History Matters - state of chaos after surrender

"Complex mess" filters down to Casino. Jim Belshaw continues the story of Camp Victory and the Casino Boys

The position in the Netherlands East Indies in the last months of 1945 and first months of 1946 can best be described as chaotic.

Upon surrender, the Japanese troops had withdrawn to barracks, leaving a power vacuum. The terms of the subsequent peace treaty required them to maintain civil control pending the arrival of the Allies, but there was reluctance to become re-involved.

The Allies had undertake to restore the previous civil order, ie the Dutch East Indies Administration, but were stretched and slow to move. The independence forces under Sukarno had asserted independence, but were weak in both military and administrative terms, especially outside Java.

They were also divided. While the main movement supported a pluralist unitary state, some wanted an Islamic state, others a soviet state.

The result was a complex mess that saw Japanese troops fighting independence forces, British and Dutch forces fighting independence forces and Indonesians fighting each other.

BLOODY BATTLE: British troops Surabaya,1945. The battle of Surabaya from October 27 to November 20 1945 was the single most bloody engagement of the war for Indonesian independence.  

 The position in Australia was also messy. The Netherlands East Indies (NEI) Government-in-Exile wanted to re-assert control and had been planning to that end, partly supported by a $US 10 million dollar loan from the US Government.

Its military position was relatively weak, but it now sought to deploy the military resources it had back to the Netherlands East Indies. As part of this process, Australian personnel were withdrawn from the three joint RAAF/NEI squadrons, with full control restored to the NEI Government in January 1946.

The union boycott intended to prevent NEI Government action was blocking shipping. The Australian Government had been bound by Allied arrangements, but as fighting in Indonesia dragged on and faced by union boycotts and local support for Indonesian independence, its position began to shift.

DAILY LIFE: Camp scene in Camp Victory, Casino 1946. There was strong support for Indonesian prisoners following the Indonesian declaration of independence

Conditions at Casino’s Camp Victory began to deteriorate. At the end of 1945, some locals wanted to give presents to the Indonesian prisoners who had been court-martialled and imprisoned for refusing service. When the Camp authorities refused to allow this, a local protest movement formed to supporting the prisoners.

There were also growing local fears about the risk of a prison break-out. Papers across Northern NSW and beyond began carrying stories about the camp, calling it a concentration camp.

The Dutch authorities were in a difficult position, They wanted to maintain military discipline, but Camp Victory had become a running sore. The couldn’t move the prisoners because of the shipping bans. Initial attempts to encourage repatriation to rebel territory in Indonesia failed because of distrust among the prisoners. The Australian Government was reluctant to take direct responsibility for the prisoners.

In September 1946, the whole thing blew apart, forcing the Camp’s closure.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 8 March 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017. 

Musings on the latest Aboriginal DNA studies from Professor Cooper and his team, issues for New England studies

The map shows possible Aboriginal migration routes. ka stands for a thousand years ago. 

The latest  research published in Nature on Aboriginal DNA provides further light on our evolving understanding of the pattern of Aboriginal occupation of this continent. I haven't read the original paper, that will have to wait until I can access it via a library, but both ABC and ars technica have good coverage.

The researchers analysed mitochondrial DNA — which allows maternal ancestry to be traced — from 111 hair samples that were originally collected, with permission, from Aboriginal families who had been forcibly relocated to the communities of Cherbourg in Queensland and Koonibba and Point Pearce in South Australia.

The South Australian Museum's collection of more than 5,000 hair samples, complete with cultural, linguistic, genealogical and geographical data, came from the expeditions run by the Board of Anthropological Research from the University of Adelaide between 1928 and the 1970s.

I don't want to comment on the detail of the paper until I have read it, but a few broad observations.

The idea that the continent could be settled quite quickly by the descendants of an original small group seems feasible once one thinks of "quite quickly" in terms of multiple generations. The idea of a run or area capable of supporting an extended family or small group is central to our understanding of the pattern of traditional Aboriginal life.

Even if the Aboriginal population descended from a single small group, natural population expansion in a land unoccupied by other humans or major natural predators would have led to the spotting of new family groups into territory already known through exploration, groups that would in turn have spotted new family groups in a continuing process. Over 2,000 to 5,000 years (50 to 125 generations), this compounding process would have led to occupation over very large geographic areas.

One of the debated questions in Aboriginal history is whether occupation extended first down the east and west coasts and then expanded inland as compared to a broader pattern of dispersion. Despite the references to waves of migration down the west and east coasts, so far as the east is concerned, my present judgment is that the easiest migration routes would have been inland, to the west of the Dividing Range along the slopes and immediate Western Plains country.

I am cautious about the meaning to be placed upon the relationship between place and people as summarised in the ABC  heading "DNA confirms Aboriginal people have a long-lasting connection to country". I need to be very careful and precise here, for my concern is the popular linkage about very specific peoples and very specific places over long periods.

The broad problem can be stated this way. Given the enormous climatic changes that took place in Australia (Sahul) over the millenia, when was the modern connection between modern Aboriginal groups and their country established? Was it a result of the changes that came with the Holocene?

The first thing that I think we can now say with a reasonable degree of certainty is that recent DNA analysis suggests that modern Aborigines are directly descended form the original founding group(s). This is important because alternative models popularised by Joseph Birdsell concluded that there had been several waves of settlement to the Australian continent, with later comers merging with or even supplanting existing populations. There may still have been later admixtures, but the core DNA component suggest a continuity over the 47-50 or so millenia of human occupation of the continent. The considerable differences in Aboriginal populations revealed by both physical anthropology and DNA analysis can be explained by the combination of different settlement patterns with time and relative isolation including that created by the effects of climate change.

To go from this to arguing a connection between particular groups and particular areas is more problematic. I note again that I have yet to read the paper itself.

I would expect some connection. As environmental conditions worsened with the Late Glacial Maximum (LGM), groups would have been forced to shift. Particular areas may have become uninhabitable, or at least inhabitable only on an irregular basis, forcing people to move. The changes took considerable time, so people would have moved slowly to join other groups in moves linked to existing family and cultural links. This would have preserved, even reinforced, particular DNA structures. It would also probably have led to genetic divergence between groups now more separated. As conditions eased, land would have been reoccupied starting with the immediate, more familiar traditional territories. Oral memories of past connections preserved over generations would also have come into play.    
 
I am especially interested in the history of a particular area. The latest research provides further tantalising clues on Aboriginal history, but I need to translate this into hypotheses about what happened in my area. For example, inland and coastal patterns are likely to be different. During the LGM, one can hypothesize that contact between coastal and western groups in New England would have been reduced as the Northern Tablelands became more inhospitable, more desolate. This suggests that the DNA of the two groups would have altered, accentuating differences.

Taking into account the paucity of recent archaeological work in Northern NSW outside rescue digs, I await the results of further DNA analysis with considerable interest. i need it to tell my story.        
    .

History matters - the ripple effect of Indonesia's declaration of independence

Tense wait: A scene from the 1946 Joris Ivens film Indonesia Calling showing Indonesian seamen in Sydney listening to a short-wave radio for news of Indonesia’s declaration of independence. Jim Belshaw continues the story of Camp Victory and the Casino Boys

 May 1925, Dutch East Indies. The Executive Committee of Comintern (Communist International) orders communists in Indonesia to form a united anti-imperialist front with non-communist nationalist organizations, but key elements in the PKI (Partai Komunis Indonesia) demand revolution to replace the Dutch colonial government with PKI rule. At a conference in Prambanan, Central Java, communist-controlled trades unions decide that revolution should start with a strike by railroad workers that would signal a general strike and then a revolution.

The attempt was poorly coordinated and quickly crushed by the Dutch East Indies Authorities. A number of those arrested were sent to the Tanah Merah prison camp in West Papua, with others added later. By 1943, numbers in the camp including women and children totalled more than 500.

Concerned that the Tanah Merah detainees might become a fifth column, Charles Van der Plas, the Chief Commissioner of the Netherlands East Indies Government-in-Exile, persuaded General Douglas MacArthur to overrule Australian Government reluctance and bring the Tanah Merah detainees to Australia. The evacuation was completed between 27 May and 2 June 1943, using a mix of boats and flying boat.

Initially the detainees were sent to the Australian Government’s internment camp at Cowra, but then redistributed to various places including the 36^th Australian Employment Company at Wallangarra and Camp Victory at Casino. While supporting Indonesian independence, most of the detainees saw defeat of Japan as a first priority.

The proclamation of Indonesian Independence on 17 August 1945 reached Australia by crackly short wave radio. Among those listening to the announcement were a group of Indonesian sailors crowded around a short-wave radio set in the Indonesian Seamen’s Union offices at Woolloomooloo.

Indonesian seamen speaking at a pro-Indonesian demonstration in Wynyard Square, Sydney, on September 28, 1945.

One of the things that I hadn’t properly realised until researching this series was the extent to which the relatively large Indonesian presence in Australia after 1942 created organisational linkages and a support base supporting Indonesian independence. This included both the Indonesians themselves and their organisations and their Australian supporters, building on previous fraternal links established through the unions and the Communist Party.

These links now came into play.

On 23 September 1945, Indonesian crew members on four Dutch ships in Sydney began a sit-down strike partly over pay, partly concerned that that the material on the ships might be used to suppress the independence movement. They were supported by the Australian Maritime Union and the Waterside Workers’ Federation, leading to a black ban on Dutch or Dutch chartered shipping that would last for over four years.

SS Moreton Bay. One of the Dutch chartered ships help up by the Union boycott 

News of Indonesian Independence seems to have reached both the Australian Army base at Wallangarra and the Netherlands East Indies’ Casino Camp Victory by 12 September 1945. At both places, Indonesian troops refused to continue service, while a grenade was thrown at Wallangarra.

At Camp Victory, barbed wire fences were hastily erected to contain troops who were (from a Netherlands East Indies’ Army perspective) in dereliction of duty. Instead of learning to fly, the Casino Boys found themselves pressed into duty as guards. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 1 March 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.

History Matters - the Casino Boys wait for wings

The RMS Rangitata which brought the Casino Boys to Australia.

Jim Belshaw continues the story of camp Victory and the Casino Boys

With the final German surrender on 8 May 1945, attention switched to the defeat of Japan. As part of this process, the Dutch Government recruited 200 trainee pilots who were sent to Australia on the New Zealand Shipping Company’s RMS Rangitata for pilot training.

The group knew little about Australia. At Sydney, they were put on a troop train for travel to an unknown destination. After a long trip, the men found themselves at the Dutch East Indies Army base at Casino, Camp Victory, for basic training. 

We know from photographs that conditions at Camp Victory were fairly primitive, with the men living under canvas or in huts. Despite that, we know from later records such as interviews that they enjoyed themselves

They got on well with the Dutch East Indies troops, enjoying the food. With the exception of the Aboriginal settlement in South Casino which was out of bounds, they could move around freely, including visiting Casino or the nearby beaches.

A number acquired local girlfriends. Three of them, including Jill Spilsbury’s

step father Jacobus Johannes (Koos or Jack) Dalmayer, would marry local girls. They were also able to visit Sydney and in some cases Melbourne for R&R.

The experiences built on the bonds formed on ship, creating a tight knit group that would come to be called the Casino Boys.

Their biggest problem was that the military authorities really didn’t know what to do with them. Cornelus (Corry) Koedam recalled that they didn’t even have proper uniforms, wearing American uniforms at one point, Australian uniforms at another.

The men’s main frustration was that they had come to train as pilots. This depended on the Royal Australian Air Force and kept being deferred. The Pacific War was winding down, and the Dutch trainee pilots were not high on the list of immediate war priorities. They were effectively in limbo.

On 15 August 1945 Japanese time, the Japanese announced that they had surrendered. The official surrender document was signed on deck of the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay on 2 September.

The Dutch Government still wished the men to be trained, but the RAAF had no further interest in the matter. Other events now intervened.

In March 1945, the Japanese had organised an Indonesian committee on independence. On 9 August 1945, Sukarno, Hatta, and Radjiman Wediodiningrat were flown to meet Marshal Hisaichi Terauchi in Vietnam. They were told that Japan intended to announce Indonesian independence on 24 August.

With the Japanese surrender, Sukarno and Hatta decided to take immediate action. Two days after the Japanese surrender, they unilaterally proclaimed Indonesian independence. Indonesians were called upon to refuse service in the Dutch East Indies armed forces.

Word of the independence proclamation reached Camp Victory in September. With that, everything changed.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 22 February 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.

NSW Premier's History Awards Now open

The NSW State Library advises that nominations are now open  for the NSW Premier's 2017 History Awards.

Sadly, I'm not at the point that I can nominate a book of mine. Maybe next year?

History Matters - a unique wartime solution

Jim Belshaw continues the story of Camp Victory and the Casino Boys

Cut of from the home country by the Nazi invasion, the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) forces in Australia struggled to regroup. The problems were most acute on the Air side where there were shortages of planes and manpower.

A unique solution was adopted, the formation of joint NEI/Australian squadrons. The Dutch supplied the planes acquired under Lend-Lease arrangements, the pilots were Dutch, the aircrew a mix of NEI and Australian personnel, while ground crew were generally Australian.

Combined No 18 (NEI) squadron in action, 1944 

Operational command rested with Australia, with Australian crew reporting to an Australian squadron leader, while NEI personnel were under KNIL (Netherlands East Indies Army) command. The Dutch flag replaced the RAAF roundel on the planes, while the squadrons were named No (NEI) Squadron RAAF

This arrangement explains a conundrum I referred to in my first column in this series. How did an uncle from Kentucky with no known Dutch connections end up serving in the Dutch Airforce? Well, it should be more correctly the Netherlands East Indies Airforce!

Four squadrons were formed, of which three entered operational service (one bomber, one fighter plus one transport squadron), flying missions against Japanese positions in the Netherlands East Indies and South-West Pacific.

On the land side, the Australian Government provided the Dutch Netherlands East Indies KNIL forces with bases under NEI control. As part of this process, an advance party arrived in Casino in December 1942 to establish what would be called Camp Victory, a base for the KNL Technical or Labour Battalion.  

The Battalion contained personnel recruited from different parts of the Dutch East Indies under the command of both Dutch and locally recruited NEI officers. It also included people from other parts of the Dutch Empire including Surinam.

 MATES. Relations among the groups at Camp Victory appear to have been good up to the tensions flowing from the declaration of Indonesian Independence

Camp Victory also seems to have included political prisoners, supporters of Indonesian Independence, although it is unclear to what extent they formed part of the Battalion or were separately held. In any event, security at the Camp was low, allowing mixing and fraternisation within the Camp and beyond.

The White Australia Policy may have been bent by the exigencies of war, but was still in place. The sudden presence in Casino of a large number of non-Europeans therefore posed a challenge. How would the locals respond?

CAMP VICTORY. Fraternising with the locals, Ballina

The answer seems to be very well. Relations with the Dutch were easiest, with some concerns about local girls dating non-European personnel. However, the soldiers had soldiers pay and after hours would visit the stores. Many long term Casino residents remembered them buying bikes and having a fondness for perfumes. They also remember the soldiers showing them how to make kites.

The ending of the War would bring new tensions. Casino was about to find a place in Indonesian history.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 15 February 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not all on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.

History Matters - complexities, but fighting for the same cause

Jim Belshaw continues the story of Camp Victory and the Casino Boys

WORKING TOGETHER. Australian Army Officer with Netherlands East Indies troops, Cairns, c 1940. While they had different aims their immediate goal was the same - to defeat the Japanese 

With the surrender of the Dutch to the Japanese on 8 March 1942, remnants of both the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL) and Air Force (ML-KNIL) escaped to Australia, as did thousands of officials and civilians. This created complexities that would play out over the years of the war and its immediate aftermath, including the establishment of Indonesia.

Both the KNIL troops and civilians included Netherlands East Indies (NEI) nationals as well as Dutch citizens, adding to the many national groups brought to Australia by the war. The White Australia Policy was still in force, but the war situation forced its partial suspension.

The NEI nationals included people who were opposed to Dutch rule, some of whom had been interned by the Dutch prior to the outbreak of the war. While some were interned in Australia, another part of our story, for the present the war situation muted the tensions between nationalists and Dutch loyalists. However, these tensions would become significant later with the defeat of the Japanese and the declaration by Sukarno of Indonesian independence.

Two New England military camps would then became major flash points. The first was the Wallangarra Camp, home to the Australian Army’s 36^th Australian Employment Company. The second, and more important, was Camp Victory at Casino, an NEI KNIL camp home to KNIL’s Technical Battalion. .

In 1942, further complexity was added by the existence in Australia of what were effectively two governments, the home Dutch Government in exile based in London along with a separate NEI administration. This reported to the Dutch Government, but was also a seen as (and organised as) a separate national administration with its own military forces.

The Dutch and Australian Governments had different objectives. To the Australians, the priority was to protect Australia by defeating Japan. To the Dutch and especially the NEI administration, the objective was to reassume control of the Netherlands East Indies by defeating Japan. For both, the immediate priority was defeat of the Japanese.

A number of NEI nationals were absorbed into the Australian Army’s Employment Companies. The work of these companies in providing the hard physical labour needed to maintain the war effort and support the fighting troops is poorly recognised.

By the war’s end, 39 companies had been formed totalling 15,000 men. Of the 39 companies, 11 were made of aliens, non British citizens. Two of the 11, the 23^rd and the Wallangarra based 36^th Co were made up in whole or part from NEI nationals.

In parallel, efforts proceeded to reorganise and restructure the NEI Armed Forces and Government administration, culminating in the formal formation of the Netherlands East Indies (NEI) Government-in-Exile, the only foreign government ever to be established on Australian soil.  

This was necessary for military and diplomatic reasons, but would create significant problems as tensions rose at the end of the War. 

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 8 February 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.

History Matters - New England's role in Indonesian and Netherlands' history

Jim Belshaw begins the story of Camp Victory and the Casino Boys

Melbourne 1943. KNIL Netherlands East Indies troops who escaped march through the streets of Mebourne.

Growing up, I was always a little confused that an uncle had apparently served in the Dutch Air Force during the Second World War. How did a boy from Kentucky with no Dutch connections end up in the Dutch Air Force?

The answer to this question provides another thread in the complex history of Northern NSW, one that would give the quiet Richmond River town of Casino a place in Dutch military history and in the history of the Indonesian struggle for independence.

The Nazi Germany invasion of neutral Netherlands began on 10 May 1940. Four days later, the main elements of the Dutch army surrendered. Queen Wilhelmina escaped to London, followed a day later by the Dutch government.

With the fall of France, Dutch PM De Geer concluded that the war was lost and sought to return to Holland to negotiate surrender terms with the Germans. Queen Wilhelmina, later described by Winston Churchill as the only man in the Dutch Government, would have none of this. She dismissed De Geer, replacing him as PM with Pieter Sjoerds Gerbrandy.

Despite the loss of the mother country, the Dutch Government in exile still controlled the Dutch overseas possessions and especially the Dutch East Indies with its resources including oil supplies. However, the position in the Far East was becoming increasingly cloudy with the growing threat from Japan.

The Dutch Government’s main military asset in the Dutch East Indies was the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army (KNIL, short for Koninklijk Nederlands Indisch Leger). Air cover was provided by the KNIL's air arm, the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force (ML-KNIL). There were also some elements of the Royal Dutch Navy.

These forces were ill-equipped to face the growing Japanese threat. Urgent efforts began to expand and modernise them, but there were difficulties in acquiring skilled manpower and new equipment.

On 7 December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour. The Dutch Government declared war on Japan the following day.

January 1942. Netherlands East Indies Martin 166 bombers in action over Malaya

Dutch East India oil supplies were of critical importance to Japan. The already prepared Japanese invasion began on 17 December 1941. The Allies established a unified command including the British and Americans, but the ill-equipped KNIL ground and air forces could not stop the advance.

On 8 March, 1942, the Dutch were forced surrender. In two months, the Japanese had seized effective control of all the Dutch East Indies, including its oil resources.

Dutch East Indies General Hein ter Poorten surrenders to the Japanese following heavy defeats.

Remnants of both the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army and Air Force escaped to Australia, laying the basis for the story that would follow.

 Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 1 February 2017. I am repeating the columns here with a lag because they are not on line outside subscription. You can see all the Belshaw World and History Revisited/History Matters columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015, here for 2016, here 2017.

Reflections on the life of John Mulvaney

The death of Professor John Mulvaney on 21 September 2016 placed a full stop on a remarkable career and, in a way, the end of an era. John Mulvaney was as the first university-trained prehistorian to make Australia his subject and has been justly described as the ‘Father of Australian Archaeology’.

I met Professor John Mulvaney just once, at an ANZAAS conference in Canberra. I remember his infectious smile, the way he cocked his head.

This was a fun conference, a real experience. I was a nineteen year old university student who had been interested in Australian prehistory by Isabel McBryde. Isabel had studied under John Mulvaney at Melbourne and was one of his protégés.

I had come to the conference almost by accident because we were staying in Canberra, allowing me to go. This was an exciting time to be involved in Australian prehistory. Everything was new, the first drawing back of the veil over the deep history of Australia’s Aboriginal peoples.

This was the conference at which Alexander Gallus presented his results on Koonalda Cave. I remember the scepticism about those results, the discussion over coffee at the breaks. In the end, Koonalda Cave would prove to be as important as Gallus suggested, but that was certainly not clear at the time.

Derek John Mulvaney was born at Yarram, South Gippsland in 1925. One of five children, his Irish born father was a teacher with the family moving around country Victoria to various schools and eventually to Frankston.

After completing year 11 at Frankston High School, John became a trainee teacher but quickly realised that this path was not for him. In 1943, the eighteen year old joined the RAAF as a navigator. He was sent to Canada for training and then posted to England in September 1944. 1944. During his days off he toured the English countryside, creating an interest in history. Apparently, it was his visit to the megalithic standing stones called ‘the Consuls’ that sparked his particular interest in prehistory. I was curious, but was not able to identify those particular standing stones in a short web search.

The War ended before John entered active service. Late in 1945, he returned to Australia, enrolling at Melbourne University as an honours student in history. The course was funded by the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme, a scheme that would have a considerable impact on Australian intellectual life.

At Melbourne, John studied Roman History under John O’Brian. There were just six in the class.

In 1949 he was appointed tutor in ancient history at Melbourne, enrolling in an MA. Twelve months later he submitted his thesis on ‘State and Society in Britain at the time of Roman conquest’.

Reflecting on this early history, I was struck by the timing of it all. By the time John was 25, he had started as a trainee teacher, served in the war, completed his first degree, worked as a tutor and then completed an MA. That’s not bad going! John was always an organised man!

John’s experiences as well has his study of ancient Britain had aroused an interest not just in archaeology, but in the possibilities of Australian archaeology. He applied for an Australian National University post-graduate scholarship. His application contained an unusual request: he asked to use the graduate scholarship to enroll in undergraduate study, in Paleolithic archaeology, at Cambridge University. Reflecting the influence of Grahame Clark and his colleagues, Cambridge was one of few university centers interested in archaeology beyond the Old WorId. It was, John argued, essential for him to train as an archaeologist and this required undergraduate studies in prehistory at Cambridge University.

His application was accepted, and in September 1951, full of enthusiasm, John became an undergraduate student at Clare College. Given that he already had two degrees at honours level, he did not have to complete the first part of the undergraduate course but was allowed to complete the remaining course over two years.

While John would later be critical of what he saw as Clarke’s imperial tendencies and indeed of the Cambridge school as a whole, that period in England was (to use his own words) a “Golden Age.” Upon arrival, John went to see Grahame Clark who was to be his first Supervisor. Clarke told him that, in addition to himself, John must go to a young man named Charles McBurney, who was the real Stone Age authority. John hadn’t heard of McBurney, but would learn much from him.

The then level of staff student interaction is hard to imagine today. For his two years at Cambridge, John was supervised every week by McBurney and also by Clarke until Clarke was appointed professor. Then Clarke’s place was taken by Glyn Daniel, so throughout his two years, John had contact every week with two academic supervisors.

Over the two years, John studied stone tools and took part in his first archaeological digs – in England and Ireland, Denmark, and in Cyrenaica, Libya. The Libyan dig was especially important, for it introduced John to the application of rigorous excavation techniques that he would later use in Australia and teach to his students, including Isabel McBryde.

Early in 1952, McBurney invited John to join his party to go to Libya to dig at the Haua Fteah, the enormous cave where McBurney had dug a trial trench the previous season. This was clearly an adventure for John. In June 1952, they drove across France to Marseilles, went by sea to Tunis and then drove across North Africa to Apollonia near where the site was located. There was a British army base at Apollonia. That proved fortunate, for John collected two serious infections, both requiring hospitalisation at the base hospital. 

Archaeology is about precision and preservation. Charles McBurney had developed techniques to excavate deep sites; the year John was there they got down to 27 feet. McBurney used sieves suspended on stands that he developed and he sorted material separately according to stone, bone, shell, keeping them separate. These were techniques that we used under Isabel’s guidance sixteen years later, using tweezers to pick up pieces of bone or charcoal so that they would not be contaminated and could be properly bagged for later examination by a subject specialist.

John was also exposed to the very early days of carbon dating, something that would be absolutely critical for him a little while later in establishing the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia.

In September following his graduation, John met and became engaged to Jean Campbell. At this point, John might have stayed on at Cambridge for a period or, alternatively, gone to Auckland as Professor of Archaeology, a move suggested by Clarke. However, while visiting friends in the north of England there was a car crash that badly injured Jean and also placed John in hospital. Coming out of hospital, he found a message from his parents that his father was dying. So the couple abandoned all other plans and returned to Australia, marrying after their return.

John was offered a position at Melbourne University teaching Ancient History. He was now teaching with his former teacher and mentor John O’Brian. Inevitably, his teaching soon extended to prehistory and archaeology. In 1957, John was allowed to introduce a fourth-year Honours history option to undergraduates, a course called Pacific Prehistory. This was the first course taught anywhere in Australia on the prehistory of our region. So little was known about Australia that Polynesia was taken as the main field, with Australian material added as the years passed.

In 1956, John began his journey into Australian prehistory by excavating a limestone rockshelter at Fromm’s Landing on the Murray River, a dig that continued into the early 1960s. Radio carbon dates from the site, John’s first, suggested that the site had been occupied for almost 5,000 years. At Fromm’s Landing, John discovered the skeleton of a dingo, the tooth of a Tasmanian tiger and the highest flood in the history of the Murray River, all about 3,000 years ago.

John’s Cambridge experience had already convinced him of the importance of interdisciplinary studies. So at Fromm’s Landing he worked with geomorphologists. He also took a palynologist, Sadly, no pollen was discovered in the deposit. 

John’s second excavation was also a limestone rockshelter, this time at Glen Aire on Cape Otway. This was Isabel McBryde’s first fieldwork experience.

John’s third excavation, at Kenniff Cave in Queensland, began in 1960. In 1962 he received a telegram from his wife, giving him the first carbon dates from the site. The oldest was 16,000 years. John thought there must have been a mistake and telegrammed back. The date was indeed 16,000 years. With that one date, the antiquity of Aboriginal occupation of Australia had been pushed back many thousands of years into the Pleistocene era.

Here we need to reflect on the state of prehistory globally and especially in Australia at the time.

Globally, the study of prehistory was in many ways still in its infancy. To a continuing degree, archaeology was dominated by the romance of the Classical World. In Australia, those few interested in Australian prehistory had come primarily from museum backgrounds.

In 1960 the University of New England was the first to appoint a tenured staff member, Isabel McBryde, carrying prehistory in her job title and was, I think, the first Australian university to require the study of prehistory as an element in in the introductory history course. In 1966, UNE was also the first to introduce an Australian prehistory course at honours level.

I enrolled in History I at UNE in 1963. Even then, there were very few textbooks. Further, those we had had a distinctly European flavour. By 1996 when I enrolled in honours, the frontiers were already being pushed back. Here there were two distinctive features in Isabel’s archaeological work, both reflecting John Mulvaney’s influence. The first was a focus on developing a regional cultural sequence, on exploring Australian prehistory, Aboriginal history, within the confines of a reasonably broadly defined but still geographically contained region. The second was the importance placed upon the ethnographic record as a way of examining patterns of Aboriginal life that might then inform the archaeological record. It was an exciting time. 

In 1965 John was appointed to a position at the Australian National University in the Research School of Pacific Studies, allowing him to work full-time for the first time as a research worker in the Australian region.

At ANU, John became increasingly involved with Jim Bowler (a geomorphologist from Melbourne University) and Rhys Jones (an ANU prehistorian newly appointed by Jack Golson.

In 1969, Jim Bowler persuaded John and Rhys Jones to take part in a field trip to Lake Mungo, in western NSW, one of the dry-lake beds in the Willandra Lakes complex, surveyed and named previously by Bowler. This visit set in train the most important archaeological discoveries in Australia, or perhaps anywhere in the world, to that time. The first samples of charcoal and burnt bones included material dated to 26,000 years before the present, the earliest evidence for human cremation. Another burial site located by Jim Bowler was an inhumation, ritually covered with red ochre, was older still. These were the most remote Paleolithic remains of Homo sapiens discovered to that point, placing Australian Aborigines at the very end, in time and place, of the human diaspora out of Africa. In 1981, John had the honour of introducing the nomination of the Willandra Lakes as a world heritage site, at a World Heritage Committee meeting.

In the midst of his other work, John found time to complete and publish The Prehistory of Australia in 1969. This book has now seen three editions (the most recent with Jo Kamminga as co-author in 1999 involved a total revision) and remains a classic.

In 1971 John was appointed to the Foundation Chair in Prehistory in the Arts Faculty at the ANU and in the following year introduced Prehistory 1 as an undergraduate subject. In addition to a busy archaeological life life, he became involved almost inevitably in related public activities.

In the 1960s, John along with Jack Golson and Isabel MvBryde campaigned for legislation to protect Aboriginal sites, including organising a major conference on the requirements for site legislation. Between 1965 and 1975, every state in Australia introduced some kind of legislation to protect Aboriginal sites. He was involved in the formation of the Australian (now Australian and Torres Strait Islander) Institute of Aboriginal Studies, being an executive member between 1964-80 and then its chair in 1982-84. He was also involved in organising the first meeting of the Australian Archaeological Association.

John became a leading light in bridging the gap between the public and academia, actively campaigning on pubic issues, including the struggle to save the Franklin River and its Aboriginal heritage. He became a foundation member of the Australian Heritage Commission in 1976, remaining a member until 1982, and member of the Committee of Inquiry on Museums and National Collections 1974-75, the body which recommended establishment of the National Museum of Australia. It would be 20 years before this recommendation would be acted on and even then its details were largely ignored. John was also involved in the formulation of the Burra Charter (1979) and was the chief Australian delegate to the inaugural UNESCO meeting in Paris, held to determine the criteria for World Heritage listing. He was instrumental in nominating the Willandra Lakes and Kakadu National Park to the World Heritage list. latter

John’s role as a public intellectual during his long career has been detailed in the book Prehistory to Politics. John Mulvaney, the Humanities and the Public Intellectual edited by Tim Bonahady and Tom Griffiths (Melbourne University Press 1996).

In the late 1970s, the ANU decided to include anthropology alongside prehistory in John’s Department. High student interest led to the appointment of another professor. Differences in approach created difficulties for John.  Partly for that reason, partly to open his post to a younger prehistorian, he decided to ease into an early ‘retirement’ in 1985 aged 60, being inscribed as Professor Emeritus at ANU the following year. 

‘Retirement’ is in inverted commas since John remained as active as ever. He became Honorary Secretary of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and Chair of the ACT Heritage Committee, while the following two decades became a golden age of writing and publishing. During this period John wrote, coauthored or edited 16 books, including his autobiography. 

Over his long career, John received many awards including .a CMG (Companion in The Most Distinguished Order of St. Michael and St. George) in 1982, an Order of Australia (Australia’s highest Order) in 1991, the Graham Clark Medal by the British Academy in 1999 and the Rhys Jones Medal from the Australian Archaeological Association in 2004.

Reflecting on the changes that had taken place over his long professional and public career, John suspected in 2000 that that there might not be another general prehistory of Australia. So much had been discovered that it was very difficult now to cover it in one book within the space limits set by publishers. Instead, it would now be possible and indeed more sensible to write specific regional histories. In a sense, that was almost a reversion to the position he had held in the 1960s on the need to develop regional cultural sequences instead of trying to create generic sequences that may or may not hold in individual areas.

He also mused on the changes that had taken place in the disciplines of archaeology and prehistory, at the way multi-disciplinary science had pushed out the boundaries of what could be learned. They have indeed been truly remarkable. This links to another element in John’s various reflections.

When he first became interested in Australian prehistory and indeed for many years after, he had not met any Aboriginal people. He was 35 before he saw his first Aboriginal people on his first trip to Kenniff Cave in 1960 and then met many after he started field work in the Northern Territory from 1963 on. He was not aware of the extent of continuing knowledge among Aboriginal people. He was alerted to this partly by the anthropological studies, partly through increasing contact. In 2000, he said: “I suppose in my own career I went from this ‘I was a Stone Age archaeologist, I wasn’t dealing with the living’ till I started meeting living people and giving greater and greater credit to work of Donald Thomson (Australian anthropologist), work like that.”

I could identify with that. While I was doing my honours thesis on the economic structure of Aboriginal life in Northern New South Wales at the time of European intrusion, I read Malcolm Calley's PhD thesis on Bandjalang Social Organisation with fascination. My thesis was a study in ethnohistory, using historical records to try to understand the economic structure of aboriginal life. At the time I was writing there was great suspicion among historians about the role of oral history and tradition as an evidence source. There was also a view that the Aborigines of Eastern Australia were too far removed from their tribal past for current memories to be a valid guide to traditional life. To me, the striking thing about Malcolm's thesis was the way it demonstrated that oral tradition was still in fact worthy of study as a way of understanding present and past Aboriginal life.

John became involved not just in the study of the Aboriginal past but in giving Aboriginal access to that past, in involving them, recognising their continuing history and contribution. Among other things, he played an important role in the transformation of the Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies into an Indigenous controlled institution, as well as campaigning for protection of indigenous sites.

By 1999, John was worried about balance, concerned that the pendulum had swung to the point that policies and processes were actively impeding the study of Aboriginal history. The consent requirements for digs, for example, imposed financial and time costs on honours or higher degree students that many students could not afford, reducing the numbers of those interested in Aboriginal history. As another example, the reburial of remains has the effect of destroying their archaeological value, including the possibility of using new scientific techniques to extend our knowledge.

Perhaps ironically, the work that John and others did to protect Aboriginal sites has led to an explosion in certain aspects of Australian archaeology and especially the need to carry out investigations in advance of development activities. This has created jobs for John’s students. I say ironically because so much Australian archaeology is now carried out on a fee for service basis without peer review or indeed the results being easily available. Meantime, and I find this sad, Australian prehistory seems to have dropped behind studies elsewhere. I still remember my astonishment at visiting the Danish National Museum last year at just how much was now known about Danish prehistory as compared to Australian. .

In 2004, Jean Mulvaney died after heart surgery. She was 81, a little older than John. They had brought up six children in the home in Yarralumla which John and Jean established when they moved to ANU from Melbourne. Because my focus was on John, I haven’t said much about Jean. She was clearly a remarkable person in her own right, you will find details given under sources below, and the couple formed a very real partnership. 

In 2006 John married again, historian Liz Morrison. John and Liz continued to live in the Yarralumla home John and Jean had established. John continued his work until his death  plus the gardening that had been his primary leisure activity..

Sources:

Australian Archaeological Association Award of the Rhys Jones Medal 2004 https://www.australianarchaeologicalassociation.com.au/awards/rhys-jones-medal/john-John/

ANU Interview October 2010 http://www.anu.edu.au/emeritus/ohp/interviews/john_John.html

In 2000,John was interviewed by Pamela-Jane Smith as part of the Personal Histories Project. A full transcript of that interview can be found at http://www.arch.cam.ac.uk/JohnTranscript

Mulvaney Reflections, Australian National University http://www.deepeninghistories.anu.edu.au/sites/John-reflections/index.php?action=about

John Mulvaney & Johan Kamminga, Prehistory of Australia, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, 1999

The Australian Women’s Register, Mulvaney, Jean (1923 - 2004), http://www.womenaustralia.info/biogs/AWE4884b.htm

Below is the YouTube video of John's 2010 ANU interview