The French Australian Review – No 69 Australian Summer 2020-2021

JANE GILMOUR, ELAINE LEWIS, Foreword

CAROLINE WINTER, Com-Memoration of the Great War: Tourists and remembrance on the Western Front

Social memory changes in response to the characteristics and needs of each generation, thus it can often present a somewhat more favourable perspective on past events, compared with historical reality. In the lead up to the centenary of the Great War, 1914-1918, the Australian government sought to intensify its commemorative focus in Europe to the battles around the village of Villers-Bretonneux, the site of the Australian National Memorial in France, and since 2018, the Sir John Monash Centre. This appears to have initiated a process of sight sacralisation, which may lead to the creation of a ‘commemorative bubble’ that narrows Australians’ views of the war. It remains to be seen, whether or not the site at Villers-Bretonneux leads to the development of a broader understanding by Australians of the Great War, or in fact narrows it. Other nations in Europe have also changed their focus, but moved towards an international perspective, that acknowledges a common war experience for all of the nations involved.

Keywords: commemorative bubble, commemoration, social memory, tourism, Great War, remembrance, forgetting.

PAULINE GEORGELIN, ‘The fighting in France’: French-Australians report from the front.

This article examines the experiences of French-Australians fighting with the French army in the First World War, via reports sent to Australia and published in the press. French-Australians sent back personal accounts of their experiences in iconic battles such as Verdun, and their letters performed multiple functions. In addition to informing and entertaining the Australian readership, the firsthand accounts provided a sense of immediacy and authenticity, and helped to strengthen feelings of connectedness between Australia and its French ally, therefore underpinning pro-war rhetoric.

Keywords: French-Australian relations, French army, Verdun, World War One.

DOCUMENTS, NOTES AND REVIEWS

GILLES PRILAUX, Underground Traces of the Great War at Naours: Some Australian Soldiers and their Stories

This article documents the discovery in 2014 of a concentration of inscriptions in a network of underground caves and tunnels under Naours in the Somme. Almost 3,200 of these inscriptions date from the First World War, with 2,200 inscriptions by Australian soldiers identified. An historical overview of the site is presented along with the personal biographies of a selection of the soldiers who inscribed their names, drawing on the National Archives of Australia and family records, including personal diaries. The article contains many images of the underground signatures as well as photos of the soldiers.

Keywords: Naours, the Somme, World War One, the ‘souterrains’.

YVONNE DELACY, French Australian Encounters Number 5

Yvonne DeLacy connects the story of the ‘Sunnysiders’—a group of artists, poets and writers in Kallista, Victoria—with the First World War battlefields in Picardie, where she visited the grave of one of group, Frank Roberts and a sculpture by Sunnysider Web Gilbert, that was erected at the site of the battle only to be demolished at the order of Hitler during the occupation of France during the Second World War.

Keywords: the ‘Sunnysiders’, Kallista, Villers-Bretonneux, Frank Roberts, Web Gilbert.

ELIZABETH RECHNIEWSKI, ALEXIS BERGANTZ, The ISFAR Research Committee

The authors are the joint chairs of the ISFAR Research Committee and report on its program of activities including two new research projects—one on the French influence on the wine industry in Australia and the second on the development of a walking tour of the sites of French presence in Sydney. They also draw attention to the aim of holding a biennial conference the first of which will be held 8–9 April 2021 in Melbourne.

Keywords: French-Australian Dictionary of Biography, ISFAR 2021 Symposium, Colin Nettelbeck, Indo-Pacific region.

KERRY MULLAN, The Annual Ivan Barko Prize
This note congratulates Angela Giovanangeli as the recipient of the 2019 Ivan Barko Prize for her article ‘Communal Luxury and the Universal Republic in the Designs of Lucien Henry’ published in Issue 67 of the French Australian Review.

Keywords: Ivan Barko Prize, Lucien Henry, Angela Giovanangeli.

WALLACE KIRSOP, Obituary: Meredith Sherlock, 1955–2020
Wallace Kirsop pays tribute to Meredith Sherlock who died in November 2020, and who, for many years, was the Technical Editor of the Australian Journal of French Studies and from 1992 to 1996 of Explorations. More recently she was editor for Ancora Press and the Centre for the Book at Monash University.

Keywords: Meredith Sherlock, Ancora Press, Centre for the Book, Monash University, Harold Love, the Early Music Society.

KERRY MULLAN, Melbourne Salon and ISFAR Events

This note reports on the events held by the Melbourne Salon and ISFAR during 2020. Two on-line Salons were held, the first in September with author Juliana de Nooy speaking about her recently published book, What’s France Got to do with it: memoirs of Australians in France. The second was held in November with Professor Frédéric Thomas of the CNRS (France) and Professor Beata Ujvari of Deakin University reporting on their joint research project Unravelling the cancer puzzle from an ecological and evolutionary perspective: an Australian and French International Associated Laboratory.

Keywords: Juliana de Nooy, Frédéric Thomas, Beata Ujvari, facial tumours in Tasmanian devils.

BOOK REVIEWS
ELIZABETH RECHNIEWSKI, Book Review: Romain Fathi, Our Corner of the Somme: Australia at Villers Bretonneux

This book is an examination of the commemorative agenda of the Australian Government at Villers-Bretonneux, challenging some of the assumptions underlying that agenda and the increasingly exclusive focus, manifest particularly in the new Sir John Monash Centre, on the role of the Australian troops.

Keywords: World War One, Villers-Bretonneux, Sir John Monash Centre, commemoration, the Western Front.

PATRICIA CLANCY, Book Review: Alistair Kershaw, Village to Village

This review documents the third reprint of a book first published in 1993. It recounts the life of Alistair Kershaw, Australian journalist, writer, reporter and editor, who arrived in Paris in 1948 and fell in love with the city. From down and out times when he first arrived to his retreat from the city to a village in the Berry, he describes, with wit and youthful enthusiasm, his personal relationship with French life and the many people he has known over forty-five years.

Keywords: Paris, Max Harris, the ABC, Sury-en-Vaux, foreigners in Paris, modernisation of Paris.

ROBYN STERN, Book Review: Juliana de Nooy, What’s France got to do with it? Contemporary Memoirs of Australians in France

This book explores what the author describes as a ‘contemporary publishing phenomenon’ – the recent ‘proliferation of memoirs by Australians about their experience of living in France and the seemingly insatiable demand for them’. De Nooy concludes from her research and analysis that these books are less about France itself, than about France as a backdrop to a project of self-renewal by the authors. The author seeks to identify reasons for this, examining the difference in gender constructions between the two countries.

Keywords: memoirs, gender constructions, Australian identity, French identity.

MARGARET SANKEY, Book Review: Danielle Clode, In Search of the Woman Who Sailed the World

The author of this book is a trained biologist and the daughter of a boat builder. She has sailed with her family around the coast of Australia and, since her childhood, has devoured books about maritime adventures. She became aware of the number of women who participated in early French sea voyages when she was researching and writing her earlier award-winning book, Voyages to the South Seas: In Search of Terres Australes. This book tells the story of Jeanne Barret who, dressed as a man, accompanied her partner the naturalist Philibert Commerson on Bougainville’s voyage in 1766-1768 to circumnavigate the globe. The reviewer finds the book rigorously researched, beautifully written and full of interesting facts both historical and scientific.

Keywords: Louis-Antoine de Bougainville, Philibert Commerson, Jeanne Barret, Île-de-France, Henriette Dussourd, Glynis Ridley.

BOOK NOTES
GEOFFREY DE Q. WALKER, Book Note: A Translation Project

This note provides details on five new translations now available on-line at the State Library of New South Wales. Through these translations, Geoffrey de Q Walker has made available to the public five studies of early Australia written by nineteenth century French authors.

Keywords: Ernest de Blosseville, Alexis de Tocqueville, Jules de La Pilorgerie, M. Mazois, Thomas Muir, Paul Merruau, penal colonies, convicts, the Scottish martyrs, State Library of New South Wales.

ELAINE LEWIS, Book Note: A Publication Project

This note announces the publication of two new editions of the translations by George Mackaness of the memoirs of two French-Canadians transported to Australia in 1840. The publications are by ETT Imprint.

Keywords: Léon (Léandre) Ducharme, François Xavier Prieur, the rebellions of 1838, Canada, political exiles, French-Canadian ‘patriotes’, Canada Bay.

ELAINE LEWIS, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes

The French Australian Review – No 65 Australian Summer 2018-2019

ELAINE LEWIS, Foreword

ELIZABETH RECHNIEWSKI, Voyage of the Pilgrims
WINNER OF THE 2018 IVAN BARKO AWARD

In June 1902, a small group of prospective settlers set out from Sydney for the New Hebrides. They were accompanied by A. B. Paterson–‘Banjo’ Paterson–who had been hired by the Sydney Morning Herald to report on their progress and the nature of the territory to which they were venturing. This article draws on contemporary French and Australian newspapers, including Paterson’s articles for the Herald, and parliamentary debates, to explore the significance of this settlement project in the context of the decades-long dispute between France, Britain and Australia over the future of the New Hebrides. It pays particular attention to the years immediately following Federation, when the new nation of Australia offered government and private support to boost British settlement of the islands.

Keywords: Australian colonisation, New Hebrides, Vanuatu, Banjo Paterson, Pacific imperial rivalry, Annandale settlement

BRIONY NEILSON, Convict Suffering and Salvation in New Caledonia and Australia: the Life and Writing of French Bagnard-Poet, Julien de Sanary

This article offers a contextualised analysis of the published writing of the French convict-poet Julien de Sanary. Transported from France to the penal colony in New Caledonia in 1881, Sanary spent almost forty years of his life incarcerated in the archipelago before his case was taken up by an Australian woman, Wolla Meranda, who successfully petitioned for his release in 1920. The first extended study of Sanary’s life and work–and the first ever in English–this article discusses the meaning of the act of writing for the French convict and provides an analysis of some of the major themes of his poetry. In addition it points out the greater significance of Sanary’s life and poetry, arguing that his experiences and relationship with Meranda are illustrative of a prevailing trope in the early twentieth century concerning the backwardness of New Caledonia as a European settler colony relative to Australia.
Keywords: bagne, convict poetry, bagnard-poète, prison writing, New Caledonia, convict transportation, Julien de Sanary, Wolla Meranda, penal colony, criminal justice

Speeches delivered at the ISFAR/Alliance Française de Sydney event, ‘French and Australian Dialogues‘ (May 2018) and at the Melbourne Salon (November 2018):

ROBERT ALDRICH, The 2018 New Caledonian referendum

This article provides us with a sweeping history of both the colonial legacy in New Caledonia and the various ‘ideologies that have underlain campaigns for change in status’, thus supplying the reader with a perspective from which to view present and future options.

Keywords: Referendum, New Caledonia, French Pacific territory, French outre-mer, événements of the 1980s, self determination

DENISE FISHER, The Referendum in New Caledonia

Denise Fisher writes a detailed description of events in New Caledonia during the week of the referendum and her incisive comments demonstrate its complexity, as well as its importance to Australia.

Keywords: New Caledonia 2018 independence referendum, 1988 Matignon/Oudinot Accords, Noumea Accord, Groupe de dialogue sur le chemin de l’avenir

CARRILLO GANTNER, Mirka Madeleine Mora 1928-2018 (Tribute at State Funeral, September 2018)

This tribute to Melbourne artist Mirka Mora, delivered at her State Funeral in September of 2018, farewells a woman who ‘has been at the very heart of Melbourne’s creative life and popular esteem for many decades’.

Keywords: Mirka Mora, Honoured Artist of the City of Melbourne, State Funeral

ELAINE LEWIS, Barry John McGowan 1945–2018

Barry McGowan’s article, ‘Convicts and Communards: French-Australian relations in the South Pacific, 1800–1900’, appeared in The French Australian Review issue 64. Barry was a prodigious researcher who published sixteen books as well as many reports, articles and papers.

Keywords: Barry McGowan, ‘Convicts and Communards’, French Australian Review issue 64, ANU, Medal of the Order of Australia

PHILIPPA HETHERINGTON, Leslie John Hetherington 1955–2018

Les Hetherington MA (University of Sydney), B. Litt (Australian National University) was a scholar of Australian social and migration history. In particular, he examined the history of the French community in Australia, as well as Australian history of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries more broadly. He was particularly committed to biographical approaches to the past, authoring a number of articles for the Australian Dictionary of Biography.

Keywords: Les Hetherington, Leslie John Hetherington, social and migration history, French community in Australia, Australian Dictionary of Biography

KERRY MULLAN, Melbourne Salon and ISFAR events, 2018

10 May 2018 ‘Were it but for a lemon’ – Dr James Tibballs,
17 May 2018 ISFAR event in Sydney: The Referendum in New Caledonia: what is at stake? The second in the series, ‘French and Australian Dialogues’ – Professor Robert Aldrich and Ms Denise Fisher,
2 August 2018 French convicts and the case for freedom in Australia – Dr Alexis Bergantz,
27 September 2018 French Contributions to Australian Life. ISFAR Colloqium, University of Adelaide, Reflections on the Commemorations of the Great War,
8 November 2018 The Referendum in New Caledonia: what is at stake? – Professor Robert Aldrich and Ms Denise Fisher, – Emeritus Professor Colin Nettelbeck,
14 July 2018: Bastille Day
26 November 2018 Presentation – Chevalier dans l’Ordre des Palmes académiques to Dr Kerry Mullan,
27 November 2018 ISFAR end-of-year gathering

PAULINE GEORGELIN, French Australian Encounters no 2: Anzac Day at Villers-Bretonneux 2018

On April 2018 Pauline Georgelin was one of 8,000 people, mostly Australians, who gathered at Villers-Bretonneux for the Anzac Day Dawn Service, commemorating the centenary of the battle of Villers-Bretonneux in 1918 – a personal description of an annual commemoration.

Keywords: Anzac Day at Villers-Bretonneux, Sir John Monash Centre, Villers-Bretonneux, World War 1 commemorations, Édouard Philippe, Wéo TV

BOOK NOTES:

IVAN BARKO, 101 mots pour comprendre l’Australie, by Peter Brown & Jean-Yves Faberon (eds), published by the Centre de documentation pédagogique de Nouvelle Calédonie. The 101 topics are grouped into ten chapters, namely First Peoples, Explorers, History, Economics and Development, Cultures, Institutions and Politics, External Relations and (Relations with) New Caledonia.

Keywords: 101 mots pour comprendre l’Australie, Peter Brown & Jean-Yves Faberon, New Caledonia, Centre de documentation pédagogique de Nouvelle Calédonie

CAROL NETTELBECK, Mirka and Georges: a Culinary Affair, published by The Miegunya Press and Museum of Modern Art Heide contains black and white family photos and coloured photos of Mirka’s artworks, a profusion of French recipes and an engaging text, all of which pay homage to two extraordinary personalities.

Keywords: Mirka and Georges: a Culinary Affair, Melbourne artist, Miegunya Press, Museum of Modern Art Heide

ELAINE LEWIS, French-Australian Bibliographical Notes

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

The French Australian Review – No 59 Australian Summer 2015

(SPECIAL WORLD WAR I ISSUE)

STUART MACINTYRE, Foreword

COLIN NETTELBECK, Introduction

LEAH RICHES, ‘De l’ombre à la lumière’ – Remembering Fromelles through a Century of Private Grief and Public Politics

This article examines the way the memory of the battle of Fromelles has been sustained in private and public spheres. It identifies three distinct phases from 1916 to the present. First, remembrance was predominantly private and localised, driven by returned servicemen and families. Second, a resurgence of interest in war memory saw Fromelles enter a public commemoration phase from the 1980s. Finally, with the recovery of the Fromelles soldiers, there has emerged a major reconnection between Fromelles and Anzac in public discourse.

Keywords: Fromelles, RSL, renaissance of war memory, personal memory, politics of commemoration, Lambis Englezos

JACQUELINE DWYER, Ahead of their Time – the French Economic Mission to Australia 1918

This article undertakes a more detailed description and analysis of the Mission than has been done to date, in order to cast light on French-Australian relations of the time. The author has drawn on a number of sources: the Mission’s official report for the general public, The Economic Relations between France and Australia; an article by Robert Aldrich ‘La Mission Française en Australie de 1918’, which was based on the diplomatic archives of the Quai d’Orsay; and the Rapport Thomsen.

Keywords: French Economic Mission to Australia, General Pau, trade, wool, Labour Mission

COLIN NETTELBECK, Not Just a Nostalgic Farewell: The “Dernière Heure” as a Landmark Document in Franco-Australian Friendship

This article argues that the story of a magazine, The “Dernière Heure”, produced by members of the AIF awaiting repatriation after the Armistice, contains many aspects of the complex story of the disengagement of Australian forces from the First World War, an assessment of the costs and an awareness of a deepening friendship between Australia and France.

Keywords: The “Dernière Heure”, The Jackass, Australian General Hospital in Rouen, James R. W. Taylor, Cyril Leyshon White, 1918-9

JANE GILMOUR, An Australian Chaplain on the Western Front, 1916. Extracts from the Diary and Letters of the Reverend Chaplain Joseph Lundie

Using her grandfather’s diary and a few letters that have survived, the author describes her grandfather’s experience as a chaplain with the Ninth Battalion on the Western Front. The published memoires of other chaplains add further substance to the experiences and attitudes of chaplains at the front.

Keywords: Ninth Battalion, Reverend Chaplain Joseph Lundie, 1916, the Western Front, Fleurbaix, conscription debate, chaplains

PAULINE GEORGELIN, Encounters between Diggers and Poilus: Finding the History in Family History

This article investigates the intersection between family history and its wider context, by exploring aspects of the interactions between French and Australian soldiers. It draws on family history research about the author’s grandfather who was born in France, moved to Australia and returned to France as a digger.

Keywords: family history, 14th Battalion, the Western Front, 1918, the ‘International Post’ interaction between French and Australian soldiers, the AIF Education Service

JILLIAN DURANCE, ‘Un bon souvenir pour nous’: Australian Soldiers Billeted in France and Belgium after World War I

This article is an exploration of the wartime connections between Australian soldiers and the people of France and Belgium. Its starting point is a postcard sent by a young Belgian woman to an Australian soldier (the author’s grandfather) after the war (1919).

Keywords: 21st battalion, 1919, host families, learning French, the Western Front, Nalinnes, contributions of the troops to village and rural life

ANDREW PLANT, Villers-Bretonneux: a Different Landscape. An Author’s Reflection on Remembrance of the Great War in Australia and France

The author, who is an author and illustrator of childrens’ books describes his research about the battle of Villers-Bretonneux and his visit to the town in 2011 to photograph, sketch and research locations for the book.

Keywords: Villers-Bretonneux, March 1918, role of the AIF in recapturing the town, Brigadier General Harold Edward Elliott, Brigadier General Thomas William Glasgow, German offensive on the Somme

ANNE BRASSART, ‘Je suis en Australie’: a Personal Memoir of Villers-Bretonneux

The author was a former inhabitant of Villers-Bretonneux and president of the Franco-Australian Assocaiaion of the village from 2007-2010. The article recalls her childhood memories of Villers-Bretonneux and her return, many years later to the village.

Keywords: impact of the war on the village, establishment of Museum in the school, Comité d’accueil Franco-Australien, the Australian Memorial, black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, 2009, Franco-Australian Association of Villers-Bretonneux

JOHN DRURY, Help from Afar: The Adoption of Dernancourt by Adelaide after World War I

This article recounts how Adelaide decided to adopt Dernancourt in Picardie at the end of World War I

Keywords: Dernancourt, the Somme, the British League of Help, Berthe Mouchette, Maire Lion, General Pau, fundraising activities

ELAINE LEWIS, A Selected Bibliography of Australian Literature Relating to World War I

Notes on Contributors to this Special Edition of FAR