Australia ventures into intelligence

Led by flagship HMAS Australia, the Australian fleet enters Rabaul in 1914. While this was seen as a great triumph, Australian naval intelligence had already achieved a greater victory. This is the second in a new series on Australia's early intelligence activities. 

Reading John Faye’s 2018 book, Australia’s First Spies, I was struck by the relative sophistication of Australia’s early intelligence efforts. I was also struck by the way that bureaucratic and political infighting tarnished that early promise.  

Three intelligence networks were important in the first two decades after Federation.

The first and least important was military intelligence.

In November 1901, British Major General Edward Hutton was appointed as the first General Officer Commanding the newly formed Australian Military Forces. Hutton, an experienced soldier who understood the importance of intelligence and the need for armies to study other armies, began building military intelligence.

On 1 July 1909, Hutton was replaced by Australian born Major General John Hoad. Hoad was an ambitious man and an effective bureaucratic politician, but he had little knowledge of, or interest in, military intelligence, and the function decayed.

The second intelligence network was the civilian network established by Atlee Hunt.

A lawyer, Hunt had been Edmond Barton’s private secretary in the period leading up to Federation. In May 1901, Barton appointed Hunt as secretary and permanent head of the Department of External Affairs to which, until 1909, the Prime Minister's Office was also attached.

Hunt immediately began to build an intelligence network using, among others, the overseas trade representatives appointed by the Australian colonies, now states.

"The third and by far the most effective Australian intelligence network was that founded by the newly formed Royal Australian Navy"

It was Hunt who launched Australia’s first ever international spy mission in 1901 when Wilson Le Courtier was sent to the New Hebrides to spy on the competing French and British interests in that territory,

The third and by far the most effective Australian intelligence network was that founded by the newly formed Royal Australian Navy.

Today, we think of the successful invasion of German New Guinea in as the first successful action by the Royal Australian Navy.

That’s true at one level, but it’s not really correct. Arguably, the most important RAN success, one that had a significant effect on the outcome of the First World War, was the breaking of the German maritime ciphers.

I will tell you this story in my next column. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 23 January 2019. 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, here 2018, here 2019  

Australia ventures into foreign policy - and spies

Raising the flag, Port Moresby 1883: This action by Queensland set the initial framework for both Australian foreign policy and its espionage activities. This is the first in a new series on Australia's early intelligence activities. 

In this new short series of columns I am going to take you into the world of Australia’s early spies, well before ASIO, ASIS and the alphabet soup of this country’s multifarious intelligence agencies.

In a way, Wednesday 4 April 1883 provides a useful entry point to our story. On that day, Henry Chester, the Police Magistrate on Thursday Island, raised the flag at Port Moresby to formally annex New Guinea and adjacent islands in the name of the British Empire.

Chester was acting on the instructions of the Queensland Premier, Sir Thomas McIlwraith.

The Australian colonies had been concerned for some time about the expansion of German power in the Pacific. They had asked the central Government to annex New Guinea, but also refused to pay any of the costs. In 1876, London declined.

Frustrated, McIlwraith. decide to act unilaterally.  

The British government repudiated the action. However, after the Australian colonies agreed to provide financial support, the British Government made the territory a British protectorate the following year.

Agreement was also reached between the Netherlands, Germany and Britain defining a key dividing boundary.

West Papua became a Dutch colony. The north eastern portion of the island became German New Guinea, the south eastern portion became British New Guinea, later Papua. Four years later, in 1888, Britain formally annexed the territory along with some adjacent islands.

In 1902, authority over Papua was effectively transferred to the new Australian Federation. With the passage of the Papua Act of 1905, the area was officially renamed the Territory of Papua, with Australia assuming formal control in 1906.

This simple tale provides the basis framework for understanding both Australian foreign policy and the emergence of Australia’s intelligence activities.

To the Imperial Government in London trying to balance costs and. imperial economic and political interests at time of growing competition between rising empires including that of the United States, the acquisition of new, distant and potentially costly territories was a low priority.

The self-governing Australian colonies and then the new Commonwealth of Australia were well aware of the imperial position, but took a different view.

While loyal to the Empire, they saw the South Pacific as their economic and political territory, wishing to establish a hegemony similar to that asserted by the Unites States over the Americas with the 1823 Munroe Doctrine. They were also concerned at the growing influence of other rival empires in the Pacific that threatened this dream. 

The end result was the early emergence of a quite distinct if parochial Australian foreign policy. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 16 January 2019. 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, here 2018, here 2019  

Reflections of Christmas past and the season of homecoming

Stand and deliver: The Belshaw boys, Mann Street, Christmas 1951. Cowboys and Indians were all the rage.

Christmas is a very special time for all of us, marked by our own family rituals.

Growing up, Christmas began with a pine branch buried in a pot. Downtown, brother David and I visited Coles and Penneys with our money clutched in our hands to buy presents.

On Christmas Eve people came round to our house for drinks. We had to go to bed, but were allowed to stay up for a while to meet people.

Christmas Day dawns. On our bed is a Santa sack full of presents. We play with these waiting for our parents to wake up. They do, and we get our presents from them.

Mid morning and we go down to Fa and Gran’s, a block away in Mann Street. This was always open house for our grandparents’ friends and electorate workers. The Mackellars who managed Forglen, Fa’s property, were always there with eldest a little older than me. We talk to people and go outside to play.

Once people have gone, we get another set of presents from our grandparents and aunts. Then to Christmas lunch, always a roast chook. We kids sit in a little sun room off the main dining room.

After lunch we play, rolling down the grass slopes. Sometimes there are special events. I remember one Christmas a piper played, striding up and down the lawns at the back of the house.

Later we go up to the Halpins for late afternoon Christmas drinks.

Time passes. I am living in Canberra, part of the great New England Diaspora. By car, train and plane many of us try to come home, meeting family and old friends, revisiting old sites.

This pattern is replicated across the greater New England. Les Murray’s great poem The Bulahdelah-Taree Holiday Song Cycle, vividly describes the return of the kids from the city.

The last time I saw Zeke was on the Christmas train. Zeke and I were in scouts together, 2nd Armidale Troop. We were friends.

I suppose that 2nd Armidale still has a bob a job week equivalent. That year Zivan and I decided to clean shoes in Beardy Street. We stood there, but no one came up to us.

Finally we overcame our shyness, started spruking and approaching people. The cash rolled in. I think that we both learned an important lesson, the way in which you have to stand outside yourself to be successful.

Those Christmases were very special times as those dispersed over tens of thousands of miles came back together. I hope that you and yours had a very Happy Christmas.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column, the first for 2019 in the Armidale Express Extra on 9 January 2019. 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, here 2018, here 2019  

A new history year dawns in New England - Port Arthur, Isabel McBryde and the importance and difficulties of multidisciplinary studies

And so we come to the start of a new historical year, or should that be historiographic year since I am talking about writing history?  

To mark the start of the year, UNE scholars Richard Turfin and Martin Gibbs had an interesting piece in the Conversation, Why archaeology is so much more than just digging,. With their team, they are currently over a year into a research project, Landscapes of Production and Punishment, that uses evidence of the built and natural landscape to understand the experience of convict labour on the Tasman Peninsula, Tasmania between 1830 and 1877.

At its peak, nearly 4,000 convicts and free people lived on the penal peninsula. Their day-to-day activities left traces in today’s landscape that the teams looks to locate and analyse using historical research, remote sensing and archaeological field survey.

I am interested in their work in part because New England had two penal colonies, one at Newcastle, the other Port Maquarie.

Joseph Backler (1813-1895). Port Macquarie c1840. The penal settlement was established in 1821 and finally closed in 1830. 

Several things struck me reading the piece. One was simply the advances in technology over the years.

I became involved with Isabel McBryde's work in Australian archaeology as a first year student at the University of New England in (gulp) 1963. In 1967, I was a member of her first archaeology honours class, the first such class in Australia.

Isabel sought to use the latest science and technology, but it was just so limited. Radio carbon dating was in its infancy, while none of the passive ground sensing technology that we know today existing although simple metal detectors were already being used by some prospectors and treasure hunters. Aerial photography was the most advanced technology available to Isabel and that was quite expensive.

Like the current UNE team, Isabel attempted to combine survey work with historical and ethnographic records and later Aboriginal memory. She also involved other disciplines including botanists, zoologists, geologists and geographers to aid her in her work.  

UNE archaeological survey c 1963-64. Mick Moore left, Jim Belshaw right. Photo Isabel McBryde. 

Today, of course, we know so much more and have so much more more depth available to us. That's good, of course, but there was a certain enjoyment in our then innocence, the rush of the new.

At UNE I was involved in what we now call multidisciplinary studies. In fact, for most of my working life I have been involved in working with other fields, other disciplines, aided by broad based studies. In doing so, I became very aware of the way in which professional silos blind us, limit the questions we ask, limit our ability to develop new ideas.

This may be a prejudice, but I think that this problem has become worse as education has become more narrowly vocation, specialisation deeper. But if this is a prejudice,  I know with a much higher degree of certainty just how much of a challenge the spread of knowledge has become.

I am a general historian. Yes, I have a strong focus on a particular area, but within that area I try to understand and write on as many aspects of human life over 30,000 years as I can.. I am constantly reminded how little I know, aware of the possible things I don't know that I don't know!

It's not all bad, of course. The work I do is is a constant broad education. Mind you, I sometimes wonder just how I might have gone if I had put as much time and thought into my university studies?!    

Which brings me to my final point. Over this year I hope to continue to bring you new things, new ideas, new slants on New England history that may interest or at least inform broader thought.