History revisited - the man who stopped Thunderbolt

INFAMOUS CHARACTER: Thunderbolt is one of the most reognisable names amongst Australia's bushrangers. This is his statue in Uralla.

Some years ago on a visit to the McCrossin’s Mill Museum in Uralla I was fascinated to see that my great grandfather John Goode was one of those signing the document congratulating Constable Walker on his actions in shooting bushranger Captain Thunderbolt in Kentucky Creek in May 1870.

Growing up in Armidale, the name Constable Walker was a familiar one, if overshadowed by the more famous Thunderbolt. However, I actually knew very little about Walker. He was there as a necessary figure in a much bigger drama.

Alexander Binnie Walker was born in 1847, joining the police force as a teenager. After training in Sydney, Walker was sent early in 1867 to the Northern Police District where he served first at Grafton and then briefly at Armidale before being posted to Uralla in October 1867.

Uralla was, to use Walker’s own phrase, then it its roaring days. For four days a week Walker guarded the mail from Uralla to Bendemeer. The coach travelled past that rock now called Thunderbolt’s Rock south of Uralla.

In 1869, Walker and boss Senior Constable Mulhal were involved in the search for Charles Rutherford. Rurtherford and another man, Frank “Dr” Pearson had been bushranging and had been involved at a shooting at the Shearer’s Inn at Engonia where Constable McCabe had been shot and killed.

Pearson, a fascinating rogue who claimed to be the model for Boldrewood’s Captain Starlight character, deserves a column in his own right. For the moment, the two men split up after the shooting, with Rutherford coming up though the Liverpool Plains onto the New England to Innes Taylor’s property Terrible Vale.

Mulhall and Walker pursued Rutherford for four days without sighting him. Soon after Walker could have been shot, for Rutherford watched him while Walker changed horses at the pub at Carlyle’s Gully. Three days later, Rutherford was shot by the publican while trying to hold up the pub at Pine Ridge.

The fight that took place at Kentucky Creek has been variously described.

Walker was not a big man, five foot five inches or just over 165 centimetres tall, but he was young and obviously reasonably fit. Shot, the much older Ward grappled with Walker. Walker's horse fell. Thunderbolt rushed at him with his revolver in his hand. Walker then fired at the bushranger, who rose and attempted to grapple with the constable. The latter then struck Thunderbolt over the head with the revolver. It was Walker's last shot that killed Ward.

Private and official tributes flowed to Walker, including a Government reward of 300 pounds. On 1 June Walker was promoted to Senior Constable in charge at Glen Innes and then in August Sergeant.

Walker went on to a long and very successful career in the police force. His death at Cremorne in Sydney at the end of March 1929 attracted considerable newspaper coverage, in part because of the link the bushranging past.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 18 March 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - combatting leprosy

STARTING POINT: Leprosy became a problem in Australia during the Gold Rushes. The first reported case in the New England was in 1881 

I have deferred the next column on the history of history in New England because I need to do more research to complete it.

In 1881, New England’s Chinese community collected subscriptions to send a leprosy sufferer away to Queensland. The plan misfired. Police at Stanthorpe arrested him and sent him back.

Leprosy, now called Hansen's Disease after Norwegian Armauer Hansen who discovered the bacterium that caused it in 1873, has afflicted humans for a long time. It existed in ancient China, India and Egypt as far back as 6000 BC and may have been brought to Europe by Alexander The Great around the 4th Century BC.

The incidence of leprosy peaked in Europe in the fourteenth century. It was a disease that caused great fear and loathing. Lepers were expected to live in isolated colonies and in Europe they carried a bell to warn others of their presence.

While leprosy is still something of a medical mystery, it is clear that the disease is does not deserve the fear and loathing attached to it. In fact, most people who are exposed to the bacterium will never get the disease.

Leprosy affects the skin, the nerves and the lining of the upper respiratory tract, causing areas of skin to lose both pigment and sensation. It is this lack of sensation that results in most tissue damage. You hurt yourself, but don’t notice, leading to serious deformation, the rotting associated in the popular mind with leprosy.

In the nineteenth century, leprosy was endemic in parts of China and was brought to Australia by the incoming gold diggers. Those first Chinese lepers went unrecognised even when treated in hospital. It was not until 1857 that the disease was first identified.

We know that the Chinese diggers who came to New England first for gold and then for tin brought leprosy with them. We do not know how common the disease was, although its incidence was probably quite low.

In 1883, two more lepers were brought down from New England to Newcastle. They had to wait there, for no collier or coastal steamer would carry them to Sydney. The small Chinese community in Newcastle sent them food, but would not go near them. The Government ship Pinafore was sent up to take the patients to the infectious diseases hospital at Little Bay.

By 1888, there were 11 male leprosy patients at Little Bay. A new lazaret or leprosarium was established to isolate them from the rest of the hospital. There they would spend the rest of their lives.

The relationship between leprosy and the Chinese became a potent political weapon. Speakers wishing to stop Chinese migration railed against the “leprous Chinese”. But it was the Aborigines of Northern Australia who became the real victims of the disease.

With no natural immunity and greater concentration in camps, the disease spread, leading to a twentieth century epidemic, another disruption of traditional Aboriginal life. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 March 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - building the institutions that would preserve and promote New England's history

BUILDING HISTORY: Eric Dunlop's recreation of a bush school room in the Museum of Education around 1958

In 1920 the first New State manifesto, Australia Subdivided, put a key problem facing the North in this way: In Northern New South Wales, a few high schools, no technical schools, no universities exist to retain the intelligence and culture of the area.

To try to address this problem, the Northern leadership set about institution building.

The establishment of the Armidale Teachers’ College in 1928 was the first major building block. It was to include a museum that Education Minister David Drummond hoped would represent the North to students from the North. To this end, he peppered his Department with minutes demanding that they find the best possible exhibits.

Down in the Clarence, in 1931 Sir Earle Page suggested the establishment of a historical records museum, which was named the Clarence River Historical Society, with R. C. Law as Secretary. In 1935 the society affiliated with the Royal Australian Historical Society, the first country historical society to do so

In 1933, Drummond opened the Armidale Municipal Museum, proclaimed as 'the first municipally controlled museum' in the state. The museum, Drummond suggested, should be more than just a repository of specimens. To his mind, a country museum should firstly be a place for objects that are 'intimately bound up with the history of the district'; and secondly a place for things 'closely associated with the industries of the district'. He warned that, above all, the museum 'must not be allowed to become a mausoleum or dumping ground for curios'.

In 1936, the Richmond River Historical Society was founded. By 1938, it was publishing its own journal.

New institutions attract new people. Eric Dunlop was one of the people drawn to Armidale by the new Teachers’ College.

Born on 17 May 1910, Dunlop went to Fort Street Boys High School where he was taught history by CB Newling, later first principal of the Armidale Teachers' College. Newling reputedly fired Dunlop's interest in museums by setting a project for him and another student to examine and report on the Australian Museum's Captain Cook artefacts.

In 1933, Dunlop graduated from Sydney University as Master of Arts with first class honours in history in 1933. The following year with Newling’s encouragement, he took up an appointment as lecturer in history at the Armidale Teachers' College.

Dunlop stayed just two years at the College before returning to teaching. He decided that this was an error wanted to come back, but it would be 1949 before he could return. He would then take up the up the museums cause with great enthusiasm, leaving his imprint on Armidale and on the study of history.

Another of the new people drawn to Armidale by the new institutions was Jim Belshaw. New Zealand born, Belshaw arrived in Armidale early in 1938 as foundation lecturer in history and economics at the newly established University College.

The base was now set for an explosion in New England historical writing. Two very different institutions, a university and teachers’ college, would combine with local historical societies and community bodies to create a golden age in New England historiography.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 March 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - reflecting back on our history

FIRST OF ITS KIND: St John's Theological College was the North's first tertiary institution.

Continuing my story of New England historiography, the history of history in New England, the last decades of the nineteenth century saw a burgeoning interest in Australian history. Australia as a nation did not yet exist, but each of the colonies wished to promote their own achievements, while there was an evolving sense of national identity.

In 1880, for example, the text books introduced into NSW schools contained a segment on Australian history. That same year saw the founding of the Bulletin magazine. In 1901, the Royal Australian Historical Society was established, publishing its own journal from 1908.

This was also a period of considerable intellectual curiosity in areas such as ethnography and anthropology and of a belief in self improvement leading to the creation of school of arts and mechanics institutes. These trends were reflected in Northern New South Wales.

In the Clarence Valley, for example, Thomas Bawden, as President of the School of Arts, gave three lectures in 1886 on the early history of Grafton. His collection of newspaper clippings and personal notes eventually filled 63 volumes. By 1906, the Grafton Daily Examiner was calling for the establishment of a local museum.

In 1898, St John’s Theological College (the North’s first tertiary institution was established in Armidale to train clergy. In 1918 E H Burgman was appointed Rector, the following year A P Elkin was appointed Deputy Warden, bringing to Armidale two men who were to play major roles in the development of Australian thought.

Later, in 1926, Armidale would lose the College to Morpeth in the Hunter. From its base there and especially through its Morpeth Journal, the College would have a significant impact on Australian thought through the 1930s.

Local newspapers began to publish historical pieces, while settler’s reminiscences started to appear.

Of especial importance from the viewpoint of New England’s Aboriginal peoples was the work of R H Mathews.

Born in 1841, Mathews worked as a surveyor across Northern NSW and into Queensland. In 1872, he married Tamworth girl Mary Sylvester Bartlett.

Mathew’s work drew as surveyor and magistrate drew him into contact with Aboriginal people. From around 1890, he began to document the language and social structures of the Aborigines with a particular focus on Northern NSW and Southern Queensland, creating a resource that would be of increasing importance.

All this work was laying the basis for later studies, but it remained localised and fragmented. Events were now to occur that would create the basis for the emergence of an integrated, influential and arguably unique New England historiographic tradition.

I will look at this in my next column. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 25 February 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - the telling of New England's history

STARTING POINT: Many of New England's first professional historians were drawn to Armidale when the Teacher's College was established in 1928

Lionel Gilbert was an Armidale institution, something drawn out clearly in John Harris’s obituary (AE, 11 February). He was also part of what I have come to think of as the golden age in New England historiography, the writing of history about the place and region in which we live.

Triggered by Lionel’s death, I thought that I might tell you a little in my next few columns about the history of history in New England. It’s an interesting story, reflecting both the changes in New England life and broader events, fashions and trends.

How historians write is largely set by the canons of the discipline. However, what they write about, the questions they chose to ask and answer, is very much a creature of current fads and fancies.

You can see this if you look at the Australian histories on the shelves in the diminishing number of bookshops. War is presently popular, as are books connected in some way with the convict period.

In my case, I write about the history of the broader New England because that is my personal passion, one connected with my own family and with the Northern causes that I became involved with from an early age. I am, I suppose, an historical relic in my own right, part of the history that I write about.

Historians stand on each other’s shoulders.

What we can think of as the North’s first professional historians were drawn to Armidale first by the Teachers’ College (1928) and then by the newly created University College (1938). They focused on local and regional history partly because of the ethos of the newly created institutions, partly because that was the source material that was most readily available.

By 1949, their students were beginning to produce theses such as A V Cane’s 1949 MA study, Ollera, Study of a Sheep Station. This was followed by articles and books, culminating in something of a publishing explosion in the 1980s. By then, each Armidale bookshop plus Pidgeon’s had a small section devoted to local publications.

Not all this writing came from the academy. Much such as Owen Wright’s Wongwibinda (University of New England, 1985) reflected family and local interests that had been triggered and directed to some degree by the professional historians.

Interest and output then declined, although interest in family history continued to grow rapidly. It wasn’t all bad news. Individual historians such as Lionel or John Ryan maintained interest, while there was also some very good individual writing.

In my next column, I will look in more detail at the history of our history, starting with the early period in New England historiography. Most of the books are now out of print, but you can still find them in second hand bookshops or in local libraries.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 18 February 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - vegetable gardens a fading necessity

In January 1885, Albert Wright purchased Kangaroo Hills, now Wongwibinda. It had been done in a rush.

They had been living at Nulalbin outside Rockhampton. The year before eldest son Bertie had died after a lingering illness. The death came as a shock, and Albert and wife May decided that they must find a home in a more temperate climate.

They left Nulalbin in December for Bickham, a Wright family home in the Hunter Valley.. In early January Albert went north, buying Kangaroo Hill on the spot. At end January, the whole family shifted to the new property.

One of Albert’s first acts was to plant a large vegetable garden near the new house being built for his family. This was a common pattern on the properties around Armidale, for the kitchen garden and associated fruit trees were critical to the supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. It was a day’s ride to Armidale, so you could hardly buy there on a daily basis.

In town, people had more choices. Even so, most people had vegetable gardens, while much of the fruit and vegetables they might buy were grown locally. The Chinese market gardener was once a common feature in most Northern towns.

This reliance on locally produced produce created a pattern of seasonal gluts and shortages. When produce was plentiful, people bottled, preserved or prepared for storage in cool, dry, dark places. Later, when fresh produce was scarce, they ate.

Some of the tastes were wonderful. Some of us would kill today for a jar of Aunt Kay’s tomato relish!

That old world has largely gone, killed by supermarkets and modern transportation. In a time poor two income world, what’s the point of growing and producing your own when you can go to the supermarket and buy the quantity you want when you want?

The spring of 1885 was a very good one on Kangaroo Hill. Albert planted onions, cabbages, lettuces, pumpkins, beans and fruit trees. Then came that evil we all know so well, a sudden frost.

“It seems useless”, Albert wrote, “to try to grow anything in such a climate.” Nevertheless, he persevered.

Many years after Albert’s time, I read a book on New England gardens. The thing that struck me was the gardener’s ability to create micro-climates through location, wind-breaks and walls. We also learned when to plant things to best effect.

What did we eat with our vegetables? I have already spoken of beef and lamb or mutton. But then, the most luxurious meat was, arguably, roast chook.

Many people had their own hens, mainly for eggs, partly for meat. Those chooks were killed for special occasions. Others brought their chooks from local farms.

Today when chicken is the cheapest of meats, it’s hard to imagine a world in which chook was a luxury, when every part was eaten later. So the world changes.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 11 February 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

History revisited - settlers' craved Australia's cheaper meats

In 1893, Sydney Doctor Philip E Muskett attacked Australian’s love of meat, tea and tobacco. Dr Muskett was one of the first if not the first Australian nutritionists, much concerned with children’s diseases and especially rickets.

Australians would be healthier, he suggested, if they ate more salads, drank more wine, substituted a small cup of coffee for tea and walked ten or more kilometres a day. This advice was largely ignored.

Australians had become the world’s largest per capita consumer of tea and meat. This love emerged in the early period of European settlement and for practical reasons.

Tea was a low bulk, high value product that could be carried easily to NSW from China and then distributed reasonably cheaply. It disguised the taste of often muddy water and replenished fluids lost in heavy work in high temperatures.

Vegetable had to be carted at considerable expense or grown on home or station gardens. By contrast, livestock was readily available and could be driven to market over considerable distances. New England beef helped feed the diggers on the Victorian gold fields.

The European settlers were attracted to meat for another reason as well. In the home countries, meat was expensive, a relative luxury. Many families rarely tasted meat in their daily diet. Now it was cheap and freely available.

In his book on the history of daily life in Australia up to the First World Way, historian Geoffrey Blainey suggests that meat was more than a food, more than an incessant topic of conversation; it had become a way of life.

In the absence of refrigeration, meat spoiled quickly. For that reason, it was desirable that meat be slaughtered close to the customer, often in the cool of the evening. One result was a proliferation of butcher’s shops. The name of the best butcher, the best place to buy your meat, was a common topic of conversation.

You can see the remnants of this pattern today in the number of former butcher shops in the older parts of Armidale. Often located next to a general store, the butchers were both a sources of meat and of information. This photo is actually from Quirindi. 

People had their favourites. When I was growing up, my mother always went to a butcher in West Armidale because, to her mind, he had the best meat.

Across Australia, beef was the most popular meat because it was cheaper. This was not true in Armidale, for here sheep meats were freely available and cheaper. The more expensive beef cuts were less popular. Steak was a special treat.

Growing up in Armidale, I now struggle with the price of lamb. It just doesn’t seem right!

In my next and final column in this food series, I will look at other aspects of Armidale’s changing diet.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 4 February 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

Growing up in New England – four stories

Some years ago now, Neil Whitfield commented that he and I seem to have grown up in different Australia's. The trigger for the comment lay in an exchange of experiences relating (among other things) to first exposure to things Asia. He was right, of course.

I was reminded of this by four books that I have been re-reading. The books are all set on the Northern or New England Tablelands. Each is a story of childhood or young adulthood in a country setting. Spanning many years, they tell stories of change set against a backdrop of major historical change.

The period from the early eighteenth century to the start of the Second World War saw a period of economic expansion followed by consolidation. There were major shocks: the depression of the 1840s, that of the 1890s and the 1930s; there was war. During those periods, many lost their properties, some their lives, yet the social system they established seemed solid. Decline followed in the great remaking of Australian society from World War Two through to the end of the twentieth century. By the end of the twentieth century, their society that had seemed so secure had been largely relegated to history.

Writer and film maker Maslyn Williams was born in England in 1911. In the 1920s he came to Australia to work as a jackeroo on a large station near Tenterfield. His Mother's Country[1] is an almost lyrical account of his experiences there. His account shows life on the station but also in the nearby town from the perspective of someone who could mix across social divides. In Maslyn’s case, his experiences created a love of Australia that would keep him there for the rest of his life.

Poet and writer Judith Wright was born in 1915, a member of the Wright family who had major pastoral interests in the Falls country to the east of Armidale and in Queensland. Her half a lifetime[2] is a very different book. Written towards the end of her life, it is a partial account of that life up to the death of husband Jack in 1966 covering childhood, school, her experiences at Sydney University and then in Queensland.

The historical span of half a lifetime is greater than the other books, stretching over 140 years from the arrival of George and Margaret Wyndham in the Hunter Valley in the late 1820s. It is a more acerbic and reflective book than the others, written by a woman looking back and reflecting in part on the formation of her own views.

Binks Turnbull Dowling was born in Papua in 1923. In 1928, her parents sent her to stay at Kotupna, the Turnbull family property also in the Falls country east of Armidale not far from the Wright properties. Bink’s autobiographical memoir For crying out loud![3] starts in Papua, covers her childhood and early life up to her marriage. Full of detail, the book centres on life on Kotupna and the interactions among the extended Turnbull family.

Judith Wallace was born in 1932 and grew up on Ilparren, a sheep and cattle property just to the west of Glen Innes. Her family was part of the Ogilvie family, a family described a little earlier in George Farwell's book Squatter's Castle: The saga of a pastoral dynasty.[4].

Judith Wallace's Memories of a Country Childhood[5].centres on Ilparren, recording the now vanished life style and the changes that were forced on it from external events. He book ends:

The new owners (Ilparran had been sold) never homesteaded on Ilparran and the great house, still standing in spite of the sunken foundations, stares with blind eyes over the ravaged garden.

Three of the four books are marked by this sense of impermanence. In Judith Wright’s case, The Wyndham branch of the family lost much of their assets in the great crash of the 1890s, while the Wrights’ themselves would lose Judith’s beloved Wallamumbi the year following publication of half a lifetime. In Bink’s case, the book is in part about the decline and loss of Kotupna.

As personal stories, the books are interesting in their own right. Together, they also represent social history of particular life in an area over time.

I referred at the start to Neil Whitfield’s comment that he and I seem to have grown up in different Australia's.

The overlapping worlds of all four writers are familiar to me. I am very much younger, but aspects of their life and the people they write about are also part of my own life. I see things a little differently, in part because of age, in part because I came from another if again overlapping part of New England life, more because my experience and research means that I see them contextually, as part of a broader pattern.

It’s complicated to explain. Some aspects, my personal reactions, are better dealt with via autobiographical memoir where I can observe from my own perspective. But as historical documents, the four books are intensely interesting because I can put them into context as part of an interlinked story.

---

[1] Maslyn Williams, His Mother’s Country, Melbourne University Press, Carlton, 1988

[2] Judith Wright edited by Patricia Clarke, half a lifetime, Text Publishing, Melbourne, 1999

[3] Binks Turnbull Dowling, For crying out loud!, published by the author, Glen Fernaigh via Dorrigo, 1997

[4] George Farwell, Squatter's Castle: The saga of a pastoral dynasty, Lansdowne Press, 1973.

[5] Judith Wallace, Memories of a Country Childhood,. University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1977.

History revisited - a bit about bread

Apparently, the first bread slicing machine was invented by Frederick Rohwedder. Rohwedder started work on the machine in 1912, but bakeries were reluctant to use it for fear that the bread would go stale. Then in 1928 Rohwedder invented a machine that would slice and wrap bread. The modern mass produced sliced loaf was born.

It took some time for this new trend to reach Australia. Here mass production of sliced and packaged bread had to wait until the rise of the supermarket. Tip Top, the first national bread brand, was launched in 1958.

Prior to the rise of the supermarket, bread was produced, distributed and sold by small, independent family-owned bakeries. The bread, unwrapped and unsliced, was mostly white and was often delivered to homes by horse-drawn cart or, later, vans.

The mass produced sliced loaf may have been slow to reach Australia, but it quickly wiped out the old bakeries, a process aided by selective purchase and closure. Then came new bread making technology that allowed the proliferation of the bread shops along side the supermarkets. Still, the bread they make does generally taste different from the old loaves.

Older Armidale residents will remember those old loaves. As kids, we used the break them open and pull out the soft bread from the centre. They tasted different in part because the bread was fresher, in part because of the absence of chemicals added now to extend shelf life. They also provided the raw material for bread pellets that could be thrown at other kids!

Bread is one of the oldest human foodstuffs, with a history extending back at least 30,000 years.

In Aboriginal Australia, bush bread or seedcakes formed part of the staple diet across the slopes and plains of inland Australia. The seeds used varied depending on the time of the year and area.

Women harvested the dry seeds, winnowing the grain sometimes several times. The grain was then ground using a millstone to create flour. This was mixed with water to create a dough that could then be baked in the ashes, providing a bread that was high in protein and carbohydrate.

We know about these bread making techniques in part from the observations of early explorers and settlers, in part from the presence of millstones and plant residues found at Aboriginal sites.

While exact dates are uncertain, it seems likely that Aboriginal bread making is one of the oldest examples in the world, pre-dating the rise of agriculture that would make bread a basic ingredient supporting the growth of urban populations.

The existence of Aboriginal bread making in fact challenges one of the continuing assumptions about the evolution of settled society, that hunter-gatherer communities did not have access to technologies that would come with farming.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 28 January 2015. 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 columns by clicking here for 2009, here for 2010, here for 2011, here for 2012, here for 2013, here for 2014, here for 2015.

Volume three of Alan Atkinson's The Europeans in Australia wins the Victorian literary prize

Monday's post on my personal blog, Monday Forum - the historians, was triggered by Alan Atkinson's success in winning the Victorian prize for literature for volume three (the final volume) of  The Europeans in Australia. I was pleased. It also gave me the Monday Forum topic. Here I wrote:

All this brings me to the topic of today's Monday Forum, a break from Australian politics.

What historian do you especially like or dislike? Why are they good or bad? Do you actually read history? 

Don't limit yourself to my questions or, indeed, Australian historians. Go in whatever way you like. Tangents are welcome. I'm just interested in what you think.

Do feel free to join in.