Cirrus@Austlit

'The story of the 'Dunera Boys' is an intrinsic part of the history of Australia in the Second World War and in its aftermath. The injustice these 2000 men suffered through British internment in camps at Hay, Tatura and Orange is well known. Less familiar is the tale of what happened to them afterwards. Following on from volume one Dunera Lives: A Visual History (2018), Dunera Lives: Profiles continues the saga in life stories.

'This second volume of Dunera Lives presents the voices, faces, and lives of 20 people, who, together with nearly 3000 other internees from Britain and Singapore, landed in Australia in 1940. All over the world there were Dunera lives, those of men and women who passed through the upheavals of the Second World War and survived to tell the tale. Here are some of their stories.

'A contribution to the history of Australia, to the history of migrants and migration, and to the history of human rights, these two volumes put in the public domain a story whose full dimensions and complexity have never been described.' (Publication summary)

'Leonhard Adam (1891–1960) was among the most distinguished internees despatched from England to Australia in 1940 on the infamous HMT Dunera.Penguin Books had lately published his Primitive Art, which was on the way to becoming a standard work. In 1942 he was released in order to study Aboriginal stone artefacts under the supervision of the University of Melbourne’s Professor R.M. Crawford, who secured resources for the making and sustenance of a small ethnological museum attached to the university’s history department. By canny exchange, Adam built a precious collection. He gave sparsely attended lectures, and with some cause believed that Australian colleagues did not greatly value his work. It has been receiving more attention and respect in recent years.' (Abstract)

'Memorials to Australian participation in wars abound in our landscape. From Melbourne's huge Shrine of Remembrance to the modest marble soldier, obelisk or memorial hall in suburb and country town, they mourn and honour Australians who have served and died for their country. Surprisingly, they have largely escaped scrutiny. Ken Inglis argues that the imagery, rituals and rhetoric generated around memorials constitute a civil religion, a cult of ANZAC. Sacred Places traces three elements which converged to create the cult: the special place of war in the European mind when nationalism was at its zenith; the colonial condition; and the death of so many young men in distant battle, which impelled the bereaved to make substitutes for the graves of which history had deprived them. The 'war memorial movement' attracted conflict as well as commitment. Inglis looks at uneasy acceptance, even rejection, of the cult by socialists, pacifists, feminists and some Christians, and at its virtual exclusion of Aborigines. He suggests that between 1918 and 1939 the making, dedication and use of memorials enhanced the power of the right in Australian public life. Finally, he examines a paradox. Why, as Australia's wars recede in public and private memory, and as a once British Australia becomes multicultural, have the memorials and what they stand for become more cherished than ever? Sacred Places spans war, religion, politics, language and the visual arts. Ken Inglis has distilled new cultural understandings from a familiar landscape.' (Publication summary)

'Sir, – What does Robert Potts, reviewing Peter Porter’s anthology The Oxford Book of Modern Australian Verse (October 3), mean by saying that A. D. Hope’s “Augustan line . . . owes more to English education than Australian residence”? Doesn’t he know that Hope went to New South Wales schools and the University of Sydney before spending at Oxford three of his so far ninety years? Does he imagine that Augustan models are unknown to Australian residents?'  (Introduction)

'As the bells in the tower of Sydney's General Post Office chimed eight o'clock on the evening of Friday 1 July 1932, the peals were picked up by a microphone and carried to every State of the Federation. 'This is the Australian Broadcasting Commission,' said the announcer, Conrad Charlton.

'So begins K.S. Inglis's compelling history of the first fifty years of the ABC. In a sparkling tour de force Inglis shows us the ABC's triumphs and failures, its great medley of personalities and the effects it has had on Australian public life. Based on the Commission's own archives, on newspapers and journals, on a rich assortment of interviews and on the author's own listening and viewing, this is a social history of the highest order.' (Publication summary)