Rerun of part of a series on New Zealand author and activist Jean Devanny, whose personal papers are in Townsville's James Cook University Special Collections, by Peter Simon .
Bill Harney and Jessie Litchfield
At one stage in her frenetic life- punctuated by bouts of poor health, exhaustion , campaign after campaign and Communist Party internal skirmishes - Jean Devanny considered taking a break in Darwin . Over the years she had contact with a range of people in or from the Territory. These included Territory literary figures who were also activists in a variety of fields .
One encounter took place at a meeting of the Fellowship of Australian Writers in the Blue Room Cafe, Sydney , at which (Olaf) Michael Sawtell , described in a newspaper report as an old cattleman from the Northern Territory and Kimberley, gave a lecture about BOOKS IN THE BUSH. Guests included Territorians Bill Harney , introduced as the " last of the Beachcombers," and journalist, newspaper editor and author , Jessie Litchfield , who ran the Roberta Library in Darwin , became the assistant editor of the North Australian Monthly , grandmother of former NT Chief Minister, Marshall Perron.
MAN OF GREAT IDEAS ,VIEWS
Michael Sawtell , living in Sydney at the time , a dynamic person , had been a strong advocate of socialism, engaging in many union battles in WA and Broken Hill, NSW, serving time in jail. Full of big ideas , he gave scores of lectures , wrote numerous letters to newspapers on a wide range of subjects and strongly campaigned for the advancement of Aborigines .
During the Wet of 1908 , Sawtell had ridden by horse from Darwin to Derby in WA , swimming flooded rivers, without seeing one person along the way. While droving in the Northern Territory he came into possession of a copy of a book by the American poet and essayist, Ralph Waldo Emerson . It transformed his life as he became a voracious reader , filling him with the desire to better mankind.
Like Bill Harney , he had spent time in Borroloola ,in the Gulf country , and like Bill had read many of the books in the 3000 volume Carnegie Library collection which had been set up in the court house in that isolated, tiny community , it becoming known as the University of the Northern Territory. He also said Mrs Aeneas Gunn, of We of the Never-Never fame, the Australian Inland Mission and other people had helped to spread good books throughout the back country.
In 1930 , Sawtell settled in Sydney, married , and the couple opened a health food store in the Victoria Arcade and he preached socialism on Sundays in the Domain. Becoming disillusioned with socialism , he took up the cause of Aboriginal welfare and in 1940 was appointed to the Aborigines Welfare Board, which involved him , said one newspaper report , going on "walkabout" with the people to discuss their problems, from time to time visiting Alice Springs and Darwin.
One of his ambitions was to divert northern rivers through tunnels to fill Lake Eyre . He advocated a massive tree planting drive in parts of the outback and said that at Marree there was not enough wood to enable the boiling of a billy. When there was a call in 1949 for Australia to produce more beef to feed Britain, Sawtell colourfully said the NT’s grass fed cattle could not even supply the cats of the Old Country; hundreds of stud bulls needed to be sent to the Territory to improve the bloodstock over 10 years.
His lectures were about diverse subjects – The Aborigines of the NT, The Life of Pythagoras, Occultism and Mysticism, Theosophy and the Australian Aborigine, Censorship and Plato-every aspirant to public office, every reformer and every politician , he said, should read Plato’s Republic . He wrote a book about Emerson and was the head of the Emerson Society in NSW.
Sawtell opposed the 1950s atomic bomb tests in Australia and expressed his concern about Aborigines in the area . When a NZ politician suggested that Indians could settle the vast and empty north, Sawtell responded with a letter to the Sydney Morning Herald in which he said the so-called Afghan camel drivers in Australia were not actually from Afghanistan , but from India , the Punjab, he thought . They had done wonderful pioneering work all over the back country before motorised transport . Cattle King, Sir Sidney Kidman , had always praised the honesty and the sobriety of the Ghan camel driver.
Some of the older "Ghans" had been soldiers in the Indian Army and were most loyal. During the first war loan for the 1914-l918 battle, an old "Ghan" had hobbled up from " a shack on the bank of the Todd River"at Alice Springs, and paid in £3000 ($6000) to the war loan.
Some of the older "Ghans" had been soldiers in the Indian Army and were most loyal. During the first war loan for the 1914-l918 battle, an old "Ghan" had hobbled up from " a shack on the bank of the Todd River"at Alice Springs, and paid in £3000 ($6000) to the war loan.
In another newspaper letter,Sawtell, in September 1946,said people who "hurl abuse" at Bob Menzies, calling him Pig- Iron Bob , should know that at the time Port Kembla workers refused to load pig-iron for Japan , the West Australian Labor Government was trying to sell 500,000 tons of Australian Yampi Sound ore to the Japanese. This could be verified, he wrote, by reading Federal Hansard.
GRAND OLD LADY OF THE TERRITORY
In the case of Mrs Jessie Litchfield , she was also an exception person , a prominent NT pioneer , who fought long and hard to improve conditions in the Territory . While a young girl attending school in Neutral Bay , Sydney , in 1895 , one of her teachers was Miss Mary Cameron , who later went to the Utopian settlement , New Australia , Paraguay, South America , with her husband and became Dame Mary Gilmore , prominent in Australian literature.
Dame Mary said that when Jessie was a schoolgirl she had stood out in character , personality and intelligence . "All that life had to do was develop her. Her interests went beyond the local into the national , even world affairs."There are many letters from Dame Mary in the Jean Devanny Papers , James Cook University Special Collections , Townsville.
Litchfield had been to China as a young women to see a relative, became a correspondent in Darwin for overseas newspapers and magazines. Major stories she covered included arrival of pioneering aviators in Australia , and she used her local knowledge to scoop hotshot reporters . Late in life , walking with the aid of a walking stick , she hired a taxi to drive 3000 miles throughout the Territory in a bid to be elected as the NT’s MHR.
Interestingly, Litchfield loathed Communists so she would not have been enamoured of Jean Devanny. She called Communists Red Raggers and left a literary bequest , administered by the Bread and Cheese Club, Melbourne , to promote new and unknown writers , no entries to contain pornographic, seditious or Communist material.
One recipient of the award was the late Glenville Pike who wrote and published many books about the NT and North Queensland. He later edited the above 1982 biography of Jessie Litchfield GRAND OLD LADY OF THE TERRITORY, written by a granddaughter, Janet Dickinson, of Blackwater, Queensland. The cover is a Pike oil painting.
Pike provided me with first-hand information about Jessie Litchfield, her Roberta Library , her fierce devotion to the advancement of the NT and how she had financed the launch of the North Australian Monthly, which he edited ; Michael Sawtell also wrote for the magazine.
Jessie had dealings with the late author Xavier Herbert when he was in the Territory, and was not impressed by his novel , Capricornia. Herbert told me about his meetings with her, and said some of her opponents in union organisations cruelly called her “Mother Thickneck,” because of a goitre problem. She died while on a trip south and her ashes were scattered about Darwin Harbour .
BILL HARNEY ENCOURAGED
Interesting information about Bill Harney, once the Keeper of Ayers Rock , now Uluru , emerges in Devanny’s correspondence and shows how prominent female writers of the day helped him. Dame Mary Gilmore mentions his book ,Brimming Billabongs ; a letter says he is heading back to his " beloved Territory,"and is a " nice bloke."
Writing from the Native Affairs Branch , Katherine , NT , May 25, 1944 , Harney addressed Devanny, then residing in Cairns , North Queensland , as Dear Jean. He had received her welcome letter. It being his job to inspect all the missions in the Territory , he had been travelling everywhere by plane and motor to visit all the " native centres" to see the "blackman " in his native home and this had made him feel good. More than 1200 children had been seen during his months of travel , all the time writing . Part of his work involved talking to troops to inform them about the people.
"I am grateful for your advice and see the wisdom of it ," he told Devanny . " I am also grateful to Ruth Park (also NZ born , prominent author whose partner , D'Arcy Niland , later visited Alice Springs with a travelling boxing troupe gathering material for his writing, and was met by Jim Bowditch , who would become the renowned NT crusading editor,whose life story is being serialised in Little Darwin ), giving me so many pointers to correct myself in a poem . Of course, it took only two days to write the story of the blackman while I was coming up in the train over the arid desert from Adelaide to Alice Springs ."
"Listen Jean ," he continued ."I honestly believe the black man is going to survive the storms of civilization as here they are on the upgrade and breeding strong. Personally , I am for the natives in their own reserves till they are strong enough to be able to resist the outside, or until a new system develops that will give them a fair go." In this " land of peace ," the native children and elders were living as all should do in a land of social security .
Harney , born 1895, told Devanny he had lived in Cairns when he was a lad and remembered the Kanakas ( the blackbirded islanders brought in to work the canefields) they used to call the blackmen from the islands . While in Cairns he had worked as a printers devil at the Morning Post and often visited nearby Green Island . Sailing ships came in to take away the cheap labour , and the place always spelled romance to him . Harney ended : " Wish you were here to write and write freely."
Charlie Priest , Poor Fellow My Country
While in Townsville perusing the fascinating Devanny Papers, I took time out to chase up another series ; Lady Lucky led me to an unexpected discovery about Bill Harney and information on other NT characters and events.
Harney, it was revealed , had contributed poems, one under the nom-de-plume , Moorandanni, to the Communist Party of the NT’s fiery publication, The Proletarian , which regularly flayed the NT Administration and others during the 1930s. It and the North Australian Workers’ Union paper, Northern Standard, often engaged in attacks upon each other .
The Proletarian editor from May 1934 to January 1935 was Charlie A. V. Priest , one of a number of very active Darwin unionists who inspired a composite character in Xavier Herbert’s huge novel, Poor Fellow My Country .
Priest later wrote his autobiography in nine parts, one entitled Northern Territory Recollections, spanning the years 1927-70, covering a year on Melville Island, travels throughout the Territory, mining and prospecting in Tennant Creek, the Tuckiar murder case and Lasseter’s Reef,which was advertised in The Australian on September 25,1988.
Writing about Harney , Priest said he ran a poem dealing with the plight of Aboriginal men, women and children, sneering whites , which Priest said had brought tears to his eyes upon reading. Priest wrote poems himself as well as pamphlets. Another who contributed poetry to The Proletarian was R.F.Antony from the loco sheds in Darwin who corresponded with Jean Devanny in February 1938.
