines with possible territory swaps would amount to a return to the
1947 UN Partition Plan (UN General Assembly Resolution 181), which called for the
establishment of “a Jewish state” and “an Arab state”, but taking for granted the
expansion of Israel’s territory until 1949.
A new stage in the long and painful relations between Israel and its Palestinian
neighbours has thus opened. It is not completely foreign to the historic developments
8
that shook the Arab world. Indeed the general aspiration to normal life in a democratic
state forcefully but peacefully demonstrated by the Arab youth and “street” found its
expression among Palestinians in the form of a non-violent claim for long overdue
statehood. The paradox of this new situation is that the strong supporters of that
statehood, the Obama administration, and, with internal nuances, the European Union,
seem now to want to delay it. Israel’s government, on its part, by resisting such move,
may give the impression that the negotiations that it offers to resume will only aim at
postponing the establishment of a Palestinian state. It may confirm the conviction of
some that it only wants to create facts on the ground (the number of settlers in the
West Bank and East Jerusalem has been multiplied by three since Oslo). Its attitude
towards democratic change in the Arab world has been one of caution if not paranoia,
expressing some nostalgia for stable albeit authoritarian regimes, another paradox for
the “only democracy” in the region. With its rigid attitude, it has lost its Turkish ally,
which could have helped it bridge the gap with the Arab world. It has argued that
statehood without full control of the Palestinian territory would not be acceptable while
at the same time rejecting any idea of a Palestinian unity government including
Hamas. If it were led by the self-confidence and vision that had inspired the Israeli
leadership before the Oslo agreement, the Israeli government would now seize the
opportunity offered by the recognition of a Palestinian state to conclude a mutually
beneficial accord. It has too much accused the Palestinians in the past of being
influenced by fanatic extremists and “not missing an opportunity to miss an
opportunity” for not swapping roles today.
The ‘Geneva Initiative’ Map: possible borders between a State of Palestine and Israel.
9
Man’s Best Friend
With Scott and his Party in Antarctica 1910–1912
(Merle Kavanagh)
The epic journey to the South Pole by Robert Falcon
Scott and his party a century ago, 1910-12, is well
known. Its tragic ending ensured a place in history for
the group who had been beaten to the Pole by
Amundsen’s party but died on the return journey.
Such a project required an enormous amount of
support, both from individuals and animals, in this case
ponies and dogs. On this second expedition Scott’s
party took with them 31 Siberian sledging dogs, two
Esquimaux, ‘Peary’ and ‘Borup’ and a collie bitch,
‘Lassie’. Cecil Meares, in charge of the dogs, had
driven the sledging dogs across Siberia to Vladivostok
with dog driver Dimetri Gerof. From there they were
taken by steamer to Sydney, then on to Lyttelton in New
Zealand. Even though the dogs had Russian names,
various schools who had donated dogs were able to
give names to them, some choosing the school or area
name e.g. Bristol Grammar gave the school/area name
to ‘Bristol’, also known as ‘Lappa Uki’ (Russian)
meaning ‘Lop Ears’.
From Lyttelton, the port for Christchurch, they sailed to
Port Chalmers, the port for Dunedin, where their ship,
the Terra Nova, was anchored. They had managed to
stow 45 tons of pony food (compressed oaten hay) with
some extra for immediate use, plus five tons of dog
biscuits. The Terra Nova left Port Chalmers on Tuesday
29 November 1910 with the dogs chained to bolts on
deck, some on coal sacks, between motor sledges. It
would be a wet and miserable voyage for them.
At the beginning of the voyage south they were regularly
sprayed by breaking waves and occasionally ‘some poor
beast’ would give a long pathetic whine. When the ship
struck very rough weather in early December, the dogs
were thrown around so much that one dog drowned and
two others were washed overboard when their chains
broke.
By a miracle, one was washed back again. ‘Osman’,
their best sledge dog, was settled warmly into hay to aid
his recovery from exhaustion and trembling while others
needed careful nursing to restore them.
They
celebrated Christmas surrounded by ice and Crean’s
rabbit presented the ship with 17 babies which found
foster ‘parents’ amongst the men.
Scott and team 1911
Scott writing up his journal
in the Team Hut 1911
Captain Robert F Scott (in uniform),
Captain Lawrence E.G. Oates (standing
behind Scott) and party inspecting sled
dogs at the training centre on Quail
Island, New Zealand
10
Later there was criticism of the dogs’ accommodation on the Terra Nova on its voyage south
but it was obvious to the men that there was no alternative. The ship was crammed wih gear
and supplies, both in the hold and on deck. They even had no room for a magnetic hut, which
had to be left behind.
The new year found them still on board, searching for a place to land and on 4 th January 1911
they struck on the hard bay ice, a firm road to the shore and their camp. The dogs were busy
carrying loads from the ship but were soon distracted by the inquisitive penguins which leapt
onto the floe, waddling around and peering into everything. They paid little heed to the
restrained dogs, yelping and howling for blood, but when a curious penguin came too close,
there was a blood and feather mess on the ice which attracted the skua gulls who zoomed in
for the spoils.
On one occasion six or seven killer whales were swimming around the floe ahead of the ship,
diving and breeching, then suddenly appearing astern near where the two Esquimaux dogs
were tethered to the ships wire stern rope. One man, Ponting, raced to get a photograph
when the whole floe under him and the dogs was thrust up by the whales below. It broke into
pieces as the heads of these huge animals rose several feet through the cracks, terrifying the
dogs. By pure chance they were both on the same piece of floe and had not been tossed into
the freezing water. Their supply of petrol also happened to be on the ice but it was not
broken off. The ice at that part was 2 ½ feet thick.
There were accidents with the animals—a dog team ran off and one, ‘Mukaka’, fell over and
was dragged by the galloping team for a mile or so, surviving with a few injuries. Scott tried
some team work with the dogs but had trouble remembering the Russian orders the dogs
knew. He was not convinced that the dogs would be an asset.
Late in January near the ship the dogs saw a whale breeching and raced for it. By a miracle
they were stopped before they reached the water. The dogs were alert to any strange sound
and when the surface crust cracked and split, the dogs were instantly on their guard, jumping
up and down, looking for the enemy which made the sound.
Unloading continued and the ship was able to move closer to their camp site on land which
was then fairly clear of snow. Dogs and ponies worked hard at hauling supplies, eleven dogs
pulling 500 pounds at a snails pace—“a back-breaking load”. One dog was lost after he
coughed, trying to bring up something then died a few minutes later. The post mortem
revealed nothing.
They had periods of hail which were very uncomfortable for the men and animals and
Meares, the dog handler thought that some of the dogs were suffering from snow-blindness.
He had estimated their food allowance at two/thirds of a pound of biscuits per day, though
Scott thought this was not enough. Scott had also noticed how well the dogs worked and
lived together until food was brought out. “An empty stomach makes a fierce dog.” So
feeding time brought out the aggression in each dog. Scott wrote in his diary “It is such stern
facts that resign one to the sacrifice of animal life in the effort to advance such human
projects as this.” When blizzards raged, Scott noted that it was a pleasant rest for the dogs.
As they moved camp further in, the dogs settled into the pattern of hauling and resting. A
pony, “Weary Willy”, was attacked by the dogs after he had fallen. He suffered many bites
and died two weeks later, despite all their nursing efforts. Late in February a depot for
supplies was established and they moved on, further south. The dogs and ponies were
11
getting a good allowance of food but were “desperately hungry”, both eating their excrement.
Then a serious accident gave them all a terrifying experience.
They were sledging in dim light when one man, Wilson, shouted an alarm and his leg slipped
into a crevasse. A few minutes later the centre dogs of the team disappeared, and the whole
team began sinking out of sight. The men leapt off the sledge and saw they had been
travelling along the edge of a crevasse. The dogs were hanging in harness over the abyss.
Only ‘Osman’, the leader, had managed to keep a foothold. They anchored the sledge firmly
and looked over at the howling dogs. Two had dropped out of their harnesses and were dimly
seen on a snow bridge below. It looked hopeless and they were not thinking clearly at first
but soon worked out a plan. ‘Osman’ was choking on the weight he was bearing and they
worked to reduce this load and release him They managed to get one dog up, but the rope
holding the dogs had bitten deeply into the edge of the crevasse. They manoeuvred the
sledge over the gap of about 4½ feet and worked from it. Two by two they hauled up the
dogs and cut them loose, releasing 11 of the 13 dogs. The other two were on the snow
bridge and to rescue them seemed an impossible feat.
They measured the drop to the bridge and Scott was lowered, grasping both dogs. Then a
fight broke out between the dogs saved and those on the second sledge and this had to be
quickly brought under control. That resolved, they returned and hauled up Scott and the last
two animals. It was a near miss for the party as the sledge could have gone down and put
the men at risk of possible death. The rescue had taken two hours. Several dogs suffered
from internal bleeding and one dog died from its injuries a month later. Scott noticed the
general weakening of the dogs. They were very thin—“ravenous and tired”. The biscuit alone
was not enough to meet their needs and he decided that the men should not sit on the
sledges but run with the teams.
On 22nd February they arrived at Hut Point where some mail was expected but not found and
it was not until their return to Safety camp that Scott received the news that Amundsen was
established in the Bay of Whales. This was a threat to Scott’s desire to be first at the South
Pole, especially as Amundsen’s advantages in the Pole journey were considerable.
In March they had some terrible weather, the animals suffering badly. They let the dogs run
loose, except for the quarrelsome ones and they fed them seal meat when they could. Some
dogs even accompanied the men on their walks.
By April they were into Winter Quarters at Hut Point where they experienced extreme cold, 36 degrees in mid June. It was a waiting time prior to the Pole journey and they filled it in with
lectures and walks. Scott recorded his association with the dog ‘Vaida’, renowned for its brutal
temper and aggressive behaviour. When ‘Vaida’s’ coat was in a poor condition, Scott
massaged the dog, who tolerated it with much growling but gradually accepted the attention,
burying his head in Scott’s legs and frisking by him when outdoors.
The dog ‘Serais’ had a leg problem in May and was put in shelter but died during the night.
He was the third dog to die with no apparent cause. By this time Scott’s confidence in the
dog teams had been seriously damaged. ‘Mukaka’, who had been dragged and injured in
January, was found coiled up outside their door in June, thin, weak, but still able to give them
a bark. Scott was told that he had returned from a foray with some of the men, but this was
incorrect and ‘Mukaka’ had actually been ‘missing’ for a month. It seemed he had somehow
caught a seal to survive. They also noticed a few weeks later that when the dogs were loose,
they ‘worried’ the seals. As the winter wore on, the dogs’ coats thickened up.
12
Late in July the dog ‘Julick’ disappeared and was
not found until a month later—thin, but with a full
stomach. He leapt upon Ponting and Gran (Lt.
Tryggve Gran) with great excitement when they
were on a walk and returned to the hut with them.
The constant winter darkness lessened in August
and with three to four hours of light at midday,
men ponies and dogs celebrated with a return to
regular exercise. In the calm days after a blow
Clissold often took the two Esquimaux dogs in
hand, borrowing ‘Noogis’ from Meares and taking
them for a run with the sledge. It overturned on
one occasion and Clissold was left in the snow,
the team disappearing ahead. ‘Noogis’ bit through
his harness and returned and the others were
collected two miles away. They did duty the
following day, bringing back a load of stores from
the depot – an achievement for the Esquimaux
dogs which were considered “useless” by Meares.
‘Lassie’ increased the dog population with six or
seven puppies which were housed warmly in the
stable. As a first time mother she was not very
successful and all the pups died, being left or laid
on.
Captain Lawrence Oates
Spring came with hopes of more similar good
weather to that experienced in August. When
Dimetri’s team set off for Hut Point the dogs were
keen to run and at a full gallop they flung Dimetri
into the snow. Scott leapt onto the sledge as it
raced by driverless and Atkinson joined in. They
managed to reduce the pace of the exuberant
dogs which, after their winter sojourn, were fit and
very energetic. Unfortunately dog ‘Deek’ showed The expedition ponies being tended by
Oates at Mawson.
similar symptoms to the dogs which had died
previously and spent a night in pain, dying in the
morning. Wilson thought it could be a worm which
attacked the brain. Later it was found that a nematode worm was the culprit and was
probably acquired in Vladivostok. The dogs as a whole were performing well, Meares with
one team covering 60 miles in two days and a night. The Pole journey was now uppermost in
Scott’s mind and Amundsen’s chances caused him to reflect on his own plans. He decided
that he would carry on as if there was no opposition—no race.
By November the dogs were still in good form and the pony ‘Chinaman’ was shot, making
food for the dogs. Forage for the horses was running out and before long the ponies provided
meat for all the party. The weather continued bad, falling snow and horrible light. Wind
added to this and was particularly strong at times.
On 5 December they were stopped by a blizzard which raged for four days. The drifts around
the tents were very large and the softness of the snow made walking difficult. All the ponies
13
had been shot by 10 December but the dogs continued on pulling sledges for half of the next
day and were then sent back. There was food enough for them on their return journey.
And so the Pole party moved on in three sledges, two of these supporting the main team.
One support sledge would drop out at a designated point, then the next would do the same,
until Scott’s party alone made its bid for the Pole. On December 21 Atkinson, Wright, CherryGarrard and Keohane left and on January 4 Lt. Evans, Crean and Lashly returned. The final
group of Scott, Wilson, Oates, Bowers and P.O. Evans sledged on and the day before they
reached the Pole area they found ski and paw marks in the snow—Amundsen’s dogs! It was
a devastating find for them all.
They made the pole on 17th January 1912 and found Amundsen’s tent the following day. It
was such a bitter disappointment! They had achieved their goal, despite bad weather, but too
late by a month. That the Pole party lost their lives on the return journey was a tragic end to
the high hopes of all who had struggled and worked hard on an expedition that added much
to the world’s knowledge of Antarctica and the prestige of Britain.
The returning support teams were aided by dog tracks, though their own teams were sinking
deeply into the soft snow. Meares had built up cairns which had been blasted down by the
big blizzard of early December and had consequently had a difficult time with his own team,
killing one American dog for food. The Terra Nova returned but the sea ice prevented her
approaching near enough to unload. When she was able in January 1912 to unload, another
14 dogs were landed, big and fat.
Unaware of the Pole disaster the winter of 1912 saw 13 men of the original group at Cape
Evans for the third year. Nine others had gone home and two new men landed. There were
24 dogs from the previous group and 11 remaining from the 14 landed earlier that year, three
having died.
As the ice formed there were areas which were dangerous, especially for the dogs. Both
‘Vaida’ and ‘Noogis’ had floated off and found difficulty returning to land and eventually
‘Noogis’ disappeared entirely. ‘Vaida’ became quite a house dog but showed his nasty side
when being turned out in the morning. He was also friendly with the mules, rubbing noses
with them in their stalls. ‘Cooke’ was a dog who seemed to have been ostracized by the
others and picked on regularly. Once when walking with Cherry-Garrard his instincts gave
warning and he suddenly turned and raced for the hut as three other dogs tore around the
rocks in full chase. In October 1912 when the dogs were travelling from Corner Camp to Hut
Point, three fell down a crevasse but were dragged out on the gallop by the others.
Spring arrived and the dogs showed that they had become rather tired of the whole cold
business. They were still having their disagreements, there were still snappy disputes and
‘Osman’ still reigned but… They were over it completely!
On 12 November the bodies were found. There were the usual ‘What ifs…’ such as Scott
taking dogs on his Pole expedition. But nothing could change what had happened. The
Terra Nova finally departed the area late in January 1913 with the remaining survivors and
their dogs.
References:
Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World. With Scott in Antarctica 19101913, Dover Publications, Inc. Mineola, New York.
Captain R.F. Scott, Scott’s Last Expedition, the Journals of Captain R.F. Scott, London,
The Folio Society, 2009.
14
Goannas, Whales and Wallabies
Part 5 – Hand Stencils (and Grinding Grooves)
(Bruce Howell)
Although rock engravings and shelter art can be seen
throughout the Royal National Park and surrounding
regions, more common by far are hand stencils. Even if
only by their sheer numbers, they symbolise the original
occupants of the Sutherland Shire in a special way. To
see a hand stencil on the wall or ceiling of a shelter, and
to fit one’s own hand neatly into the same space, allows
a powerful sense of connection with those who walked
here centuries ago. Each stencil, by its very manner of
creation, is a representation of a unique human being,
a signature—written in a universal language.
But where there is one hand stencil, there will usually be
several more near it, and when one sees an array of
stencils, some much smaller than the others, some more
slender, some much larger and including the wrist or
varying lengths of the forearm, (note: stencils that
include the forearm are thought to be those of an older
person, possibly an “elder”) it’s easy to imagine that one
is looking at a “moment in time” in the life of a family of
people— a “photograph” of sorts.
This stencil was found on the
ceiling of a shelter in Menai,
close to the Barden Ridge
playing fields.
Detail of hand stencils located near Heathcote Dam. The uniformity of appearance across the group of stencils
suggests that they were applied at the same time.
However, whether a group of stencils indicates one session of stencilling, or activity
over a long period of time, can currently only be guessed at. Where different colours
of ochre have been used, or where one stencil has faded compared to others
alongside it, or where one set of stencils overlaps another, it can reasonably be
assumed that the stencils have been applied at different, possibly widely different,
times.
15
Hand stencils are made by placing the hand flush against a flat surface, taking a slurry
of ochre mixed with water into the mouth and spurting the liquid over the hand with an
explosive puffing action. To successfully create a stencil is not easy, requiring exactly
the right consistency for the liquid and the right puffing action.
Although comparatively rare,
there are examples in the
Royal National Park of the
stencilling of feet and tools.
One example, at Red Jack’s
Point near Maianbar, is
particularly interesting in that
it shows a child’s foot, no
doubt placed against the
shelter wall as the child is
being held up by his or her
mother or father.
This interpretation may seem
somewhat sentimental, but it
is not uncommon for hand
stencil sites in the Sutherland
Shire and further west, to
In this image, a seven year old girl is being lifted so that her foot will rest
beside a foot stencil (centre in red ochre), at Red Jack’s Point.
Minto, for example, to display
a mixture of hand sizes and
forearm lengths, applied in
the same coloured ochre, and
of
the
same
overall
appearance, suggesting that
the stencils were applied in
the context of recording a
family group.
In other parts of Australia,
stencils of boomerangs, tools
and animal feet, are common.
In Queensland’s Carnarvon
Gorge, multiple stencils of
boomerangs (and hands) are
used to great decorative
effect.
However, in the
Sutherland area there are
relatively few examples of
stencilling of anything other
than hands.
Detail of stencils near Mill Creek near Menai. The length of forearm on
the stencil on the left may indicate the relative age of the person
involved. Note the two much smaller hands immediately to the right.
This group of at least 20 stencils, is located at Sandy Point. There are
various sizes and the stencil at far right includes the entire forearm.
16
Grinding grooves are similarly numerous in
the Royal National Park and surrounding
regions. A grinding groove results when a
stone tool is shaped by rubbing it back and
forth against a flat area of sandstone. Most
grinding grooves are found in groups on a
rock platform, or in a rocky river bed, but
some have been found inside rock shelters.
In virtually all cases the grooves are
adjacent to a permanent or semi-permanent
water source, e.g. a pothole (or well) in a
creek bed, or a furrow in a rock platform
along which water will flow after rain.
The rock used to make the tool was usually
a hard volcanic or metamorphic rock that
had already been shaped to some extent by
water action, although stone tools found
across the length and breadth of Australia
show that there was a multitude both of the
types of tool and the methods of
manufacture1. As the stone was shaped to
form the desired edge, the sandstone
surface was simultaneously worn away, little
by little, with each stroke of the stone, and a
characteristic lens shaped groove was
formed.
Sometimes a groove might be narrower or
longer than normally seen, but most
commonly in the Sutherland area, it is
differences in the depths of the grooves that
distinguish one from the other. The manner
in which the tools were made suggests that
one groove was associated with one tool,
since a new tool could not have been
shaped in an old groove, simply because
the shapes wouldn’t have matched. So it is
possible that a deeper groove indicates that
a given tool was reworked by its owner over
a period of time. Now, this is an interesting
idea, because if it’s true, then a correlation
may be able to be found between the
depths of grinding grooves, and the ages of
the individuals who used them.
These grinding grooves, each about 30cm in length, are
typical in basic shape and size. They are located near
Uloola Falls. Notice they are in a natural furrow in the
rock, where water will flow on occasion.
These grooves near Heathcote, are unusually long and
narrow, indicating a different type of tool was being
made.
This group of ten grooves, along Heathcote Creek, is
immediately adjacent to a water source.
17
Furthermore, a statistical analysis of measurements of hundreds of grinding groove
sites may allow conclusions about not only the arm lengths and perhaps the heights of
the individuals making the tools, but also the age distributions of populations in the
distant past.
So hand stencils and grinding grooves are similar in that they have the potential to
provide measurable data that could reveal significant statistics about the people who
created them—family sizes, cumulative population figures, relative ages within a family
group, and possibly average life-spans. For this reason alone, the hand stencils and
grinding grooves of the Sutherland Shire are important, but if you sit amongst an array
of grinding grooves beside a rock pool, and imagine the people at that same spot,
talking to each other, engaged industriously, or if you hold your hand up to a stencil
and notice how little the hand of the person who created it differs in size and shape
compared to your own hand, then you may be ready to understand the real
significance of what the original inhabitants of our region have left behind.
Like a ghost from the distant past, this hand stencil, barely visible at the centre
of the image, in white ochre, sits alone on the back wall of a small shelter
overlooking “The Basin” in Maianbar. It reminds us that there was a day long
ago, when one individual was inspired to record his or her presence in a very
personal way, and in doing so, has achieved a kind of immortality, and has
unwittingly provided us with a link back to the rich heritage that we all share.
1. See “Australian Aboriginal Stone Implements” by F.D. McCarthy (1976), published by the Australian Museum Trust, for an exhaustive
examination of stone tools, their manufacture and uses throughout Australia.
All photographs taken by the author.
18
Palenque
W H Nethery
Where the Otulum River cuts through the foothills of
the Tumbalá mountains in Mexico’s southernmost
state, one broad plateau commands a panoramic
vista, north across the rolling coastal plains of
Chiapas and Tabasco towards the Gulf of Mexico.
Here, about 1400 years ago, the rulers of an early
Maya townsite embarked upon a program of
construction and expansion that was to last for two
hundred years. In the loose confederation of citystates that was the Maya empire, the city they built
grew to become a powerful administrative and
ceremonial centre.
Pyramid of the Inscriptions
This complex society, combining military might and
astute priestcraft with advanced mathematics and
astronomy, amassed sufficient wealth and influence
to attract the most skilful builders and accomplished
artisans of the Maya world. Here, they created the
foremost artistic achievements and architectural
monuments that their strange and mysterious
civilisation would produce.
Here, today, deserted, stand the ruins of Palenque,
the fullest flowering of Maya genius, abandoned to the
jungle at the zenith of its glory. Fourteen principal
structures of Palenque’s great temple and palace
complex have been cleared, excavated and partially
reconstructed. Others await discovery, overgrown by
the dense rainforest that cloaks the surrounding hills.
Yet, these are only a small portion of the vast city that
once covered an area of some 80 square kilometres,
noble and priestly dwellings reaching up into the
Sierra, while the modest neighbourhoods of
commoners spread across the low-lying savannah.
Palenque’s builders shaped their natural surroundings
to suit their grand designs. With hand-hewn channels
and a 50 metre covered aquaduct, they guided the
course of the Otulum River through the ceremonial
centre to an ornamental bathing pool. Flattening
hilltops and facing terraced slopes with stone, they
transformed the site into a landscape of stepped
pyramids and platforms. These elevate their temples
above the floor of the plateau, creating a series of
open spaces surrounded by towering architectural
monuments—theatres of religious ritual and political
pageantry.
From atop the Pyramid of the
Inscriptions; L–R Temple X, Northern
Acropolis, Palace of the Nobles
Temple of the Foliated Cross
19
The twenty-metre climb to the summit of the Pyramid
of the Inscriptions is breathtaking in every respect.
The angle of ascent is steep. Stand only a metre back
from the edge at the top of the platform and the
stairway cannot be seen. The sensation is that of
floating on a thin carpet of stone, oblivious of the mass
of masonry beneath. This vantage point opens to view
a site in part typical and, in part, unique.
The architects of Palenque designed and built in the
Classic Maya tradition, developed at other sites over
the previous 300 years. The corbelled (tapering)
arches of the temples and the monolithic (square)
vaults of the Palace are characteristic of their
technology, which never discovered the principle of
the keystone. The Palace stairs, the stepped facades
of the pyramids, the terraced stonework—all create
the visual impression of straight, parallel lines climbing
upward and receding into space on all sides that is the
essence of the Classic Maya architectural form.
Other features and refinements are found only at
Palenque. Its buildings have the largest rooms, the
thinnest walls and the most varied interior
arrangements known in the Maya world. The roof
structures, or “combs”, of Palenque’s temples are
impressive feats of engineering in themselves.
Perforated trellis-works of stone, they actually consist
of two walls, inclining inwards from either side,
supported by the central partition of the interior rooms
below. The square tower rising three storeys above
the Palace roof is the only structure of its kind in
Classic Maya architecture.
Pacal’s tombstone (reproduction—
the original is in the Museum of
Anthropology in Mexico City)
Inside the Temple of the Inscriptions, a secret stairway
leads down, through the body of the pyramid, to a
chamber deep below its base. Discovered in 1952, this
hidden crypt held the burial of Pacal, the longestreigning ruler of Palenque. Attended by sacrificial
victims, adorned with elaborate jewellery and a jade
death-mask, Pacal’s remains lay beneath a 4.5 tonne
slab of limestone. This stone, decorated in richly
carved bas-relief depicting his death and eventual
resurrection, is among the crowning achievements of
Maya art.
If the grand buildings of Palenque speak to us of the
power and ambition of Maya civilisation, its superb
stone and stucco carvings offer more intimate
glimpses of its people and their history.
Pacal, stucco sculpture
The usual subjects are royal ceremonies, religious rites and military exploits. In addition to
the events they commemorate, these works of art reveal the faces, postures, fashions and
foibles of Palenque’s high society.
20
In the palace courtyard, two groups—high reliefs more than twice life-size—flank a royal
staircase. On the left, a victorious general brings a kneeling captive chieftain for
judgement. On the right, a priest leads three slaves by ropes around their necks. The
characters’ expressions lift this set-piece of propaganda to the realm of high art. The
general is proud, confident; the vanquished warrior, defiant; the priest, a study in smirking
complacency.
Temple altarpieces record the propitiation of cosmic and mythic deities—the Sun, the
Moon, the Foliated Cross—by priests or priestesses, old or young, sleek or decrepit, each
apparently a portrait from life. In a Palace relief, one talkative figure gestures expansively,
while another stifles a yawn. The finely sculpted head of Pacal himself gazes serenely
from beneath an elaborate coiffure. All exhibit the distinguishing feature of the Maya
aristocracy: a flattened, receding forehead, the result of deliberate cranial deformation in
childhood. Images more outlandish and grotesque lurk among the complex pictographs,
or “glyphs” that make up the Maya’s highly-developed written language. Strange and
fearsome beings, sporting winged helmets and baring twisted fangs, snarl beside oddly
comical, camel-lipped creatures in this enigmatic script, still only partially deciphered.
Best understood are the dates of the Maya calendar and the numerous inscriptions
recording the birth, investiture and death of Maya rulers. We know that Pacal came to the
throne at the age of twelve, on July 29, 615 CE and ruled Palenque for nearly 70 years.
During his reign his city rose to heights of prosperity and achievement unprecedented—
and unsurpassed—in ancient North America.
The century following his burial beneath the Pyramid of the Inscriptions in August, 683,
saw the rapid decline and disintegration of Classic Maya civilisation. Unsustainable
exploitation of natural and agricultural resources may have precipitated economic failure,
peasant revolution, foreign invasion or a series of natural catastrophes may have brought
about the final collapse.
The last date was inscribed in Palenque in 799.
Strange and fearsome beings
(All photographs taken by the by author)
21
Péron and the Birth of the Science of
Invertebrates
Dr Gabriel Bittar
President, International Foundation Jîvasattha and Jîvarakkhî
Part I - Passion, struggle, success, oblivion
1. Introduction—The beaches of "Kanguroo Island"
While strolling along the stirring seashore of Kangaroo Island, this
large island off South Australia, marvelling at its natural wonders,
my mind often drifts back to January 1803. During the whole of this
austral summer month, an enthusiastic and energetic young French
scientist, endowed with the mind of an intrepid explorer, François
Péron, was looking for invertebrates and collecting shells for his
friend Charles-Alexandre Lesueur, another gifted man who would
then carefully draw and paint them, usually from living specimens.
Péron was in quest of any unknown invertebrate, which he collected
and described for the scientific expedition led by commander
Nicolas Baudin.
François Péron a few
days before his
death, December
1810
A most interesting captain this Nicolas Baudin, unusually attracted to natural sciences—
alas, he would not live to see the fruits of his rather successful expedition: on the 16th of
September 1803, he would die of tuberculosis, on Mauritius Island, while on his way back
to France; dying under the tender attention of Alexandrine Kerivel, born Miss Alexandrine
Genève.
Ah, Genève... At this point my mind drifts by association to Geneva the international city,
where, in my youth, while wandering about its magnificent Muséum d'Histoire naturelle, I
had come across the last remains of a now extinguished dwarf species of emu bird from a
far-away island, Kangaroo Island. A ratite bird brought back to Napoleonic France by an
incredible scientific expedition, that no one in France seemed aware of. The Kangaroo
Island emu, Dromaius baudinianus, named after captain Baudin.
“Nouvelle-Hollande: Ile Decrès” i.e. Australia: Kangaroo Island. Illustration of the Kangaroo
Island dwarf emu, Dromaius baudinianus, named after captain Baudin, who collected them
on January 1803 for the garden of Joséphine, the wife of Bonaparte, at Château
Malmaison. From the Atlas of the Voyage de découvertes aux Terres Australes. (Paris:
Imprimerie impériale, 1807).
A museum where I had also discovered, to my astonishment, that the great Lamarck's
most extraordinary collection of shells, the personal collection of a scientist who had been
among the very first pioneers of the evolutionary paradigm... had ended donated to the city
of Geneva, in 1869. The Muséum d'histoire naturelle of Paris, where Lamarck worked for
decades... had refused the gift!
Lamarck—a magical name for any phylogenetist with a passion for evolution. And Baudin,
and Péron, and Lesueur, and Leschenault the botanist... stirring names, fascinating
destinies. While wandering along these Kangaroo Island shores, wondering about the
billions of years of evolution of life on this magnificent planet, I cannot but think of these
brave people, so far from home, poignant particles of dust in the wind, these brave,
courageous people who, two centuries ago, were strolling eagerly or peacefully on the
22
very same shores, watching the very same sea, rich in so
many life forms—a sea so powerful, so beautiful, so
indifferent.
Captain Baudin, having from the 2nd to the 4th of January
1803, and for the first time for Europeans, circumnavigated
Kangaroo Island with the two vessels under his command
(Le Géographe and Le Casuarina), landed with his
scientists on the 6th. They would explore with high interest
the island of the kanguroos (as spelt then) with high
interest, until their departure for the mainland on the 1st of
February. They provided a thorough description of the
flora and fauna of an island that was devoid of any human
beings. Eden on Earth.
Péron, having de facto become chief zoologist of the
expedition at this point of the long voyage, as usually
performed his job thoroughly. Inter alia, he observed and
documented the Australian sea lions, for which he created
the genus Otaria (the "small-eared ones"). But Péron did
not only observe large-sized animals. In fact, most of his
time was spent on animals that were generally considered
in those days as insignificant lowlies: the invertebrates.
Péron in 1804
These include obvious animals like spiders, scorpions,
crustaceans and insects, the cephalopods (squids,
cuttlefishes and octopuses), diverse forms of worms,
myriads of shelled animals, urchins, sea cucumbers,
ophiuroids, sea stars, but also even stranger animals which
were in those days hardly recognised as such: sea lilies,
bryozoans, hydroids and medusas, sea fans, anemones
and corals, and those oddest, the sponges, which are
hardly animal-like.
2. François Péron, a man of modest origins with a passion for
knowledge
Through his writings, Péron often demonstrates that he
was deeply touched by the unending beauties provided by
nature, despite its often harsh aspects. But if nature's
beauty always inspired him, he was first moved by
knowledge; it was to its furtherance that he had decided,
early on, to dedicate his life. Deep inside, the young Péron
believed that understanding would spring out of
knowledge, and social goodness out of understanding, and
that his own destiny was to participate in this most sacred
endeavour: increasing knowledge of the natural world to
progress humankind.
He came from a poor family, born in the small town of
Cérilly, at the heart of France. He grew up fatherless. After
volunteering in the revolutionary army, he fought bravely
on foreign soils, at the same time showing an
unquenchable thirst for reading anything educative. Taken
Illustrations of invertebrates made by
Charles-Alexandre Lesueur during
Nicolas Baudin's mission of
exploration to Terra Australia (18001804)
23
prisoner, having lost the sight of one eye, Péron finally came back to his home town,
knowing a bit more of life but diminished physically. There, he was noticed by the local
notary who, in July 1797, generously provided the funds necessary for this promising
young chap "to go up to Paris" and study medicine. After a few years Péron was trained
as a physician, and Georges Cuvier was one of his professors. Obviously, he was a good
student and the great anatomist noticed him.
At this point, destiny pierced the heart of the young man. The benefactor notary, father of
the Sophie he loved, would not allow him to marry her; he considered that a doctor in
medicine was not good enough. This crushing of Péron's dreams as a romantic and
impetuous amoureux determined him to do whatever was necessary to become someone,
socially speaking. Medicine was not good enough for this higher ambition: so he had to
become exceptional. But politics, war and business were not this man's cup of tea.
Instead, he had a passion for science.
3. 1800: Bonaparte orders a new scientific expedition to Terra Australis
Good luck: Captain Nicolas Baudin and minister Charles-Pierre Claret de Fleurieu were
organising the most ambitious scientific expedition ever to Terra australis. An endeavour
that would dwarf the two previous scientific expeditions to the terra incognita of the
antipodes that Fleurieu had already organised, with La Pérouse in 1785, then Bruny
d'Entrecasteaux in 1791. Two expeditions which had been tragic histories of bad luck,
heroism and suffering. One expedition had been organised by tenacious Fleurieu under
the engrossed care of King Louis XVI, the second one under a revolutionary regime, and
now this third expedition, which was to depart on the very last year of the Enlightenment
century, was being organised under a republic sliding into despotic rule!
Nicolas Baudin, born in 1754, was the perfect choice for commanding this expedition: he
had already proved himself not only as a seasoned captain, but also as an experienced
naturalist, who could miraculously bring back alive all sorts of plants and animals from
expeditions to the most distant places. He was also a man of immense culture, travelling
with a vast and diverse personal library, someone who could both understand the
importance of science on the expedition and the necessity of bringing back to France the
people under his responsibility and care. Without tragedy this time, hopefully...
Péron applied as an anthropologist, but finally, with the support inter alia of Cuvier and
Lamarck, embarked as anatomist and student in zoology. His two mentors had particularly
recommended to him to keep his eye open for soft-bodied animals ("mollusques") that he
would come across during the expedition. Of course, the taxonomy of these animals was
at that time far from being established, and what these two zoologists had in mind were
more or less the invertebrates.
4. Lamarck and the invertebrates
Lamarck, who, since his nomination in 1793 as head of the chair of "Animaux sans
vertèbres" at the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle of Paris, had progressively become a
famous expert in invertebrates, had been spending a lot of time and putting a lot of thought
into the matter of their systematics and taxonomy, of their place in life and in the great
scheme of things. Two papers by him, dating from 1799, on the year preceding Baudin's
expedition, testify to his interest in the matter, and his conviction that the systematics of
this branch of life wasn't yet clear enough.
In these days, invertebrates were not clearly recognised as animals, in the usual sense of
the noun. Neither did scientists mistake them any more for plants. Even corals, since the
famous pioneering study by Jean-André Personnel, in 1726, were, like the other
cnidarians, recognised by the educated as belonging to the animal kingdom, despite their
24
integration of photosynthetic micro-algae. Nevertheless, for the curious investigator,
invertebrates remained an enigma. For many philosophers and intellectuals, they were
deeply troubling. What should honest, God-fearing taxonomists, do with "flower animals"
(anthozoans), such as those mysterious corals and those sea "anemones"? With "moss
animals" (bryozoans), with "lily-like" creatures from the sea (crinoids), with sea
"cucumbers" (holothurids), or with "leathery baggy" things (tunicate ascidians)? These
little critters were blurring all boundaries, natural boundaries, mental boundaries, and
consequently: God's boundaries!
The problem was even worse regarding "lamp shells", clams, mussels and other oysters: a
further enigma within an enigma. Though clearly associated, as living beings, with
seashores, they could also be found, as fossils, at high altitudes in many places far away
from any existing sea! This was most troubling, enough to drive an informed man trying to
figure out the meaning of all this into illness and madness, à la Maître Mussard. Lamarck,
having studied with an all-consuming passion the shells he had amassed in a vast
collection, would, for his part, become blind and estranged from the academic world in his
last ten years.
Other than Lamarck, Georges Cuvier also was interested in the invertebrates, but for
different reasons. For the former, they were valued pointers to a higher, fundamental
truth; for the latter, their taxonomic place simply needed to be precisely defined. It was G.
Cuvier who, in 1800, created a new adjective by prefixing an existing one: "in-vertébré".
He had started studying them as early as 1792, but most of his memoirs on this branch of
life were published between 1802 and 1815, and were subsequently collected as
Mémoires pour servir de l'histoire et à l'anatomie des mollusques (1817). Even if Cuvier's
interest was genuine, it also appears that this valuable work was done in a spirit of
confrontation with Lamarck.
Lamarck who, in 1809, made an important conceptual leap: by creating a substantive out
of the adjective created by Cuvier, he brought the three branches of "animaux sans
vertèbres" (the Mollusca, Articulata and Radiata) together in a new phylum, the
"invertébrés" (Invertebrata), of which the vertebrates radiated in a particularly derived
branch.
As a scientist with a taste for the bigger picture, Lamarck had been interested in trying to
develop a natural method of classification (a taxonomy) even from the time of his earliest
work in botany. Well before 1800, he had thought of series of taxonomic classes, which
future research would inter-connect. In the theory of evolution that he developed, the
natural taxonomic method was close to the path nature itself had followed in producing the
different groups of organisms.
For Lamarck, the best way to understand life as a whole was by first studying its simplest
forms. There, basic organisation and life functions could be observed more easily, as they
were not masked with more complex and more specialised faculties and organs. He was
philosophically and scientifically of the opinion that all forms of life formed an integrated
development, deriving from one another and transforming into one another, with fossil
forms proving that this process had always been ongoing, and was a progressive one.
This urge to understand philosophically what life is, and to see life science as an
integrated whole (the science of biology, a word which Lamarck coined in 1802, at the
same time as German scientist Treviranus), and his conviction that the investigation of
invertebrates would contribute to this understanding, explain old Lamarck's extraordinary
later-life dedication to the study of invertebrates, and particularly fossil shells.
25
5. Transformism vs fixism - the great polemos
It should be noticed that Lamarck's philosophical perception of life, as a progressively
transforming whole, extended to geology, with landscapes changing slowly and being
formed progressively, through mineral but also biological processes! A most modern and
unusual concept in those days.
This transformist approach was the exact opposite to that of Georges Cuvier, who was a
proponent of the fixist, Platonic-Aristotelian, view of life: a series of non-connected, parallel
lineages, with existing life forms being either the well preserved, or the degenerate form, of
early and perfect prototypes, with some appropriate catastrophes in the past pruning the
wild and untidy diversity of the original lineages and allowing the "best" ones to become
dominant. This made him very popular with Christian circles, still endowed with money
and power despite the Revolution, who were conscious that their traditional narrative
needed some tinkering with, the main ideas being preserved.
This major polemos, this great fight between fixism and transformism, would illuminate the
stormy skies of science and philosophy during the whole first half of the 19th century. And
following Darwin's enormous effort of integration and interpretation, fixism would only be
promoted by ignorant people, or by the thickest ideologues.
On the whole, it was Lamarck vs Georges Cuvier. But to make things more interesting,
one should not forget the presence of another great pioneer of transformism at the
Muséum: the second person, chronologically, to be nominated as head of a zoological
department, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. He had been nominated in 1794 as chair of
the department for mammals and birds. During Bonaparte's expedition to Egypt in 1798,
he made important contributions to the study of fishes and reptiles. He specialised in
experimental teratology & shared with Lamarck the notion of structural unity across the the
animal kingdom, implying a common origin for all animals. Thus, like Lamarck, he found
himself ideologically opposing Cuvier. There was some conceptual difference between the
two transformists, though. Unlike Lamarck, rather than progressive transformations
occurring because of animals changing their habits and attitudes, he surmised that these
transformations occurred mainly because of environmental pressures on organisms in the
course of their development, particularly in the course of their epigenesis.
Though philosophically Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire was closer to Lamarck, he and Georges
Cuvier were rather good friends (at least in the earlier years). This academic trio being
set, one can easily foresee in it the potential for a major progress in scientific ideas, albeit
chaotic and illogical in its processes. We shall come back later to this intricate
epistemological problem and to the unknown role of Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire in Péron's life—
or rather lack of a role!
6. Péron, the molluscs and transformism
The devilish irony of history can be found in its details. Péron had collected, in Tasmania,
Kangaroo Island and King Island, shells from a very significant mollusc species: Trigonia
margaritacea (Lamarck 1804). This bivalve would prove to be a most significant
discovery, the taxonomic group to which it belonged being then known only from fossils.
This was evidence that some groups of species could disappear from somewhere on the
planet, possibly simply transforming themselves into other species, while surviving and
continuing their existence unchanged elsewhere!
Species and groups of species were thus not necessarily meant to completely disappear in
global catastrophic events, in a providential process marked by some immanency, as G.
Cuvier would have it. On the contrary, here was proof, with the discovery of a so-called
26
"living fossil", that the whole story of life on the planet was more of a continuous and
accidental process, with some elements of contingency in it. This major discovery would
help Lamarck to formulate more confidently the first elements of his truly revolutionary
interpretation of life: what would be called transformism, a major paradigm shift that would,
six decades later, be decisively improved on by Charles Darwin and become known as
evolution through natural selection.
To get an idea of the huge impact of this discovery: 30 years after its description by
Lamarck, scientists Quoy and Gaimard would write, in their report on the voyage of
discovery of L'Astrolabe, under the command of J. Dumont d'Urville during the years 18261829, that they did not fail to look for an alive specimen of this all-important Trigonia, of
which only the shell was known; that they were so enthralled in finding one living individual
of this species that, when L'Astrolabe was at risk of foundering on the reefs of Tongatabu,
it was this all-important specimen that they wanted to save at any cost and which they kept
with them (thankfully their ship did not finally sink and their collection was not lost).
Why then the irony? Well, because of the very success of the expedition. Péron felt
cheated by Lamarck having described this species without associating him properly in the
process. This shell was part of the rich load that Le Naturaliste, the second ship under the
command of Baudin on its departure from Le Havre in 1800, had brought back to the same
harbour on the 6th of June 1803. Absolutely everyone was mesmerised by the enormous
diversity and quantity of well-preserved specimens that had managed to be transported,
and there was huge excitement. Quite naturally everyone was impatient to immediately
start studying this rich bounty, and by the return of Le Géographe, on the 25th of March
1804, Lamarck already had had three notes published describing six new invertebrate
species brought back on Le Naturaliste, G. Cuvier had had two "mémoires" published, and
Lacépède one. Having come back to France with illustrators Lesueur and Petit aboard the
master ship Le Géographe, Péron did not react specially well at not having been more
seriously associated with these scientific results which were using his samples.
7. A very successful expedition for zoology
On his return, Péron found a France where things hadn't changed much: France was still
at war with most of Europe. Some things had altered: citizen Bonaparte, having produced
his "Code civil", a tour de force in law making which would have more lasting effect on
continental Europe than any of his military ventures, was morphing into Napoleon, the
Emperor.
It is in this context of war and tyranny that Péron had to struggle to get the glory he so
deserved after all his efforts and sufferings. First things first: Péron needed money to
survive, and he wanted to secure his pre-eminent position into anything in relation to what
he had come to see as his own expedition, particularly anything zoological. So, with
pugnacity, Péron managed to obtain from the authorities some money (though just enough
to survive), and an official monopoly over the exploitation of zoological data from the
expedition… but, unfortunately, no position of responsibility in any institute. His partial
victory would thus prove to be a Pyrrhic one; from now on, Péron would not get much
practical support from the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle. And Lamarck would not
collaborate with Péron under these conditions, preferring instead, until 1806, to
concentrate on reporting his own discoveries of invertebrate fossils in the region of Paris:
"Mémoires sur les fossiles des environs de Paris, comprenant la détermination des
espèces qui appartiennent aux animaux marins sans vertèbres" (1802-1806).
Péron had cleverly managed to secure for himself supervision over the production of
zoological results. Alas, it would soon appear that Péron could not do much with so limited
financial and human resources. All the more so that Petit would die shortly following his
27
return to France, with the result that Péron's team would only consist of brave and loyal
Lesueur. Moreover, François himself was sick with tuberculosis, which was tearing him
down all too quickly considering his ambitious projects—he would be the next hapless
casualty of an expedition to the Southern lands.
That the third major scientific expedition of the French towards Terra Australis, though
afflicted once more with a high human cost (still better than the two preceding ones!) was
a very successful expedition, from a zoological point of view, and this mainly through the
efforts of Baudin, Péron and Lesueur, has been re-established through the investigations
of Belgian zoologist Michel Jangoux, and in France of curator Jacqueline Bonnemains, as
well as of scientists Jacqueline Goy, Christian Jouanin and Bernard Métivier. They have
shed a lot of light on the zoological aspects of Péron's and Lesueur's contributions to
science, during and after Baudin's expedition. Their verdict: this had been great work.
To get an idea of the accomplishment in zoology from the Baudin expedition, here are
some comments and numbers on just two parts of the zoological treasure trove that was
brought back, and the shameful waste that would be made of it by those who should have
known better. In 1810, Péron had had his extraordinarily competent description and
classification of medusas published, unfortunately without Lesueur's magnificently precise
illustrations—there was no money in an exhausted France which had been at war for two
decades and where, since early 1810, printers had to give priority to... propaganda!
Impact on the world of science of this pioneering work: practically nil, which was to be
expected without the illustrations ever being published. G. Cuvier and to a lesser extent
Lamarck wouldn't have it.
Yet the big boss of French zoology, Georges Cuvier himself, had recognised, in a report to
the government, on the 9th of June 1806, that the expedition had brought back more than
100,000 specimens of animals, many alive, representing nearly 70,000 different zoological
species, of which 2,500 were new to science! This was more than the cumulated results
of all preceding expeditions made during the last hundred years, including Cook's!
G.Cuvier was then full of praise for Péron's thoroughness and scientific methodology.
Let's look in detail at just one zoological class of invertebrates, that of the asterids or sea
stars. In 1800, at the time of departure, only a dozen asterid species were known. Half a
hundred new species were brought back by Péron! Regrettably, he did not find the time or
the resources to properly describe them and have the results published, and neither could
Lesueur following his death in 1810. Only 14 of these new species would be (laconically!)
described by Lamarck, the remainder being rediscovered and properly described during
the following two centuries, mainly by German scientists Müller and Troschel, in 1842-3.
What a shame. Schade!
8. From amazing success to oblivion - what happened?
What happened? Is this a rather common instance of things going wrong, because if they
can go wrong they will? Or is there some sort of evil spirit in action here? Actually, was
there a truly evil-doing person in this story? And firstly, was it Péron himself, with his sad
fate simply being divine retribution for some uncommendable deeds?
Firstly, he's been accused, particularly in Anglo-Saxon circles, of the sin of openly
despising his captain. But this is pretty much an inappropriate appreciation of the sociopsychology of the French in general: for people with an English mind-frame, not standing
up for the captain is contemptible; to despise him openly is beyond contempt. This is not
true for French people, and was even less for a child of the Revolution!
28
Otherwise, and more seriously, Péron has been caught red-handed by historians, rewriting
facts to make the original chief zoologist René Maugé's contributions look like his own, or
flatly pretending them to be so, or that of his friend and ally Lesueur.
However that wasn't done out of spite or nastiness, or because Maugé, whom Péron
greatly respected, was a friend of Nicolas Baudin—it was simply a matter of money and
survival in a France which was at war and where resources for science were becoming
rare. Péron, with the support of the hierarchy of the Muséum, had obtained the privilege of
receiving a backdated salary compensation as chief zoologist of the expedition, and
Lesueur as chief illustrator, starting on the expedition's departure from Mauritius, in April
1801... while Maugé was still alive! So Maugé's contributions had to be non-existent!
Péron obviously thought his situation was not that stable, relations with the Muséum were
not that good and, despite the nice official reports made on his behalf, any privilege could
be reversed. Glory was not easy to obtain and he would not sabotage this hard-won vital
privilege through his own publications! Tant pis pour la vérité historique! Too bad for
historical truth.
Contrary to his prickly relation with Baudin, there was nothing personal here, just some
tampering with truth, common enough among the great majority of human beings. That
does not make him a particularly criminal character, bringing imminent retribution upon
himself. If it's not Péron himself who's really responsible for his own demise in destiny—
one cannot accuse him of sloth, this little guy never stopped fighting, to his last breath!—
then who is it? Is there a smoking gun, somewhere?
Could it be the vengeful ghost of Baudin? Rather unlikely, considering the magnanimous
character of the commander. Of course, there was a deep temperamental chasm between
the felid-like Baudin and the canid-like Péron. In the cramped conditions of a ship they
were incessantly getting up their respective noses and could stand each other less and
less.
However, in the main, there was no blood feud between these two gentlemen, very
different in temper but gentlemen nevertheless. Baudin, with the exception of his older
friends and his original staff from his previous expeditions, obviously had difficulties
dealing with both the rotten sailors he had taken on in Mauritius and all these children of
the Revolution. Péron was the most brazen and the most overbearing of the lot, but he
was not an exception in Baudin's inter-personal difficulties during what was to become his
last expedition. It wasn't just a matter of the rotten sailors, or of the young scientists, who
seemed to think of the commander as some sort of majordome (butler) to their own high
duties. His undrilled officers themselves, often disrespectful, even impertinent, weren't any
more helpful. Poor Baudin, late son of an age of politeness and refined manners, was
surrounded with insolent, impudent "mal-élevés", as far as his eyes could see. Baudin
tried his dry sense of humour to cheer up things, to no avail.
So... non, it cannot be Baudin, who "ceased to exist" in Mauritius on the 16th of September
1803. It cannot be him, the captain who had died of tuberculosis, who could, in any fateful
way, be considered responsible for Péron's own unhappy fate. Péron would die in his turn
of tuberculosis, on the 14th of December 1810, in his home town of Cérilly but without
having achieved a tenth of what he wanted to do. The disease that he got during his
voyage was a bad omen, but on the whole Péron's bad luck was mainly shaped after his
return to France, not during the expedition which, on the contrary, was really an
extraordinary opportunity for getting scientific fame.
Part 2 will appear in the February edition.
29
Exploring the
Web
By John Low
I want to begin this month’s ETW with a web site that began earlier this year and is
sure to become popular with historians of all varieties. Obituaries Australia
http://oa.anu.edu.au/ is based at the National Centre of Biography at the ANU in
Canberra (home of the Australian Dictionary of Biography) and has set its goals
high—to collect every obituary of an Australian ever published.
Obituaries can be searched by name, occupation and author and, at a more
advanced level, by life dates, place of birth and death, religion etc. Where
applicable, obituaries are linked to entries in the ADB. Though only a limited
number have been loaded so far, the site aims to become a major repository of
Australian stories from the earliest years to the present. To achieve this it seeks
the public’s help in its search for obituaries published in both national and local
newspapers, magazines and bulletins.
Unlike the above, Picture Australia http://www.pictureaustralia.org/ (image below) is
a web site that has been around for some time and that everyone interested in
Australian history and culture should be familiar with. Under the wing of the
National Library of Australia, the site allows access to an enormous variety of
pictorial collections around the country and even overseas. The images, covering
the great diversity of Australian life, embrace formats such as photographs,
30
artworks (paintings, drawings, posters etc.) and museum-type objects (sculpture,
costumes etc.)
If you are not interested in something specific and just want to browse the site for
enjoyment, you can choose one of many ‘picture trails’ which assemble highlights
from member collections into themed slide shows—‘Bushrangers’, ‘Gold Rush’,
‘Women at War’ etc. Picture Australia is keen to add more photographs and seeks
contributions not only from organizations but also from private individuals. Check
out the ‘Flickr Project’ which is attempting to capture both historical and
contemporary reflections on our country and its people.
The Proceedings of the Old Bailey, 1674-1913 is a site that was recommended to
me by my Doryanthes colleague Dr Edward Duyker and can be found at
http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/index.jsp . It provides access to “the largest body of
texts detailing the lives of non-elite people ever published, containing 197,745
criminal trials held at London's central criminal court”. If you are interested in the
underbelly of old London then this is a site for you, for the humanity of the city is
revealed in all its various shades and any crime you like to name is represented.
Comprehensive search guides—in the form of video tutorials—to help you get
maximum value from the site are provided and access is also offered to another
related data base titled London Lives, 1690–1800. This “sister site”, designed to
compliment and extend the Old Bailey Proceedings, indexes over 3 million names
from a multitude of other records associated with crime, poverty and social policy in
London. Well worth and exploratory visit!
Recently, while I was looking for information about an obscure piece of late 19th
century music titled ‘The Leura Falls Mazurka’, I stumbled across a wonderful
music project initiated by the National Library of Australia in collaboration with the
National
Film
&
Sound
Archive.
Music
Australia
http://www.musicaustralia.org/apps/MA has assembled a large information resource
on historical and contemporary Australian music of all formats, styles and genres.
You can locate music scores, sound recordings, information about composers and
much other music-related material held in libraries and archives around the country
and a selection is available to read and listen to on-line. It is building into a very
valuable site for both music historians and interested music lovers and is well worth
exploring. As for my search, while a recording of ‘The Leura Falls Mazurka’ was
not available, I was able to view and print a copy of the score. Now to find a
friendly piano player!
Until next time, enjoy your time on the web and please let me know if you come
across any great web sites that others should know about.
John Low (johnlow@iprimus.com.au)
31
Scattered Seeds
Scattered Seeds: Fragments from a Six-Month Sojourn, France, 2007
(Conclusion)
Edward Duyker
Australian Catholic University/University of Sydney
Early on the morning of Friday 6 July, we took the TGV high speed train to Nantes, in
Brittany, in order to visit my cousin Didier Lionnet and his charming wife Anne-Lise. Didier
and I share a great-great-grandfather, but not a great-great-grandmother. That might
seem a distant connection to many Australians, but Didier is a Lionnet on both his
mother’s and his father’s side. His parents were first cousins. My mother’s mother was a
Lionnet and the extended Mauritian family is very close. Didier was born in Port Said, the
year before the Suez Canal was nationalized by the Egyptians, but grew up in Marseille.
His father, Jacques Lionnet, was a master mariner and scholar who translated Lao-Tze’s
Tao te Jing into French. Didier is a physiotherapist, as is Anne-Lise, but they are not the
kind of practitioners who treat more than one patient at a time. Leaving a hot wheat-bag
on one, while massaging another and putting electrodes on yet another to maximize
income, does not accord with their philosophy of treating the suffering and injured on a
one-to-one basis. Didier knows something of suffering himself; he has battled severe
eczema since childhood. Anne-Lise, who is quite some years younger, sees the profound
inner beauty of this kind and gentle healing philosopher. If there is such a thing as
reincarnation, then I think the soul of Buster Keaton inhabits Didier’s body. With comic
brilliance, he will stop in the street and pluck an old chamber pot from a Council clean-up
and crown his mop of hair with a sad and dejected face. At other times he will mime an
animal with surprising inspiration and subvert the moment with contagious laughter. He
plays Celtic music on the mandolin and dresses like a wandering minstrel in bright
handspun weaves. Like the jester of a medieval court, he will tell you what he thinks with
remarkable frankness, but he will also listen to your darkest troubles and respond with
profound compassion.
Thanks to Didier and Anne-Lise, Sue had a very different birthday weekend from any she
has ever had or could ever have imagined. On the day we arrived we went for a walk
along the Loire to Trentemoult, a little village on the southern bank of the river where the
houses are brightly coloured and many are emblazoned with murals and satirical ceramic
tiles. In the afternoon we visited the newly restored Château des ducs de Bretagne. It
was built by Duke Francis I, father of Anne of Brittany. Anne became duchess of Brittany
at the age of 11. While she sought to maintain her freedom, she faced the overwhelming
ambition of her expansionist feudal neighbour and was successively married to two kings
of France intent on absorbing her realm. She has come to symbolize the fate of Celtic
Brittany, although she did not speak Breton and spent most of her life away from her
people. Twice Queen of France between 1491 and 1514, she died at the age of 37 having
borne nine children of whom only two daughters survived. She may be a symbol of peace
and union to some, but the fact remains that her reign saw the end of Breton
independence. To this day, however, there are no toll roads in Brittany thanks to her
marriage contract. The château is a very fine local museum which has only just reopened. Particularly memorable was a ‘video’ (I use the term lightly) presentation on a
semi-circular screen by the artist Pierrick Sorin who was born in Nantes. It was as if
32
Rowan Atkinson had been let loose with instructions
to represent the history of the city from Roman
times. The result is a very amusing tableau of
floating vignettes, in which Sorin appears over and
over again in different costumes, on different boats
passing each other on the river and then returning –
all set to a quirky musical score. We were entranced
and left the museum exhilarated.
The following morning our magical mystery tour
continued, thanks to the generosity of our hosts
Didier and Anne-Lise. We took the riverboat Hervé
de Portzmoguer down the Loire Estuary to SaintNazaire on the Atlantic coast. This was part of the
inaugural biennial ‘Estuaire’ festival bringing together
the communities of 850,000 people along the mouth
of the river. The vessel was covered in a festival
livery of translucent mirror tiles which reflected the
river–port and starboard. On board, films and
interviews
were
presented
with
wireless
commentary. As we sailed west, we saw numerous
art installations, such as Alain Séchas’ ‘Captaine Cat’
(the masts of a steamer sunk during WWII, converted
into
a
cat-head fountain),
Erwin Wurm’s
‘Misconceivable’ (a yacht arched with dolphin-like
improbability over the gates of a lock), Jean-Luc
Courcoult’s ‘La Maison dans la Loire’ (it was high tide
so we only saw its roof) and Denis Oudendijk’s
‘Capsule hôtel’ (made from recycled lifeboat
capsules) to name just a few. In Saint-Nazaire, we
encountered Dutch artist Florentijn Hofman’s ‘Canard
de bain’, an enormous yellow rubber duck (19.49 x
23.44 x 16.64 metres) floating in front of one of the
vast U-Boat pens built by the Germans during WWII.
Swords can be beaten into ploughshares, and rubber
ducks can float where submarines once ventured
forth to cast terror from beneath the waves! In one of
the U-Boat pens, another Dutch artist, Edwin van der
Heide, had created ‘LSP’ a veritable theatre of light
and sound. As a fine mist of water rained down on
us, laser light beams inscribed the droplets, and our
bodies, with a dazzling caligraphy; and electronic
music echoed against the concrete and pulsed
through our heads, chests and limbs. On the roof of
the former U-Boat base, we saw Swiss artist Felice
Varini’s ‘Suites de triangles’, in which red triangles
painted on the silos of the port and on the roofs of
neighbouring buildings, all united and stretched along
a line of perspective. Grand Admiral Dönitz could
never have imagined it in his wildest dreams. Sue
and I have had picnic lunches in many different
places during our many travels, but never on top of a
Saint-Nazaire: Dutch artist Florentijn
Hofman’s ‘Canard de bain’, an
enormous yellow rubber duck
Saint-Nazaire: In one of the former German
U-Boat pens of WWII, Dutch artist,
Edwin van der Heide, created ‘LSP’
a veritable theatre of light and sound
The 45-ton, 12-metre high mechanical
elephant, capable of taking 35 passengers,
created by François Delarozière
and Pierre Orefice.
33
former U-Boat base where the surrounding landscape provided such a vast canvas for art
on such an imaginative scale. In the town of Saint-Nazaire there were other surprises,
such as Léo Paul’s ‘Le manège sans fil’: a diverse array of fantastic zoomorphic tricycles
and pedal carts created from found-objects to captivate young children. (Later, in Nantes,
we would see a bizarre carousel for children constructed along the same wonderful lines.
In Australia, public liability insurers would probably never allow it, but the local children
voted and pedaled with their feet.)
On Sunday, there was even more dazzling creativity and imagination to witness in what
were once the great shipyards of Nantes, the city where Jules Verne was born. We went
for a ride on a 45-ton, 12-metre high mechanical elephant! It is powered by a 450-horsepower engine and takes 35 passengers. Despite having a driver, and numerous minders,
this incredible beast is highly computerized (including a program for urination)! Within its
cavernous belly you can see the complicated hydraulics of its head and its enormous legs
with their vast piston-like bones of steel. The trunk is articulated and often drenches
bystanders with water. The ears are of leather. Most of the ‘skin’ is a creamy sculptured
tulip wood and it is crowned with a balustrade, shaded palanquin and stairs. The metal
work is embellished with laser-cut Arabic caligraphy and there are Thai and Indian
architectural details on its flanks. The elephant takes about half an hour to walk a circuit of
the surrounding buildings. This fantastic machine took a large team of artists, engineers,
craftsmen and volunteers 30 months to build and was christened a week before our
arrival. It is the brainchild of François Delarozière and Pierre Orefice previously
associated (like Jean-Luc Courcoult mentioned above) with ‘Royal de Luxe’ the studio
which created the Swiftian ‘Géant’ and gave street theatre in Le Havre and Nantes a
monumental mythic dimension. It is not hard to see how they have captivated the entire
population. Forget the kitsch of EuroDisney, go to Machines de l’île in Nantes!
On Sunday we drove with Didier and Anne-Lise to La Châtaigneraie in the neighbouring
Vendée. This is where my grandmother’s family originated and we have maintained our
friendship with the former mayor of the town, Bernard Gendrillon and his wife Anne-Marie,
since 1984. They have twice visited us in Australia and we always try to visit them when
we come to France. The last member of the family in France (before it was re-established
by the branch from Mauritius) was the painter Félix Lionnet, a student of Corot. His house,
now known as the ‘Villa Lionnet’ has been lovingly preserved by M. Xavier Bassompierre
Sewrin and his wife. They are also seeking to have it listed as an historic monument. M.
Bassompierre Sewrin has researched many of Félix Lionnet’s paintings and has
discovered others under his very nose as he scrapes back the paint in the house.
Recently, after an exhibition of Félix Lionnet’s work, he located a 600-page manuscript of
Lionnet’s travels in Greece, Turkey, Lebanon and Egypt. This journal is rich in details of
his friends the artists Gustave Moreau, Leon Bonnat, Elie Delaunay and Edgar Degas. He
was also a friend of the composer Georges Bizet. But perhaps the biggest surprise for me
during this most recent visit to La Châtaigneraie, was Bernard Gendrillon’s discovery that
the painter’s grandfather (my direct ancestor) was present as a naval surgeon in Ferrol in
Spain, as part of Villeneauve’s squadron, a few months before the Battle of Trafalgar. Sue
is a descendant of a Trafalgar veteran, William Bradshaw. It now seems that both our
direct forebears were engaged in that terrible contest. As a surgeon, Pierre-Henry
Lionnet, was unlikely to have been firing any guns, but the thought that Sue’s ancestor
could have killed mine and negated my existence is surreal. It seems likely that PierreHenry was aboard one of the French ships which returned to Ferrol after the battle in
1805. Ironically, a few years later he was captured by the British and was one of the
French officers ultimately exchanged for Matthew Flinders imprisoned on Mauritius.
34
On my last day in Nantes I returned to my biographical research - consulting three
fascinating theses written by students of the local medical faculty on the pharmacology
and medicine of Dumont d’Urville’s expeditions. When Sue and I boarded the TGV to
return to Paris it was with a sense of great satisfaction, but a no small measure of sadness
at parting from Didier and Anne-Lise until our paths cross again. It was hard to believe we
had only been away from Paris for three nights!
On 12 July we were invited to have lunch with Jean-Paul Delamotte and his wife Monique.
They live in a magnificent 150-year old townhouse in Boulogne-Bilancourt close to SaintCloud on the Seine. The house has three storeys (plus garden-level under-storey) and is
full of books, painting, tapestries and carpets. At the end of the garden is a two-storey
cottage, perhaps once the servants’ quarters, which is now a studio for visiting Australian
writers and artists. The cottage, or ‘La Petite Maison’, has also given its name to JeanPaul Delamotte’s imprint which publishes his own work, but also that of the FrenchAustralian novelist Paul Wenz, (friend of André Gide and Jack London) Henri de
Rochefort, Katherine Susanah Pritchard, Geoffrey Dutton and others. His passion for
Australian literature stems from his and Monique’s sojourn in Australia between 1974 and
1977. For his services to Australian literature, he was made a Member of the Order of
Australia in 1992. The Delamotte’s were very warm and welcoming, but there was an
added personal bonus for me, since they had also invited poet Judith Rodriguez returning to Australia, via Paris, from a meeting of International PEN in Senegal. I had not
seen Judith for over 30 years, but I have always been grateful to her for the
encouragement she gave me as a writer while I was still a student at La Trobe University.
During our visit Jean-Paul and Monique were having their roof re-covered with slate.
Jean-Paul seemed quite anxious when Monique offered to show Sue the work in progress.
Sue accepted enthusiastically, so I asked to come too. Soon we had used a chair beneath
an attic window to climb onto the top of the scaffolding three storeys above Avenue de
Lattre de Tassigny. And not long after, Sue was engaged in in-depth technical
conversation with the roofers. While Jean-Paul drove Judith to the airport, we had an
opportunity to see Monique’s very fine work as a bookbinder. I was delighted to discover
that she re-bound Gough Whitlam’s 2-volume Latin-English dictionary, which was used by
his sister Freda to assist me with some of the Latin I encountered when I was editing
Daniel Solander’s correspondence and researching Nature’s Argonaut.
Two days later it was 14 July, French national day, and we decided to view the parade
down the Champs-Elysées, particularly because this year, for the first time, soldiers from
the other EU nations were invited to march. I don’t know whether German troops have
marched down this route since the Occupation of the Second World War, but we did not
want to miss this historic event. It was interesting that the German contingent was from
the Saar on France’s eastern border. I suspect that this was a deliberate diplomatic
gesture on the part of the Germans, because the Saarland has strong French connections
with the conquests of Louis XIV. Napoleon’s faithful Marshall Ney, for example, was born
in Saarlouis. The French even sought to encourage an independent buffer ‘République
Saaroise’ after the First World War. After the Second World War the Saarland was
occupied by French troops and only reunited with the Federal Republic of Germany
following a referendum in 1955. In the end we did not see the German soldiers march,
because of our poor vantage point, but we did see the British, the Romanians, the Czechs,
the Dutch, the Lithuanians, the Estonians and the French Foreign Legion. We even saw
the newly-elected President Nicolas Sarkozy swing round in a open military vehicle and
speed up the Champs-Elysées (he seemed to be enjoying himself very much). We were in
deep shade under the trees, so our view of the fly-past was obstructed by foliage, but the
35
roar of the fighters, the heavy drone of the transport planes and the dull staccato of the
helicopters was all-embracing. Having craned our necks for nearly two hours, we were a
little weary and decided on leaving early. On departure, however, our attention was drawn
to the back of an ambulance where the march was visible on a portable television. From
behind the police and emergency services lines, demarcated with coloured police tape, we
enjoyed the later stages of the parade with the aid of modern technology. Unfortunately
our presence seemed to annoy one of the officers who proceeded to unreel even more
police tape around us with spider-like determination. We stepped out of his web and as a
last gesture of defiance found another point equidistant from the ambulance, before
leaving altogether. Actually this was not easy, because so many streets were blocked off.
The police presence in Paris often seems large and menacing. Over the previous six
months, particularly during the presidential elections, we frequently saw dozens of police
vans, towing trailers full of riot-shields, marshaled near strategic points in the city. It made
us very uncomfortable at times and certainly unnerved some of our visitors from Australia
and Britain used to more gentle policing traditions. While we were fortunate to avoid
violent encounters (despite our proximity to Bastille), it is hard to avoid an impression of
frequent ritualized behaviour on the part of both law enforcement and political activists. In
Australia, demonstrators would never think of burning the cars of their fellow citizens
parked in the streets as they sometimes do here. And the only time in my life that I have
ever encountered tear-gas has been in France.
Walking home from the Champs Elysées we found ourselves keeping pace with the
mounted republican guards in their blue tunics, silver helmets and drawn sabres. One had
to admire the discipline of the horses even as the helicopters hovered above. A couple of
hours later, at Père Lachaise cemetery, we chanced upon a group commemorating the
assassination, in 1989, of the Iranian Kurdish leader Dr Abdulrahman Ghassemlou. They
were beside his grave and I was immediately drawn to the Kurdish flag, having long
sympathized with their struggle for human rights and self-determination. Before I could do
this, a man wearing a ‘Mairie de Paris’ uniform aggressively interposed himself and
prevented any engagement – despite the fact that it was a public place. I was shocked by
his rudeness and contempt for basic democratic values, but perhaps I should not have
been. Earlier I had seen the same municipal officer berate an elderly lady for sitting on a
tomb. It was hot and she was clearly exhausted and perhaps ill. She was doing no harm,
but he showed no compassion as she wearily relocated herself to the dirty stairs. It may
have been 14 July, but for a moment Liberté, Egalité and Fraternité seemed a little distant
to me.
At Père Lachaise, we had arranged to meet with my English cousin Pauline Currien, her
sister Stephanie and brother-in-law Ken Woodcock. Aside from visiting the tombs of
Gustave Doré, Oscar Wilde, Modigliani, Rossini, and many others, we came armed with a
bucket and scrubbing brush to clean the obelisk on the grave of one of my previous
biographical subjects: Labillardière. On our previous visit, in spring, Sue and I thought we
saw an inscription. At first we tried to do a rubbing with pencil and paper. Then we tried
dusting it with talcum powder - kindly provided with forensic inspiration by Pauline and
Steph. Finally Sue fetched water in our bucket and we began to scrub the stone and the
dirt-filled inscription clean All these antics made numerous passersby stop and gaze.
Whose tomb was this? Why is he important? Well, he published the first general flora of
Australia! Despite the fact that the stone is very weathered (exacerbated by its
pronounced lean), with the efforts of five amateur palaeographers looking from various
angles, we came up with the following inscription:
36
HOUTOU
DE LA BILLARDIERE
JACQUES JULIEN
VOYAGEUR NATURALISTE
MEMBRE DE L’INSTITUT
[CHEVALIER?] DE LA LEGION D’HONNEUR
NE A ALENÇON
[28] OCT[OBRE] 1755
MORT A PARIS
[8 JANVIER] 18[34]
. . . [illegible]
HOUTOU
DE LA BILLARDIERE
The detail about the Légion d’Honneur is particularly interesting. The naturalist’s name
does not appear in the index of recipients of the decoration at the Archives nationales, but
some records were destroyed during the suppression of the Paris Commune in 1871. My
personal feeling is that, if he did receive this distinction, it was probably in the last four
years of his life - during the more liberal monarchy of Louis-Philippe. So far I have neither
found confirmation nor a date for the award.
Over the past six months Paris has changed with the seasons. When we arrived, in the
depths of winter, there was an outdoor ice-skating rink outside the Hôtel de Ville; now there
is a ‘beach’ volley ball court. Indeed, on the banks of the Seine, the municipality has laid
thousands of tons of clean sand in order to create the ambiance of the seaside. The Voie
Pompidou is closed to traffic (usually this only happens on a Sunday) and families can now
picnic, promenade and enjoy outdoor performances during the long summer evenings.
The idea is that Parisians who cannot leave on holidays, like the majority of their
compatriots at this time of year, can still enjoy a taste of the Mediterranean or the Atlantic
coast. Unfortunately we have had unusually cool weather of late and a great deal of rain.
We will miss the many new friends we have made over the past six months. We will miss
strolling home through the Marais; seeing the remnants of the city walls at Saint-Paul, the
medieval houses on rue François Miron, the pink-brick buildings of Place des Vosges
(where Victor Hugo lived) and the honey-yellow sandstone of the Hôtel Beauvais (where
Mozart stayed as a child). We will miss the bookshops everywhere. We will miss the
museums. (Indeed we have visited the Louvre five times this year and the Musée d'Orsay
three times!) We will miss the delightful surprises occasioned by the many specialized
collections in the capital: it made my day recently to see, up close (in the Musée des Arts et
Métiers), the flimsy monoplane in which Louis Blériot crossed the English Channel in 1909.
We will miss the wine, the cider and the cheese, the chestnut jam and the strawberries.
We will miss the music in the streets and in the métro - and the music of French
conversation in the streets. We will miss the tour Eiffel sparkling at night and the bells of
Notre Dame echoing through our studio as they are at this very moment. And we will miss
the concerts and exhibitions at the Cité internationale des Arts, and the respect given to
writers, artists, teachers and, yes, heritage architects, in France! Despite all this, and much
more, we are looking forward to coming HOME.
37
Book Note
Reviewed by Edward Duyker,
Australian Catholic
University/University of Sydney.
Joan
Druett, Tupaia:
Captain
Cook’s
Polynesian Navigator, Praeger, Santa
Barbara, 2011, pp. 255, ISBN 978-313-387-487.
We tend to forget that English was probably not
the first non-indigenous language to be spoken
on the shores of Kurnell in April 1770. Aboard
the Endeavour was a Ra’iatean nobleman and
priest named Tupaia. He had served James
Cook well as a navigator, interpreter and
cultural intermediary from Tahiti to New
Zealand. Cook hoped that he might again
serve him well as an interpreter at
Kurnell. Unfortunately the Tahitian-Ra’iatean
branch of the great Polynesian group of
languages was no use among the Dharawalspeaking Gweagal.
Tupaia has recently become the subject of a
beautifully written biography by New Zealander
Joan Druett. It is the product of a great deal of
patient historical research, using sources dating
back to the visit of Samuel Wallis to Tahiti in
June 1767. It is also enriched by a wealth of
contextual
post-contact
ethnographic
scholarship. I can thoroughly recommend it.
Furthermore, it is a must for our local studies
collection.
Edward Duyker
38
Music and Film
Reviews
Michael Cooke
Review of the CD Journeys by Out of Abingdon
‘Journeys,’ like all good albums, hooks the listener in from the very first note. As soon as
we hear the double bass drop in we know we are in assured melodic territory. ‘Journeys’ is
the debut album by duo Warwick Hargreves (guitar and vocals) and Tina Fullerton (double
bass and vocals). The musical palette ranges from breezy jazz to laid-back funk with a
touch of blues and country without its western overtones.
The double bass slaps its response to an enquiring guitar, coupled with the singer’s visual
intonation, one can feel the musical intoxication of being a Slave to the beat.
The Australian landscape and the doggerel of Australiana together create a cliché to
whose charms one easily becomes immune. Out of Abingdon bravely meets that cliché
head-on in One of these. A picturesque romp in the Australian countryside, with koalas,
wallabies and kangaroos entering into a gentle jazz melody, seduces the listener into
sharing a fondly remembered time.
The duo cover others’ material as well as their own. The seductive and laid-back melodic
grooves of JJ Cale are easy on the ear yet hard to reproduce. On Sensitive kind this duo
strip the song back to its emotional core, with the singer bringing us yearning and hope
embedded in the lyric.
The industrial instrumentation and raspy vocals of Tom Waits defy imitation. But by
keeping his insistent beat in Clap Hands and by imparting a feminine sophistication to the
macho gutturals of the original, the interpretation is enhanced. The song is deftly
punctuated by a tasty guitar lick.
Bruce Springsteen’s I’m on fire is stripped of its macho posturing, bringing the strong
melodic foundation of the song and uncertain emotional desire to the fore. A lovely
reworking of a song which has been dulled to cliche by commercial radio.
Love you like is an original track. The lyric’s optimism is given a jaunty music palette by the
bass and guitar. The guitar solo on this track is especially lovely.
39
Glory box is a Portishead song. Not having heard the original I can only comment on Out
of Abingdon’s version. It is a straightforward love song, written and sung with a feminine
sensibility and with a hunky macho guitar solo to even out the melody.
For my money the highlight of the album is She don’t love me. Another original track, the
insouciance of the singing belies the unease and stoic acceptance that the singer’s love
will not be reciprocated. The turmoil he is feeling is nicely conveyed by the urgency of the
guitar and the frenetic bass. A perfect song for FM radio.
Sweet time is an effective counterpoint after the pace set by She don’t love me. The vocal
is reminiscent of Nina Simone, hardened by the supple tones of the double bass instead of
piano. A fine stoic take on life, love and the whole catastrophe.
Out of Abingdon’s ‘Journeys’ is beautifully recorded by the sound wizard David Williams. It
is warm and woody, with nothing of the harsh metallic sound of digital recording. Out of
Abingdon admit their influences but filter them through their very individual musical
sensibility. In the words of their web site, ‘there is a cool breeze blowing in, and it’s coming
straight out of Abingdon’. It is also a reaffirmation of music’s capacity for poignancy and
beauty.
And so it goes
More information can be gleaned from: www.outofabingdon.com.au.
40
Glimpses of Empire
Part 2: On the Margins of Empire – The Hurt Locker
Any system you contrive without us
Will be brought down
We warned you before
And nothing that you have built has stood
……………………………….
You have your drugs
You have your guns
You have your Pyramids your Pentagons
With all your glass and bullets
You cannot hunt us any more
All that we disclose of ourselves forever
Is this warning
Nothing that you built has stood
Any system you contrive without us
Will be brought down
Leonard Cohen
War, and stories and poems about war, have always been with us. Each war has created its
stereotypes, its villains and heroes and its unique depiction of violence. Movies about war are the
latest in this never-ending dance of Shiva. In American war movies, the drama usually takes place
on a distant shore. The cause for American military intervention is usually not explained, but the
goodness of the hero and the American way of life is contrasted with a brutal and primitive enemy.
With the disillusionment brought about by the Vietnam War and the arrival of the counter-culture,
there was a brief interlude when ambiguity crept into the discourse. The Vietnam War and the
opposition to it produced some classics in the genre. On the conservative side we had the mock
heroics of John Wayne’s Green Berets (1968) and the reinvention of the Tarzan myth in Stallone’s
ludicrous Rambo II: First Blood (1985).1 At the other extreme we had the nightmare of Vietnam,
painted with a Conradian palette in Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now (1979), which was to
become a grand morality play in Oliver Stone’s Platoon (1986). In between these two films came
Michael Cimino’s morally repulsive Deer Hunter (1978), whose exquisite European pictorial
sensibility confused many a critic and movie-goer. Films about the Vietnam conflict are now seen
as watersheds in how we view war, particularly imperial adventures.
The current wars, meant to preserve our standard of living and American hegemony, do not evoke
the martial splendour so useful to Hollywood in the past. They are dirty, nasty, asymmetrical wars,
mostly devoid of heroism. Most of the films about our current wars reflect the sensibility of Coppola
and Stone, and have been made by left leaning liberal directors.2 Robert Redford’s liberalism was
evident in Lion for Lambs (2007), though its effect was reduced by his pedagogic approach. Brian
de Palma’s neglected film Redacted (2007) exposed just a little of American brutality in Iraq,
1
2
Directed by George P. Costmatos.
Without the epic sweep, moral ambiguity and surreal madness that was Apocalypse Now.
41
though it suffered from its faux naturalism and boring screenplay - de Palma forgot he was making
a feature, not a home movie. Paul Greenglass’s excellent Green Zone (2010) also used hand-held
cameras to depict American perfidy in the early days of their occupation of Iraq. Unlike de Palma
he engaged the viewer with exciting set-pieces, suspense, and recognisable political figures and
their lies.
Then unexpectedly out of the blue an unalloyed masterpiece appeared, Kathryn Bigelow’s Hurt
Locker (2008).3 It is also an infuriating, disturbing and political reactionary film.
Kathryn Bigelow has always worked on the cusp of the mainstream. This has allowed her to make
films that are dark, edgy, morally ambiguous and punctuated with exhilarating and suspenseful setpieces. This was evident in Blue Steel (1990), her strange (and strangely neglected) tale of
obsession, murder and justice. In her next film she banished the darkness and prettied up the
scene with those lovely store mannequins Keanu Reeves and the late Patrick Swayze in the
shallow but exciting Point Break (1991). She then directed the dystopian science-fiction classic
Strange Days (1995), presciently linking the merging technologies of the personal computer
revolution, home entertainment and virtual reality with drug addiction. To this was added the
iconography and moral dilemmas of 1940s film noir.
Hurt Locker’s screenplay is by Michael Boal. It is based on his experiences and observations as an
embedded journalist in Iraq. The intent of Boal and Bigelow was to make a film set in Iraq but not
about Iraq. It concerns itself with a theme that was old in the age of the Iliad and the Ramayana,
three millennia ago - the adrenaline of war and the individuals who thrive in that milieu. Hurt Locker
concerns itself with a bomb disposal unit where the leader of the squad takes increasing risks in
defusing bombs, much to the fear and resentment of the two other members of the unit, who have
only 38 days to go before they are shipped out.
This is a director at the top of her game. High definition cameras and excellent editing bring the
viewer into the heart of the action. The camera looks around furtively, observing the devastated
suburbs of war torn Baghdad, the rubbish uncollected, the potholed streets, the floating ever
present dust. We hear snippets of conversation, the screaming of jets. We see the carcasses of
bombed-out cars, the curiosity of the inhabitants and their latent hostility. The fear that one of them
will detonate the bomb is palpable. The tension is diffused by a herd of goats and rises again when
the remote detonating device gets stuck in rubble. The leader of the squad dons a protective suit to
check the malfunction, and meanwhile an onlooker is texting. We discover too late that he is
detonating the bomb. The squad leader is killed. This is only the prologue.
The tension is interspersed with brief interludes when the bomb disposal unit relaxes, after which
the carnage resumes. Two members of the squad just want to survive their tour of duty with a
minimum of fuss. But the new sergeant, played with kinetic intensity by Jeremy Renner, thrives
amid the violence and excitement of battle and feels he is bullet-proof. But unlike Ravana, demon
king of the Ramayana, or Achilles in the Iliad, there are no gods or rituals to protect him. He has
only luck and intense concentration to save him. He views existence as a dice game between life
and death.
Disturbingly unlike Ravana and Achilles, his addiction to violence is attached to heroic acts not
mayhem and devastation. So when an epiphany of a sort does come it seems misjudged and
unintentionally ironic. He goes out to avenge the death of a young Iraqi boy used by the insurgents
as bomb fodder, but his action gives us no opportunity to reflect on the pain of war. In the
Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna and Krishna discuss duty, violence and other themes in a beautiful
benediction of prose before an apocalyptical battle – ‘a destroyer of civilisations.’4 We are given a
respite from the machinations of the gods and the never-ending bloodshed in the Iliad when Priam
goes on a quest to recover his dead son Hector from his slayer Achilles, who says:
The phrase ‘hurt locker’ refers to the state of being shell-shocked, in particular the physical trauma of being repeatedly in close
proximity to the deafening blast of an explosion.
4 Mascaro, Juan, translator (1978), The Bhagavad-Gita Gita, Penguin Classics.
3
42
‘ ……… Let us put our grief to rest in our own hearts,
Rake them up no more, raw as we are with mourning.
What good’s to be won from tears that chill the spirit?
So the immortals spun our lives that we, we wretched men
Live on to bear such torments-the gods live free from sorrows.’5
Our current heroes in these never ending dirty wars conducted thousands of miles away are not
prone to such grace and reflection. In America the fodder for neo-liberal imperial dreams come
from the rust buckets that their economic policies created. The film quietly depicts the banalities of
family piety and consumer trash that serves as distractions to the ‘lower orders’. It seems empty
compared to the excitement war generates for our protagonist. One of the more poignant scenes in
the film, he is seen in a supermarket with ennui etched on his face amid a glut of products that
seem essential to our material existence. The Hurt Locker ends with him going back to Iraq to
serve another tour of duty.
There is something repugnant at the heart of the film: an absence of those whose country is being
invaded and destroyed. There are seen as bit players, extras to our tragedy and victims of the
terror of those who are resisting the Americans. Whatever our ambivalence towards those who
resist our imperial adventures; the fact remains that western intervention in Iraq has resulted in
around one million deaths6, ninety per cent of them civilians. It has created 740,000 widows and
displaced 4.5 million people. The sanctions imposed after the first Gulf war resulted in over
500,000 deaths of children mostly under the age of five, because of a lack of basic medicines and
clean water.7 Under the guise of bringing democracy, we invade because we need their oil to
preserve our standard of living. Films like the Hurt Locker harden our hearts to the plight of the
refugees who are fleeing the mayhem our military and economic policies create. Bigelow’s
cinematic eye by wilfully ignoring the Iraqis and only looking at the plight of the ordinary soldier has
to be complicit in the debacle that is Iraq.
Thankfully artistry and talent is not only the preserve of those who we agree with. One can still
(barely) appreciate the musical crescendos of Wagner without being drowned by his rabid antiSemitism. We can put up with the fascist phallic imagery of Lawrence because of his natural and
lyrical depictions of nature and human relationships. Dali is a major artist in spite of his relentless
self aggrandisement, ludicrous genuflecting to the Spanish Bourbons and the kitsch he produced
in his later years because of the sublime images he produced in the 1920s and 1930s. Similarly in
film, we can acknowledge the importance of Leni Reifenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) with its
homoerotic images tied to the icons of Nazism as a landmark film. Reifenstahl’s documentary is
distasteful but it is also a strange, beautiful and beguiling film. It is in this light we can see
Bigelow’s film; a peerlessly crafted film of men under the pressure of war. At the same time
acknowledging the film is complicit in making the colonised invisible, except in how it affects the
coloniser; who are manfully struggling on the margins of empire defending democracy and
preserving our way of life.
And so it goes …….
5
Fagles, Robert (1998), translator of The Iliad, Penguin, p. 605.
6
Robert Manne calculates that between 300,000 to 400,000 Iraqi civilians have been killed in the current conflict. See Manne,
Robert, Bad News Murdoch’s Australian and The Shaping of the Nation Quarterly Essay QE43 Black Inc 2011 page 22. We can only
estimate the toll as the Americans and their allies have never properly quantified the amount of civilian casualties.
7 Pilger, John, director (2011), The War You Don’t See, broadcast on SBS Television on 10 April 2011. 9:30pm.
43
Notice to Contributors
Doryanthes welcomes contributions, on any subject from members and non members,
alike. Preference may be given to articles relating to Southern Sydney or to articles
written by authors who live in southern Sydney.
Unless by prior arrangement, the preferred length for formal articles is 3000 words. Any
annotation must be in the form of footnotes. The editors also seek short notes, book and
film reviews.
Copyright of material published in Doryanthes is retained by the author. In the case of any
subsequent publication, the editors of Doryanthes merely seek a statement of the prior
publication in Doryanthes.
Contributions (articles, notes or reviews) may be sent to the publisher on disk or as email
attachment (in both cases as Word files) to the publisher Les Bursill (les.bursill.gmail.com).
Membership
Doryanthes Inc. has two classes of membership:
(i) Subscription Members. The Doryanthes year runs from November till October. The
annual subscription is $35 per year. In addition to the online version, subscription
members are entitled to receive, per year, four hard copy editions of Doryanthes.
Subscriptions should be forwarded to the Hon. Treasurer Mrs Mary Jacobs
10 Porter Road
Engadine 2233
(ii) On-line Members: On-line members pay no annual subscription fee and receive four
times per year the on-line copy of Doryanthes. Such members must provide the publisher,
Les Bursill (les.bursill@gmail.com) with a current email address.
44