A regular visitor from New Caledonia, Pierre Loti voyaged to Sydney from 1937 until its seizure in 1940. Photograph courtesy of Jean-Paul Fontanon.

This week on 2SER Breakfast, Dr Peter Hobbins talked to new breakfast host Tess Connery about French Nazis in Sydney during World War II. Listen to  Peter and Tess on 2SER here  After France fell to Germany in June 1940 in World War II, the loyalties of French colonies around the world were divided as they had to choose between loyalty to the French Vichy government that was now in place, or the Free French rebels under General Charles de Gaulle. This confusion rippled across the British Empire as it became unclear who French colonials were loyal to and whether the Allies could rely on their support. In September 1940 a steamship called the Pierre Loti sailed out of Indochina (Vietnam) to New Caledonia. When the ship arrived in Noumea, the new French Governor Henri Sauteau had just declared that both the New Hebrides and New Caledonia  were to be a Free French colonies, and that local supporters of the French Vichy government were to be deported. These Vichyists, mainly French citizens and some colonials, were put on board the Pierre Loti for repatriation to Indochina. Before returning to Indochina however, the ship was due in Australia.

Sydney Morning Herald, 12 November 1940, p10 via Trove

In October 1940 the Pierre Loti arrived in Sydney. How were the Australian authorites, who were after all part of the British Empire, to deal with these people who wanted to be part of their homeland's government but didn't want to fight against the Germans either? They weren't enemies or prisoners of war, so they were classed by the Australian government as aliens and housed in hotels around town while a decision was made. The crew on board the ship who were mainly Vietnamese and Lascar sailors, were sent to the Quarantine Station at Manly, where one of the sailors inscribed his name into the sandstone. Several of the ship's officers were also Vichyists, with one of them, Jean de Boisriou, accused of being a 'rabid Nazi' by a Free French supporter in Sydney. To the Free French in Sydney it seemed clear that the Vichyists were fundamentally Nazis walking around town, and they wanted these collaborationists kicked out of Australia as well.

This large inscription left by a ‘Tonkinese’ sailor in 1940 marks the beginning of a long detention at the Quarantine Station for Vietnamese and Arabic crewmen aboard the French steamship Pierre Loti. Photograph: Ursula K Frederick, Sydney Harbour National Park.

The British acquisitioned the Pierre Loti in November 1940 which was used as a merchant marine. The crew were offered the possibility of continuing to work on the ship if they agreed to sign a document stating that  were loyal to Britain and the Free French, but none were prepared to accept these terms. In April 1941 Quarantine Station staff reported that there were still about 50 sailors from the Pierre Loti at the station. It's likely they were gradually returned to French territory from May 1941 along with the Vichyist passengers and officers, although it is unclear what effect the Japanese occupation of Indochina had upon such plans. To read more about the Pierre Loti and the French Vichyists in Sydney, head to the Australian National Maritime Museum's website here where Peter has written a more detailed blog post: https://anmm.blog/2017/11/29/two-invasions-two-nations-and-a-solitary-carving/ You can also explore other aspects of the Sydney's Vietnamese and French communities on the Dictionary here and and here.    Peter Hobbins is an historian of science, technology and medicine at the University of Sydney. Much of his work has explored the meanings and boundaries of 'scientific medicine', in both nineteenth- and twentieth-century Australia. He is the author of a book on snakes and snakebite in colonial Australia, and co-author with Ursula K Frederick and Anne Clarke of 'Stories from the Sandstone: Quarantine inscriptions from Australia's immigrant past', winner of the 2017 NSW Community and Regional History Prize at the Premier's History Awards. In 2016 Peter was the Merewether Fellow at the State Library of New South Wales, researching Sydney-based amateur naturalist, James Samuel Bray. He appears on 2SER for the DIctionary in a voluntary capacity. Thanks Peter! Listen to the podcast with Peter & Tess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Tess Connery on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.  The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing funding and needs your help. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction!

Leigh Straw, Lillian Armfield: How Australia’s First Female Detective Took on Tilly Devine and the Razor Gangs and Changed the Face of the Force

Hachette Australia, 306 pp., ISBN: 9780733638107, p/bk, AUS$32.99

Leigh Straw, the author of The Worst Woman in Sydney: The Life and Crimes of Kate Leigh (2016), now gives us Lillian Armfield: How Australia’s First Female Detective Took on Tilly Devine and the Razor Gangs and Changed the Face of the Force (2018). Straw receives a fabulous endorsement from Larry Writer. The man whose work Razor: A True Story of Slashers, Gangsters, Prostitutes and Sly Grog (2001) did so much to bring this period of Australia’s history and the characters that dominated it to a wider audience, enthusiastically claims the work to be: “An exhaustively researched and beautifully written true crime tour de force” (front cover). High praise. Richly deserved. This is a biography that has been rigorously researched and carefully crafted. In addition to being a diligent researcher, Straw is a terrific storyteller. Armfield’s personal history unfolds at pace. There are stake outs, lost girls, hard women, bad men and the various crimes that compete for attention in a tough city. Lillian Armfield, a descendant of thieves (p. 1), is certainly an extraordinary figure. There is an emphasis in the book on the “firsts” that Armfield achieved. For example, in 1915 Armfield was one of the first (of only two) women to be appointed as a police officer in Australia (p. xiv). In another impressive first, Armfield was carrying a revolver when female officers in New South Wales “were not officially given guns until the 1970s” (p. 182). Straw also elegantly captures and portrays the many faces of Australia’s first female detective. This was a woman you would address as “ma’am” in a situation requiring the assistance of police and a woman you would be proud to call “Lillian” in other circumstances. Issues of gender are crucial to the text. Many readers will recognise the stories of being passed over, of being dismissed and of having credit for good work given to a male colleague. In an especially disgusting act of discrimination, when Armfield retired in December 1949 after nearly thirty-five years of distinguished service, she was denied a pension on the grounds that: “Lillian had joined the police six months older than the cut-off age, making her ineligible for membership in the Police Force Pensions Fund” (p. 232). In 1965, when Lillian was eighty, the New South Wales Government attempted, belatedly, to redress the issue and granted her a “special pension in recognition of her services” (without impacting upon her Commonwealth pension) (p. 233). The book includes general notes for each chapter, rather than traditional endnotes or footnotes, but there is sufficient guidance given here for those who wish to follow up particular points or interest or learn more about specific events. There is, happily, a useful index. Images which show Armfield in several different settings and provide insight into some of the people that Armfield was up against are also reproduced. Armfield is a vital figure, not just in the history of New South Wales policing, but in Australian women’s history. Vince Kelly's earlier biography of Lillian Armfield, Rugged Angel: The Amazing Career of Policewoman Lillian Armfield, was published back in 1961 and this fresh look at her story was long overdue. This book is great reading for anyone wanting to know more about Sydney in the early to mid-twentieth century, as well as those interested in issues of crime and crime control. It's also a book for readers who are fascinated by pioneering women who have achieved great things, not just for themselves but for all of us.   Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, May 2018 For a preview of the book or to purchase online, visit the Hachette website here: https://www.hachette.com.au/book/lillian-armfield

There's some essential maintenance being done on the Dictionary today, which might result in some delays and difficulties searching the site. You should still be able to use Browse menus (listed in the brown column on the right hand side of every page in the Dictionary) and links within the site to move around so if you get an error message, please try these. Click here to be taken to the list of entries as a starting point. We apologise for any inconvenience.  

John McCormack and unidentified woman assembling aircraft cowling in Wunderlich factory, Redfern 1943, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (PXA 355, 803)

Jill Roe, Miles Franklin: A Short Biography

HarperCollins Australia (Fourth Estate), 417 pp., ISBN: 9781460755792, p/bk, AUS$32.99

  The first edition of the late Jill Roe’s award-winning work Stella Miles Franklin: A Biography was published in 2008. A decade later, a new edition has been produced: Miles Franklin: A Short Biography (2018). The new edition is, as it claims, shorter. Much shorter, at 417 pages, down from 709. The idea of a shortened version of Roe’s epic volume that documents Franklin, her family, friends and the age in which she lived and wrote, felt, at first, a little unsettling, even sacrilegious. Surely, the text that I have been holding aloft as an example to students, alongside Grace Karskens’ The Colony: A History of Early Sydney (2009), with exhortations of “this is what you can do, this is what committed and rigorous archival research can achieve” could not be subjected to an editor’s pen. Editor Neil Thomas (in collaboration with Roe's partner Beverley Kingston) has however ensured the integrity of Roe’s work with an approach to abridgement that focuses on removing full sentences and entire paragraphs that offered additional information to the central narrative, rather than merely chipping away at each line of text and deleting adjectives or any other word that presented itself as potentially superfluous. Looking at the two editions side-by-side and comparing the first chapter of each line-by-line reveals that all the material removed is contextual rather than critical. The cuts reduce the first chapter from 21 pages to 10 and have a flow-on effect that results in only 27 endnotes instead of 67. The incisions are neat and clean. It could have been so easy to distort Franklin’s story or re-imagine Roe’s interpretation but thoughtful work has resulted in a biography that unfolds naturally and seamlessly. This shortened biography (perhaps better described as a tightened biography) adds an energy and a sense of urgency to Franklin’s story. The purpose of the text is clear and unrelenting: this is Franklin’s life of success, fear, failure, international work and a devoted circle of companions. Miles Franklin is still here, complicated, contradictory, determined, sometimes difficult to understand, very much ahead of her time and always talented. Jill Roe is also still here, authoritative, compassionate, meticulous and a Franklin scholar without equal. The text on the cover of this new edition describes Franklin as a feminist, activist and literary legend. It also features a classic image of Franklin: beautiful, long-haired and very young in a snugly fitting black suit with the sharp lines of matching hat, gloves and umbrella. This is a striking contrast to the original cover which features Franklin in her mid-30s, still beautiful, but in soft muted tones that merge into the dust jacket’s beige background. Using Franklin’s famous silhouette is clever biographical and literary shorthand; this is Miles Franklin who wrote Australia’s first 'New Woman' novel, an important genre focused on intelligent, educated, emancipated and independent women. This is also the Franklin who marched at union rallies, served as a cook in a military hospital, lobbied for better housing, railed against ideas of war, stood up against censorship and who produced a body of work that has forever changed the Australian literary landscape. The cover design serves as a statement that this is a book slightly less concerned about background information and very much concerned about her. As a woman who often overlooked her own birthday and who easily lied about her age, Franklin might also appreciate the new design. Though fewer images have been reproduced in this edition, it is great to see pictures integrated within the text, anchored to description, rather than sequestered on sheets of glossy paper. Another change is the inclusion of an extra appendix, one that lists all the winners of the Miles Franklin Literary Award since the first Award was presented to Patrick White for Voss in 1957 (p. 339) and of the Stella Prize since being awarded to Carrie Tiffany for Mateship with Birds in 2013 (p. 342). For some, these prizes are symbols of Franklin’s impact on the national imagination while annual discussions, and occasional controversies, of these prestigious accolades ensure perennial discussions around Australian literature and the Australian woman who gave her life to establishing and promoting a distinctly Australian voice: written works we could proudly assert as our own. A guide to sources and the endnotes have been retained in 2018 but, regrettably this version does not have an index. Jill Roe’s Miles Franklin: A Short Biography is a thoughtfully abridged and accessible edition of a classic Australian biography. While it's not a replacement for the original, which will still be essential reading for anyone studying Franklin and the history of Australian literature, this shorter, tighter version should find a larger audience among readers who want to understand Franklin's extraordinary life and work. In the original iteration, and in this new edition, Roe noted that: “A final acknowledgement is due to Miles herself. She has been good company and taught me much” (p. 669; p. 415). Miles Franklin is, as is her greatest biographer, still very good company indeed. The lessons are still there too, in her own words as well as in her actions. Franklin may not have achieved the brilliant career that she dreamed of and that she worked so hard for, but she is indeed a literary legend, and this successful abridgement of her biography provides an engaging introduction to her legacy. Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, April 2018 You can read an excerpt of the book on the HarperCollins website here.  

The Parramatta River with Searle's monument c1915 by GN Wilson, courtesy National Library of Australia (nla.pic-an24616593)

Today, April 18, is International Day for Monuments and Sites, a time when people around the world celebrate historical, spiritual , and cultural heritage. It's been going since 1983, run by an international organisation called ICOMOS, promoting the conservation, promotion and protection of heritage places.

Listen to  Lisa and Jess on 2SER here 

The theme for this year's Day is Heritage for Generations. Sharing stories and the transfer of knowledge between generations is a crucial step in cultural development, characterising the human experience since time immemorial. The Dictionary of Sydney plays a vital role in sharing the history and cultural heritage of metropolitan Sydney, so today I thought we'd look at the stories behind three of Sydney's monuments that appear on the website. Appin Massacre Memorial The Appin massacre occurred 202 years ago in the early hours of the morning of 17 April 1816, the outcome of a military reprisal raid against Aboriginal people ordered by Governor Lachlan Macquarie. At least 14 Dharawal men, women and children were killed when soldiers, under the command of Captain James Wallis, shot at and drove a group of Aboriginal people over the gorge of the Cataract River. The massacre is often said to mark the end of hostilities on the Cumberland Plain, a war that began in the early 1790s when settlers began to take land for farms, and continued in cycles as they expanded into new areas. However violent incidents continued until at least August 1816 and only ceased after Macquarie's instigation of alternate policies – banishment, and then amnesty for the Aboriginal leaders. An act of officially sanctioned violence and murder, we need to recognise this history as part of the process of historical reckoning and reconciliation. Since 2000, people from the non-Aboriginal and Aboriginal communities of the region have come together at Cataract Dam, downriver from the massacre site, every year around 17 April for a memorial service to remember the Appin massacre. A memorial to the victims was erected at Cataract Dam in 2007, a sandstone rock or plinth, with a bronze plaque. Read Grace Karskens' entry on the Appin massacre on the Dictionary here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/event/appin_massacre Archibald Fountain

Archibald Fountain and surrounds 1930s, courtesy City of Sydney Archives (SRC9320)

Few of the people strolling through Hyde Park today realise that the large elaborate Art Deco fountain at the northern end was actually constructed as a memorial to commemorate the association between Australia and France in World War I. Known as the Archibald Memorial Fountain because it eventuated from a bequest in the will of JF Archibald, founding editor of the Bulletin newspaper, patron of the arts and committed Francophile, the Archibald fountain took 13 years to organise and complete. Its French sculptor, François-Léon Sicard, never visited the site, which has become one of Sydney's enduring landmarks. Read Robin Tranter's entry on the Archibald Fountain here: https://dictionaryofsydney.org/structure/archibald_fountain Searle's monument A marble broken column in the Parramatta River off Henley Point memorialises world champion sculler Henry Searle, who died of typhoid in 1889 at the age of 23. The monument, which symbolises a life cut off in its prime, is erected on one of the rocks exposed at low tide known as The Brothers. Why not have a look through the Dictionary for more monuments and memorials via the 'memorial' subject listing here! Further reading You can find out more about ICOMOS here: http://australia.icomos.org/ Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and the former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity.Listen to the podcast with Lisa & Jess here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Nic Healey on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney.With no ongoing operational funding, the Dictionary of Sydney needs your help to survive. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction!

'Our first and gayest bank robbery', The Sun, 29 March 1948, p7 via Trove

Did you know Australia’s first bank robbery occurred in Sydney in 1828 and most of the £14,000 was never recovered? This week we'll look at the crime that shocked colonial Sydney.

Listen to  Nicole and Nic on 2SER here 

On 14 September 1828, the strongroom of the Bank of Australia on lower George Street was breached by thieves who had tunnelled into the vault underneath the bank via a nearby sewer that ran into the Tank Stream. The convict stonemason, Thomas Turner, who had worked on both the strongroom and the drain, told a fellow convict, James Dingle, that the two adjoined. Dingle recruited other convicts and ex-convicts including George Farrell, William Blackstone, John Creighton and Valentine Rourke. Over a number of weeks the thieves spent every Sunday, when they were supposed to be at church, removing the bricks to the strongroom. When they finally broke through, they stole about £14,000 — mostly in notes but also some gold and silver coins. That's estimated to be equivalent to about $20 million today. The next day, bank staff were horrified by the discovery in the strongroom. The bank’s directors offered a reward of £100 for information and Governor Darling offered a free pardon to any of the perpetrators who would come forward with information. The bank also guaranteed the informer free passage back to England. Over time, a very small portion of the money was recovered, for example, £140 was found hidden in a public toilet in The Rocks and a bundle of £50 notes were found under a rock near Liverpool Street. In 1830, Blackstone, who had been sent to Norfolk Island after committing other crimes, took up the offer of the Governor's offer of a pardon and confessed, naming his accomplices. The following year, Dingle and Farrell were tried alongside Thomas Woodward, who had received some of the spoils. Farrell and Dingle were transported to Norfolk Island and Woodward sentenced to 14 years. The other conspirators had either died or left the country. Blackstone was awarded the promised £100 but turned down the passage to England. He ended up back at Norfolk Island in 1833 after he was convicted of other robberies. The loot, meanwhile, was never fully recovered. Rumours abound that coins were submerged in Darling Harbour, though none were found. In 1893 a woman claimed the bank’s gold and silver were buried near Mrs Macquarie’s Chair, but excavations proved fruitless. So the mystery remains! Further reading: Neil Radford, Robbing the Bank: Australia's First Bank Robbery, on the Dictionary of Sydney here Carol Baxter, The Bank of Australia Robbery, Australian Heritage Magazine: Summer 2008, p 48–52 here Carol Baxter. Breaking the Bank: an extraordinary colonial robbery, Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 2008

View from the Sydney Hotel c1826 by August Earle, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (PX*D 321, Pt. 1, no. 2) Underwood's Buildings, where the Bank of Australia was located, can be seen on the right. The main guardhouse is the on the left.

This is the Dictionary of Sydney's last segment with Nic as he is moving to Perth to take up a new position with the ABC. We all wanted to say thank you to him for all of the great early morning chats over the last couple of years, and to wish him well in his new radio adventures! The Dictionary of Sydney segment will return to 2SER Breakfast with the new host. Nicole Cama is a professional historian, writer and curator, and the Executive Officer of the History Council of NSW.  She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Listen to the podcast with Nicole & Nic here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney. The Dictionary of Sydney has no ongoing operational funding and needs your help. Make a tax-deductible donation to the Dictionary of Sydney today!

Elizabeth Macquarie c1819, courtesy Mitchell Library, State Library of NSW (MIN 237)

As an historian, I'm always interested in how we shape our cities and how we get the names we get. Earlier this week I was looking at the city's street names and noticing how few, comparatively, were named after women. Looking further afield at Sydney's suburbs, there were even fewer that had been named in some way that commemorated women and their history and I though I'd look at some of them today.

Listen to Lisa and Nic on 2SER here 

Elizabeth Macquarie, the wife of Governor Lachlan Macquarie, is commemorated in the names of several of Sydney's suburbs. Airds, the south-western suburb in the Macarthur region was named by Macquarie in honour of Elizabeth's family estate at home in Scotland. Appin, not far away, he named for her birthplace, while Campbelltown commemorates her maiden name. Elizabeth Bay, the harbourside suburb in Sydney's east, was also named for her. It's often assumed that the wealthy harbourside suburb Darling Point was named after New South Wales Governor Ralph Darling, but in the 1830s it was known as Mrs Darling's Point. Eliza Darling's is also thought to be the name behind Darlinghurst, which had previously been known as Wooloomooloo Hill or Eastern Hill. Her husband envisaged the ridge line as a place for the construction of a series of fine villas, meant for members of the colonial elite, and named the site in honour of his wife. Agnes Banks, a north-western rural district, where the Nepean and Grose Rivers meet to form the Hawkesbury River, was named by convict settler Andrew Thompson after his mother, Agnes Bank. The traditional land of the Dharug people, property at Agnes Banks was granted by the government to European settlers from the 1800s, who farmed the rich river flats, but were frequently flooded out. Agnes Banks was also where Europeans first saw a platypus. Oone of the most recent suburbs named after a woman is of course Barangaroo. The waterfront urban renewal precinct on the site of some of Sydney's earliest wharves between Darling Harbour and Millers Point is named after Barangaroo, a feisty member of the Cammeray people. Bennelong's second wife, she maintained her strong connection with her people and intimidated Phillip and his officers. In Grace Karsken's words "They found her very striking but also a little frightening. She had presence and authority. They estimated her age at about 40, and this is significant. She was older, more mature, and possessed wisdom, status and influence far beyond the much younger women the officers knew". The final suburb in my list today is possibly a bit of a stretch, but seemed worth it. Wollstonecraft, the north shore residential suburb, was named for Edward Wollstonecraft, a local landowner in the 1800s, but he was in fact the nephew of early feminist Mary Wollstonecraft, and cousin to Mary Wollstronecraft Shelley, whose book Frankenstein was published in 1818, 200 years ago. It's interesting how naming can inscribe a way of being into a landscape and how this kind of gendered division  shows how our society has functioned. As we make deliberate choices to balance this out, it will be interesting to have a look in another 200 years to see what names have been chosen to commemorate in the places we live. If you'd like to look through the list of suburbs mentioned on the Dictionary and see if you can spot more, you can sort Places by Type to get an alphabetical list here. The City of Sydney also has a list of street names in the city and their history, where known, which is downloadable as a spreadsheet here. Dr Lisa Murray is the Historian of the City of Sydney and the former chair of the Dictionary of Sydney Trust. She is the author of several books, including Sydney Cemeteries: a field guide. She appears on 2SER on behalf of the Dictionary of Sydney in a voluntary capacity. Listen to the podcast with Lisa & Nic here, and tune in to 2SER Breakfast with Nic Healey on 107.3 every Wednesday morning at 8:15-8:20 am to hear more from the Dictionary of Sydney. With no ongoing operational funding, the Dictionary of Sydney needs your help to survive. Make a donation to the Dictionary of Sydney and claim a tax deduction!  

Plan of Mrs Darling's Point divided into villa allotments for sale 15 June 1833, courtesy Dixson Map Collection, State Library of NSW (Ca 83/16)

Meredith Lake, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History

NewSouth Publishers, 2018, 439 pp. ISBN: 9781742235714, p/bk, AUS$39.99

Meredith Lake’s latest book, The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History (2018), is extraordinary. Lake’s authority as an historian, her skills as a writer and her subject matter expertise are all on full display in this work which tracks the impact of the Bible in Australia from the arrival of the First Fleet through to the present day. The book’s opening paragraphs assure readers that the “Bible’s changing place in Australian culture, over the few hundred years since it was first hauled across the water and on to a Sydney beach, offers a rich and surprising history” (p. 2) and “invites us to reconsider some competing myths. One is that Australia, since the convicts, has been a doggedly secular society and culture. Another is that Australia is (or was, or should be) a straightforwardly Christian nation” (p. 3). This invitation is immediately compelling and Lake holds tightly to her enormous task to demonstrate how the Bible serves “as a source of inspiration, power and practical wisdom”, until the last page of her book (p. 369). The undertaking of compressing such a vast, complex and contested history into a single volume has been deftly handled by Lake who has produced a clear and elegant story in four parts: Colonial Foundations; The Great Age of the Bible; Bible and Nation; and A Secular Australia? Each part is, in turn, divided into chapters which feature vignettes that examine an event or theme. I would suggest reading the book from cover to cover but it is possible to read sections randomly and out of order. An excellent index enables this second approach while a very good select bibliography and endnotes allow for the easy follow up of points of special interest. No history is ever complete, yet this work is immensely satisfying. Lake includes all of the major debates surrounding this sacred text in Australia, as well as personal stories and events of national pride and terrible shame. From the logical arguments through to impassioned pleas made about the Bible over centuries, Lake shows how this “library of composite texts” (p. 5) has influenced, and continues to influence, the lives of all Australians in more ways than we might imagine. The voices of many of these Australians — the early Indigenous evangelists, women demanding their suffrage, unionists fighting for equality, parliamentarians sorting out the separation of church and state together with the devout, the cynical and the ambivalent, the authentic preachers and the charlatans — are all able to be heard within this book. There is much here that we might readily endorse and much that might horrify us but we have in our grip a tool that facilitates our understanding of why some events unfolded (or were allowed to unfold) in the way they did. One of the many wonderful surprises in this book are the anecdotes, between the stories of encouragement and progress and the damning critiques of mistakes made, that are very funny. It is difficult not to laugh when reading of the fierce rivalry between Melbourne’s major daily papers, of the 1860s, the Age and the Argus. The arrival of news from abroad would routinely “send colonial journalists into a spin” (p. 147). But the men of the Argus had a plan. A correspondent would take a whale boat out to meet the steamer, bringing stories from Britain, before it entered Port Phillip Bay and once “back at the pier, a waiting buggy would drive him at break-neck speed to the nearby telegraph station so he could transmit the main points back to Melbourne” (p. 148). As there was only one telegraph wire available at the time, to thwart any similar plans by the Age, the savvy journalist would give the telegraph operator a copy of the Bible before heading out to meet the clipper to tie up the line: once those in the office of the Argus started receiving the Word of God they were on standby for word from Europe (p. 148). So, as some argued that the Bible was central to the building of a civil society, for others it was just a neat device in maintaining a commercial advantage over a competitor. In the hands of a lesser scholar, this book could have been completely botched. Biases revealed, gaps glaring, mistakes made. Lake has, however, delivered a work of such scale and quality that it will sit easily alongside the compelling works of researchers who have taken on equally ambitious projects such as Andrew Pettegree’s, on the worship of information, The Invention of News: How the World Came to Know About Itself (2014) and Frank Trentmann’s, on the worship of stuff, Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-first (2016). “From the outset, the Bible was associated with the colonising projects of transporting convicts, appropriating Aboriginal land, and forming settler societies” (p. 7). The Bible continues to be associated with much of what we have done and what we do. Complete with its baggage and its potential, for Christians and non-Christians, this Book of Books is an undeniable part of our history and is set to be part of our future. Even if we are not interested in examining the Bible we should be interested in examining its impact. The Bible in Australia: A Cultural History will surely dominate the short lists of every major literary award over the coming months and will certainly come to be regarded as one of the most important Australian history books of the year.   Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, April 2018 Available from all the best bookstores and the NewSouth Books website.

Jamelle Wells, The Court Reporter 

HarperCollins Australia (ABC Books), 309 pp., ISBN: 9780733337888, p/bk, AUS$32.99 

The Court Reporter (2018), described by the publishers as “a tough and fearless journalist’s memoir that looks at the cases that have shocked, moved and never left us”, is equal parts personal reflection on a career in the Australian media and a catalogue of crimes committed in New South Wales over recent decades.   Jamelle Wells' name will be familiar to many. In her work on radio and television she has delivered news of some of the most audacious, as well as senseless, crimes to make our headlines, from felons Des Campbell (found guilty of pushing his wife off a cliff) and Keli Lane (found guilty of murdering her baby, Tegan, and of lying under oath) to victims Lisa Harnum (thrown off the balcony of her fifteenth-floor apartment by her fiancé Simon Gittany) and two-year-old Dean Shillingsworth (murdered by his mother, placed in a suitcase and then dumped in a pond) as well as outrageous cases of greed heard at the Independent Commission Against Corruption. The book's tone is informal, almost conversational, which works well as this approach serves to keep you reading rather than sitting and dwelling on some of the cases that are discussed.  The stories are short, much like the live crosses Wells makes for televised news bulletins, with a few sentences so clipped you read them twice, thinking you must have missed something.  Perhaps the most significant aspect of this work is the contribution Wells makes to the debates around the ethics of journalism, in particular, what should be covered and how much detail should be released? Critically, Wells wonders if “reporting on these crimes fell into the ‘helping people’ category or was it really the entertainment business. Was I contributing to the problem of people’s fear of Sydney becoming a bad place by scaring them unnecessarily?” (p. 22). That said, the idea of crime as entertainment is a thread that runs throughout the text. After obtaining a position as a court reporter, after many years in journalism, Wells admits that, after overcoming the initial fear of just how much work was involved in her new round, that the courts “unexpectedly appealed to my love of journalism but also theatre, in a way that I had never imagined it would” (p. 43). Yet the fundamental question of how “the facts need to be stated in the interest of accuracy and balance, but just how much to we need to filter to protect our audience?” (p. 252) is one that is asked every day. In discussion of the multiple trials of Robert Xie – eventually found guilty of murdering five members of his extended family in North Epping in July 2009 – Wells talks about sitting close to the exit of a court room and the need to be able to leave quickly and meet a crew, waiting patiently, out on the street ready for a live cross. Wells notes, too, how Kathy Lin, who had attended nearly every day of the final trial in 2016 often bringing Xie lunch, also sat towards the rear of the court observing that maybe she too “had sussed out the quickest way to escape from the court and the waiting media each day” (p. 16). This anecdote, more than any other offered, highlights how journalists in general and court reporters in particular, are not so different from anyone else: they just have a much harder job than many of us. As Wells unpacks her day-to-day routine, the need for people who cover the worst of what people can do to each other to “cultivate resilience” (p. 59) becomes increasingly obvious. It’s not just about the need to deal with the stress of the competition of the news business, the unsociable hours and the pressure to not make even the smallest error in reporting: it’s the need to stay sane. A near-endless exposure to violence might not corrupt the soul but it certainly has the potential to wither it or to re-shape us in a way that we can only ever see the world as a place cast in shadow.   In the introduction Wells explains that her mother, when undergoing treatment for terminal cancer, suggested: “You might be sad when I die so you need to keep busy […]. You could write a book about some of your adventures in the courts and all the people you’ve seen and talked to” (p. 2). Wells has certainly delivered. She covers an extraordinary amount of content including her adventures in surviving the strains of the job, the competitiveness and the sexism as well as the waiting (and waiting) for verdicts. There is also a heavy responsibility to the victims, their families and the men and women of the court system who are working to see that the justice system serves everyone in the community. The people are there too, from the anonymous to the infamous, from dignified sentences handed down by judges to brawls in the foyers of court complexes. Her mother would be proud.  The Court Reporter is a great read and will be quickly devoured by anyone with an interest in journalism or in true crime.    Reviewed by Dr Rachel Franks, March 2018  For a preview of the book or to purchase online, go to HarperCollins Australia.