Adam Eldridge-Imamura
In a draft letter dated 6 June 1954 to the Melbourne newspaper The Sun News Pictorial, Fraser disputes an article that was published on its front page on 3 June 1954 that he did not play local football for “political reasons”. Continue reading “Fraser’s Political Football”
Anton Donohoe-Marques
‘Dear Householder,’ begins this intriguing letter from former Liberal Party Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser’s first political campaign for the electorate of Wannon, in 1954. The signature, indelibly marked in blue pen at bottom of the letter, evokes an image of a young and passionate Fraser sitting at his desk, hand aching, signing letters repeatedly to be delivered around the electorate of Wannon. This personalised style of political engagement is a far cry from present-day political leaflet drops, printed by the thousands and deposited in letterboxes by crews of political canvassers. The bespoke nature of the letter is also emphasised by the typed text, sometimes wonky and yet carefully formatted, which hints at the typist, perhaps Fraser himself or a friend or a relative, working tirelessly over a typewriter to produce copy after copy for the campaign.
The document itself comes from one of Una’s carefully compiled scrapbooks. In the latter years of her life Una attended lectures at Melbourne University, taking a strong interest in history and art history. Given her love of the historical landscape then, it is unsurprising that she understood the value of archived documents for future generations of historians and history students (as well as any other potentially interested parties). In this context, the letter, along with the other ephemera contained within these scrapbooks, are imbued with a duality that straddles the line between private and public. They illustrate a mother’s pride and care for her son’s achievements, as well as an understanding of the historical value of archival artefacts.
Historically, I was intrigued by this particular letter which embodies the idealism that drove Fraser in his early political life. Notorious for his role as caretaker prime minister following the Whitlam dismissal, at this period Fraser was an unknown quantity in the Australian political sphere. This letter to the ‘Householder’ begins however to demonstrate Fraser’s passion for the political philosophy of liberalism, fostered during his time at Oxford University, from where he had graduated two years earlier.1
The issues Fraser identifies bear a distinctly individualist and egalitarian tone. He implores his readers that “a country should be described as great if the individual happiness of every citizen is the first thought of its leaders.”2 He further advises the importance of this notion for the future of the country in his statement that Australians love their nation “not only a place where we are free and can work happily for our own prosperity but also as a place that holds a wonderful future for our children.”3 Fraser’s emphasis on egalitarianism and self-determination is consistent both with his own rural upbringing and with the ‘bushman ethos’ identified by Russell Ward as a foundational part of the Australian national character. This ‘bushman ethos’ describes a distinctly Australian national character marked by irreverence, egalitarianism and a rugged style of masculine individualism.4 In the context of Fraser’s eventual rise to the highest office in Australian politics, this early example of engagement with his voting bloc is a modest illustration of the values and rhetoric that would come to define his political career.
Anton’s thesis examines the changing shape of remembrance practices that centre upon the Second World War in Australia. It examines how these practices have shifted in response to political and cultural changes in Australian society over a number of contexts.
1 Philip Ayres, Malcolm Fraser: a biography (William Heinemann Australia, 1987), 53.
2 Malcolm Fraser, “Letter to Wannon Constituents,” Letter, April 14, 1954, Una Fraser collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2008.0058 unit 2.
3 Ibid.
4 Russel Ward, The Australian Legend (Oxford University Press, 1965), 2.
The Una Fraser collection in the University of Melbourne Archives includes two large scrapbooks of various ephemera – newspaper cut-outs, photos, letters – collected by Una Fraser, Malcolm Fraser’s mother, during the 1950s and 60s. Carefully clipped and pasted into the scrapbook, with dates noted by hand, they convey the sense of personal and intimate links to the future Prime Minister (1975-1983). Whilst the majority of these items relate to Fraser’s political life, there are also a number of other items related to the Fraser family, including family photographs and clippings from local newspapers, which give a window into rural life in Australia in the mid-twentieth century.
From this collection and in this context, doctoral students have each chosen a different document from the early stages of Malcolm Fraser’s career, particularly those which shed some insight into his sometimes contentious political journey.
In Fraser’s letter to the householder, Anton Donohoe-Marque examines a typed, hand-signed campaign letter from Fraser to the constituents of Wannon, a seat in Western Victoria. In it, Fraser champions the values of individualism and egalitarianism he developed studying political philosophy at Oxford and so makes an appeal to the ‘bushman ethos’ that would likely resonate in the rural communities of Wannon.
In ‘Fraser’s Political Football‘, Adam Eldridge explores another typed letter from Fraser to the Melbourne daily newspaper, The Sun. This document takes issue with the Melbourne-based Sun newspaper for its distortions and false attributions, and unfortunately seems to reinforce the caricature of Fraser as a humourless figure, quick to combat the media. However, the scrapbook reveals that the Sun letter followed other letters published in regional newspapers which show young Fraser’s media savvy as well as a rarely seen self-deprecating aspect to his character.
In ‘Bread and Butter Issues’, Timo Eckhardt looks at two articles from Fraser’s successful 1955 campaign for Wannon. First, Fraser seeks to appeal to the people of Wannon by extolling the virtues of the thrifty Menzies government’s social policies and secondly, he shows his passion for international politics and warns against the ALP’s closeness to communism.
Finally, in ‘Fraser meets Digger’, Pauline Georgelin considers a photo of Fraser as Minister for the Army meeting a digger in South Vietnam in July 1967. The photo provides yet another glimpse into Fraser’s lifelong passion for international politics and is particularly interesting in light of the 56,000 Vietnamese immigrants welcomed to Australia by his government during the 1970s.
Just what a hall filled with finance students were not expecting on their first lecture for semester two, was a print curator armed with printed images, historic banknotes and a rare book, set to explain how these items convey financial and economic concepts. Printed material (and by extension other cultural materials) convey economic concepts both in the subjects they exhibit and in the ways they are consumed and used. Additionally, their production often follows trends of financial booms and crashes.
The student’s topic for week one was financial bubbles. A simple description of a bubble is an unstable asset or business accompanied by high speculation. For example, an investor sells commodities or shares worth $100 onto a second investor for an inflated $200 who sells them onto a third party for $400 and so on. Should the company collapse, the original investor makes a tidy profit while the last person into the scheme loses a great deal of money. [1.] The world’s most famous cases and the student’s subjects are: tulip mania, the Mississippi Bubble and the South Sea Bubble.
Tulip mania occurred between 1634 and 1637 and saw the price of tulip bulbs rise to an extraordinary level. Economic bubbles are also characterised by the influence of crowd behaviours whereby people are irresistibly drawn to an asset, such as tulip bulbs, which appear to offer a ‘get rich quick’ opportunity, and a mania ensures. The engraving by Hollar was made in 1641 just a few years after tulip mania. It shows the wealth of the woman who wears an expensive costume and to her right is an open chest displaying a costly fur garment. She holds a bunch of rare tulips (rare striped tulips were affected by the mosaic virus), much sought after by tulip traders and the fashionable. When looking at objects like this engraving, a useful technique to uncover their interpretation, is to ask them questions. For example, when considering an asset whether it is a tulip bulb, a work of art or a company share, how does rarity influence buying behaviours?
The Mississippi Bubble was a more complex financial scheme masterminded by economist John Law (1671-1729). Law became the Finance Minister of France, a country which in 1716 was bankrupt through wars. This provided Law with the landscape with which to launch his economic experiments. The Mississippi Bubble was his misadventure into converting France’s debt into shares of the Mississippi Company, a business focussed on the French colony in Louisiana. Law’s exaggerations of the success and wealth of his company led to wild speculations on its shares. Profits from the shares were issued to investors as banknotes. In 1720 there was a mass urge by shareholders to convert their shares into coin at the bank. However, the Banque Royale did not hold the amount of money represented by the paper notes and was therefore unable to pay. [2.]
This episode is captured by a new acquisition for the Print Collection: Pasquins Windkaart op de Windnegotie van 1720, an uncut Dutch set of cards satirising John Law and the Mississippi Bubble.[3.] The first card depicts John Law as the King of Hearts and other characters and players in the scheme such as shareholders follow suit. There are many visual references to the Dutch terminology for inflating shares: a ‘wind scheme’, and for selling shares yet to be officially released: to ‘trade in the wind.’ Other financial schemes are referenced, for example the three of spades shows three girls sitting on a swing to represent the South Sea Company, the Mississippi Company and the West Indian Company. As well as an economist, John Law was a gambler and was known to spend his evenings playing cards. These cards are a comical means to enable the disgruntled investor to take their revenge and wield their power upon Law. They seem to ask: how much does chance and emotion play in financial investment?
The engraving Lucifer’s new row-barge satirises Robert Knight (1675-11/1744) and the South Sea Bubble, the second financial crash in England following on the heels of John Law’s experiments in 1720. This, another failed scheme to refinance national debt through a trading company, saw Knight the Cashier abscond with a fortune. Knight stands in a boat bound for hell named the S.S. Inquisition. Various devils and demons control the gold, which is scathingly portrayed in the commentaries as the object of individual and national ruin. Like the cards, this broadside is made by an anonymous artist and would have been sold on the streets of London, the location of an audience ready to revel in sensationalism. It also echoes popular card games for in the top right corner is a playing card which is the knave or jack of diamonds and this card the viewer may associate with Robert Knight.
For contemporary finance students, the 17th and 18th centuries are rather distant and hazy constructs, yet these primary source items provide them with tangible evidence and genuine context. Financial bubbles are as prevalent today as they were in the past and through their example, the Print Collection has now entered the financial arena.
Kerrianne Stone, Curator, Prints
References
[1.] John Chown, A history of money: from AD 800, London; New York: Routledge, 1994, p. 144
[2.] see John Chown, 1994, pp.201-211
[3.] See Roger Tilley, A history of playing cards, New York: C.N. Potter; distributed by Crown Publishers, [1973] especially pp. 123-133.
Nathaniel Cutter
James Graham’s Overland Letter provides a vivid account of the early settlement of Victoria and of the hopefulness of many of its settlers, and through the physical writing style a vibrant material record of the challenges and ingenuity the colonial experience afforded. The letter was presented to the University of Melbourne Archives in 1961, within the extensive business and personal archive of Graham’s prominent trading and retail firm Graham Brothers and Co. The collection, which spans the period 1839-1960, can be found at the accession number 1961.0014; the Overland Letter and transcript at 1961.0014.00045–46.
Even though James writes the diagonals in red ink to aid readability, having a transcript is extremely helpful to the modern reader! Other writers of the time experimented with different paper-saving methods, including shorthand, reusing paper, or writing over newsprint.[3] Unlike many long letters of the time, Graham appears to predominantly written in one sitting, rather than over a period of repeated folding, storage, unfolding, and additions.In July 1839, James Graham, a new settler in the Port Phillip District of the Colony of New South Wales, wrote to his family in Fife, Scotland. This letter was his first in over a year, meaning he had plenty to say, to update (and reassure!) his readers.[1] James employs a wonderful example of the prevalent contemporary cross-writing technique: writing horizontally, vertically and diagonally to save expensive paper, and filling two large leaves of heavy paper with enough text to require 40 pages of transcription – yet even still he found himself forced “to draw to a conclusion for want of paper, tho’ I have a great deal more to say.”[2]
James first recounts his five-week journey by horse and cart from Sydney through trackless bush, with only damper, tea and salt beef for sustenance.[4] Graham’s party battled thick ice, rough-sleeping, water shortages, wandering horses, falling branches, backward seasons, unusual wildlife, and bushfires, all challenges alien to his own experience and no doubt thrilling to his family in Scotland; yet at the end he wrote, “altogether I was very much delighted with the journey, and would willingly undertake another”![5]
From here James compares his new home in Melbourne, “a most astounding place”, with Sydney. The Melburnian countryside was “as Heaven to us,” but “there is not a more…beautiful harbour in the known world” than that which bisects Sydney’s “extensive and beautiful town.”[6]
Outside the cities, however, a war rages between Indigenous Australians and the newly arrived pastoralists, where the former one is reputed to practice cannibalism, “treachery and ill-will”; while the latter includes Britain’s “most debased and vilest dregs”, who “never look upon the Blacks [as] human beings, but, would just as soon shoot them…or hunt them [as a] kangaroo,” start the majority of violence.[7]
James presents a palpable sympathy for those Indigenous people who “retaliate on the oppressors,” imagining the “heart-rending” experience of being driven from “their dominions…the wild animals [killed]…[and] their women carried off.”[8]
James’ own affairs were promising: sponsored as a Melbourne wool buyer, and placed in charge of 100 acres, he lives in a log cabin until his house is built, and has learned to cook, clean and bake for himself, fancying himself “a great adept” in cookery and having “Scotch acquaintances come miles in the mornings to get a plate full of porridge.”[9] His twelve workmen live onsite with their families, and though in Australia “money is the great idol, and for it they will…undergo any hardship”, these men are “worth their weight in gold.”[10]
Port Phillip is booming, with land speculation and cattle stations proliferating and skilled jobs ready for the taking; but prices are high since everything is shipped from Sydney or Tasmania.[11] With a great sense of optimism about the new colony, James regards emigration to Victoria as an unqualified success, for: “Were I at home and know as much as I do about this country with its privations, hardships and pleasures, I should not have the least hesitation in making up my mind to come out at once.”[12] The Overland letter is an unusual artifact but it is also an ode to the complex affective responses one of Victoria’s early settlers felt towards both the land and its peoples.
Nathaniel Cutter is a current PhD student in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, researching the experiences of English expatriates in seventeenth-century North Africa.
Citations
[1] Overland Letter transcript, 1.
[2] Overland Letter transcript, 39-40.
[3] David Livingstone famously employed this technique: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19119-dear-diary-i-am-sick-to-death-david-livingstone/.
[4] Overland Letter transcript, 2-6.
[5] Overland Letter transcript, 6-11, 16-17, 36-37.
[6] Overland Letter transcript, 12.
[7] Overland Letter transcript, 13-14.
[8] Overland Letter transcript, 15.
[9] Overland Letter transcript, 17-25.
[10] Overland Letter transcript, 25.
[11] Overland Letter transcript, 30-33.
[12] Overland Letter transcript, 34.
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