Surrounded by books, files, newspapers, paintings , musical instruments , a photo above his kitchen sink of an East Timorese hero killed in the fighting against the Indonesians,Robert Wesley-Smith is a veteran campaigner against injustices and inequalities .
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During the Vietnam War, standing atop Saigon's famed Continental Hotel, where American author Graham Greene once occupied room 214 and wrote The Quiet American, about the Indo-China conflict, Darwin agronomist Robert Wesley–Smith watched distant explosive flashes in the night. It was 1972, the end of which year America heavily bombed and mined the entrance to Haiphong ,the supply port for the North Vietnam capital,Hanoi.
An outspoken opponent of the Vietnam campaign, Wes, as he is commonly known,had organised anti-Vietnam War marches and other opposition in Darwin in earlier years, his actions and comments noted by ASIO. After spending Christmas in Hong Kong with his brother, Peter , a professor of constitutional law, Wes, his then wife, Jan,in the company of a professor of political science, flew to Saigon. The flight took them over Cambodia where the landscape was pock-marked by lunar-like craters, the result of secret American carpet bombing-2.7 million tons dropped - exceeding by about one million tons the amount dropped on Japan during WW11. During their time in Saigon they met political contacts through the professor and witnessed a wild scene in a restuarant when a large American Marine went berserk and began to wreck the premises.He was nearly killed when much smaller Vietnamese flew at him. A Vietnamese police officer fired his gun into the air and rescued the Marine.
What he saw and heard about the war confirmed his conviction that it was unjust , unwinnable and that Australia should not have been sucked into the destructive bloodbath. The fact that young Australian conscripts were sent to fight there on the strength of a marble dropped out of a lottery barrel , he regarded as another obscenity .
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Wars of various kinds have and still are playing a big part in Wes’s life. Born in 1942, the year the Japanese bombed Darwin,he was named Robert after an uncle who had been killed in an RAAF plane crash near West Wyalong in February of that year.
Wes's father was an Adelaide teacher,and his mother, Sheila Main Martin, a local beauty, had played the part of the Spirit of South Australia at the 1936 centenary celebrations of the state. A kindergarten and primary school teacher, a singer and musician, she hosted the ABC’s popular children’s radio program,Kindergarten of the Air, for about six years. The program was broadcast to the Northern Territory and throughout Radio Australia.On his mother’s side, he was related to the recently retired NT Chief Justice ,Brian Martin. When Wes thanked former Chief Minister Clare Martin for appointing his cousin, Brian Martin, to the top judicial post , he claims her jaw fell.
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WES’s parents were bound for England, where his father wanted to be a French teacher, when WW11 broke out ; the ship turned about at the Suez Canal and resumed the voyage via the Cape of Good Hope. Mindful of the German U-boat sinking of the liner SS Lusitania in 1915 on its voyage to England , they were put ashore in Ireland, where their first child , Jerry ,was born. The family subsequently headed back towards Australia, but were not far from Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour ; their ship was diverted to Fiji. On arrival back in Australia, his father joined the Army and became an intelligence office. Wes’s father,regarded as an expert on Japanese "order of battle," was sent to the Pentagon in 1944 when the Americans were stepping up plans to clear the Japanese from the Pacific and then went to Bletchley Park , in the UK , where enemy messages were decoded at a place known as Station X.
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As Wes put it,each time his father returned from active service , his mother gave birth nine months later. After Wes in December 1942, twin brothers, Peter and Martin,were born in 1945. All, like their mother , were musically inclined. After the war, his father was a Guidance Officer for WW11 returnees. Then he became Academic Registrar at Adelaide University, having many dealings with overseas students brought to Australia under the Colombo Plan.
An outspoken opponent of the Vietnam campaign, Wes, as he is commonly known,had organised anti-Vietnam War marches and other opposition in Darwin in earlier years, his actions and comments noted by ASIO. After spending Christmas in Hong Kong with his brother, Peter , a professor of constitutional law, Wes, his then wife, Jan,in the company of a professor of political science, flew to Saigon. The flight took them over Cambodia where the landscape was pock-marked by lunar-like craters, the result of secret American carpet bombing-2.7 million tons dropped - exceeding by about one million tons the amount dropped on Japan during WW11. During their time in Saigon they met political contacts through the professor and witnessed a wild scene in a restuarant when a large American Marine went berserk and began to wreck the premises.He was nearly killed when much smaller Vietnamese flew at him. A Vietnamese police officer fired his gun into the air and rescued the Marine.
What he saw and heard about the war confirmed his conviction that it was unjust , unwinnable and that Australia should not have been sucked into the destructive bloodbath. The fact that young Australian conscripts were sent to fight there on the strength of a marble dropped out of a lottery barrel , he regarded as another obscenity .
*******
Wars of various kinds have and still are playing a big part in Wes’s life. Born in 1942, the year the Japanese bombed Darwin,he was named Robert after an uncle who had been killed in an RAAF plane crash near West Wyalong in February of that year.
Wes's father was an Adelaide teacher,and his mother, Sheila Main Martin, a local beauty, had played the part of the Spirit of South Australia at the 1936 centenary celebrations of the state. A kindergarten and primary school teacher, a singer and musician, she hosted the ABC’s popular children’s radio program,Kindergarten of the Air, for about six years. The program was broadcast to the Northern Territory and throughout Radio Australia.On his mother’s side, he was related to the recently retired NT Chief Justice ,Brian Martin. When Wes thanked former Chief Minister Clare Martin for appointing his cousin, Brian Martin, to the top judicial post , he claims her jaw fell.
**********
WES’s parents were bound for England, where his father wanted to be a French teacher, when WW11 broke out ; the ship turned about at the Suez Canal and resumed the voyage via the Cape of Good Hope. Mindful of the German U-boat sinking of the liner SS Lusitania in 1915 on its voyage to England , they were put ashore in Ireland, where their first child , Jerry ,was born. The family subsequently headed back towards Australia, but were not far from Hawaii when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour ; their ship was diverted to Fiji. On arrival back in Australia, his father joined the Army and became an intelligence office. Wes’s father,regarded as an expert on Japanese "order of battle," was sent to the Pentagon in 1944 when the Americans were stepping up plans to clear the Japanese from the Pacific and then went to Bletchley Park , in the UK , where enemy messages were decoded at a place known as Station X.
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As Wes put it,each time his father returned from active service , his mother gave birth nine months later. After Wes in December 1942, twin brothers, Peter and Martin,were born in 1945. All, like their mother , were musically inclined. After the war, his father was a Guidance Officer for WW11 returnees. Then he became Academic Registrar at Adelaide University, having many dealings with overseas students brought to Australia under the Colombo Plan.
One of those was the Sri Lankan, Kamahl, who had been living in Malaysia . He visited the Wesley-Smith household and joined in the musical entertainment . With Wes's mother on the piano,the family gathered around heartily singing the Hallelujah Chorus and many tunes from the Oxford Book of Song. Wes upset his mother by saying she used to "thump " the piano in those happy sessions ; she responded by emphatically stating she never ever thumped a piano.
Wes’s father gave Kamahl sound advice about his future career and, as previously explained by Little Darwin, media proprietor,Rupert Murdoch,took him under his wing for two years,prevented him from being deported and helped him along the path to international fame as a singer. Kamahl recently discussed with Wes a proposal by the Wesley-Smith brothers to commemorate the great Afro- American activist, singer Paul Robeson, who came to Australia ,in a musical production . Wes fondly recalls meeting Robeson,whom he describes as a hero in the eyes of the family,at an Adelaide concert .
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Wes, in suit, tie and cap, went to Adelaide’s respected St. Peter’s College, where he was president of the musical society and a versatile sportsman. From an early age, he expressed strong views on many issues including Aboriginal rights . Aged 14, he and his father had frequent , sometimes angry debates , late at night, in the study. " We argued about points of fact," Wes recalls . His father would say that Wes would have to concede that he (father) was more likely to be right because of his vast amount of experience , compared with his young son. Wes would not accept this ploy. "If you are right , with your academic experience, you should be able to persuade me by the power of your argument that you are right," Wes would counter . These lively exchanges , which generated a certain amount of tension, usually ended with Wes having to concede that his father was right-sort of- and being sent off to bed.
In his final year at school,Wes organised a daytime concert involving numerous groups. He convened a group of prefects called the Four Prefs and they sang to raptuous applause from snivelling kids wanting to curry favour. A Kingston Trio-like group included a future premier, John Bannon. One of them got sick and Wes told his brothers , Peter and Martin,they would have to get a replacement act together for the concert. The trio included a contemporary of their’s, Keith Conlon, later to become a well known TV personality in Adelaide . Called the Wesley Three, below, they put out four long play records and were popular .
NEXT : The music continues, Einstein is challenged and Wes has to decide if his future will be in NEW GUINEA OR THE NORTHERN TERRITORY?
In his final year at school,Wes organised a daytime concert involving numerous groups. He convened a group of prefects called the Four Prefs and they sang to raptuous applause from snivelling kids wanting to curry favour. A Kingston Trio-like group included a future premier, John Bannon. One of them got sick and Wes told his brothers , Peter and Martin,they would have to get a replacement act together for the concert. The trio included a contemporary of their’s, Keith Conlon, later to become a well known TV personality in Adelaide . Called the Wesley Three, below, they put out four long play records and were popular .
NEXT : The music continues, Einstein is challenged and Wes has to decide if his future will be in NEW GUINEA OR THE NORTHERN TERRITORY?
