Crying in the Wilderness or, Nursing in the Twilight of Australian Colonialism

Charles Cornwallis (University of Melbourne Bachelor of Arts student)

The last 15 years of Australian administration in the Territory of Papua and New Guinea were a period of rapid social and political change. Even within this context, a particularly unusual position was occupied by the expatriate public servants working in the Territory’s Administration. Evidence in the Royal Australian Nursing Federation (RANF) collection in the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) allows us explore the situation of these workers through the actions of one group, the nurses of the Territory’s health service. Their attempt to form an industrial organisation during the 1960s offers a new perspective on the period, allowing us to see the final years of Administration through the concerns of those working right along its fault-lines.

The Papua New Guinea Nurses Association

In her grand survey of 75 years of nursing in Papua New Guinea, Ellen Kettle devotes little more than a paragraph to the Territory’s first professional nursing association. She records that an initial attempt was made in 1962 but that progress was slow and the actual goal was not reached until a decade later, in 1972. Archival evidence, while by no means a complete account of the formation of the PNG Nurses Association, allows us to add to the story outlined by Kettle.

In the RANF collection, the first mention of a nurses association actually appears in 1956, six years earlier than Kettle records. Towards the end of that year, the Assistant Secretary of the RANF in Melbourne wrote to Jean Henderson, an Anglican mission nurse working in Oro Bay in Papua. She was writing in response to a call (from who is unclear) for a link to be established between nurses in the Territory and the RANF, and suggested that she could assist them in joining one of the Australian state branches. Henderson however replied that she wished to establish something more – a professional organisation for nurses in the Territory. Such an association would, she felt, greatly assist them in achieving uniformity in methods and training, and help to encourage indigenous involvement in the profession. She thanked the RANF for its offer, but indicated that she would work towards establishing an association on her own.

The issue then seems to disappear until 1961, when the RANF once again began to receive requests for information. This time the push was coming from two women in very senior positions in the Administration. In 1961 Joyce Jones was writing as a Senior Matron of the Department, and within a few years she would be appointed Principal Matron, putting her in command of all nursing services in the Territory. Violet Bignold, the other correspondent, had military experience during the war, and at the time occupied a senior administrative position in the ICMH Division.

They both contacted the RANF with similar requests – nurses in the Territory were considering organisation, and any information or advice on how to go about it would be greatly appreciated. The RANF happily mailed off the relevant rules and instructions, but once again the association failed to eventuate. Why is not exactly clear. Kettle merely states that “many stumbling blocks were presented”, but the archives suggest that an application was actually taken to the RANF in 1962 and that there it was either rejected or simply not acted upon. Nevertheless, the ball was now well and truly rolling and over the next few years the project would not only continue, but would also become entangled with the political changes of the time.

On 20 July 1963, “Pixie” Annatt arrived in Port Moresby on what had originally been holiday from her work as the Assistant Secretary of the Queensland Branch of the RANF. However, the trip to see her sister had been too valuable an opportunity to miss and Annatt’s holiday had duly been co-opted for another purpose by the Federal branch. As a result of the RANF’s anxieties about “changes emerging” in the Territory, Annatt was asked to embark on an extensive fact-finding mission of interviews and investigations.

The report that Annatt produced is one of the most interesting documents of the collection. It contains firsthand information which was gathered from all over the Territory and shipped back to the headquarters in Melbourne. It also describes the state of the nursing profession as seen by one who had made their professional and industrial advancement her career. Annatt was not impressed with what she found. In centres right across the territory the same complaints were recorded again and again. Nurses were frustrated with the lack of professional autonomy – in areas like training and promotion they were being overruled by the Department, and the result was a clear decline in standards of care. Coupled with this were the perennial problems of work in the Territory. Conditions were poor, with equipment and personal amenities in very short supply. Nurses worked for low wages in often isolated areas and had little more than basic supplies and the goodwill of the local population (not always forthcoming) on which to survive. Annatt declared that these problems were creating a desperate situation – indeed, her report provides the evocative quote which gives this article its title.

Annatt’s report seems to have precipitated a flurry of activity back in Australia. Meetings were held with the Minister for External Territories where the plight of Territory nurses was explored in detail. When a wage deductions dispute (or more accurately, the threat that this might drive nurses to join a rival organisation, the Public Service Association) was thrown into the mix in 1964, a further series of letters and visits to the Territory appear in the records. In early 1965 Annatt returned to the Territory, this time to witness a meeting which resulted in the creation of a Nursing Committee which was charged with first establishing an Association and then deciding whether to affiliate with the RANF.

After 1965 the records become a little patchier but it can be assumed that the work of the committee quietly continued, requiring little further input from Australia. Eventually a constitution was adopted and the Association came into being in 1972, although the RANF had little to do with it. With independence only a few years away, the Territory nurses had created an independent, national organisation which would have no official links to the Australian one.

After more than a decade of work from the RANF, this result seems slightly anticlimactic. However, if viewed in light of the social and political context of the Territory in the 1960s, this story illustrates what must have been a common tension experienced by those expatriates working in the Territory in the lead-up to independence. The nurses of the Territory’s Department of Health had long worked on the frontlines of public health in PNG. The Department’s Infant, Child and Maternal Health (ICMH) Division was able to ‘reach out’ into indigenous Territory society far more than other, urban-based services. Indeed, this ‘reaching out’ operated in both directions; the ICMH was also one of the earliest government services to begin official training of indigenous staff, with nursing orderly courses being opened in 1951.

By the beginning of the 1960s however, the character of Australian administration in the Territory was changing. The day when Australia would hand over its responsibilities to Papua and New Guinean nationals was coming.

The drive to create a nurses association was naturally influenced by these changes in the Territory. From the very beginning, the Territory nurses leading the push described the project in terms of creating a sustainable profession, by giving indigenous nurses the experience and authority to continue co-ordinating activities after independence.

At the same time however, the project was also an effort to resist the effects of localisation. Horrified as Annatt was at the conditions in the Territory, this was not what had prompted the nurses there to request her help. It seems far more likely that the “changes” which had prompted Annatt’s mission were the imminent completion of a new nursing syllabus and the formation of a Nursing Council within the Department of Health. Both of these moves can be seen as efforts by the Department to gain more control over a profession which had to be restructured to outlive Australian involvement. The Territory nurses also faced a more personal threat – in one letter, Lyn Mcalister voiced her concerns that the jobs of expatriate nurses were not safe.

The nurses’ push to create an industrial association thus reveals the curious double-bind in which many in the Administration found themselves. On the one hand, they were committed to preparing the Territory for self-sufficiency and independence but on the other, forced to react personally against the very processes which they began for this purpose. Ultimately, and in spite of their dealings with the RANF, it was this first objective which would win out, resulting in an independent, national association.

 

Bibliography

Primary Sources

Report of the Assistant Secretary to the Council of the RANF Queensland Branch, on her return from Papua and New Guinea; July-August 1963. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/63, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Report of Meeting, 2nd February 1965, Turama Hospital, Papua New Guinea. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/65, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

“New Guinea Call to Clear Way for Independence.” The Canberra Times. 23rd January 1965. Accessed [online] from <http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/105824965?searchTerm=papua%20new%20guinea%20independence&searchLimits=dateFrom=1950-01-01|||dateTo=1970-12-31>.

Bignold, Violet. Letter to the Secretary-General of the RANF. 9th June 1961. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/61, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Department of Public Health, Territory of Papua and New Guinea. Annual Report, 1962-1963. Port Moresby, 1963.

Hall, V.M. Letter to C. E. Barnes, Minister for Territories. 25th June 1964. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/64, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Henderson, Jean. Letter to the Assistant Secretary. 13th January 1957. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/56, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Jarrett, L. Letter to the Executive. 20th February 1963. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/63, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Jarrett, L. Letter to Dr Symes. 23rd December 1968. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/68, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Jones, Joyce. Letter to Secretary of the RANF. 24th May 1961. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/38/61, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Kirchner, J. V. Letter to Jean Henderson. 24th December 1956. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/56, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Lalor, W. A. Statement: Public Service Ordinance. September 1964, Port Moresby. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/44/64, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Mcalister, Lyn. Letter to L. Jarrett. 15th February 1963. “Royal Australian Nursing Federation, Federal Office”. P/38/63, University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne.

Secondary Sources

Denoon, Donald. “The Political Economy of Western Medical Services in Papua New Guinea.” In A History of Medicine in Papua New Guinea: Vignettes of an Earlier Period, ed. Burton Burton-Bradley, 77-100. Kingsgrove, N.S.W: Australasian Medical Publishing, 1990.

Kettle, Ellen. That They Might Live. Sydney: F. P Leonard, 1979.

Nelson, Hank. “Liberation: The End of Australian Rule in Papua New Guinea.” Journal of Pacific History 35, 3 (2000): 269–280.

Scragg, Roy. “Medical tul-tul to Doctor of Medicine.” In A History of Medicine in Papua New Guinea: Vignettes of an Earlier Period, ed. Burton Burton-Bradley, 15-46. Kingsgrove, N.S.W: Australasian Medical Publishing, 1990.

 

Fletcher Jones ‘Pleasant Hill’ Water Tower (otherwise known as the ‘Silver Ball’)

'The Elevated Water Tower in its Factory and Garden Setting at Warrnambool, Victoria', Ralph Jones, Ralph Jones Water Tower Submission & Business Papers, 2014.0112, University of Melbourne Archives
‘The Elevated Water Tower in its Factory and Garden Setting at Warrnambool, Victoria’, Ralph Jones, Ralph Jones Water Tower Submission & Business Papers, 2014.0112, University of Melbourne Archives

In late 2014 the University of Melbourne Archives UMA acquired Ralph Jones’ 1975 Engineering Awards Competition submission ‘Elevated Steel Water Tower and Associated Project and his papers about the construction of the water tower at ‘Pleasant Hill’, (otherwise known as the ‘Silver Ball’) at the old Fletcher Jones Factory site, Warrnambool. The water tower is an iconic and distinctive feature in the Warrnambool local area and is a useful landmark for the visitor as they enter the town. In discussions with Ralph Jones his motivation for depositing his collection with the Archives is to ensure others are aware of the design and construction method used to build the tower and to raise awareness about the factory site’s significance.
The elevated steel water tower has an attractive appearance which enhances the famous landscape and garden setting of the Fletcher Jones & Staff Pty. Ltd. Production centre, “Pleasant Hill” at Warrnambool. The water tower is 37.8 m (124 ft.) high with a total capacity of 205,000 litres (45,000 gallons). It is in the form of a sphere 7.32 m (24 ft.) diameter, supported on three lets each 0.76 m (2’-6”) diameter.

As space was at a premium, the design permitted the base frame of the water tower to be incorporated in the factory fabric.

The Ralph Jones Water Tower Collection is now available for research access.

The many stories of the Commercial Travellers Association

W.H. Ell's 'Safechek' sovereign changer c. 1907 Commercial Travellers' Association of Australia 1979.0162
W.H. Ell’s ‘Safechek’ sovereign changer c. 1907 Commercial Travellers’ Association of Australia 1979.0162

The Commercial Travellers Association of Australia (CTA) represents a professional organisation of otherwise previously unrepresented workers – a white collar union for travelling salesmen – that experienced a long decline as the economy evolved and steadily made them redundant. As such, the CTA’s interests were in providing services and supports to their membership such as insurance, supera

nnuation, educational opportunities, negotiating deals with hotels to support the commercial travellers’ work, providing display rooms for goods, a place for the commercial travellers to meet and socialise both together and with customers in the CTA Clubs.

It was initially a large and active body, conducting annual conferences and publishing a monthly magazine (The Australian Traveller), with an annual supplement (Australia Today). It had active branches in every State and especially prior to the Depression, was filled with that 19th Century ethos of civic duty and public good and the idea that the CTA was helping to create a bigger and better nation. After the Second WW, the economic changes occurring in Australia steadily began to wear the CTA down and much of the later years (60s-70s) were dominated by its declining finances and membership. Despite the problems of the later years, the CTA still tried to promote Australia and Australian achievements and never lost that pride in the nation building role that they saw for themselves.

The CTA collection, documents the rise and fall of the association over 100 years and includes the iconic original artwork of the flagship publication Australia Today by artists such as Norman Lindsay, Napier Waller, Lionel Lindsay and C Dudley Wood. The collection includes a rare sovereign changer. Once prolific in bars, and like establishments the ‘Safechek’ gold changer provided a canister of change in exchange for a sovereign or a half sovereign when it was inserted in the appropriate slot.

Contributor: Carl Temple

Source: Primary Sources: 50 Stories from 50 Years of Archives

Links

Commercial Travellers Association

Professor L.F. Giblin’s view of the Australian trade policy during the interwar years

Portrait of Professor Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin, UMA/1/1026, University of Melbourne Archives
Portrait of Professor Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin, UMA/1/1026, University of Melbourne Archives

The Giblin collection reveals Professor L.F. Giblin’s practical view of the Australian economy, challenging set approaches to empire. Recognising Australia’s interests and unique economic circumstances, Professor Giblin argued for greater responsibility in dealing with unemployment and falling trade during the Great Depression. He also called for greater self-sufficiency to develop a war-ready economy, broadening trade relations within and beyond the Commonwealth. Giblin’s view of the Australian economy did not overturn relations with the British Empire, but questioned how set approaches could be changed to meet distinctly Australian interests.

Madeleine Thorburn, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies has prepared an essay for her Capstone subject Making History that focuses on the interwar years. She considers the Giblin archive to be a significant primary source for scholars who wish to research the effect of events like the Great Depression and war on Australia’s relationship with the Empire.

University of Melbourne Archives links to collections:

1992.0142 Lyndhurst Falkiner Giblin

1983.0090 James Davies

Contributor: Madeleine Thorburn

Strange Scenes Identified in the Baillieu Library Print Collection

‘Unidentified. Series of twenty seven engravings from a book/ copper engravings – Dutch – ? 1650-1700 good impressions.’ This is what Dr Orde Poynton wrote in his registration book in 1960 for his print collection about a group of illustrations that subsequently remained a mystery. The key to unlocking the identity of the images lies in their peculiar subject matter. One of the most startling of the illustrations shows a scene of men attaching tapers to foxes’ tails and setting them on fire in order to burn a wheat field. What has this to do with other pictures in the series such as a man with his tongue stuck to the handle of a water pump?

Embelmata XV: How, Christian, are you now thus divided? (Hoe zijt ghy Christ, nu dus gesplitst?) (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Embelmata XV: How, Christian, are you now thus divided? (Hoe zijt ghy Christ, nu dus gesplitst?) (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J.
Orde Poynton 1959.
Embelmata L: De keur-wijz' leert van't gheen hem zeert (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Embelmata L: De keur-wijz’ leert van’t gheen hem zeert (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the
University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.

Once the scenes were recognised as emblems, identification of their source revealed they were some of the 51 illustrations from Johannes de Brune’s Emblemata of Zinne-werck first published in 1624.[1] Emblems exist throughout art history, but as a genre they appeared in the 16th-century and seem to have fallen out of usage during the 19th-century. The earliest or most influential emblem book is Andrea Alciato’s Emblemata (1531). A copy of this popular book was donated to the university library in 1903 as part of the George McArthur Bequest. Unfortunately, the library does not hold a copy of de Brune’s work on emblems.

An emblem comprises three components, including a title or motto which sits above the image and a verse or epigram which sits below. Typically their design conveyed inculcating wisdom to their audience. They have been described as word-eye pictures as the two elements are required to interpret their riddle-like qualities. Yet their meaning can often remain elusive, and in the case of the Baillieu’s engravings, without the words, they have the unintentional effect of not making any sense. Indeed, de Brune wrote in the dedication to his book that without the explanatory text, the images would be as helpless as oysters without shells.[2] Emblems are similar to fable stories and their subjects can range from scenes of everyday life through to the fantastic; a guiding hand can reach out of the sky to direct the action, or an enchanted animal can be a protagonist.

Emblemata XI: De mensch vint baet, in anders quaed (1624)
Emblemata XI: De mensch vint baet, in anders quaed (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne, Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.

In an example from Alciato’s Emblemata, a translation from the Latin motto is: ‘Intelligence matters, not beauty’ and the prose below the image describes:

A fox, entering the store-room of a theatrical producer, found an actor’s mask, skilfully shaped, so finely fashioned that the spirit alone was missing, in all else it seemed alive. Taking it up, the fox addressed it – What a head is this, but it has no brain![3]

The illustrations in de Brune’s Emblemata are after drawings by Adriaen van de Venne, a leading emblem artist. As a text prepared during the Dutch Protestant Reformation, many of the images convey religious analogies through scenes of contemporary life. In one of the emblems the text explains God and the Devil’s battle for the soul, which is represented by two hands in the clouds finger-wrestling a pretzel.

Emblemata XIX: Des mensches leven is een strijd, Die noyt als met den mensch' en sijt (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Emblemata XIX: Des mensches leven is een strijd, Die noyt als met den mensch’ en sijt (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J.
Orde Poynton 1959.

While other images have caught the attention of scholars for their social history such as the depiction of the medical practice of leeching in one image, and Dutch manufacture of early telescopes in another.  The illustration with the foxes refers to the biblical story of Samson torching the fields of the Philistines.[4] Although all of the translations are yet to be found, and the relative wisdom, or lack thereof, to setting foxes’ tails on fire and licking handles cannot be fully defined, it has been important to provide these images with some much needed context.

Emblemata XLVII: Jealousy finds pleasure in another's misfortune (De Nijd vind baet in anders quaed) (1624); Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.
Emblemata XLVII: Jealousy finds pleasure in another’s misfortune (De Nijd vind baet in anders quaed) (1624);  Baillieu Library Print Collection, the University of Melbourne. Gift of Dr J. Orde Poynton 1959.

Kerrianne Stone (Special Collections Curatorial Assistant (Prints))

[1]  For a more detailed description of the book see Marleen van der Weij, “‘A Good Man, Burgher and Christian’: the intended reader in Johan de Brune’s Emblemata,’ in Alison Adams, Marleen van der Weij, Emblems of the Low Countries: Book Historical Perspective (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies, 2003), pp. 111-128.

[2] Els Stronks, Negotiating Differences: Word, Image and Religion in the Dutch Republic (Leiden: Brill, 2011), p. 77.

[3] Emblemata: Lyons, 1550  Andrea Alciato; translated and annotated by Betty I. Knott; with an introduction by John Manning (Aldershot, Hants., England: Scolar Press, 1996),  p. 203.

[4] P.J. Meertens, introduction to Emblemata of zinne-werck (Soest, Germany: Davaco, 1970), p. 4.

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