Eureka to the Diggers

by Thomas Keneally

  Hughes agreed pleasantly, ‘That’s about the size of it, Mr President. That puts it very well.’ But again those present thought it possible that he had not heard properly. It was only when Wilson again asked whether Hughes set 5 million people against the 1200 million represented by the conference that Hughes replied, knowing that American losses were far lower than Australia’s, ‘I represent 60 000 dead.’

  Wilson was not in a conciliatory mood, however. An article had appeared in the Daily Mail that morning attacking him as an impractical idealist, announcing that there was conflict between the Dominions and the United States, and that Britain was threatening the future of the Empire by siding with Wilson. Everyone believed that Hughes was the source of the article. Wilson said he would accept the idea of a Class C Mandate for Australia over New Guinea, subject to full discussion by the League of Nations when it was drawn up. The league could define each individual mandate, including that of Australia over the Pacific Islands, to ‘fit the case as a glove fits the hand’. Hughes asked if he was really expected to tell the people of Australia that a mandate was to apply, but he did not know how except that it would fit like a hand to the glove?

  When he later received the documentation of the Australian claims, President Wilson pencilled on it, ‘I could agree to this if the interpretation in practice were to come from [South African Prime Minister] General Smuts . . . my difficulty is with the demands of men like Hughes and certain difficulties with Japan. A line of islands in her possession would be very dangerous to the US.’ On the one hand Wilson believed in self-determination and the equal dignity of all men. On the other he was concerned about American interests and concerned too that if the Japanese had control over the islands of the North Pacific they could turn them into military bases that were closer to Hawaii than Hawaii was to the US. America’s peace and security would be imperilled. The apostles of the war to end all wars were thus already aware of the danger of further ones. And Hughes, the most pragmatic of them all, certainly was. He dressed each morning at the Majestic with care, brushed his moustache before the mirror, snorted and was ready to put the man he referred to as the ‘heaven-sent’ in his place.

  Hughes received a telegram from his cabinet expressing bitter disappointment over the Class C Mandate. It seemed to them (inaccurately as it turned out) that under it Australia would not have the authority to prevent Asian immigration to New Guinea and thus to the mainland. But Hughes knew that New Guinea and the other mandated islands were a long way from Paris and Geneva, and that in practice the Australians would run the mandate according to their own principles. That Hughes had stood up to the president was common knowledge throughout Paris and caused amusement in some cases, and in others was seen as an example of a smaller man standing up to a moral bully. Still others were outraged. Secretly, the Prime Minister of Canada, Sir Robert Gordon, apologised to Colonel House, President Wilson’s aide and US delegate, for Hughes’ behaviour.

  The mandate issue was not fully settled because the Japanese objected, wanting an ‘open door’ clause under the Class C Mandates. They would rule out the right to fortify the Marshalls and Carolines if Australia would institute the open door. It would be a year before their objections were withdrawn and the mandates issued on 17 December 1920.

  By the first week in May 1919 the draft of the immense treaty with its 439 articles was ready for approval by the Plenary Session. It was a mass of compromise. On 7 May the treaty was given to the German plenipotentiaries summoned to Versailles. They were allowed three weeks to provide a written response. During the meeting, Count Brockdorff-Rantzau of Germany protested that the terms contravened the Fourteen Points. He did so while seated, which brought an angry note delivered to Lloyd George by Hughes, who had moved along the table. ‘Why does Clemenceau allow Rantzau to address him seated? He stood up and so did we all.’

  The Allied reply to the German objections to the treaty was delivered on 16 June with an ultimatum demanding acceptance within a week. The signing session was fixed for the following Saturday, 28 June. The Dominions were to sign for themselves, and finding out on 26 June when he got to Paris after a visit to London that he needed a seal to set beside his signature, Hughes’ staff searched the curio shops for something appropriate. Hughes particularly liked one of Hercules slaying the lion, but this was vetoed by Sir Robert Garran, who said, ‘No, Mr Hughes, you are not in the least like Hercules.’ Finally it was decided that an AIF tunic button could be shaped into a seal and it was the one that was used.

  The signing occurred on the afternoon of 28 June in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles. Clemenceau was in the position of honour, with Wilson on his right and Lloyd George on his left, and then the Dominion ministers, Hughes and his minister, colourless Joseph Cook, being seated between the Canadians and South Africans. Two German plenipotentiaries arrived at seven minutes past three and signed. That night there was a gala dinner and dance at the Hotel Majestic, and the British and Empire delegates returned the next morning to London. Billy met his wife and his daughter Helen at Victoria Station and their car was mobbed in the street by 500 Australian soldiers with shouts of ‘Where’s our Billy?’ Hughes was pulled out of the car and hoisted shoulder-high by four of them, and Helen was carried off by another. He and his daughter accepted their rough treatment with good humour, as the prime minister’s hat was knocked off and a soldier’s hat jammed in its place. Mrs Hughes was more shaken. The car arrived at the Anzac Buffet in Horseferry Street and here Billy gave a speech, after which he was carried on a number of shoulders back to his car, still wearing the Digger hat. After all, he was the Little Digger.

  The French prime minister had rather liked Hughes, since the French were cynical about the process and about the high-flown Wilson too. Clemenceau would later write, ‘In the first rank, I should have placed Mr Hughes, the noble delegate of Australia, with whom one conversed through an acoustic box from which emerged symphonies of good sense.’ He noticed that Hughes turned the machine off when he didn’t like what he was hearing.

  Australia’s mandate over German New Guinea, including New Britain and New Ireland, would soon be officially confirmed, but Australia would need to share the mandate over Nauru with New Zealand and ultimately with Britain too, though Australia was in effective control. The Solomons remained with Britain.

  Though Hitler would rise to power on the idea that the Allies had bled Germany white, the compensation for starting the war seemed small to Billy. ‘All the indemnity we get will hardly pay for repatriation let alone the cost of the war and pensions. At least I fear so. It is not a good peace for Australia; nor indeed for Britain. It is a good peace for America.’ His view was that Australia, with its 5 million people, had incurred a public debt of something like £300 million, which would need to be paid off by Australian taxpayers, while Germany, whose factories were unscathed, and the United States and Japan, who had made large profits out of the war, would all be at an unfair advantage.

  In the trenches, men sealed together by the most extreme peril had dreamed of a peace in which they would apply the new level of brotherhood and cohesion they had achieved in war to Australian society in general. After all, this was the War to End All Wars and thus the war to bring about fraternity. Yet even the soldiers were divided—on conscription they had been split down the middle, as had been Australians at large. The strikes of 1917 had signalled to many of them that the Wobblies and others were fighting against them to shut down Australian ports and Australian mines. The idea was that what had happened in Russia that year, with the rise of the Bolsheviks, might now occur in Australia. The withdrawal of Russia from the battle, its signing of a peace treaty with Germany at Brest-Litovsk in the early days of March 1918, had enabled the massive German outbreak on the Western Front, which the Australians had had a large part in driving back and in finally extinguishing at significant cost of flesh and blood throughout 1918. The Bolshevik revolution had a great impression, one way
or another, on both sides of the trench lines.

  Yet others of the Australian troops had relatives who were unionised, and they understood exactly, from their own pre-war experience of hardship and food prices, what the people at home were upset about. And so the problem for the future was this: whether civilian or soldier, man or woman, some Australians wanted the war to transform society, put all the old pieties up for debate, and bring in a new era of social justice. Other Australians wanted to return to the same society which had existed before the war. These latter believed that the trade unions, the Wobblies and the socialists would try to deny them their Australia, and that therefore it would need to be defended by arms.

  This division was potentially bitter. It was enhanced by the post-war slump, in which—as happens after every all-out war—prices of wheat and wool, metals and manufactures all fell, while food prices stayed high. Many Diggers who had been cheered home presented themselves for work at their old shop or factory and were told that times were too hard to re-employ them.

  The common belief in a White Australia had nonetheless been validated by Billy Hughes amongst the international show ponies in Paris and Versailles. Good on him! And within that White Australia, there were estimated to be a mere 60 000 Aboriginal Australians. The belief that they and their culture would soon disappear remained as strong as it had in 1901, and the idea that they should exercise political influence was countenanced only by a few informed whites.

  For those with jobs, meanwhile, the decade ahead looked glittering and tranquil, lit up by the pulse of modern music, by the sounds created by radio and, through open windows in the city and bush, by the melodies sent forth by record players. Modern consumerism was about to be born. The automobile was the most desirable consumer item and the young made it a venue for sexual experimentation deplored from pulpits and by their elders. The young were also enchanted by the seducing flicker of the cinema screen, and the long-lashed screen sirens stared and glimmered down the barrel of the camera in the darkened cinemas of the remotest towns, raising new expectations in the young.

  But in the privileged parts of cities and in the countryside, solemn elders, particularly those who owned great pastoral or commercial enterprises, were already discussing the need to recruit and equip armies to protect Australia from the political calamity which seemed to be in play. The crisis had emerged in many European countries, in defeated Germany, and even in Britain, victorious though she was. There was a belief that though the battle in Europe was over, the battle for Australia itself was just beginning. The War to End All Wars was giving way to the war to rescue society.

  In nearly all cases of individually mentioned Australians, the admirable online Australian Dictionary of Biography, founded and maintained by the Australian National University, was a most valuable resource throughout the writing of this history, though for the vast majority of Australians dealt with in this narrative other sources were also consulted. I shall not therefore mention case-by-case recourse to the Australian Dictionary of Biography, but acknowledge my enthusiastic thanks for it once and for all here.

  Another highly appreciated reference which I acknowledge but mention once and for all here is Graeme Davison, John Hirst, Stuart Macintyre (eds), The Oxford Companion to Australian History (South Melbourne 2001).

  There also exists a debt to general histories of Australia, including: Geoffrey Blainey, A Shorter History of Australia (Melbourne 1994); Manning Clark, A Short History of Australia (London 1964); Frank Crowley (ed), A New History of Australia (Melbourne 1974); David Day, Claiming a Continent: A new history of Australia (Sydney 1996); Beverley Kingston, The Oxford History of Australia, Volume 3, 1860–1900 (Melbourne 1993); Stuart Macintyre, A Concise History of Australia (Melbourne 2004); Stuart Macintyre, The Oxford History of Australia, Volume 4,1901–1942 (Melbourne 1993); Ernest Scott, A Short History of Australia (Melbourne 1936); Frank Welsh, Great Southern Land, a New History of Australia (Melbourne, 2004).

  CHAPTER NOTES

  Abbreviations to the notes

  ML Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales

  MS Manuscript (MSS plural)

  NLA National Library of Australia

  JRAHS Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society

  JAS Journal of Australian Studies

  AWM Australian War Memorial

  CHAPTER 1 OLD AND NEW FACES IN A COLONIAL SOCIETY

  Post-transportation convicts

  A.G.L. Shaw, Convicts and the Colonies (London 1966).

  Some Tasmanian convicts: Terry O’Malley, The Sin Eaters: Post-colonial portraits from Van Diemen’s Land (Hobart 2006).

  Australian sensibilities to convictism: Babette Smith, Australia’s Birthstain: The startling legacy of the convict era (Sydney 2008).

  On Fenians: Keith Amos, The Fenians in Australia (Sydney 1988); Thomas Keneally, The Great Shame (Sydney 1998); ‘Personal and Other Descriptions, Acct. 1156, Volume 10, Convict Establishment, Convict Department No. 40’, Western Australian Archives; ‘Denis Cashman’s Diary’, MSS 1636, ML; Geoffrey Bolton, Land of Vision and Mirage: Western Australia since 1826 (Perth 2006).

  Desolate in the extreme

  Michael Cathcart, The Water Dreamers: The remarkable story of our dry continent (Melbourne 2009).

  John McDouall Stuart, Explorations in Australia (London 1863).

  John Bailey, Mr Stuart’s Track: The forgotten life of Australia’s greatest explorer (Sydney 2007).

  Griffith Taylor, A Study of Warm Environments and Their Impact on British Settlement (London 1947).

  Senior inspector burke

  C.M.H. Clark, A History of Australia, Volume IV. The earth abideth forever, 1851–1888 (Melbourne 1978).

  Sarah Murgatroyd, The Dig Tree: The story of Burke and Wills (London 2002).

  Tom Bergin, In the Steps of Burke and Wills (Sydney 1981).

  Tim Flannery (ed), The Explorers: Stories of discovery and adventure from the Australian frontier (Melbourne 2000).

  Alan Moorehead, Cooper’s Creek (London 1963).

  Cathcart, The Water Dreamers.

  Transported gentlemen

  Mary Lazarus, Two Brothers: Charles Dickens’s sons in Australia (Sydney 1973).

  Charles Dickens, David Copperfield (London 1850) and Great Expectations (London 1860).

  John Forster, The Life of Charles Dickens: Two volumes (London 1927).

  Victoria Glendinning, Anthony Trollope (London 1992).

  Henry Dickens, The Recollections of Sir Henry Dickens, (London 1934).

  Being black and white

  Don Watson, Caledonia Australis: Scottish highlanders on the frontier of Australia (Sydney 1984).

  Richard Broome, Aboriginal Victorians: A history since 1880 (Sydney 2005).

  P.D. Gardner, ‘A melancholy tale, Thomas Bungaleen, the civilised blackman’, Victorian Historical Journal, volume 52, 1981.

  Politics and bankruptcy

  Charles E. Lyne, The Life of Sir Henry Parkes (Sydney 1897).

  Peter Cochrane, Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian democracy (Melbourne 2006).

  Sir Henry Parkes Papers, Consult Index, ML MSS 4312.

  Sir Henry Parkes, Papers 1879–1896, ML MS S6072, microfilm C Y 4441.

  Plorn tries to do a magwitch

  Lazarus, Two Brothers.

  Glendinning, Anthony Trollope.

  C.E.W. Bean, On The Wool Track (London 1910).

  E.L. Dickens, Correspondence 1895–1898, ML MSS 1372.

  The Wilcannia Times, 7 July 1881.

  Social bandits

  Social banditry: John McQuilton, The Kelly Outbreak 1876–1880: The geographical dimension of social banditry (Melbourne 1979); Russell Ward, The Australian Legend (Melbourne 1978); Pat O’Malley, ‘Social justice after the “death of the socia
l”’, Social Justice, volume 26, issue 2, 1999.

  Ben Hall: John Bradshaw, The Only True Account of Ned Kelly, Frank Gardiner, Ben Hall and Morgan (n.d., nineteenth century); Susan C. West, ‘The role of the “bush” in 1860s Bushranging’, JRAHS, December 2005.