The Captain's adventure - from wealth and power to the Dorrigo Hills

NEW YORK MARRIAGE: Clarissa (Clara) Jerome nee  Hall. This is the first in a short series on the life and times of Captain Hugh Frewen 

Many remarkable stories are to be found hidden within the history of the broader New England, stories once well known but now much diminished by time. This is one-such story.

I am not sure when I first met Captain Hugh Frewen (or Cappie as he was known), but it must have been in the early sixties. I clearly remember him from New England New State Meetings and from our car drive on Sydney. There he stood out in his tropical drill suit, frail but still erect.

At the time, I had no idea of his history. He was just a friend of my grandfather's.

I did find out a little later that he was Winston Churchill’s first cousin when I found a letter in my grandfather’s papers from Clementine Churchill to Hugh Frewen.

In 1943, David Drummond had published a book called Australia’s Changing Constitution: No states or new states. Frewen sent a copy to Winston Churchill asking him to read it.

Clementine replied to say that Winston had yet to read it, perhaps not surprisingly in the circumstances, but had asked her to thank Hugh and say that he would read it. Drummond had annotated the letter to say that Hugh was Churchill’s cousin.

I knew little more until I watched a BBC TV series telling the story of his mother and her sisters. I was immediately caught.

There was such an enormous difference between the quiet hills of Dorrigo where High Frewen spent the last years of his life and the world of sometimes wealth and imperial power that Hugh Frewen came from.

We can begin our story in 1849 with the marriage in New York of Leonard Jerome and Clarrisa (Clara) Hall. The couple had four daughters, one of whom died young.

Known as the King of Wall Street, Leonard Jerome was a flamboyant and successful stock speculator and railway investor who made and lost several fortunes.

Jerome was very much a New York man, part of that period of American history known as the Gilded Age. New York was his power base, his home. There he spent money on supporting the arts, on building race tracks and mansions.

The Jerome Mansion on the corner of Madison Avenue and 26th Street had a six-hundred-seat theatre, a breakfast room which seated seventy people, a ballroom of white and gold with champagne and cologne-spouting fountains!

His wife’s needs were  different. While a recognized beauty of the Gilded Age, she suffered from a degree of insecurity. Her sole goal, a biographer tartly recorded, was to ensure that each of her daughters married nobly and lucratively.

In 1867, Clara and her three daughters sailed for Europe, starting the next stage in our story.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 10 July 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   

Launching an introductory course on the history of Australia's New England

This is a photo of the North Coast Steam Navigation Company's Uralba in naval dress.
Built by the shipbuilder E Wright of Tuncurry in 1942, this was the last ship built for the North Coast Steam Navigation Company, the last wooden coal burner built in Australia and, almost certainly, the last ship built in New England for the coastal trade.

Back in June 2007, so twelve years ago, I started outlining a possible course outline on the history of Australia's New England. The trigger at the time was linked to frustration on the new school curriculum, at the way it it ignored particular areas, as well as my own concerns about the promotion of New England's history.

My 25 June 2007  post, Towards a Course on the History of New England- The Colonial Period, was the most developed. Note the way I have tried to tailor it so that schools in particular areas could use local examples and themes in the course.

In the years since I have kept researching and writing, but have never given up the idea that my material might form the basis for a course or courses. My view was and is that history has to be taught if it is to have real meaning to people. This is especially important where, as in the New England case, history has been effectively written out of existence by the passage of time and fashion.

Aberglasslyn House: The monumental Georgian pile designed by architect John Verge for George Hobler remained unfinished following Hobler’s insolvency in the crash of the early 1840s. Part of New England's built landscape 

I can now advise that, after all this time, the first course, An introduction to the History of New England, will be delivered through the University of the Third Age (u3a) in Armidale over the first semester in 2020. This first course is experimental, to test interest, to develop the course ware required for broader delivery and to sketch further courses where there may be demand.

Here I need to make an important point. In market test on the Uralla, Armidale and Glen Innes family Facebook pages,  I received 35 expressions of interest for external delivery within a few days. It was also suggested that the course should be delivered in conjunction with other u3A branches and local historical societies.

Horton River Band 1967: Dave Game, Mark Rummery, Chris Sullivan, Lionel O'Keefe. The band became a major vehicle for presenting New England's folk tradition.

Neither surprised me. For every person currently living in New England there are three New England expats living elsewhere. At purely local level, the same position holds for Armidale or Uralla or Glen or Singleton. People want to know their history and want to see it in a broader context. However, this creates a problem.

.In logistic terms,  it's not clear how this might be done simply, recognising that we are working outside a conventional university environment. So things have to be worked through. Can it be done?

Now as part of continuing market testing let me outline the course to you.

Scope

In geographic terms, the area covered is the New England Tablelands and the surrounding river valleys from the Hunter to the NSW border and, in fact. beyond prior to the separation of Queensland.  In time terms, we are looking at the 30,000 or so timer period since first human habitation.

This is a general introductory course that seeks to cover, if in a sometimes superficial way, most aspects of human life.

Overseas Students' Week 1960: The Columbo Plan brought many international students. By the early 1960s, they formed a significant part of the student body at the University of New England

Structure

It will be a full semester course with a break in the middle for school holidays. That means 16-18 lectures plus some tutorials and possible excursions. The number may fall a little depending on detailed course planning. Lectures will deal with main content, the tutorials with method issues and sub topics linked to the main course. Excursions are supplementary.

This is based on internal delivery. .Any external delivery will be a little different since on-line platforms will have to be used. That is one of the issues that will have to be worked through.

Tom Robert's painting of squatter Edward Ogilvie. Ogilvie staked out land on both sides of the Clarence River seeking to build a dynasty.

There are. no pre-requisites for enrolment nor is any knowledge assumed. This is an adult education course where interest is the only requirement. There will be no essay or assignment tasks since at this point the course does not provide a formal qualification requiring formal measurement.

This may change should it be possible to offer a recognised certificate or letter of attainment. Those wishing to obtain this would need to go through an assessment process without affecting others.

 Course Content

The course content is evolving, but this is the current draft:

1. Introduction

• Structure of the course, objectives
• Setting the scene: geography of New England, naming
• Historical overview 

1. Aboriginal New England to 1788
   

• Origins
• The journey
• Arrival in new England
• Impact of the Late Glacial Maximum
• The Holocene and the spread of settlement
• Aboriginal New England on the dawn of invasion

The heritage-listed Brewarrina fish traps are one of the largest surviving examples of Aboriginal engineering.

2 Colonial New England

• Britain and the context of European occupation
• The penal period
• The pastoral rush including the frontier wars and the impact on our Aboriginal peoples
• Mining
• Spread of the railways, rise of the towns
• Political movements including rise of the unions and the emergence of the first new state agitation
• Threads in social and cultural history: families, class, recreation, art, architecture

3. New England in the Twentieth century

• Economic challenges from the 1890s, context for what might follow
• First World War
• Emergence of new political forces including Labor, the Country Party and a resurgent new state movement
• Fights for services and the creation of new institutions
• The Depression, possible secession and recovery
• The Second World War
• Social and economic change 1950-2000
• Aboriginal history over the 20th century
• Threads in social and cultural history: families, class, recreation, art, architecture, music, film, 

Conclusion

Obviously a lot of work to go, but in the meantime I would be interested in any feedback you care to offer. 



 .  .  

Bikes put boys on a road to freedom

Road trip: Boys on an adventure. Setting off for Port Macquarie 1956. This is the second in a two part series. You will find the first here. 

In 1904, the North Coast Steam Navigation Company published its Tourists’ & Settlers Guide to the Northern Coastal River Districts of New South Wales. By then, the Great Northern Railway had attracted most inland traffic, but water travel was still the dominant transport mode along the North Coast and up the coastal rivers.

The Guide is something of a classic period piece, one that tells us much about the detail of Australian life in a particular place at a particular time. It includes hints about cycle tourism.

By 1904, the safety bicycle had become a popular sporting and touring machine, but it was still more the workhorse for many working men in country and city alike. Bicycles were used to get to work, to collect orders and to deliver goods.

By the 1950s, bikes had become the province of young people, boys in particular. Both girls and boys peddled to school, all schools had bike racks, but boys were allowed to roam, girls were restricted.

“I still remember”, Catherine Marker recalls, “learning to ride a bike when I was 7 or 8 with friend Beryl teaching me. However, as a girl I was not allowed to do the fun rides my brothers did”.

Bikes gave boys freedom. They travelled.

John Caling recalls: ‘I used to ride out to my old mate Robin Munsie's place "Strathhaven" on Burying Ground Creek most weekends. When I first started that ride the Grafton road was only sealed as far as Ralph Toombs' property at the edge of Armidale. The rest was gravel and pretty rough in places”.

Dick McDertmott remembers riding to Woolomombi Falls, Dangarsleigh Falls, Gara Gorge, Thunderbolts Rock, the Dangarsleigh War Memorial and Gates, Dumaresq Dam, the Blue Hole, the Pine Forest, Bald Knob and Hillgrove.

Sometimes, Dick and his friends would travel with rabbit traps, slug guns over their shoulders. The skins would go to Thos Green and the meat to the Niagara cafe.

Most trips were day trips, but long trips were a rite of passage for many boys.

 In 1956, fifteen year old Keith Douglas, Ken Sweeney and Richard Hoy set off for Port Macquarie down the then dirt roads. By the end of the first day they were at the bottom of the range. “Not a bad day’s ride”, Keith later commented.  

Four years later, fifteen year Philip Kitley and friend David Belshaw set off to ride to Sawtell, something that Philip recorded in a piece in the Armidalian. They made it in two days.

There wasn’t a lot of money around following the Second World War. Many of our bikes were made from bits and pieces, heavy steel frame bikes, but they were well used.  

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 26 June 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   

Kate Bagnall's great blog: The Tiger's Mouth. Thoughts on the history and heritage of Australia's Chinese

I have just found Kate Bagnall's great blog, The Tiger's Mouth. Thoughts on the history and heritage of Australia's Chinese. That history and heritage forms one thread in the history of New England. I recommend a browse. 

Reading Kate's blog, I decided to list some of her posts that were most relevant to my own research and writing.

8 July 2018, Chinese Australian families and the legacies of colonial naturalisation. Paper presented at the 2018 Australian Historical Association conference. It includes this excerpt:

"Barton could be so dismissive of his responsibility because, at that moment in time, domiciled Chinese men were able to bring in their wives and minor children under section 3 paragraph m of the Immigration Restriction Act. This provision was suspended by proclamation after only 15 months, and repealed in 1905, but during the time it was in force 88 Chinese family members, mainly wives, were allowed to enter Australia permanently. One of these was the wife of Kok Say, managing partner of the Hong Yuen & Co. store in Inverell. In mid 1902, Kok Say wrote to the government requesting a permit for his wife’s entry and stating his credentials – he had been naturalised in 1884 after arriving in the colony of New South Wales nine years earlier. In his words, ‘I have made my home here & have no intention of returning at any time to China’. His request was granted without issue and Mrs Kok Say arrived at Sydney from Hong Kong in November 1902".

Hong Yuen is a very well know name. The link above will take you to the Australian Archives  papers dealing with the application for Mrs Kok Say's entry. The image is drawn from Kate's paper.

12 December 2017 Communication and collaboration in the digital age. This paper presented at the Related Histories: Studying the Family conference, held at the National Library of Australia on 29 November 2017 provides a nice picture of some of Kate's work. My attention was caught by the involvement of Sydney merchant Quong Tart in cycling; I have been writing about cycling in my current Armidale Express history columns. The paper also refers to the work of Janis Wilton in Golden Threads. I hadn't realised that the website was no longer on line. 

13 August 2017, New guide to researching Immigration Restriction Act records

1 March 2017, Can a Chinaman get naturalised?’

22 February 2017, Finding your Chinese roots. Includes a lot useful background material. 

26 October 2016, Emma Tear Tack nee Lee Young. In this guest post, New England local historian Gill Oxley shares the interesting lives of Emma Tear Tack, nee Lee Young, and her reverend husband Joseph including their missionary work at Tingha and surrounding areas. It includes a link through to a 2010 paper by Ian Welch, The Methodist Chinese Mission in Australia,  which provides background information on the work of the Mission. It includes some details (pp99-20) on Joseph's work that I have taken the liberty to quote in full:

"New England, northern New South Wales.

The work in Victoria gave rise to missions in other parts of Australia. The Rev Joseph Lee Tear Tack had accepted the post of Superintendent of the Chinese Mission in New South Wales and had established himself at Tingha, in the Glen Innes circuit to which Edward Youngman had been appointed as minister. Youngman took little interest in the work and his attitude was accepted by the other ministers in the area.75

The pattern was similar to that of Victoria with an early curiosity tapering off into disinterest. While four hundred had attended in the early stages, it was not long before it dropped to about twenty or so regular adherents. A church building was opened at Tingha in 1887 but the congregation continued to fall with less than ten men attending each Sunday and eventually attendance at worship was down to an average of three. The major reason was the constant movement of men in search of new tin workings. The movement of Chinese to the New England district was stimulated by the finding of alluvial tin, for which the gold-sluicing techniques worked just as well.

His main means of outreach was to conduct English language classes at Tingha on four evenings a week. These were well attended with about thirty men coming each night and through the contacts made in the classes, he succeeded in convincing thirteen men over the years to accept baptism.76

His greatest success came after he managed to borrow a horse from a Chinese merchant and could move more freely. He started preaching at the main Chinese centre at Emmaville where his congregation attracted about a hundred men every Sunday. He travelled regularly to Tenterfield, Inverell and Glen Innes. He was still tied physically to the property at Tingha but spent two full months at Emmaville and returned every month. He supplemented his own income through his English classes.77 

In 1895, the Society decided to close the New England mission, and asked Tear Tack to open a new church in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, where a considerable Chinese population had developed. 

75 Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Reports 1889:xvi and 1891:xix.
76 Wesleyan Missionary Notices, London 1888:10
77 Australasian Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society Reports 1893:xxi; 1894:xxi; 1895:xxviii" 

14 September 2016, The curious case of Ernest Sung Yee. Fascinating post

 16 June 2016, In memoriam. Hunter Valley Story. 

15 January 2016, Building a DIY Trove list exhibition. A really valuable post focused on the Chinese in NSW.

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Riding the cycling craze: Safety bike a transport breakthrough

 Safety Bike group about 1900: Note the heavy dresses that had to be accommodated on the bikes, giving us the girls' and boys' bikes we know today. Photo National Museum.

“Twas Mulga Bill, from Eaglehawk, that caught the cycling craze” is the opening line in one of Banjo Paterson’s poems first published in the Sydney Mail on 25 July 1896. That poem signals the arrival of one of the most important inventions of the late 19^th century, the safety bike.

I was reminded of this a few weeks back. I had been doing some contract writing in the city. Each day I walked from the bus stop to the office past construction work underway for the Sydney metro. There, suddenly, the side of a building was revealed through demolition carrying the words Bennett and Wood. I was at what had once been Sydney bike central, the home of the famous Speedwell brand. 

Cycling had been popular for some time, although some of the early variants such as the velocipede or the later Penny Farthing are strange to modern eyes. They were heavy, expensive and could be dangerous.

There were three wheelers suitable for the ladies. Queen Victoria had one, although there is no record of her ever using it, but cycling was the largely the domain of men,

The arrival of the safety bike changed all this. It had a diamond shaped frame, two equal sized wheels, pedals that provided drive to the back wheel by a chain.

Women with their bulky dresses could not easily ride the new bikes. They were accommodated with a step through frame with a guard over the chain to stop their dresses becoming caught.

Men and women could now ride together. The result was a cycling craze that swept the world. 

In Sydney, Bennett and Wood had opened a cycle sale shop in 1882 in humble premises in Clarence Street, a single fronted two-storey warehouse. They were both cycling enthusiasts.

Initially they imported Penny Farthings, but then began importing the new safety bikes from England. In 1887, Bennett took full control of the business. As demand grew, he began local manufacture.

Demand continued to grow and the company bought premises in George Street and then Market Street. Meantime, down in Melbourne, a cycling enthusiast called Tom Finnigan had established a cycling business in the suburb of Malvern. The famous Malvern Star bike was born.  

The cultural and social effects of these developments were quite profound. They formed a pattern of life that survived in Australia to the 1960s.

Next week, I will take you down memory lane with a particular focus on Armidale, bringing back a world in which kids could roam wild in a way that’s no longer possible. 

This is the first of a two part series. You will find the second part here. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 19 June 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   

Kettling for the cause: workers' rights and wedding nights

Cacophony: Depiction of charivari in the early 14th century.

My historical research takes me down some strange by-ways.

I was listening to a radio report on demonstrations in Istanbul where the demonstrators were tin kettling, banging pots and pans together to create noise. I had not heard that phrase for a long time!

I first came across the term reading about the history of the miners’ union in the Lower Hunter, the Northern Coal Districts. This is a long and fascinating story that has had a more significant impact on Australian history than most realize.  

Coal miners were paid under a complicated system of piece rates. While earnings were better than average in good times, the work was hard, often dangerous and insecure.  

Starting with Miners’ Lodges in the 1850s, a concept drawn from the English and Welsh coalfields, the miners tried to organise collectively. For their part, the proprietors also organised, creating what came to be called the Combine.  

The miners’ main weapon was withdrawal of labour, strikes, while the proprietors retaliated with lock-outs and the importation of non-union labour, the scabs. The relationship was far more complex than this simple description, for unions and proprietors would also combine if anything threatened the powerful market position held by Hunter Valley coal.

Tin kettling was a powerful miner weapon in these industrial disputes. As the scabs arrived, the miners’ women and children would greet them by blocking roads and banging on pots and pans, creating a constant and often effective cacophony.

I had thought that this was the end of the story, but when I came to investigate, I found that this was not the common Australian usage for tin kettling. The dictionaries don’t mention the industrial usage. Instead, they focus on tin kettling as a custom in Australian marriages!

I shuddered a bit on this one. When I spoke to female friends, they shuddered too.

Imagine. You have just married. Tired, you come back to your new marital home for the first time after the wedding.

Unknown to you, your guests have all followed you home secretly carrying pots and pans. You are ready to go to bed and suddenly the silence is broken by banging, kettling and drumming accompanied by raucous noise! Ouch.

This is still not the end of the story. Researching, I found the practice of charivari or, in England, skimmington or rough music, a practice that spread to North America. Here performance, vulgarity and loud noise, including the banging of pots and pans, were used to embarrass wrong doers in small communities.

The next time your young child or grandchild gets the pots and pans out and starts banging them, remember they may be an extension of a long tradition!

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 12 June 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   

The mysterious life and death of Harry Freame

Over the last few months, my Armidale Express history columns have been devoted to the mysterious life and death of Harry Freame, soldier, orchardist and spy.

This post brings all the columns together into a single series so that you can follow the story through post by post. Each post opens in a new window, so read, close and then click the next link in this post.

The first part of the series discusses Australia's early intelligence activities beginning pre-Federation and then through to the immediate period after the ending of the First World War.

We then trace the life of Harry Freame from his birth in Japan through the First World War including Gallipoli to his early involvement in espionage activities as a consequence of his fluency in Japanese. .

Harry then becomes a soldier settler and orchardist  at Kentucky south of  Armidale and Uralla. There Harry and his wife became involved .in a variety of community activities, a son was born, but also experienced troubles.because of May's illness.

As war with Japan becomes closer, Harry is again drawn back into intelligence work, this time with fatal consequences.       

Setting the Scene

• Wednesday, January 23, 2019 Australia ventures into foreign policy - and spies
• Wednesday, January 30, 2019 Australia ventures into intelligence
• Monday, February 18, 2019 Early Royal Australian Navy intelligence makes a difference
• Tuesday, February 19, 2019 Politics burns spy moves

The Life of Harry Freame

• Monday, February 25, 2019 Creating the Freame legend
• Wednesday, February 27, 2019 ‘Spy’ a hero of Gallipoli
• Wednesday, March 06, 2019 Harry in the frame for new agency
• Wednesday, April 10, 2019 Settlement for soldiers: half the new farms would fail
• Wednesday, April 17, 2019 Building a new life book-ended by war
• Wednesday, April 24, 2019 Battling settlement and separation
• Wednesday, May 01, 2019 The Growers' Co-operative debate
• Wednesday, May 08, 2019 A brief period of stability and success for the Freame family as the clouds gather
• Wednesday, May 15, 2019 Japan's Empire a threat
• Wednesday, May 22, 2019 Nation unprepared for threat of war
• Wednesday, June 05, 2019 Harry Freame: odd jobs man in Japan
• Wednesday, June 12, 2019 End of a mysterious life: Harry Freame returns to Australia to die

A Note on Sources

I have called Harry Harry because that is the name normally used in Australia. He was Henry to his wife's English family. I have called his wife May rather than Edith, her formal first name, because that seems to have been how she was known.

 I have used John Fahey's Australia's First Spies: The remarkable story of Australia's intelligence operations, 1901-45 (Allen & Unwin 2018) for background material on Australia's intelligence operations as well as his chapter on Harry Freame. I have also drawn from James W. Courtney, 'Freame, Wykeham Henry Koba (1885–1941)', Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/freame-wykeham-henry-koba-6241/text10743, published first in hardcopy 1981, as well as military history web sites. 

Family material including references to family letters is drawn from Sheila Goodyear's WYKEHAM HENRY KOBA FREAME, DCM: an ANZAC in the family

Material on the Kentucky period is drawn especially from Sheila Goodyear supplemented by the regular reports on Kentucky activities contained in the Uralla Times accessed via Trove. 

End of a mysterious life: Harry Freame returns to Australia to die

Final chapter: The SS Tanda, the ship that carried Harry Freame to his death.This is the seventeenth in a series on Australia's early intelligence activities, the thirteenth on the life of Harry Freame. And so our story comes to an end. .

On 11 October 1940, Harry Freame sailed for Tokyo on the SS Tanda to set up the new Australian Legation.

Harry was worried by all the publicity, including the identification of his previous intelligence activities. He thought that he had been followed in Sydney in the weeks before his departure. He was right to be worried.

The economic sanctions imposed by the United State in1939 in response to the Japanese invasion of China were biting hard. Japan was already considering pre-emptive military action. The month before he sailed, Japan had signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy.

The new Australian Legation could probably have done little in any case, but the delays in appointing Sir John Latham meant that it was arriving after the signature of the Tripartite Pact.

John Fahey records that as the political climate worsened, the feared Kenpeitai was instructed to crack down on foreign intelligence activities in Japan.

Many Australian service members would meet the Kenpeitai to their cost. Founded in 1881 as the military police wing of the Imperial Japanese Army, it had evolved into military police plus intelligence plus enforcement wing. It was, in effect, a law in itself.

Political considerations limited action against US nationals, but all others were targets. Harry Freame had a particular problem because he was half-Japanese.

Events now are as confused as anything else in Harry Freame’s life.

The family believed, and there is evidence to support this view, that he was garroted on 27 January 1941, destroying his larynx. The official Australian position at the time was that he had throat cancer. Later family attempts to gain adequate compensation would be unsuccessful.

Severely ill and barely able to speak, Harry Freame was repatriated to Australia where he died and was buried on 29 May 1941. It had been quite a life!

This is not quite the end of our story, nor the last sad part.

Finding the orchard unprofitable with wartime restrictions, Harry Jnr decided to enlist. He tried to join the air force, but was unsuccessful. He therefore joined the 33^rd Battalion, a militia unit, on 31 October 1941.

On 27 March 1943, he entered the Royal Military College, Duntroon, graduating as head of his class on 4 April 1944. He had now achieved that office rank his father had sought so many years before. 

Harry Jnr was posted as Lieutenant to the 2/24 Battalion where he served on Tarakan. On 7 May 1945, Australian papers carried stories of a successful attack he had led on a Japanese pillbox. He was killed the following day.

It happened almost by accident. Suffering from a tooth abscess, Harry Jnr had called into a medical post. Invited to stay overnight, he was asleep when a Japanese soldier crept in and threw a fused shell under his bed. He died instantly. 

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 5 June 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   

Harry Freame: odd jobs man in Japan

John McEwen, Australian Minister for External Affairs: "the Consul-General of Japan considers the Freame appointment an excellent one, as Mr Freame had created a very favourable impression." This is the sixteenth in a series on Australia's early intelligence activities, the twelfth on the life of Harry Freame.

We come now to the next and last stage in the life of Harry Freame, one that would be as shrouded in mystery as all those that had gone before.

 I have spoken before in this series about the problems Australia faced in finding Japanese language speakers. I have also talked about the sometimes chaotic and ad hoc Australian approach to Australian intelligence gathering.

We will now see both in operation.

On 4 December 1939, Australian Military Intelligence employed Harry Freame on “secret defence work”.

There is no evidence that Harry had retained any intelligence links while living at Kentucky, but now there was need for Japanese speakers. His role was to monitor the small Japanese community living in New South Wales.

August 1940 was a big month for Harry. He married again. His new bride was a nurse, Harriet Brainwood, a divorcee with a son and daughter. He began working for the Military Censor as a Japanese linguist while retaining his intelligence role. He was also under consideration for another role.

Japan was a strategic threat to Australia, but it was also a major trading partner. Still hoping to avoid war, the Australian Government decided to open a Legation in Tokyo. This was an historic move, for this was Australia’s first diplomatic post outside the Empire and Commonwealth. 

Sir John Latham was appointed as Australia’s first Minister to Japan. A special act of Parliament was required since Latham was also Chief Justice of the High Court. Harry was offered and accepted the job of interpreter and odd jobs man, an unusual combination, at the new legation. 

In September 1940, Australian newspapers carried detailed stories on the Freame appointment including, in many cases, references to his secret defence work. Someone had backgrounded the papers and all hell broke loose.

 The Minister for the Army, P A McBryde, wrote to the Minister for External Affairs, John McEwen, to express his concern at the leak. The “possibility cannot be overlooked that this appointment may now be viewed with suspicion in Tokyo.”

McEwen defended his Department.

Freame’s activities were well known to the Japanese authorities in Australia. Further, his Department had specifically raised the question of Freame’s appointment with the Consul-General of Japan who had responded that the Freame appointment “was an excellent one, as Mr Freame had created a very favourable impression.”

Despite the assurances from the Consul-General, this leak would have unfortunate consequences.

Note to readers: This post appeared as a column in the Armidale Express Extra on 29 May 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   

David Reich on who we are and how we got here

Over the last few weeks I have been binge watching YouTube videos about prehistory. I haven't been taking notes, simply immersing myself  in the latest content with a special focus on the latest results from DNA analysis. I suppose this approach lacks rigour, being more akin to the last minute approach I used to follow to get through exams, but I find that it works for me in providing structure and generating thoughts and linkages. 

As I listened, I thought how much our knowledge had changed and just how quickly.

This is a video of a talk given by Professor David Reich last year at Harvard: "Who we are and how we got here - Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past". This the second presentation I have seen on the same topic by Professor Reich, this is the link to the first. Both presentations follow  the release of his 2018 book of the same title.

The book has attracted some criticism not so much on the science but on some of the wording used. I haven't read the book, it seems to have got caught up in current preoccupations about language, but the presentation strikes me as scientifically rigorous and indeed quite fascinating.  It's quite a long video, over an hour, but will give you an insight into the way that scientific research is challenging our deeply held perceptions about the human past.