Beaming a parable to European Renaissance art classes

Of the many classes utilising the Print Collection during semester one, European Renaissance Art receive the gold star for the most visits and for some very engaging interactions with the collection.

With a fly on the wall vantage onto the classes, it is intriguing to view one of the prints selected for their seminar topic: The Print Revolution, which was Daniel Hopfer’s Interior of the Church with the Parable of the Mote and the Beam (c.1520). Students commenced their study of the print with some close visual examination and this produced some confused expressions as well as some muffled laughter. For central to the image is a figure with plank of wood protruding out of his eye.

This is a very literal rendering of the proverbial saying of Jesus from the Gospel of Matthew: ‘And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye, but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye’. This warning against judgment may not be in 21st century parlance but it is just one of the many insights offered by this etching.

Geographically this image is categorised as art of the Northern European Renaissance, rather than the more familiar Italian, and stylistically these works of art have different characteristics to Italian. Daniel Hopfer (1471 – 1536) as a trained armourer is perhaps best known for his contributions to adapt the metalworking process of etching on iron, to printmaking. The link to metalwork designing is most apparent in the intricate vault decoration in the print. Another innovation which can be seen developing through the image is perspective. The church, identified as St Catherine’s in Hopfer’s hometown of Augsburg, employs newly outlined mathematical principles in its execution of depth and scale.

Like many students of print culture, an essential method to appreciate prints such as Hopfer’s in context as they do, is to read them alongside Peter Parshall’s influential article: Imago contrafacta: Images and facts in the Northern Renaissance.

A life in 22 boxes

Jane Beattie, Assistant Archivist – University of Melbourne Archives
Sophie Garrett, Assistant Archivist – University of Melbourne Archives

Two pairs of ballet slippers used by Juan Cespedes are preserved in the John Harvey Foster collection, along with research material and personal effects such as Foster’s diaries and a notebook of recipes written by the pair.

Ballet slippers and notebook, John Harvey Foster Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 1997.0085, units 1 and 8

These items highlight the enduring nature of not only records but of people. The hopes and dreams of the future, courtship, family feuds, deaths and births of dynastic families alongside struggling migrant pioneers are played out in thousands of pieces of correspondence. The business ventures and failures, take-overs and expansions of family run stores and colonial interest shown in leather bound volumes of business records.  Sketches by an Indigenous father attempting to support and keep his family together. Community, union and political groups laid bare through correspondence and minute books detailing complex relationships with the public and governments of the day. Visitors are constantly surprised by the vibrancy of records housed in stark, cold order.

The collection of John Harvey Foster, is housed in 22 plain brown boxes that give no clues to the emotional depth of their contents. Letters, photographs and ephemera reveal the relationship between Foster and his partner, Cuban dancer Juan Cespedes, whose ballet shoes are an unexpected treasure in a repository filled mostly with paper. Foster was a lecturer in History at the University of Melbourne from 1970 until illness forced early retirement in 1993; he died the following year. Scholars who share an interest in German Jews will be interested in the research notes and oral histories contained in these boxes while others will be intrigued by Foster himself, or the heady decade of the 1980s.

Foster’s literary scope covers the research publications of ‘Community of Fate: Memoirs of German Jews in Melbourne’ and ‘Victorian Picturesque: The Colonial Gardens of William Sangster’. The manuscript for Foster’s memoir ‘Take me to Paris, Johnny’ complete with editor’s comments also forms part of this collection and complements other UMA collections that provide insight into the publishing industry. Encompassing the racial and sexual prejudices of Australian and US culture in the mid to late decades of the twentieth century, ‘Take me to Paris, Johnny’ tells of the life and death of Cespedes, who he met in New York in 1981.

In almost every collection at UMA is a story that grounds us in the larger picture of what it means to be human. Then there are the smaller, quieter stories that can be found in the simple act of ensuring two pairs of used ballet slippers are kept in permanence.

Frozen voices from the past: Captain Horatio Austin’s Log of the HMS Resolute and the first traces of the lost Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin

Generously supported by donations to the University of Melbourne’s Annual Appeal, access to hidden treasures in the Rare Books Collection is being enhanced using digital technologies…

Situation of HMS Resolute, Baffins Bay, June 1858

Monstrous icebergs, eerily tolling ships’ bells, fogs so dense that sky and sea solidify into a single ghostly whiteness, and uninhabited boats snap-frozen in time.  Such are the haunting images described in accounts of the early exploration expeditions in the Arctic.

Imagine three Icebergs, as big as St Pauls tilting at each other, and we in our poor vessels!’ wrote ship’s master George McDougall in October 1850.[i]

One of these stories – that of the lost 1845 expedition of Sir John Franklin to find the elusive Northwest Passage – has persisted in the public imagination for almost 170 years, casting its icy spectre over many books, poetry, songs, documentaries and feature films.   Infused with heightened elements – vast frigid oceans, a devoted wife who would not give up the search for her husband, and a solitary and remote landscape – the mystery gripped a Victorian reading public who avidly awaited newspaper articles and naval reports on the fate of the voyage.  The alien world of the Arctic provided a vivid background for successive instalments of the story, and depictions of the unfamiliar environment were brought to life using the new technologies of moving panoramas and magic lantern shows: Continue reading “Frozen voices from the past: Captain Horatio Austin’s Log of the HMS Resolute and the first traces of the lost Arctic expedition of Sir John Franklin” →

Historic records are not relics – they are events unfolding

Stella Marr,

Archivist,  University of Melbourne Archives

As an archivist, it is an all too common experience to see people puzzle over your stated profession. In conversation it is usually attended with a perplexed pause; in print, it is variously and excitedly read as anarchist, or interpreted perhaps more reasonably as activist.

When my inevitable exasperation subsides, I have to admit that on some level an archivist engages in a certain oblique activism. A repository of records is a breathing decomposing organism, which the hapless archivist attempts to control both its intellectual and physical integrity, and serve through advocacy, so that these records can be retained, re-read and reinterpreted in the future.

Research archives, such as the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) are inaugurated by the right of access, unlike the archives of private companies or individuals. That is not to say there is anything innocent about collections, either in their creation, or in their carriage to a repository. Collecting is a deliberate act of inclusion – one that is guided by policy, influenced by politics and dependent on opportunity. Once in cold storage, papers remain in their original functional order, where they join the existing compressed body of past actions. It is here that the continuous activities and interests of individuals and organisations cease their frantic momentum.

Australian Red Cross National Office, 2015.0033

It is round about this time my previously puzzled interlocutor, having ascertained the nature of my days becomes pensive and looks at me with something akin to pity – for surely nothing happens in an archive. “No, no – my friend – everything happens in an archive, let me explain.”

For an archivist – who lives their days immersed in the past – is to exist in the very unfolding of events – ‘you find nothing in the Archive but stories caught half way through: the middle of things; discontinuities.’ (1)  Clothes worn to rags, skins of animals and pulp of trees, fibres joined to make paper, inscribed with instructions, memos, correspondence, maps, receipts, contracts, doodles, reports and notes. The material world transmuted and transmitting fragments of life – the cause of movement and actions in the world.

In walking the length of the repository – one passes records of the university, trade unions, insurance agencies, temperance & benevolent societies, records of settlers, merchants, scientists, butchers, chemists, funeral directors, theatre groups, career politicians, political activists, a few legitimate anarchists, architects and business in the supply of everything from photographs, lawn-mowers, biscuits, felt hats and copper. (2)

Over time as a research collection matures it develops not merely the quality or depth of its collection categories (such as ‘Trade Union’ holdings), but also the complex intersectional relationships between its collections. New acquisitions like the Australian Red Cross into UMA’s existing body of records creates an opening – very sobering view – of the nexus between Government policy, consumer demand, business interests, civil war, refugees and humanitarian organisations.

The records of the Australian Red Cross (which includes both the National Office as well as the Victorian Division) chart its activities over the last 100 years from a mere fledlging – into a mammoth organisation grappling with the extent of the humanitarian crisis resulting from the First World War. (3)

The complex factors that coalesced into in the First World War are many, but what is certain is that the territorial conflicts of competing Empires played a significant role. The 1880s was an era of amazing technical developments and equally astounding atrocities perpetrated by the demand for domestic goods, and the profits that could be made from their sale.   The inflatable pneumatic tyre radically changed the aptly named “the boneshaker” bicycle. The consumer demand for this comfort – coincided with the rapacious ambition of King Leopold II of Belgium to own a slice of “magnifique gâteau africain.” He created a private company which from 1885 to 1908 controlled the Congo – ruthlessly enslaving and killing millions of people in the production of rubber for the European market. (4)

Colin Fraser, Oliver Holmes Woodward and R. Pryor holding RG Casey’s steed’, local expedition assistants in foreground. Loloki River, 17 March 1914.
Photographer RG Casey, Oliver Holmes Woodward (1978.0079) collection, Unit 3, University of Melbourne Archives

A mere 4 km from Australian’s coast, the German New Guinea Company took control of eastern Papua New Guinea (including Bougainville) renaming it Kaiser-Wilhelmsland (1884-1914). Previously held under British colonial control, and with the outbreak of WW1, Britain tasked Australian forces to seize the German colony – resulting in our first military casualty of the war – a 28 year old Northcote electrician, ‘Billy’ Williams (1886 -1914). (5)

The Treaty of Versailles (1919) which divided German colonial territories between the allies charged Australia with the administration of Papua New Guinea – until it achieved independence in 1975. This period, and the records produced by creators of vastly differing interests, allow a view into the complex interdependence between government policy, business interests and humanitarian organisations (who often attend to the impact of philosophies and decisions of the former) – a site of fascinating research potential.

The Australian Red Cross collection, which occupies 374 linear meters, contains a diverse range of records including those of the Papua New Guinea Division of the Australian Red Cross, which operated from 1940-1972; records of the Field Force officers who served in embedded medical units with the Far East Land Forces (FARELF) in Papua New Guinea, Japan, Korea and Malaya, as well as records of the Bureau for Wounded, Missing and Prisoners of War in these theatres. Further records include disaster relief after the catastrophic eruption of Mt Lamington (1951); aid relief to civilians fleeing the Bougainville civil war, as well as development projects in its aftermath.

Mount Lamington, 7 February 1951, Photographer: Mr GA Taylor, Government Vulcanologist, Australian Bureau of Mineral Resources, Australian Red Cross – National Office collection, University of Melbourne Archives, 2016.0057.00050

These records join existing collections pertaining to Papua New Guinea and Bougainville which include the diaries of Oliver Holes Woodward – mining engineer and prospector; records of the Bougainville Copper Limited as well as their managing directors; records of plantation owners; oral histories of Australian government patrol officers tasked with ensuring political stability; the records of Malcolm Fraser, Army Minister (1966-1971), Minister of Defense (1969-1971), Prime Minister (1975-1983) and founder of CARE Australia. Alongside these are the papers of legal professionals such as John Patrick Minogue who served the PNG Supreme court as a circuit Judge (1962-1969) and later as Chief Justice (1970-1974); as well as constitutional and economic advisors. Refer to the appended list of creators and series.

Bank of New South Wales, (Left to Right) Salmoa, Nagele, Johns, Aplour, Wood, Namba, Photograph No 3., James Harold Wesley Johns collection (1972.0054)

Bougainville Copper Limited, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto, owned and operated Panguna (1972-1989) which was once the largest open-cut copper mine – with the PNG government holding a 20% share. They made contracts with local communities – but entirely disregarded the matrilineal custodial system of land-care; this, coupled with the catastrophic environmental destruction caused by acid leaching into rivers which forced thousands to leave their land and homes, resulted in rebellion against the company which soon escalated into a civil war. (6)

Rio Tinto has since ceded their majority share – along with their responsibility for the environmental destruction – which is currently shared equally between the now Autonomous Region of Bougainville and the PNG government. The mooted reopening of the mine – this deep scar – coincides with Bougainville moving towards an independence referendum in 2019. Its developing economy is ironically underpinned by the very success of the resource business that has resulted in so much bloodshed and environmental devastation. (7)

Empires may have shrunk but the shadow of imperial legacies continues unabated for Bougainville, the Congo and other developing economies. Our era’s insatiable appetite for technological marvels, such as mobile phones and electronic devices, are entirely dependent on the primary resources of copper and rare minerals. Government rhetoric on Foreign Aid and ongoing boundary negotiations, such as the Timore-Leste maritime agreement with Australia, grossly obscure and sustain the inequity inherent in these relationships. (8)

Records are not relics of the past, but direct veins between current political events and their inception. The trauma inscribed in archival collections is timeless; ‘wounds heal over on the body, but in the report they always stay open, they neither close up or disappear.’ (9)

ENDNOTES (all web resources accessed May 2017)

  1. Steedman, Carolyn. Dust (Manchester: Manchester Uni. Press, 2001) p.45
  2. University of Melbourne Archives collection can be explored by its 14 collection categories or by the occupation or activity of creators. See: The Catalogue ‘Browse’ search option. http://gallery.its.unimelb.edu.au/imu/imu.php?request=browse
  3. As the Commonwealth Department of Defence was located in Melbourne (1901-1958), it was logical that the Australian Red Cross National Office, which worked so closely with the Australian Imperial Force, was also located in Melbourne.
  4. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/africa/forever-in-chains-the-tragic-history-of-congo-6232383.html ; http://takingthelane.com/2011/10/25/the-rubber-terror-2/
  5. http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/German_New_Guinea ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-09-07/world-war-i-relatives-remember-gallantry-battle-bita-paka/5721738 and http://oa.anu.edu.au/obituary/williams-william-george-billy-17327  (Papua New Guinea was colonised by both Britain and Germany – Australian government acting for the former. Australia’s administration was temporarily interrupted by the Japanese invasion (1942-1945))
  6.  https://bougainvillenews.com/category/bougainville-copper/ ; http://www.ipsnews.net/2015/05/bougainville-former-war-torn-territory-still-wary-of-mining/ and https://thewellingtonchocolatevoyage.wordpress.com/ 2014/12/02/the-people-the-culture-the-land/
  7. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/29/papua-new-guinea-apologises-bougainville-civil-war ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-05-04/bougainville-mine-moves-to-reopen-govermment-backing/8495496
  8. https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/07/is-your-cell-phone-fueling-civil-war-in-congo/241663/ ; https://www.theguardian.com/global-development-professionals-network/2017/jan/14/aid-in-reverse-how-poor-countries-develop-rich-countries ; http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-01-09/east-timor-tears-up-oil-and-gas-treaty-with-australia/8170476
  9. Saramago, José: All the Names (New York: Harcourt, 1999) Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa. p.66

 

UMA offers a comprehensive reference service advising clients who are engaged in complex topics. http://archives.unimelb.edu.au/information/for_researchers Some of the collections held at the University of Melbourne Archive which relate to Papua New Guinea & Bougainville, referred to in this blog, include:

AUSTRALIAN RED CROSS SOCIETY – NATIONAL OFFICE

PAPUA NEW GUINEA – DIVISION RECORDS, 1940-1972 (2016.0060)

PAPUA NEW GUINEA DIVISION NATIVE CHOIR, Gramophone Record (2016.0077)

VOLUNTARY AID DETACHMENT (VAD) AND FIELD FORCE PERSONNEL RECORDS (2016.0050)

MISSING, WOUNDED AND PRISONER OF WAR ENQUIRY CARDS (2016.0049)

EXECUTIVE CORRESPONDENCE (2015.0033)

INTERNATIONAL PROJECT FILES (2016.0057)

HUMANITARIAN ORGANISATIONS – CARE

FRASER, JOHN MALCOLM (multiple accessions) Chairman (1987-2002) CARE Australia and President of CARE International (1990-1995). See: Masters Elizabeth, Wood Katie (2012) Malcolm Fraser: guide to archives of Australia’s Prime ministers Canberra, National Archives of Australia and University of Melbourne Archives.

POLITICS – GOVERNMENT

FRASER, JOHN MALCOLM (multiple accessions) Army Minister (1966-1968) Minister for Defense (1969-1971) Prime Minister (1975-1983). Ibid

PAPUA NEW GUINEA PATROL OFFICERS – ORAL HISTORY TAPES (1999.0062) Australian government patrol officers acting on authority from the Papuan New Guinea government

ECOMOMISTS

ISAAC, JOSEPH EZRA (2009.0004) Consultant for the Department of External Territories (Canberra) and the Department of Labour (Port Moresby) on PNG labour problems (1969-1973)

LAW

MINOGUE, JOHN PATRICK Sir (multiple accessions) Circuit judge (1962-1969) of the Supreme Court of the Territory of Papua New Guinea, later Chief Justice (1970-1974)

DERHAM, DAVID PLUMLEY Sir (multiple accessions) Involved in constitutional reform of Papua New Guinea

BUSINESS – BANKING

JOHNS, JAMES HAROLD WESLEY (1972.0054) Established and managed a branch of the Bank of New South Wales in Salamoa, Papua New Guinea (1929-1932)

BUSINESS – MINING

BOUGAINVILLE COPPER LIMITED (1992.0008)

JOHN T RALPH (1997.0022) CRA Ltd., Managing Director

VERNON, D.C (1988.0086) Director of CRA and Chairman of Bougainville Copper Ltd.,

WOODWARD, OLIVER HOLMES (1978.0079) Diaries and accounts of OH Woodward’s mining trips to PNG with Colin Fraser, 1930s

BUSINESS – PLANTATIONS

B. RITCHIE & SON PTY. LTD. (1985.0083) Records relating to various family members involvement in business ventures including Garua Plantation in Papua New Guinea (1947-1951)

PERSONAL ACCOUNTS

WOODWARD, OLIVER HOLMES (1978.0079) Personal diary of Marjorie Moffat Wadell’s (later Woodward) trip to PNG, 1918.

MEDICAL

OSER, OSCAR ADOLPH (1985.0155)

CAMPBELL, BRIGADIER EDWARD FRANCIS (1999.0060)

WHITE, DAVID (2015.0088)

 

 

 

‘A Humane and Intimate Administration’: The Red Cross’ World War Two Wounded, Missing and Prisoner of War Cards

Fiona Ross

Senior Archivist, University of Melbourne Archives

Private Rawson’s mother first contacted the Red Cross in early April 1942, six weeks after her son was captured by the Japanese at the fall of Singapore. For her, and thousands of other Australian mothers, fathers, wives, sisters and brothers, this began three and half years of longing and fear, and above all, silence. For the duration of the war, Mrs Rawson’s only news of her son’s fate were the snippets received and sent on to her by the Red Cross Bureau for Wounded, Missing and Prisoners of War.

In the Spring Street premises made available to the Red Cross by the Royal Australasian College of Surgeons, volunteers received Mrs Rawson’s enquiry, made a file for her son and added a card to a rapidly growing system:

Surname: RAWSON

Rank: PTE.

Reg No. VX43216

Unit: 2/29th. Btn. H.Q. COY.

9/4/42 Enq. From Vic. – Unof. Msg. [unofficially missing] MALAYA

Over the next eighteen months they retrieved and updated the card as further news of Private Rawson was received:

19-8-42: Cas. List V.319 rep. Missing.

27-5-43: List AC 494 adv. Tokio cables interned Malai Camp.

21-6-43: Cas list V467 prev. rept. Missing now rpt. P.O.W.

10-9-43: List WC 13 adv. Card rec. Washington POW Jap. Hands.

28-10-43: List JB. 213 adv. Singapore Radio Allege POW.

Then the reports cease. Nothing more, for two years.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Private Rawson’s card is now the first one in box 45 of the archival records series ‘Missing, Wounded and Prisoner of War Enquiry Cards’ This series was transferred to the University of Melbourne Archives in 2016 as part of the Red Cross’ ‘Gift to the Nation’ – the records of its first one hundred years in Australia. Digitised copies of cards from World War Two are now available to researchers online.[1]

In an era before vision statements and key performance indicators, the Red Cross Enquiry Bureau expressed its ethos as a ‘Golden Rule’:

No definite information that would be of solace to relatives should be allowed to remain in the office over-night.

Speed and accuracy were the essence of this “humane and intimate administration” which during World War Two helped over 58,000 Australian families to learn the fate of loved ones displaced by the war.[2] The vast majority of these enquiries concerned AIF personnel. Typically families received missing, wounded, killed or captured notification from the armed services then turned to the Red Cross to learn more about their loved one’s fate. However the Red Cross also attempted to trace the whereabouts of civilians – both Australian and foreign citizens – living overseas who were caught up in the war in Europe or the Pacific.

Enquiry cards
Soldiers and civilians, Australian nationals and foreigners. In keeping with its charter of neutrality and its global focus, the Enquiry Bureau endeavoured to respond to all enquiries, although Australian armed services personnel accounted for over ninety percent of its activity. MISSING, WOUNDED AND PRISONER OF WAR ENQUIRY CARDS, Australian Red Cross Society, National Office, 2916.0049, University of Melbourne Archives

The index cards were the administrative cornerstone of the Bureau’s enquiry service.[3] For such a harrowing and solemn business, the cards are a marvel of clerical efficiency and precision. Entries are heavily abbreviated and the volunteer typists rarely missed a capital letter or full stop. There are no back-stories, no narrative, in most cases not even first names, just the barest facts about a missing person’s fate, ultimately summarised in one word at the top of each card; ‘repatriated’, ‘safe’, ‘recovered’, ‘liberated’, ‘located’, ‘missing’, ‘POW’, ‘deceased’.

Yet the staccato shorthand belies both the complexity and compassion of this wartime service.  Most of the Bureau volunteers were themselves next-of-kin of POWs who somehow managed to channel their anxiety into the myriad of clerical tasks which enabled information to flow between state, national and overseas Red Cross bureaux, searchers in military hospitals and the armed services. Cards, files, lists, letters and cables in the face of fearful waiting.

Bureaucracy and heartbreak often make for peculiar companions in the Red Cross archive. Within the Red Cross’ administrative file titled ‘Bureau 1943’ we find a few stray copies of letters to family members, laden with sympathy and sadness:

Dear Mrs Bould

We have, as you know, been making enquiries to try and obtain news of your son…and we have now had an unofficial report from a member of the Battalion who has returned to Australia.

His account of what happened when the Japanese attacked Kokoda toward the end of July is a sad one… According to our witness, Pte Bould was busy on a job, ahead of the Unit’s defence position, when he was hit by a bullet which killed him instantly. The witness spoke as though he had known your son well… and added: “He was a particularly well-liked chap and a game soldier”. This is a tribute of which any soldier might be very proud, and we trust that it may bring you some slight comfort in your distress.

Please believe that our heartfelt sympathy goes out to you and that we will continue to do our utmost to find further witnesses who may be able to confirm or deny what we have so far learned.[4]

Geneva Bureau
This glass lantern slide is of the Central Prisoners of War Agency, Geneva, Switzerland, c. 1940. We hope to unearth a photograph of the Melbourne Bureau in operation as the transfer of records from the Red Cross to the University of Melbourne Archives continues. Australian Red Cross National Office Photographs Series, 2016.0081.00004. University of Melbourne Archives

Only a few pages further into the same file, however, we read of the protracted battle of wills between the New South Wales Divisional Bureau and Melbourne headquarters over the design of Form B5, the Bureau’s message service form. From the Honorary Director of the Sydney Bureau:

I was astonished to read today that the Bureau Committee had decided on 27th May “that in any further printing of B.5 it be reduced to the same size as B6.”……. What astonishes me is not that Form B5 is considered needlessly large, but that anyone experienced in its utilisation could have been found to support the idea that no greater amount of space is required by the majority of senders for their sprawling handwriting and block lettering than is needed by us for our neatly type-written reproductions.

Indignant correspondence on this topic continues for several months in 1942 and 1943, with the Sydney office refusing to accept that their locally printed alternative should not prevail over Form B5.

Also from this file is evidence of the challenge for the Red Cross of building good relations with the armed services – crucial to the Bureau’s information gathering task – whilst maintaining its impartiality. More than once in 1943 Army Records threatened to withdraw cooperation with the Bureau when, in the Army’s opinion, the Bureau was too hasty in providing information to next of kin. From the Army:

It is not the policy of this Department to declare the death of a soldier as the result of hearsay information…

_ _ _ _ _ _ _

Rachel Buchanan, Curator of the Germaine Greer Archive at the University of Melbourne Archives, has written about the index cards Greer created whilst preparing to write The Female Eunuch in 1969. She describes Greer’s ‘anti-system’ use of cards to capture not only her research but also the ‘explosion of radical ideas’ which became The Female Eunuch. Cards – and ideas – rearranged, discarded, revised and expanded. “…they are evidence of speed, fervour, the reckless stunt. Energy still fizzes from them”. Greer’s index cards come in several colours. Some are typed and some are handwritten. There are languages other than English and annotations of outrage and humour. They occupy only half an archive box; so little for a work of such significance.[5]

Fifty-nine archive boxes each containing around one thousand cards
Fifty-nine archive boxes each containing around one thousand cards. MISSING, WOUNDED AND PRISONER OF WAR ENQUIRY CARDS, Australian Red Cross Society, National Office, 2916.0049, University of Melbourne Archives

What a contrast to these Red Cross Enquiry Cards. The sheer volume of them is hard to fathom; fifty-nine archive boxes each containing around one thousand cards, each card bearing witness to a family’s trauma and tragedy. They are uniform, ordered and monochrome. The lack of colour suits them. Emotions are supressed beneath precision and procedure. There is no nuance or commentary, just the cold, hard, abbreviated facts of war. Seventy years on, the sombre silence of these cards is a testament to the lives of those who went to war, and those who waited at home, longing for their return.

For Mrs Rawson, the silence about her son ended in October 1945 after the Red Cross volunteers updated her son’s card one more time:

Army Cas. 5231 adv. a/n [above named] died of disease whilst POW Siam Dysentry 31-10-43.

[1] University of Melbourne Archives Series 2016.0049: Missing, Wounded and Prisoner of War Enquiry Cards will be available online to researchers from May 2017. Further information, and a name-based search option is available from the University of Melbourne’s digitised items catalogue accessible from archives.unimelb.edu.au. Private Rawson’s card is item 2016.0049.44698.

[2] See the Red Cross’ own account of Bureau operations within item 2016.0054.00004: ‘Outline of War Service During World War II’, held by the University of Melbourne Archives.

[3] The Bureau also generated a file for each missing person, continuing the practice established by the Red Cross during World War One. Enquiry files from World War One are held by the Australian War Memorial. Red Cross Central Bureau missing person files from World War Two are no longer extant.

[4] This and following extracts are from item 2015.0033.00657 ‘Bureau 1943’, part of the Red Cross National Office Correspondence Series, held by the University of Melbourne Archives.

[5] Rachel Buchanan’s blog post: Mindswap: The Female Eunuch Index Cards, is accessible from http://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/archives/mindswap-the-female-eunuch-index-cards/

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