The French Australian Review – No 63 Australian Summer 2017-2018

ELAINE LEWIS, Foreword

THIERRY VINCENT, An Exploration of the Fate of the Australian and Tasmanian Ethnographic Collections brought back by the Baudin Expedition, following the 1804 French Scientific Voyage to Australia [Australian and Tasmanian objects deposited at the Château de Malmaison]

Explorer Nicolas Baudin was entrusted with assembling a collection of plants and animals for the Empress Josephine, some of which were delivered to the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle and the rest to her château at Malmaison. However, on 29 May 1804 some Australian and Tasmanian objects were delivered to Malmaison to join the collection of other objects already stored there. This article explores the fate of these collections and suggests a new approach to determine the quality and importance of the ethnographic objects deposited at Malmaison, where they were kept during Josephine’s life-time and what may have happened to them after 1819 when many were sold to ‘enlightened and passionate amateurs’.

Keywords: Baudin expedition, Empress Josephine, Malmaison, ethnographic objects, Musée des Antiquités

YANNICK LAGEAT and LES HETHERINGTON, The Adventurous Life of Juliette Lopès-Rastoul-Henry

Juliette Henry was born in Laon, France in 1840 in poor circumstances. She died in Sydney, Australia in 1898 and in her lifetime was successively the companion of two figures from the Paris Commune, was once suspected of threatening the peace of the Colony of New Caledonia and late in life felt justified in appealing to the President of the French Public to intervene on her behalf. In 1898 she was described as ‘one of the most large-hearted and intellectual women in Australia’.

Keywords: Juliette Lopès-Rastoul-Henry, Lucien Henry artist, French Commune, New Caledonia, Henri Rochefort, Cercle Littéraire Français, Victor Hugo

TRANSCRIBED BY IVAN BARKO, Excerpts from ‘Behind the Scenes at SBS French Radio’: Danièle Ney-Kemp at the Melbourne Salon

SBS broadcaster Danièle Ney-Kemp in conversation with Christophe Mallet and Jean-Noël Ducasse, chaired by Kerry Mullen at The Melbourne Salon Wednesday October 1 2014. A glimpse behind the scenes at SBS French Radio. Daniele Kemp joined SBS in 1986 and was Executive Producer of SBS French Radio when she retired in 2011. She has received the prestigious decorations of Officer of the French Order of Merit and Chevalier of the French Legion of Honour for her services to the French-speaking community.

Keywords: Danièle Ney-Kemp, Christophe Mallet, Jean-Noël Ducasse, SBS French Radio, Executive Producer of SBS French Radio

MEAGHAN MORRIS, Introducing Ross Chambers

A reprint of Meaghan Morris’s outstanding tribute to Ross Chambers first published in Cultural Studies Review, volume 20 no 1, March 2014.

Keywords: Ross Chambers, Meaghan Morris, Untimely Interventions, Professor of French, University of Sydney, University of Michigan, Atmospherics of the City

MARGARET SANKEY, Obituary: Ross Chambers (1932–2017)

An obituary of Ross Chambers Distinguished Marvin Felheim Professor of French and Comparative Literature Emeritus at the University of Michigan. An inspired educator, working in the areas of French Studies, Comparative Literature and Cultural Studies. He received the French award of Officier dans l’Ordre des Palmes academiques.

Keywords: Ross Chambers, Marvin Felheim Professor of French, French Studies, Comparative Literature, Cultural Studies

CHARLES SOWERWINE, Obituary: Jacques Adler (1927–2017)

Jacque Adler was a member of the Jewish Communist underground in Paris and was active during the second World War. He was involved in the Resistance takeover of the offices of the UGIF (Union générale des Israélites de France) and it was to the UGIF records he would return when writing his PhD thesis at Melbourne University in the early eighties. A version of his thesis was published by Calmann-Lévy in France and another by OUP, The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution. His research was ongoing.

Keywords: Jacques Adler (1927–2017), UGIF (Union générale des Israélites de France), The Jews of Paris and the Final Solution

JAMES GRIEVE, Obituary: Jacqueline Mayrhofer (1936–2017)

Jacqueline Laure Georgette Lécorcher, known to students and teachers of the ANU as Jacqueline Mayrhofer, was born in Troyes, Champagne. She spent most of her life in Australia and taught for decades at ANU. A highly-regarded teacher who inspired the teaching of Introductory French at university level and published the text and tapes, À vous maintenant (River Seine, 1984).

Keywords: Jacqueline Mayrhofer (1936–2017), ANU French Department, À vous maintenant

JULIET FLESCH, Obituary: Olive Wykes Mence (1921–2016)

Olive Wykes, Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur taught French in the Faculty of Education at Melbourne University. Her survey, Foreign Language Teaching in the Australian Universities: a report prepared by Olive Wykes, with recommendations by the Sub-Committee on Foreign Languages was published by the Australian Humanities Research Council in 1963 and in 1968 she and M. G. King published Teaching of Foreign Languages in Australia with the Australian Council for Educational Research.

Keywords: Olive Wykes, Foreign Language Teaching in the Australian Universities, Teaching of Foreign Languages in Australia

KERRY MULLAN, Melbourne Salon and ISFAR events 2017

Melbourne Salons 2017: (1) Mobilities and Migrations in the Bordeaux Wine Trade: From Regional Rivalries to International Icons by Jacqueline Dutton; (2) Flanders in Australia: A Personal History of Wool and War by Jacqueline Dwyer; (3) Les masculinités de la Révolution : L’hercule jacobin, le muscadin, la femme virile by Jean-Marie Roulin.

The first presentation of French and Australian Dialogues, Alliance Française de Sydney, Fraught or Friendly Relations: New Perspectives on Australia and New Caledonia.

Award of Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes Académiques to Elaine Lewis, French Consulate General Melbourne.

Bastille Day 2017, Diggers and Poilus: Shared Memories from the First World War by Pauline Georgelin.

Keywords: Kerry Mullan, Jacqueline Dutton, Jacqueline Dwyer, Jean-Marie Roulin, Alliance Française de Sydney, French and Australian Dialogues, Pauline Georgelin, Elaine Lewis

BOOK REVIEWS

ELAINE LEWIS, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes

Explorations – No 15 Dec 1993

WALLACE KIRSOP, Foreword

ROGER LONDON, French Australia Relations in the Cold War

The author was French Consul in Melbourne These are reminiscences of his experiences in Melbourne during the French nuclear tests in the Pacific in the early nineteen-seventies, framed by references to the exploration of the Australian continent by Saint-Allouarn, Marion Dufresne, Lapérouse, d’Entrecasteaux, Baudin and Dumont d’Urville, and his own years of service at Washington DC.

Keywords: French nuclear tests in the Pacific, bans, French-Australian diplomatic relations, Ambassador Gabriel Van Laethem

COLETTE REDDIN, An Historic Comment on the House in Robe Street

The author, a long-time supporter and office bearer of the Alliance Française de Victoria and initiator of the ‘Maison de France Appeal’ which collected funds for the purchase of permanent accommodation for the Alliance, recalls French memories of the house at 17 Robe Street in St Kilda, a house that was to become the main seat of the Melbourne Alliance Française. Calling on her personal recollections, she evokes her acquaintance with this same house which was used by the French Naval Attaché, Commandant André Kervella, as his residence and office in 1944 and 1945 (until the end of war in the Pacific).

Keywords: War in the Pacific, French Military Mission in Australia, Alliance Française de Melbourne, French Legation in Canberra, André Kervella

IVAN BARKO, Thirty-Four Years in French Studies — Reminiscences and Reflections

After briefly describing his background, the author recalls his arrival in Australia and the beginnings of his academic career. He recounts the origin of his vocation and his first contacts with Australians and with French scholars in Australian universities.

Keywords: Léon Tauman, Monash University, University of Sydney, Ron Jackson, Roger Laufer, changes to syllabi in French, French nuclear tests in the Pacific

STEPHEN ALOMES, Beyond a Cloistered Europe: Universities and the French rediscovery of Australia

This article deals with the growing interest of French universities in Australian studies. The author analyses the emergence of courses in Australian studies in some French universities. Although these ‘few pockets of Australian studies’ are, in Professor Xavier Pons’ words, ‘islands in the ocean’, and although they are dependent on the personal involvement of individual scholars, they are not unrelated to a broader interest by the French in Australian culture and society.

Keywords: Commonwealth literature, ‘Australia and Continental Europe’ Conference (Paris 1982), Xavier Pons, multiculturalism, post-colonialism, Jean-Paul Delamotte, Australia France Foundation, French-Australian Research Centre at the University of NSW, Institute for the Study of French-Australian Relations (ISFAR)

MICHAEL TAPER, The Snows of Yesteryear Fell in Adelaide

In these personal reminiscences the author recalls his friendship at school in Newcastle with Tony Wilson, a future French scholar and diplomat, and Tony Tripp, a future theatrical designer. Shortly after Tony Wilson’s premature death, the author (having completed a university French course himself), meets one of Wilson’s French friends, Jean-Marie Laxenaire, with whom he develops a close association. The second part of the article, written shortly before its publication, describes the author’s fortuitous encounter at Adelaide Airport with Colin and Carol Nettelbeck, who had been his friends in the early nineteen-sixties in Paris. The two stories come together a few weeks later in Melbourne where the Nettelbecks, the Tapers and the Tripps reside.

Keywords: Tony Wilson, Tony Tripp, Jean-Marie Laxenaire, Colin Nettelbeck, Paris in the early 1960s, the Sorbonne.

BOOK REVIEWS

Marc Serge Riviere & Thuy Huynh Einam, editors and translators, Any Port in a Storm: From Provence to Australia: Rolland’s Journal of the Voyage of La Coquille (1822-1825), reviewed by Edward Duyker

Margaret de Mestre, in collaboration with Neville de Mestre, Prosper de Mestre in Australia, reviewed by Wallace Kirsop