The French Australian Review – No 73 Australian Summer 2022-2023

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JANE GILMOUR & ELAINE LEWIS, Foreword

Colin Nettelbeck was a co-founder of ISFAR and its journal Explorations (now The French Australian Review). He served in various roles (including president) in ISFAR from 1985 to 2000 and returned as president from 2011 to 2018. A Colin Nettelbeck Scholarship was set up in 2021 to recognise the central role Colin played in founding the Institute and his longstanding commitment and invaluable contribution to all its public and research activities. Colin passed away on October 21, 2022 after a long illness.

OPINION PIECES

DAVID CAMROUX, AUKUS and its Aftermath

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In this transcript of his talk presented at an ISFAR seminar in the series ‘After the Elections: Is a Reset possible in French-Australian Relations?’, the author comments on the political situation in France following the French elections in May 2022 and then examines the response to the AUKUS decision in France and the import of the AUKUS decision in terms of Indo-Pacific geopolitical relations. He then comments on the positive response to the visit to France by newly-elected Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and surmises that a return to the relationship that flourished in the 1990s and early 2000s may evolve.

Keywords: AUKUS, French-Australian relations, Macron, Albanese, Indo-Pacific, South-East Asia.

IVAN BARKO, Australians’ Love-Hate Relationship with the French in the Last Two Centuries

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An exploration, drawing on newspaper articles as well as other material, of the contradictory dispositions that have prevailed in Australian attitudes towards the French over the past two hundred years. The author explores the concept of what he calls the ‘Archibald syndrome’—dreaming of being French, the historical references that have coloured Australians’ views of the French, and the shared affinities between the two countries.

Keywords: francophilia, francophobia, the French in the Pacific, New Caledonia, the New Hebrides Question, Consul Biard d’Aunet, John Feltham Archibald, Stella Bowen.

ARTICLES

KERRY MURPHY, Henri Kowalski (1841–1916) in the Antipodes and His Comic Opera Queen Venus

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French virtuoso pianist and composer Henri Kowalski visited Australia in 1880 and then returned in 1885 when he settled in Sydney for twelve years. In 1881 he wrote a comic opera, Queen Venus. with a libretto by Marcus Clarke. This paper traces the transformation of Queen Venus into a French fantaisie-bouffe called La Guerre aux hommes, ten years later. It reveals a story of unusual cultural entanglement across two countries.

Keywords: Cultural transfer, opera, travelling artists, Australian colonial music, nineteenth century France.

VERONIQUE DUCHÉ AND AMANDA LAUGESEN, ‘Somewhere in France: Language, Place and Remembrance in Australian Soldiers’ Periodical Culture

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An exploration of the thesis that while for contemporary Australians Villers-Bretonneux is the main ‘lieu de commémoration’ (place of remembrance), for the First World War diggers, ‘lieux de mémoire’ (sites of memory) were created from a much wider and varied list of place names— places where they had been, and fought, Villers-Bretonneux being for them just one of many. Focusing on the 1918–1929 period, this article explores the Australian experience and memory of the First World War by analysing how the concept of place was constructed within trench journals and returned soldier periodical print culture.

Key words: World War 1, ‘places of commemoration’, ‘places of memory’, trench journals, returned soldiers journals, returned soldiers’ periodicals.

EDOARDO BRUNETTI, An Australian Perspective on Occitan and Breton Ethnoregionalism in the Post-war Period to 1981
This article is free access for one month, expiring Fri 14 April 2023.

In France, the student occupations and strikes of May ’68 are well known, but the period was also of immense significance to the country’s ethnoregionalist movements, who sought to increase power and self-determination. From a period of rebuilding following the Second World War, the Breton and Occitan movements, which campaigned against the perceived oppression of their regions by the central French state, were able to find new audiences and grow significantly in the 1960s and 1970s. Through an analysis of primary and secondary sources, this article charts the history of the movements throughout the era, demonstrating how the growth of the movements was linked to the broader societal politicisation of the era. As the period of radicalism waned, so did the Breton and Occitan movements, which saw many of their key demands implemented following the election of François Mitterrand as President, depriving the movements of their key reasons for existence. Nevertheless, the movements left a significant legacy in this period, through both the acceptance of regionalist political demands by the national left, and the ideological refoundation of Breton and Occitan ethnoregionalism. The author reflects on how these movements have some parallels in Australian history.

Keywords: Brittany, Occitania, ethnoregionalism, Occitanism, Emsav, regionalism, nationalism.

DOCUMENTS NOTES AND REVIEWS

EMILY DOTTE-SAROUT, The Matilda Effect in Archaeology

The transcript of an interview first published in French in the AFRAN newsletter about the history of women archaeologists in the Pacific region. The article explores the fate of women who sought to pursue careers as archaeologists in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and how their work has been consistently overshadowed by that of their male peers. She details the exploits of one of these women in particular, Adèle de Dombasle, a number of whose illustrations are held in the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris.

Keywords: Pacific archaeologists, women in archaeology, Adèle de Dombasle, Edmond Ginoux de la Coche, Musée des Explorations du Monde, ethnographic illustrations.

KATHERINE HAMMITT, The Colibri of Pacific Publishing: Interview with Au vent des îles Founder, Christian Robert

This article is published in French. In an interview conducted in July 2022, Christian Robert talks about his role as founder and manager of the largest publishing house in francophone Oceania, Au vent des îles. From his position as editor and president of Tahiti’s editors’ association, Robert speaks to the history and outlook of publishing and disseminating francophone literature across the Pacific and throughout Europe. Though the corpus he promotes does not yet have the global visibility it merits, Robert ultimately foresees a hopeful future for Oceanian literature, as well as for expanding publishing across the Pacific.

Keywords: Oceania, publishing, literature, francophone, Transpacific, Au vent des îles.

PETER HODGES, French-Australian Encounters Number 8: French-Australian Exchanges in Literary Périgord: A personal Insight through the Translation and Promotion of a Memoir

Through a chance encounter, an Australian writer and translator embarks on a privileged journey into the world of literary Périgord as he translates into French and promotes his memoir, previously published in English.

Keywords: literary Périgord, Académie des Sciences, des Beaux-Arts et des Belles-Lettres du Périgord-Dordogne, Dad’s Diary: the wanderlust chronicles, Le Journal de papa : l’esprit d’aventure, Librairie Marbot, Périgueux.

TOM THOMPSON, Frank Moorhouse’s French Connection: A Tale of Reciprocity

The author, who is an Australian publisher, explores Australian author Frank Moorhouse’s lifelong interest in France and, in particular, his friendship with translator and publisher Jean-Paul Delamotte.

Keywords: Association Culturelle Franco-Australian (ACFA), Fictions 88, Festival Les Belles Étrangères, League of Nations Trilogy.

EDWARD DUYKER, A False Portrait of Lapérouse

The author, who is currently researching a biography of Jean-Francois de Galaup, comte de Lapérouse, examines a portrait in the San Francisco Museum of Fine Arts, which is claimed to be a portrait of Lapérouse and through comparison with other existing known portraits of Lapérouse, suggests that it may well not be as stated.

Keywords: Lapérouse, Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco, Musée Lapérouse in Albi.

THE ANNUAL IVAN BARKO PRIZE

Awarded to Patricia Clarke, for her article ‘Australian Connections with the Franco-Prussian War and the Commune of Paris, 1871’, published in Issue Number 71 (Summer 2021–2022).

Keywords: Ivan Barko prize, ISFAR.

BOOK REVIEWS

Charlotte Mackay, Book Review: Jane Tuttle, My Sweet Guillotine

In her latest novel, Tuttle returns to the city that nearly killed her—the city to which she fled after the death of her mother and which attracts many of the artistic type by virtue of the intrinsic value it seems to place on the arts—in an attempt to rebuild her life post-accident.

Keywords: Jayne Tuttle, Paris, guillotine, trauma and survival.

Andrew Montana, Book Review: Jean-Claude Lesage, Australian Painters in Étaples, translated by Pauline Le Borgne

Lesage’s Australian Painters in Étaples may be a springboard for curious minds to take this English translation as a cue for further research into these artists working abroad in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Keywords: Australian painters, Étaples, artists ‘colonies, late nineteenth century, early twentieth century art.

Andrew McGregor, Book Review: Gemma King, Jacques Audiard

Jacques Audiard is without doubt one of France’s most celebrated contemporary filmmaking auteurs. It is, therefore, most timely and appropriate for Gemma King’s outstanding and definitive volume on the filmmaker to be published in the prestigious French Film Directors series by Manchester University Press.

Keywords: Jacques Audiard, French Film Directors.

Elaine Lewis, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes including a note on the latest journals in France relating to French-Australian Studies.

The French Australian Review – No 68 Australian Winter 2020

ELAINE LEWIS, JANE GILMOUR, Foreword

IRENE ROGERS, ‘A Gift for France’: the Australian Bluebird nurses of the Great War
WINNER OF THE 2020 IVAN BARKO AWARD

In July 1916, a group of twenty one Australian trained nurses known as the Bluebirds left Australia for the Western Front. They were under contract with The New South Wales Division of the Red Cross Society (ARC) to work for the French Red Cross Society (FRC) or the French military authorities and called the Bluebirds because of their distinctive uniforms. The Bluebirds became the only group of trained and registered nurses sent to France by any Red Cross branch in Australia during the Great War, making them unique. Whilst some of their achievements have been acknowledged, little is known about the connections they made with French people, culture and institutions. This paper explores those relationships through the evidence they left behind in journals, diaries and letters and provides a humanised view of their experiences.

Keywords: History of nursing WW1, Australian Bluebird nurses, Australian Red Cross nurses WW1, Microhistory and nursing, Humanitarian nursing.

HANNAH STEEL, Dr Helen Sexton’s Hôpital Australien de Paris, July–December 1915

Dr Helen Sexton, a highly skilled surgeon from Melbourne, along with five other Australian women, all volunteers, established and ran the ‘Hôpital Australien de Paris’. During its six-months tenure Dr Sexton and her team developed close personal relationships with the French doctors at the hospital and with the French soldiers they cared for. Although three of the women received French medals, there was little acknowledgement from Australian authorities and Dr Sexton and her team were not recognised for their service on Australian War Memorials.

Keywords: Dr Helen Sexton, Australian women doctors in WW1, Hôpital Australien de Paris, Australian Hospital in Paris

DOCUMENTS, NOTES & REVIEWS

COLIN NETTELBECK, French-Australian Dictionary of Biography
This note describes the French-Australian Dictionary of Biography (FADB), an initiative of the Research Committee of the Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations. It is an on-line resource and can be found at www.isfar.org.au/fadb. It describes how biography was an early strand in the ISFAR journal with scholarly articles on those individuals who have made important contributions to relations between France and Australia. The FADB is modelled on the Australian Dictionary of Biography. Entries provide essential biographical information and are normally 600 to 1000 words in length.

Keywords: French-Australian Dictionary of Biography, biography, French-Australian relations.

PETER BROWN, Jacqueline Dwyer (1925–2020): A Tribute

Peter Brown’s tribute to Jacqueline Dwyer celebrates the life of this inspiring woman whose personal and family connections with France as well as her work as an historian earned her high esteem amongst the French-Australian community. She was the granddaughter of Georges Playoust who came to Australian in the late 19^th century and established a very successful wool-buying business, supplying the textile mills back in France. Jacqueline decided, some 60 years after she had graduated from university to enrol in a PhD. She had already published Flanders in Australia, the story of her family and their involvement in the wool business in Australia.

Peter Brown was her PhD supervisor at the Australian National University and became a close friend as well as colleague. This tribute is as much about the woman as it is about the historian.

Keywords: Georges Playoust, French wool merchants in Australia; WWI, French Lives in Australia.

JOHN PRESLEY, French-Australian Encounters Number 4

John Presley, who was named by his parents Jean-Pierre Presle when he was born in Melbourne, recounts his exploration of his French ‘heritage’ for the first time when he spent six months in France at the age of twelve. His father was French, and his mother Australian. The marriage did not last and John was brought up by his mother and grandmother. At the age of 12 his maternal grandfather took him back to France to meet his relations there and to connect with his French heritage.

Keywords: Claude Presle, Peter Richardson, Smacka’s Restaurant, Balzac restaurant, Mirka Mora, Bandol, Lisieux, garlic growing.

PATRICIA CLANCY, Speech at the Book Launch of Stan Scott’s Chis: The Life and Work of Alan Rowland Chisholm (1888–1981)

Patricia Clancy was the guest speaker at the launch of the long-awaited biography of A. R. Chisholm in November 2019. The launch was held at the Baillieu Library, University of Melbourne. Stan Scott was Chisholm’s colleague and disciple at the University of Melbourne from the mid-1950s until his retirement in 1984. Thanks the University of Melbourne Archive the biography was preserved after Scott’s death and subsequently edited by Wallace Kirsop, Adjunct Professor at Monash University and an Honorary Fellow of the Baillieu Library. The article is a transcript of Dr Clancy’s speech.

Keywords: A.R. Chisholm, Stan Scott, Wallace Kirsop, Patricia Clancy, the Baillieu Library, The University of Melbourne French Department, World War 1, French Symbolists, Mallarmé, the ‘Melbourne School’ of literary criticism.

BOOK REVIEWS
KERRY MULLAN, Book Review: Robert Macklin, Castaway: The extraordinary survival story of Narcisse Pelletier, a young French cabin boy shipwrecked on Cape York in 1858

This book joins two others previously written about Narcisse Pelletier and the seventeen years he spent with the Night Island (Uutaalanganu) people in Far North Queensland, after being shipwrecked as a fourteen year-old cabin boy. The author has combined meticulous research with evocative and imaginative descriptions, creating a strong sense of place and culture as well as a ‘ripping yarn’. This is the final book in the author’s Australian History Quartet and the author alternates the story of Narcisse with the recounting of the corruption and brutality of the Queensland Frontier Wars.

Keywords: Narcisse Pelletier, Robert Macklin, Night Island (Uutaalanganu) people, frontier wars, Queensland, Saint-Nazaire, colonialism.

CHANTAL CROZET, Book Review: Christine Mathieu, Voyages Syntastiques: A Comparative-narrative Method for Teaching French Grammar to English Speakers

This book draws on the author’s extensive experience as both a learner and teacher of foreign languages. The author advocates for the use of a comparative-narrative approach to the teaching and learning of French in Australian compulsory schools. The author laments the shortcomings of the Natural Method based on her own experience of teaching languages, recognising the need to teach grammar explicitly and from a comparative perspective. The review identifies both theories and practices about which she would have welcomed discussion. The reviewer highlights that the book’s main strength lies in the author’s rich experience of classroom practice and this is particularly relevant in the second part of the book which maps the essentials of French grammar based on her comparative-narrative approach.

Keywords: Christine Mathieu, language teaching, classroom practice, Communicative Language Teaching (CLT), Intercultural Language Teaching (ILT), Second Language Acquisition (SLA).

JANE GILMOUR, Book Review: Jayne Tuttle, Paris or Die: a Memoir

This book recounts the adventure of the author’s two-years in Paris, while she was studying at the Le Coq International Theatre School. It is a lively story—of friendships, falling in love with a French man, of life as a student in Paris, of her love of being in Paris. But it is also a reflection on cultural dislocation, on loss, on passion. The writing style is vivid and the book is both funny and also very moving. After ten years moving back and forth between Paris and Australia, the author and her (Australian) husband have now settled in Victoria, where they run a bookshop. The author continues to work as a copywriter for French clients.

Keywords: Jayne Tuttle, Le Coq International Theatre School, the Centre des Recollets, cultural differences, Paris.

ALEXIS BERGANTZ, Book Note: François Vantomme ed. & Bernard Le Boursicot, Le Courrier Australien, 1892–1945: Creating the French-Australian Connection since 1892

This is the first volume of a two-part bilingual collector’s edition that offers a historical window onto the French-Australian connection from 1892 to 1945. Le Courrier Australien is the oldest foreign language newspaper in Australia. This is a beautiful coffee-table book, richly illustrated with reprints of past issues and photographs of the period. It is a compendium of historical documents that are a testament to the strength and complexity of the relationship between France and Australia over those years. While the reviewer suggests that the volume could have benefitted from a deeper engagement with existing historical scholarship, that would have helped readers interpret the documents and ponder their significance, he concludes that this is an ambitious and important publication that is both entertaining and stimulating, highlighting the role of the Courrier as a key institution binding the histories of France and Australia.

Keywords: Le Courrier Australien, François Vantomme, Bernard le Boursicot, Emeritus Professor Ivan Barko.

ELAINE LEWIS, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes

ELIZABETH RECHNIEWSKI & ALEXIS BERGANTZ, Call for Papers: ISFAR 35th Anniversary 101 Symposium, 8–9 April, 2021