The Great Australian Drought

Murray Sayle

Woy Woy, New South Wales

Overshadowing everything in Australia V at the moment is the drought, news of which has finally penetrated from the out- back to the big cities of the eastern coast, with their well-watered lawns and sparkling beaches. On one of these I am currently ly- ing, brassy summer sun lashing a back pale from the snows of north China, ice-cold Foster's at elbow, a sack of new books to read and a rare chance to relay some home thoughts from home.

The Great Dry seems to have begun in the early Sixties, but Australians thought themselves inured to such things, and the local politicians of the time were much more worried about 'the generally downward spread of Asian communism' as Sir Robert Menzies warned (a hard thing to fight, gravity). As a lad, I used to recite: I love a sunburnt country, A land of sweeping plains, Of sunlit mountain ranges, Of droughts and flooding rains...

But then, poetess Dorothea Mackellar was said to have composed it in a fit of homesickness with her last penny in the gas in the Earl's Court Road, and she certainly lived in Darling Point, Sydney's plushiest harbourside suburb.

Things are getting tough in well-watered Sydney when garden sprinklers are restricted to four hours a day and, as the bushies are always whingeing about the weather, the longest dry spell since the British settlement of the country has dragg- ed on, all but unreported, to the point where inland farmers are beginning to walk off their selections to join the dole queues or, even more pathetically, whole families with starving flocks of sheep are taking to the 'long paddock' — the yellowing strips of grass alongside the roads. In the New England District which, as the name sug- gests, ought to be green and smiling, there are towns where it has not rained for 18 years. The first European settlers, huddled around their beachhead at Sydney Cove, suspected that the scorching winds of sum- mer blew from immense deserts in the in- terior, and the country's rainfallmight not be reliable enough for permanent agriculture. The revival of this fear, and an unemployment rate which has just broken through ten per cent, has added Australia, incredibly, to the list of countries with pro- blems, where politicians are being asked to think about things weightier than how to get in, or get back in, and, elsewhere, asked in vain.

But the sun is still shining, and the beer is cold, both reminding us that it was along this very coast, in this season 195 years ago, that Captain Arthur Phillip, RN, and his First Fleet of ten ships, 564 male convicts, 192 females, 203 Marine guards and an Anglican clergyman came a-cruising, look- ing for a suitable spot to cast anchor, run up the Union Jack and score the only laugh in the long, improbable history of the British Empire.

rr here was a time when Australians were 1 rather touchy about the fact that our country started off as King George's Gulag, and the names of those stout-hearted, light- fingered pioneers were reserved, like the Popes' collection of erotica, for scholars with a serious need to see them, which ex- cluded the curious eager for a cross-check with the Sydney telephone book. The first T-shirt or visiting-card claiming convict forebears has yet to appear, but the subject is getting a lot more relaxed, to the point where we can now read The Crimes of the First Fleet Convicts by John Cobley, a painstaking job of research among assize records, jail deliveries and old newspapers, proudly published by Angus and Robert- son, the literary end of Rupert Murdoch's mutinous' kingdom.

The interest of this work, family trees aside, is that we can at least decide between the three rival theories about the type of person selected to found the new nation: 1) They were basically the unemployed of the time, done for stealing handkerchiefs, or food for their families.

2) They were dissidents objecting to capitalist exploitation, uppity shop stewards and New Statesman contributors.

3) We started off with the 18th-century colleagues of John Christie, Myra Hindley and Jack the Ripper, with results only to be expected.

The present Australian crime rate is, in

`Not too frank for Mrs Thatcher, I see.' next week.

fact, low, but it is with the first authentic convict names, and track records, that the mists begin to clear. Robert Abel, we read, was convicted at the Old Bailey, on 15 September 1784, of 'assaulting William Rough on the King's highway, and feloniously taking from his person 5$ in monies numbered and two copper halfpence, value Id his monies. Guilty. Death. On 23 February 1785, to be transported to Africa.' (Shurely shome mistake here? George III.) Small-time highwayman or, as we should say these days, mugger.

Then we have Abrahams, Esther, aged 20 years, who 'was indicted for feloniously stealing twenty-four yards of black silk lace, value 50s, the property of Joseph Har- rop and Charles Harrop, privily in their shop. Guilty of stealing, but not privately. To be transported for 7 years.' That'll teach her to shoplift at Harrop's. And kitchen- maid Ruth Baldwin, otherwise Bowyer, 'was indicted for feloniously stealing three table spoons, value 20s, two silver dessert spoons, value 10s, the property of Joseph White.' John Ball 'for stealing one Ewe Sheep price lOs the goods of John Somer- ville. Guilty. To be hanged. Royal mercy extended on condition of transportation for the term of 7 years.'

'George Robinson, 14, George Bannister, 16, John Nurse, 14 .... burglariously steal- ing one marcella petticoat, value 8s, one child's dimity cloak, value 3s, one linen gown, value is 6d, one pair of cotton stock- ings, value 6d.' Elizabeth Beck ford, aged 70 years, 'for stealing twelve pounds' weight of Gloucester cheese, value 4s'. Thirsty Peter Burn stole 'one large wooden cask, value 10s, and thirty-six gallons of porter, value 30s'. Thomas Chaddick 'did pluck up, spoil and destroy twelve cucumber plants, value 15s'. William Clark drained 'one wooden cask, value 6d, and five gallons of a certain liquor called raspberry brandy, value 22s. Guilty. Death. Pardoned on condition of being transported seven years.' Thomas Eccles 'did break and enter and ... one flitch of bacon, value 20s ... feloniously did steal'. Book-loving William Francis 'for feloniously stealing one printed book entitl- ed "A Summary Account of the Flourishing State of the Island of Tobago", value 12d, and one other printed book the property of Robert Melville Esq.' Got free passage, not to Tobago but to Botany Bay. Dorothy Handland, aged 82, 'an old clothes woman', got her free trip for per- jury and, tough old duck, survived the voyage. William Power stole '26 fowls, val. 26s'. George Raymond nicked 'seventy-two yards of bed ticking, val. 61s'. William Sherman, 'for stealing turkeys, was 'sentenced to be transported seven years'. Young John Hudson was nine when con- victed of burglary in 1782, but a doubtless more mature 13 when he set out for sunny

Australia in 1787. Revd James Carrington, sentencing him to seven years, explained that it was important to keep a boy of his tender age out of bad company. And, sure enough, Philip Farrel 'was indicted for feloniously stealing one cambrick handker- chief, value Is, the property of Major Taylor. Guilty. Transported for 7 years.'

So it, or rather they, went. It is clear that Australia's pioneers were, as criminals go, pretty small beer (John Turner, in fact, got life for stealing '28 gallons, or thereabouts, of small beer'). No murderers, rapists or in- flicters of grevious bodily harm these, all of whom, presumably, swung. No city finan- ciers either, nor was there, with the First Fleet, anyone who could be described as political, although their crimes could be handily summarised as a modest transfer of wealth from the middle to the lower classes, rather like the income-tax-and-dole mechanism of our own times.

Did they all live happily ever after, once ashore in the Land of Opportunity? brink, as we have seen, played its customary devilish role, and some of the girls were clearly, by choice or necessity, on the game. I could never have thought there were so many abandoned wretches in England,' wrote Lieutenant Ralph Clark. 'They are ten thousand times worse than the men con- victs, and I am afraid we will have a great deal more trouble with them.' He did. Australia, The First Twelve Years, another new book, by a Yorkshireman, Peter Taylor, tells a lurid tale of floggings, hang- ings and boozy debauchery as the early governors wrestled to get the colony ship- shape. American rum-runners were quick to find a new market, and before long the convicts refused to work for anything but hard liquor, or 'grog' as they called it, in tribute to Admiral Edward Vernon ('Old Grog') who prescribed the daily rum-and- water ration long popular with his Service.

A lot of the convicts stayed, predictably, as hard cases, no-hopers to the end of their days; others, often with only a year or two left on their sentences, got ticket-of-leave and took up farming, and even banking, sometimes ending up rich but always look- ed down on by the free settlers, or 'pure merinos'. Within a decade, some still recognisable Australian attitudes began to form: contempt for unreasonable authority (and dependence on it), fascination with the !ow life, immoderate love (and horror) of the grog'. It's a heart-warming story with, so far, a happy ending, and it's bound to make a great television series. Which brings us, dipping into the book- bag again, to Robert J. Hawke, A Biography, by the Canberra political writer 8Ianche d'Alpuget. Bob 'Awke, as he in- troduces himself, is easily the best-known Man in Australia, and all but unknown out- side, a sure sign that his fame is founded on television. He has, moreover, at least a sporting chance of being the next but one !prime minister, and Ms d'Alpuget's book, not off the press, is by way of being his campaign biography. This species of

literature normally tends to accentuate the positive, but Hawke and Ms d'Alpuget bet- ween them have broken with tradition and let it all hang out, to the point where Hawke's numerous detractors can have nothing to add to his discredit. Ted Ken- nedy, telling us what really happened at Chappaquiddick, could hardly do a more thorough job of self-disclosure.

What is Bob Hawke famous for? Most Australians will instantly answer, 'booz- ing', surprisingly perhaps about a man whose father was a Congregational minister and mother a leading light in the Women's Christian Temperance Union, both strictly TT all their lives. To stand out as a booze- artist among his compatriots Hawke Junior must have sunk quite a few in his time and, his biography discloses, indeed he has.

Bob Hawke's Uncle Bert was a successful Labour politician in Western Australia, clearly suggesting the nephew might blossom either as a preacher or a politician, careers which he has, in a manner of speak- ing, combined. (Before anyone starts reaching for the convict lists, the Hawke family were respectable free settlers from Cornwall in the 19th century.) Young Robert did well at school and university, and in 1953 he sailed off, first-class, as a Rhodes Scholar bound for University Col- lege, Oxford.

In the Old Country Hawke was, predic- tably, known as 'Digger', narrowly missed his cricket Blue, and gave more than a hint of things to come by getting into the Guin- ness Book of Records for downing 21/2 pints of beer in 12 seconds, a time which still stands. 'We worshipped the grog,' recalls a wistful friend of Hawke's college years. Between yards of ale, Hawke wrote his dissertation on the peculiarly Australian system of setting wages not by collective bargaining but by quasi-legal action before a Federal Arbitration Court specially set up for the purpose. While the system has far from eliminated strikes and/or lockouts, it has brought some order to the Australian social scene (and wealth to lawyers) and, in a country starved for labour, it may have actually tended to keep wages down.

Home from Oxford with his degree, young Hawke had little trouble landing a job first as researcher with the Australian Council of Trade Unions, then as advocate for the unions before the Arbitration Court and finally, on the retirement of the coun- cil's president Bert Monk (another alcoholic alas) as president of the ACTU. The arguments before the court about the Australian Basic Wage turn on 'the needs of a man, his wife and about three children' and 'the capacity of industry to pay', both economic questions, and Hawke the trained economist was speedily able to wipe the courtroom floor with the economically il- literate lawyers and employers' men set against him.

His skill with a glass did not go amiss, either, in his career as a professional trade unionist. While strictly speaking not from the working-class himself, a distinction which might be lost on a non-Australian, Hawke the Rhodes Scholar and Guinness 'record man' had no trouble standing schooner for schooner with the men with black singlets and beer paunches who were, collectively, his employers.

He may, at this time, have sharpened his already marked Australian accent which, with the use of such expressions as 'Don't come the raw prawn', on occasion makes him all but unintelligible to audiences restricted to Standard Southern English. It does him no harm at home, however, and Hawke's professional posture as an ad- vocate pleading for more wages for the workers could hardly fail to make him a na- tional hero in a time of rising prosperity and massive immigration, when there seemed no end to Australia's good fortune.

Ater he succeeded the boozy Monk in 1967 as president of the Trade Union Movement Hawke soon emerged as Aus- tralia's leading television performer. Any strike which reached a national dimension inevitably involved Hawke as a mediator, and his standard television performance was to rush, hair rumpled and shirt stained with sweat, straight from the negotiating table strewn with butts and empties to the studio to announce another dispute settled and another famous victory for the workers. Hawke had (and has) that most prized of all television assets, a crisp, articulate and reasonable opinion on all subjects, and no peer in Australia in putting it across.

On the box, Hawke is equally strong on the defensive. Asked on camera, for in- stance, whether some of his wage set- tlements were not a touch on the infla- tionary side, he was likely to reply, `Aw, have a funny one, sonny' and no inter- view has yet thought of a suitable reply.

Meanwhile, when he increasingly took to turning up at the studios too sloshed to deliver any of his favourite lines, the televi- sion people responded by editing out the more revealing lurches, partly out of public- bar friendship, partly in fear of losing the brilliance of his performances when even half-way sober.

In her book Ms d'Alpuget, clearly with Hawke's approval, traces his classic descent into alcoholism through the Seventies, beginning with a few snifters before impor- tant speeches, by way of brandy-only lun- ches to benders in which the engaging and witty Hawke would speedily drink himself into gibbering, foul-mouthed insensibility. In this condition, she reports, her subject would proposition any handy woman who was available, and many who were not, leading his long-suffering wife Hazell to consult lawyers about the inevitable divorce.

This domestic calamity (in another manifestation Hawke, who has three children, was named Father of the Year in 1971) was averted by some half-hearted ef- forts at moderating his drinking, which in- variably came unstuck when admirers press- ed treble whiskies on him in public places. Then, which had been long-awaited, Hawke resigned his trade union office in 1980 to contest a safe Labour seat in Melbourne and enter the Australian parlia- ment, a preliminary, many thought, to the premiership. More sensationally, he ap- peared once more on television to admit, that his drinking was getting the better of him, and to announce his irrevocable deci- sion to go on the wagon. Hawke bid farewell to the bottle with a rendering of ac- counts: 'As Sir Winston Churchill said, I reckon I got more out of grog than grog got out of me.' (The thought is undoubtedly Churchillian, but the wording more likely Hawke's.) The speech, which many found manly and moving, altered the few people left in Australia who were still unaware that their hero had a severe drinking problem.

This is not, of course, necessarily an in- superable barrier to success in politics in Australia, or anywhere else. John Curtin, our wartime prime minister, answered closely to W. B. Yeats's lines about

A lad with a fine fly-fisher's wrist Turned to a drunken journalist

but Curtin remains the most loved of all Australian premiers. Yet Hawke, in his three long, dry years in Parliament, has yet to make the expected political splash. Some Say (they would) that he needs the drink to keep his wits at their keenest. The tone of his authorised biography suggests that he is engaged in a period' of sober self- examination, and that he may, in his liquid years of easy victories and mediocre op- ponents, have allowed his brains to go to his head, as Lady Birkenhead said about F. E. Smith, another brilliant, boozy ad- vocate.

Last year Hawke, still a television star, failed in an attempt to seize the Labour leadership from Bill Hayden, an unflashy, quintessentially decent bloke who ascribed the move to Hawke's 'honourable ambi- tion' to be prime minister. Then Labour itself last month failed to take a seat in Vic- toria where the voters were expected to show their dissatisfaction with the crumbl- ing economy and Malcolm Fraser's floundering policies. A general election is

due this year soon after the visit of Australia's future King Charles and Queen Diana, in March. If Labour loses, Hawke will all but certainly become the leader. Then, next time round . . . .

Ms d'Alpuget hints that Hawke's booz- ing, and present teetotalling, may reflect some complex relationship with his for- midable mother. He is certainly not the first Australian to reject strait-laced lower- middle-class values and turn to the only other model available, the egalitarian, drink-soaked, hard-done-by outlook of Australia's first unwilling British settlers, which includes both an exaggerated masculinity measured by the victories of booze and bed and a secret, deep mistrust of women and their wiles.

On this view Hawke, both in his pro- blems and his popularity, may be working out some still unresolved conflict in the na- tional psyche: the love of a larrikin (OED: 'the Australian equivalent of hoodlum or hooligan' — but Oxford is wrong, it's ac- tually a term of affection) on the one hand, on the other the longing for a firm, sober, respectable father-figure when times are crook, as they are now. Then we could con- sult Freud, Jung, Krafft-Ebing and Ronnie Laing

But we're on holiday, and the sun is still shining. As Sir Winston Churchill may have said: 'Pass us another Foster's, and don't come the raw prawn with me, cobber.'