THE T GGG EE AAAAAATTTT H RR Blunders, stuff-ups and misjudgements are a part of any E country’s history. Dwelling on what might have been G isn’t always helpful, but recognising our mistakes and learning from them is important. In this highly original R M i stak es E and provocative book leading Australian historians A attempt to do just that. T M Eschewing the smugness and arrogance that hindsight can bring, and celebrating the many smart choices that I OO FF AA UU SS TT RR AA LL II AA NN HH II SS TT OO RR YY S have been made, these writers look at key moments T where one bad decision led to many more, where false A assumptions remained in place for too long, and where K we were blinkered to the reality around us. E S What if the English colonists hadn’t thought the O country had very few indigenous inhabitants with no F attachment to the land? What if they hadn’t assumed the land was as fertile as England and made for grazing? A U What if introducing species like foxes and cane toads S had seemed like a bad idea? What if we had thought T about the likely consequences of sending thousands of R young men off to fight in overseas wars? Or had realised A that the British strategy for saving Singapore wouldn’t L hold up? What if dividing the nation into states at I Federation was abandoned for another system? Or if A Gough Whitlam had acted differently? Or if giving our N cities over to cars had seemed like a foolish thing to H do? I S These and many other stories, scenarios and situations T are explored with verve, compassion and insight. The O Great Mistakes of Australian History is a lively and R provocative account of where we might have got it Y wrong, written so that next time we can get it right. edited UNSW PRESS by CROTTY and ROBERTS UNSW edited by MARTIN CROTTY and DAVID ANDREW ROBERTS PRESS Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page i THE G R E AT s M i s t a k e OF AUSTRALIAN HISTORY MARTIN CROTTY teaches history at the University of Queensland where he is also deputy director at the Australian Studies Centre. He is the author of Making the Australian Male:Middle-Class Masculinity in Australia 1870–1920 and is currently writing a history of the RSL. DAVID ANDREW ROBERTS teaches Australian history at the University of New England.He has written about Australia’s early colonial period and is the co-author of Ancient Ochres:The Aboriginal Rock Paintings of Mount Borradaile. Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page ii Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page iii THE G R E AT M i s t a k e s O F A U S T R A L I A N H I S T O R Y Edited by MARTIN CROTTY and DAVID ANDREW ROBERTS UNSW PRESS Great Mistakes02 12/9/06 9:33 AM Page iv A UNSW Press book Published by University of New South Wales Press Ltd University of New South Wales Sydney NSW 2052 AUSTRALIA www.unswpress.com.au © Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts 2006 First published 2006 This book is copyright.Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study,research,criticism or review,as permitted under the Copyright Act,no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission.While copyright of the work as a whole is vested in the editors,copyright of individual chapters is retained by the chapter authors.Inquiries should be addressed to the publisher. National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry Crotty,Martin,1969– . The great mistakes of Australian history. Bibliography. Includes index. ISBN 0 86840 995 2. 1.Australia - History. I.Roberts,David Andrew,1969– . II.Title. 994 Text design Ruth Pidd Cover design Di Quick Cover photo Rosanne Olson/Getty images Printer Griffin Press Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page v Contents Notes on contributors vii Introduction:Contemplating the Role of Mistakes in Australia’s Past 1 Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts Indigenous Peoples 1. ‘They Would Speedily Abandon the Country 14 to the New Comers’:The Denial of Aboriginal Rights David Andrew Roberts 2. Shelley’s Mistake:The Parramatta Native 32 Institution and the Stolen Generations Peter Read The Australian Environment 3. The Burke and Wills Phenomenon: 48 Trial and Error in the Conquest of Australia Alan Atkinson 4. Agrarian Ideals and Pastoral Realities:The 64 Use and Misuse of Land in Rural Australia Richard Waterhouse v ..... Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page vi 5. A Curse Upon the Land:Foxes and Cane Toads 79 Manda Page and Greg Baxter 6. ‘An Architectural Monstrosity’?:The Cahill Expressway 93 and Town Planning Paul Ashton War 7. Naive Militarism:Australia’s World War I Generation 108 Martin Crotty 8. A Great and Impotent Friend:The Singapore Strategy 123 David Day 9. The Enemy Within:Wartime Internment of Enemy Aliens 139 Ilma O’Brien Politics and Trade 10. ‘Another Singapore’? Australia Turns Away from Asia 156 Marion Diamond 11.States of Mind:Federation and the Problematic Constitution 170 Clive Moore 12.Guarding the Flood Gates:The Removal of Non-Europeans, 186 1945–49 Klaus Neumann 13.(Mis)adventures in Brinkmanship:Whitlam and the 203 Governor-General Wayne Reynolds Notes 219 Index 238 vi ..... Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page vii Notes on Contributors PAUL ASHTON is Associate Professor of Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is co-editor of the journal Public History Review and co-director of the Australian Centre for Public History.His publications include The Accidental City:Planning Sydney Since 1788. ALANATKINSON has taught Australian history at the University of New England since 1981, and is currently an Australian Research Council professorial fellow.He is the author of several books,including Camden (1988),The Commonwealth of Speech(2002) and The Europeans in Australia (Vol.1,1997,Vol.2,2004,and Vol.3 forthcoming). GREG BAXTER and MANDA PAGE both teach ecology and conservation management at the University of Queensland. Greg was awarded his PhD for research into the ecology and management of egrets in coastal NSW,while Manda’s PhD was undertaken in the arid zone on vegeta- tion dynamics and restoration.They are both involved in a research program called Conservation Research In Semi Arid InlandS (CRISIS) as well as pursuing separate research interests. In Greg’s case these include research into the ecology and management of koalas, dingoes, wallabies,ducks and fire.Manda’s current interests include research into the reintroduction of bilbies, the ability of seed rain to monitor arid systems and the impact of fire on soil seed banks. vii ..... Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page viii The Great Mistakes of Australian History ..... MARTIN CROTTY teaches history at the University of Queensland where he is also deputy director of the Australian Studies Centre. His major publications include Making the Australian Male: Middle-Class Masculinity in Australia 1870–1920.He is currently working on a history of the Returned and Services League of Australia (RSL). DAVID DAY is a graduate of Cambridge University and has been a vis- iting professor at University College Dublin and the University of Tokyo, and a visiting fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge. He is based at La Trobe University in Melbourne. His books include John Curtin (1999) and The Politics of War (2003).His latest book is Conquest: A New History of the Modern World (2005). MARION DIAMOND is an associate professor in the School of History at the University of Queensland. She has written biographies of the entrepreneur Benjamin Boyd,the journalist Charles St Julian and the feminist and immigration agent Maria Rye. She is currently com- pleting a biography of the opium trader, and friend of John Macarthur,Walter Stevenson Davidson.Much of her work deals with the linkages between colonial Australia and the wider imperial world, and she has a particular interest in Australian links with Asia. CLIVE MOORE was born in north Queensland,educated in Mackay and at James Cook University in Townsville,and has taught at the University of Papua New Guinea and the University of Queensland where he is now an associate professor. His major and rather eclectic publications have been on Australia’s Pacific Island immigrants, the Pacific labour reserve, Australian Federation, masculinity, gay Queensland, New Guinea and most recently the Solomon Islands. His major research project is now on Malaita Province in the Solomon Islands. KLAUS NEUMANN has written books,articles and radio plays about the histories and cultures of the Pacific Islands,Australia,New Zealand and Germany.His latest book is the award-winning Refuge Australia (2004). He is currently pursuing projects about Australian responses to refugees and asylum seekers; colour and Australian immigration; and public memories in ‘perpetrator societies’.Klaus works in the History department of the University of Melbourne. viii ..... Great Mistakes02 11/9/06 12:03 PM Page ix Notes on contributors ..... ILMA MARTINUZZI O’BRIEN is a researcher at Victoria University and is director of the Italian Australian Records Project. She has published widely and curated major exhibitions on Italian immigration. Her current research, supported by the Australian Research Council, is on internment during World War II. She is an honorary associate in the School of Historical and European Studies at La Trobe University. PETERREAD is Senior Research Fellow,National Centre for Indigenous Studies,Australian National University.He is also company secretary of Stolen Generations Link Up (NSW), which helps Aboriginal people separated from their families as children to return to their families.His books include Returning to Nothing:The Meaning of Lost Places (1996), Belonging:Australians,Place and Aboriginal Ownership (2000),and Haunted Earth (2003). WAYNE REYNOLDS is an associate professor at the University of Newcastle where he runs programs in the history of Australian foreign policy and defence.He has published on Whitlam’s foreign policy and is currently working on an official history of the Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty,which the Whitlam Government ratified. DAVID ANDREW ROBERTS was born in Newcastle, NSW, and now teaches Australian history at the University of New England. He has written on various aspects of Australia’s early colonial period,and is the editor of the Journal of Australian Colonial History. He is the co-author, with Adrian Parker, of Ancient Ochres:The Aboriginal Rock Paintings of Mount Borradaile (2003). RICHARDWATERHOUSE is Bicentennial Professor of Australian History and Head,School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry,University of Sydney. His latest book is The Vision Splendid: A Social and Cultural History of Rural Australia (2005). He is currently engaged in a study of the history of European land settlement policies and practices in Australia. ix .....