The French Australian Review – No 64 Australian Winter 2018

JANE GILMOUR, Foreword

BARRY McGOWAN, Convicts and Communards: French-Australian Relations in the South Pacific, 1800–1900

An examination of the impact on French-Australian relations of the decision by the French government to establish a penal colony in New Caledonia. The article documents Australian reactions to the colony drawing on press reports and official documents. The transportation of some 4,000 Communards in the 1870s was a particular cause of concern and various escapes and attempted escapes are documented. Reference is made to the possible influence of one of these escapees on the character of the hero of Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life. The treatment of convicts on New Caledonia is described as well as incidents between the Melanesian inhabitants and the French colonists.

Keywords: New Caledonia, penal colony, Communards, Marcus Clarke, Michel Sérigné, Henri Rochefort

COLIN NETTELBECK, French Awareness of Australia: The Role of Albert Métin (1871–1918)

Drawing on two articles which appeared in Le Petit Parisien in July and September 1918, the author presents a case for the importance of Albert Métin’s role in raising awareness of Australia in France and of the potential for France to establish closer economic ties with Australia following the First World War. The article documents Métin’s career, including his study visit to Australia in 1899, his subsequent publication of Le socialisme sans doctrines and his appointment to lead the French Economic Mission to Australia in late 1918. The two articles are included as Appendices in the original French and in English.

Keywords: Albert Métin, French Economic Mission to Australia, Le socialisme sans doctrines, World War One, musée social

WILLIAM A. LAND, France-Australia by air

This article documents the role of French aircraft and pilots in Australian aviation history. Reference is made to a small number of key figures who were active in the air forces of both countries. An appendix lists the aircraft of French origin that were used by all three of the Australian armed forces.

Keywords: aviation history, Walter Oswald Watt, Marcel France Dekyvere, Maurice Guillaux

YANNICK LAGEAT and LES HETHERINGTON, Juliette Lopès-Rastoul-Henry

This brief note in an addendum to an article that appeared in Issue 63. It documents the recent discovery of a letter from Juliette to Victor Hugo. It also includes the reproduction of a photograph of Juliette, which is held in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Powerhouse Museum, in Sydney.

Keywords: Juliette Lopès-Rastoul-Henry, Victor Hugo

WALLACE KIRSOP, A Hitherto Unnoticed Image of Francis de Castelnau, French Consul General in Melbourne 1863–1877

The recent purchase by the Baillieu Library of the University of Melbourne and the State Library of Victoria, of the former Ploos van Amstel collection of nineteenth-century illustrated Australian newspapers, has brought to light a previously unknown image of Francis de Castelnau. The note documents the occasion and transcribes the text of the accompanying article in The Argus of 11 July 1863.

Keywords: Francis de Castelnau, Ploos van Amstel

NATALIE EDWARDS, An Interview with Catherine Rey: Écrire entre deux langues/Writing between two languages

This note is the transcription of an interview with the French writer now living in Australia who has recently published her first novel in English. Two previous novels had been translated into English. The interview explores issues of translation, voice and how it is defined to a certain extent by voice and the creative process.

Keywords: Catherine Rey, translation, The Lovers, Stepping Out, The Spruiker’s Tale

JANE GILMOUR AND ELAINE LEWIS, The Morning Star Tapestry in the Sir John Monash Centre, Villers-Bretonneux

This note documents the opening of the Sir John Monash Centre in Villers-Bretonneux on 24 April 2018 and the creative process and production of the Morning Star Tapestry, designed by artists Charles Green and Lyndell Brown and produced by the Australian Tapestry Workshop in Melbourne, for permanent display in the Centre.

Keywords: Sir John Monash Centre, Australian Tapestry Workshop, Villers-Bretonneux, Morning Star tapestry

PETER HODGES, French-Australian Encounters, Number 1

This encounter describes a chance meeting with l’Association Internationale des Amis de Pierre Loti when they came to visit the grave in a nearby neighbour’s field, where the wife of Pierre Loti was buried.

Keywords: Pierre Loti, Blanche de Ferrière, La Birondie

BOOK NOTES

Their Fathers’ Land: For King and Empire, by Paul Wenz, introduced and translated by Marie Ramsland and The Thorn in the Flesh, by Paul Wenz, with an introduction by Helen Garner translated by Maurice Blackman, notes by Ivan Barko

Food for Friends, by Babette Hayes with illustrations by Francis Yin, notes by Patricia Clancy

ELAINE LEWIS, French-Australian Bibliographic Notes

Explorations – No 51 Dec 2011

IVAN BARKO, Foreward

PETER RICKWOOD, CHARLES ABELA & IVAN BARKO, A 1788 French Sighting of Evidence for Volcanism in the Sydney Basin – Columnar Sandstone at La Perouse

A discussion of the identification by the French explorers of columnar sandstone at Botany Bay and the recent discovery of samples of this sandstone on the shipwreck site of the Boussole on Vanikoro Reef in the Solomon Islands

Keywords: columnar sandstone, La Pérouse, Botany Bay, Boussole, John Hunter, Anglo-French contact, Solomon Islands, volcanic activity

MARGARET BARRETT, Jean Trémoulet: The Unloved Consul-General

Based on new research, this article discussed the controversial career of French Consul-General Jean Trémoulet, who represented his government, including the Vichy government in Sydney from 1937 to 1941 when he was required to leave Australia.

Keywords: Jean Trémoulet, diplomatic and consular relations between France and Australia, WWII, Vichy government, Free French movement, Allied war effort, Émile Doucet

JOHN DUNMORE, Anglo-French Contacts in 1788: The Knowledge of English on Board La Pérouse’s Ships

By reviewing the backgrounds and education of officers on board the French ships, the author who is an international authority on La Pérouse, surmises that they were probably able to communicate in rather broken English with the British. However, for any official business, and in written communication, each side used their own language.

Keywords: La Pérouse, Captain Phillip, communication, Botany Bay

EDWARD DUYKER, Timothée Vasse: A Biographical Note

A discussion of the various legends surrounding Timothée Vasse, a sailor on the Baudin expedition, who is supposed to have drowned at the Wonnerup Inlet in Western Australia in 1801.

Keywords: Timothée Vasse, Baudin expedition, François Péron

JANA VERHOEVEN, French Forum: A Melbourne Initiative

A brief note about the establishment of a Forum for French scholars from the various universities in the Melbourne region to discuss teaching and research.

KERRY MULLAN, The Second Text: A Feminist Approach to Translation

A report of a presentation at RMIT University by the two translators of a new translation of The Second Text.

Keywords: translation, The Second Sex, Simone de Beauvoir, Constance Borde, Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, Caroline Norma, gender studies

KERRY MULLAN, Georges Perec: The Australian Connection, Thirty Years On

An account of the fifth ‘Melbourne Salon’ devoted to the legacy of Georges Perec, who visited Australia thirty years previously, shortly before his death in 1982. The presentation was preceded by a literary workshop demonstrating Perec’s self-imposed experimental forms of constrained writing.

Keywords: Georges Perec

Podtour
A brief note about an educational downloadable audio tour of Melbourne.

BOOK REVIEWS AND NOTES

Robert Nash (ed.), The Hidden Thread: Huguenot Families in Australia, reviewed by Wallace Kirsop

Christine Béal, Les interactions quotidiennes en français et en anglais : de l’approche comparative à l’analyse des situations interculturelles, reviewed by Kerry Mullan

Jean-François Vernay, The Great Australian Novel — A Panorama (Panorama du roman australien des origines à nos jours), book note by Elaine Lewis

ELAINE LEWIS, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes

Explorations – No 28 Jun 2000

PATRICIA CLANCY, JACQUES DE SAINT-FERJEUX, COLIN THORNTON-SMITH, Foreword

PATRICIA CLANCY, JACQUES DE SAINT-FERJEUX, COLIN THORNTON-SMITH, Addendum and Corrigenda

Keywords: Massena, Murat, organ, Robert and William Grey 1796.

DIANNE REILLY, A Huguenot Heritage: the French Ancestry of Charles Joseph La Trobe, Superintendent of Port Phillip, 1839-1850, and First Lieutenant Governor of Victoria 1851-1854

Dianne Reilly explores La Trobe’s French heritage in general and then focuses on his direct ancestor Jean La Trobe who, in the seventeenth century, fled to England with William of Orange and, after being invalided out of the army, established himself as a linen manufacturer in Waterford.

Keywords: Charles Joseph La Trobe, Superintendent of Port Phillip, Lieutenant Governor of Victoria.

IVAN BARKO, The Closing down of the Melbourne French Consulate General (1900 and 2000)

Twice within a hundred years the French Government, in 1900 and in 2000, closed down its Melbourne Consulate General, and transferred its functions to the Sydney Consulate General. In the years and months leading to the proclamation of the new Commonwealth of Australia in January 1901, the Consul General in Sydney, Georges Biard d’Aunet, recommended that French consular functions in the new Federation be centralised in Sydney, and that Melbourne be downgraded to vice-consulate status under his control. His recommendation was eventually approved by Paris. This article records Biard d’Aunet’s pyrrhic victory and his trials under the new arrangement when his work was undermined both in Melbourne and in Paris by his critics and enemies.

Keywords: Biard d’Aunet, Consul General Sydney, Consulate General Sydney, Consulate General Melbourne.

HELEN FRANK, Buvettes and Chiko Rolls: Australianness in Translated Children’s Fiction

Helen Frank suggests that the most common constructs of Australia in French translations reveal a preponderance of traditional Eurocentric signifiers that identify Australia with the outback, the antipodes, the exotic, the wild, the unknown, the void, the end of the world, the young and innocent nation and the Far West. She explores the selections of twentieth century Australian children’s books as well as translators’ concerns with the portrayal of the exotic, rather than with Australianness.

Keywords: translation, Australian children’s fiction, Australian children’s books in French, Australianness

BOOK REVIEWS

Mark A Clements, Susan Walker, and Paul Ziesing, New Caledonia Field Expeditions 1992, reviewed by Edward Duyker

Tim Fischer, Seven Days in East Timor: Ballot and Bullets, reviewed by Edward Duyker