That Australian Life - Threads: Morella, the Parers from Catalan, Australian War photographers

I must have walked past this Mosman house, Morella, and never noticed it. It's now on the market with an expected price of between $7 and $ 8 million and possibly more. Looking at it I was struck by the art deco style and indeed it was one of the grand art deco mansions.

According to a rather dramatic piece by Dana McCauley, The derelict mansion, the ‘de facto’ nurse and the family curse: Morella mystery deepens, Morella was designed by Burley Griffin protege Eric Nicholls and built in 1939 for Leo Parer, who founded and ran the Stanford X-Ray Company with his cousin Stan Parer. Stanford built X-Ray machines.

Apparently Leo Parer entertained quite lavishly and it does seem to be a good house for that purpose. This is another detail from the house. It must have been reasonably spectacular

The Parer name was familiar because of war photographer Damien Parer. Here I quote Dana McCauley: "Generations of Parers have forged a distinguished record throughout Australian history, from war photographer Damien Parer to aviator Ray Parer and, more recently, the late Warwick Parer— a Queensland Senator under the Howard Government."

I was curious about the way those various Parers might fit together. My initial web search was quite frustrating for it was difficult to find the links. Then I found this piece, Pioneering family: The story of the audacious Parers of New Guinea. No wonder I got confused.

According to Mary Mennis, the Parer family came originally from Alella in Spain and were the anchor of the Catalan community in Australia for 50 years.

The first brother to leave Spain was Josep, who decided to migrate to South America in 1851, following his sense of adventure and eye for business. He left Montevideo in Uruguay on board the Alabama and landed in Australia in 1855. A year later his half-brother Francisco joined him and they started breeding poultry in Petersham near Sydney. This was was not successful. They moved to Bendigo looking for gold and finally settled on the banks of the Yarra River, a tent town to cope with the rapid expansion of Melbourne during the gold rush.

They had their entrepreneurial character and perseverance and also a spark of luck, building the a Parer Empire in Melbourne. In less than 40 years they invested in more than 30 hotels and restaurants. And they are believed to be the first people to have commercialised meat pies in Australia. For that reason alone, they deserve a place in Australian history.

Josep and Francisco pioneered the Parer dynasty in Australia. Seven brothers and sisters plus nephews and friends of the family joined them. You can see why I might have got confused!

A significant part of the family ended up in New

Guinea, including Oscar award winner Damien Parer. This photo on the right shows a very significant group of photographers in New Guinea, all famous in their own right.

Damien Parer is at the back left. Standing to his right is Frank Hurley, one of Australia's best known photographers and cinematographers. 

At the front left is documentary film maker and writer Maslyn Williams.The Wikipedia article on him is really just a stub. Born in England, his uncle arranged for him to come to Australia to work as a jackeroo on a property outside Tenterfield. There he fell in love with Australia. His memoir of the time,  His Mother's Country, remains a New England classic. 

Beside Williams on the far right is photographer George Silk, New Zealand born, Silk became an Australian war correspondent an went on the long career as a photographer for Life Magazine.

This photograph by Silk showing an Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942 has become one of the classic images of the New Guinea campaign.

All four men were adventurous, following the camera into different places. Parer died, but the others had long careers. Hurley in particular had a career that spanned over fifty years including two World Wars.

Postscript 5 October

Morella sold for $6.6 million in emotional scenes. The owner apparently would like to knock it down, but faces heritage problems. 

Sunday Essay - reflections on the death of Barry Holloway

I hadn't intended to write this post. I had a far more pedestrian effort in mind focused on current Australian politics. But then there was a story by Mark Baker reporting on the death of Sir Barry Holloway that carried my mind back into into entwined threads of Australian and personal life. This post is my response.

To set the scene, this photo shows Barry Holloway (right) on a UN Trusteeship mission in what is now Papua New Guinea in 1956.

Back in the now somewhat distant past, I went with my friend Sue to the wedding of her step brother Tony Voutas to Shelley Warner, daughter of Australian writer and journalist Dennis Warner, on the Mornington Peninsular in Victoria. It was a slightly difficult trip because Sue's Dad was confined to a wheel chair and somewhat grumpy about the whole thing.

I knew that Tony had been in New Guinea as a kiap or patrol officer, but had not expected that the PNG Parliament would adjourn early to allow a group including then PM Michael Somare and speaker Barry Holloway to attend the wedding. I was interested because I had long been fascinated by PNG, if at a distance.

Growing up, Papua New Guinea was still under Australian control. Papua was an Australian external territory or colony, the formerly German controlled New Guinea was a League of Nations/UN mandate. These formal differences carried through into differences in law and administration. However, following the surrender of the Japanese in 1945, Papua and New Guinea were combined in an administrative union. This unification was confirmed by the Papua and New Guinea Act 1949. The act provided for a Legislative Council (established in 1951), a judicial organization, a public service, and a system of local government.

Not that I was really aware of this legal detail. However, I was very aware of PNG because of the War and the Kokoda Track and as a place of romance and excitement. Cousin Cyril had worked as an anthropologist in PNG and we had original artifacts around the house, as well as toy outriggers.  I sat glued to the radio during primary school listening to a gripping series on the ABC Children's Hour telling the story of the adventures of a young patrol officer in PNG. The stories were so powerful that I remember them to this day.

I didn't know at the time that Barry Holloway was one such and at just that time. Born in Tasmania in 1934, he dreamed of adventure. Working as a labourer in Melbourne, he saw (in Mark Baker's words) a newspaper advertisement seeking young men with ''initiative, imagination and courage'' to work as patrol officers in PNG.

Holloway took the challenge, joining more than 2000 Australians aged between 18 and 24 recruited between 1949 and 1974 as patrol officers, or kiaps - pidgin for captain, from the German kapitan - sent to bring the rule of official law to the sometimes lawless remote regions. Here his experiences mirrored many of those that I heard on that distant radio series.  

Mark Baker records that the lanky 18-year-old with a shock of curly red hair arrived in Port Moresby in April 1953 after six weeks' basic training, After an initial posting with an experienced kiap on Bougainville island he was sent alone to a district in Madang province. Suddenly he was at once police chief, magistrate, medical chief, census officer and director of engineering for roads and airstrips.

You really did require a very particular personality to work as a patrol officer. On one of his first patrols into an uncontrolled area, Holloway had to defuse a clash between two warring tribes with the help of a handful of native policemen. ''After three weeks, the whole crowd of about 600 to 700 would be massing around,'' he told the ABC in 2009. To the tribal warriors, the .303 rifles carried by the police were only sticks. Holloway quickly disabused them. He made a dum dum (expanding bullet) out of a normal cartridge and had it fired through a line of five shields, showing the great gap at the end. The crowd dispersed.

Armidale is a big boarding centre. At secondary school, there were plantation kids at my school (The Armidale School) and at our sister school (the New England Girls School) sent from PNG by their parents for an Australian education. I was interested in the stock exchange and fascinated by the romance of the listed companied with PNG links such as Steamship Traders or Burns Philp South Seas.

Towards the end of my time, the first Papuan students began to arrive at the school. 

One such was Sir Kina Bona KBE. Kina was one of the candidates at the last PNG elections. Prior to that, he was  Chairman of the Integrity of Political Parties and Candidates Commission and Registrar of the Political Parties and Candidates Commission. He had also been PNG's High Commissioner to London in the late 90s, and Public Prosecutor before then. Today, there is an active TAS Old Boys' group in PNG.

At University in Armidale, my moral tutor was Gilbert Murray, something I wrote about in Patrick Desmond Fitzgerald Murray 1900-1967. The Murray's are entwined with Papua New Guinea. Over wine and port, we talked (among other things) about PNG. I was interested, although now I wish that I could have collected more of Dr Murray's experiences and his memories of an Imperial family. Then I had no idea of their historical significance. Now I can just record fragments of memory, backed by some historical research.

Papua New Guinea was now moving towards independence. There never was a question of Australia retaining control of a territory whose acquisition had begun with an independent act of Queensland imperialism somewhat against the wishes of Westminster.

In 1963 a House of Assembly was created, a mixture of official appointees and elected members. It was not possible to be a kiap without identifying locally. In the elections that followed, Barry Holloway was elected to the Assembly along with another younger patrol officer, Tony Voutas. Now began a series of events that was to help form the character of modern PNG.

The new institutions that were being created including the Administrative Staff College, the localisation of the public service, were creating their own dynamics. The Administrative Staff College was very important for there, among other things, Michael Somare went for training in 1965, The story that follows next is drawn from an article in Islands Business.

The kiaps and the local independence leaders came to be known informally as the Bully Beef Club. They gathered at the home of trade unionist Albert Maori Kiki, and sometimes at the community centre in Hohola. There they ate tinned corn beef and talked late into the night. Michael Somare became a natural leader. In Tony Voutas' words, “Sir Michael was fiery, spoke well and was an ideas person. He was still a public servant, so there was a limit to how visible he could be.”

On June 13 1967, the Papua New Guinea Union (Pangu) Party was officially formed from the Bully Beef Club. It's members included nine members of the House of Assembly: Holloway and Voutas were part of this group. The Administration offered Pangu ministerial posts in part of its transition program. Under Somare's influence this offer was rejected. Pangu would be an independent, independence, opposition. I think that that was a mistake, but I can see Sir Michael's point.

The next  photo shows Michael Holloway with the Queen on an official visit in 1974, the year before independence.

In September 1975, PNG gained independence with Pangu in power.

The coming of independence brought it's own problems. Again, a small personal example.

The Chinese who played a major role in the retail and trading sectors were very uncertain. Born in PNG, one Chinese merchant with major retail interests started shifting his money to Australia. This was done in a rush. leading to some very uncertain investments including a major real estate development at Caloundra on Queensland's Sunshine Coast. He recruited a friend of mine to examine the investments. For his part, Richard recruited a team: one person examined the legals; a second tramped all over the land, discovering an illegal marijuana plantation on the way; I examined the real estate market.

At night, we would gather at our motel and report. There our host talked about his life. He had been a young child when the Japanese occupied his village. He talked at length about that, and I listened. There were some amazing stories.

Today in PNG, there is a degree of nostalgia about the 1970s when administration was non-corrupt and the future looked bright. Would PNG have been better off if Australia had lagged its withdrawal a little? I suspect so. We are not talking decades, just more time to allow the independence transition measures to take fuller effects.

And the Pangu kiaps? Tony felt that as an expatriate Australian he should leave, that locals must take his place. Barry took a different view. To his mind, he was a local. Two choices, two paths.

Who knows who was right?  Probably both. Both had to do their own things. Both occupy a special place in PNG history.

What we do know is that Barry went on to a remarkable career. His lust for life was astonishing. I really envy it.  I guess as I grow older, what Barry tells me is that I don't need to limit myself, that whatever our age, we can do things. I am not sure that I want his number of children,  but it might be fun trying!        

Pubs, daughters & the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels

As someone fascinated by the idiosyncrasies of human life, I love the sometimes randomness of it all.

I have mentioned before that eldest works on a part time basis at the Newmarket, a hotel not far from where we used to live in Rosebery. Those who live in Sydney may well know the pub and the bowling alley next door - it's owned by the same people - because it's on the corner of two main drags, Botany and Gardeners Roads.

It's a very busy pub with a significant local clientele. The tour buses from the Blue Mountains and outer suburbs visiting the factory outlets that dot the area also call there for lunch, making for a very busy bistro. Helen has been working there for several years now, part time during term, more during holidays.

My work as a management consultant means that I have had to learn to watch and listen. To improve things, you really have to understand how things work in the first place. If, as is so often the case, you change things without really understanding what actually happens on the ground, then mess results.

   I don't spend a lot of time at the pub. However, I do sit at the bar sometimes when waiting for her.

Helen is one of the still small but growing number of urban young without a driver's license, put off by the time, cost and hassle now involved in getting one. This worries me from time to time, for absence of a license can be a significant problem in an emergency.

Monday night was a case in point.

Helen plays netball two nights a week. On Monday, one of her friends (Grace) took Helen to netball in her car. During the game, Grace fell heavily, so another girl drove Helen and Grace to hospital in Grace's car. Helen then rang her mum who drove across to Royal North Shore Hospital to stay with them until Grace could be seen and then bring Helen home. It turned out to be a late night. Then early the following morning, I drove Helen to Mosman to collect her mobile on the way to work. Grace's mobile battery was flat, so Helen had left the phone in case Grace needed to contact her parents.

A small story, but it does illustrate the importance of driver's licenses. Mind you, I don't mind driving Helen. It actually gives me at least the illusion of the usefulness I once had when the girls were still at school!

Sitting at the bar nursing a light beer with my management consulting hat on while Helen finishes up is quite interesting. Dear that girl's efficient. There is no wasted effort. It's not just a question of pouring a beer or serving another type of drink. Some customers pay in cash, some with EFTPOS. Most have membership cards that need to be swiped. These cards provide special benefits. All this is mixed with transactions from the Sportstab area.

From a pub viewpoint, turnover depends upon fast service. It also depends upon courteous service, especially to keep the regulars happy. 

Serving up to five people at a time, mostly regulars, Helen has the process down to an art form with no wasted effort.

I said that I was fascinated by the randomness of it all. Yesterday, I was due to pick Helen up at six. She rang me a bit after five to say that the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels were visiting the pub, and I might like to come and watch. She didn't have many details, but knew that I was interested in the history. I hopped in the car and drove off. In due course, the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels appeared and danced.

Now there is a back story here that took me a little while to put together.

Most Australians know the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels as the Papuan villagers who helped the Australian troops in the often dreadful fighting against the Japanese along the Kokoda Track in 1942. One of the most iconic photos shows one of the Angels helping a wounded Australian soldier.

While the work of the Fuzzy Wuzzy Angels was well known in this country, it took a long time for the Australian Government to formally recognise their help. That recognition was aided by the growing interest in Australia in the story of Kokoda Track and the opening of the Trail to walkers. The terms Track and Trail are used interchangeably.

This year 3 November, the date in 1942 on which victory was unofficially declared on the Track, was officially dedicated as Kokoda Day. To mark the event, a group of dancers from Kokoda village plus one of the original Fuzzy Wuzzies, the son of a second,were brought to Australia with support from QANTAS. As part of their visit, they were also involved in the unveiling of a commemorative statue at the Kokoda Track Memorial Walkway at Rhodes in Sydney's Inner West.

It was this group that was to perform at the Newmarket. Now sitting at the bar, I had no idea of all this background. Indeed, I had no idea what to expect at all!

The main bar at the Newmarket has a small stage in the corner, with an open area in front. As I waited, chairs were place on the stage, and a group of dancers came out dressed in traditional costumes including bare breasted girls, accompanied by three Papuans in suits who sat on the stage.

The dances began, accompanied by hand held drums and singing. I was quite fascinated, as were most of the other patrons.

I hadn't seen Papuan dancing, nor heard Papuan singing. I suppose that I had expected it to be like the Aboriginal equivalent, but it had a more African feel because of the drums and rhythms.

I was also struck by the small stature of those involved.

The Papuan and New Guinea people I have known (a number started coming to my old school on scholarship as boarders during my last years at TAS) were generally shorter than some of the taller local students, but I have actually never been to PNG.

I suppose my eyes have been conditioned by the big boned Polynesians who have a significant presence in Australia and especially in Rugby Union.

At the end of the performance, the group leader introduced everybody and explained the significance of the visit. It was then that I realised the importance of the back story. Me being me, this led me to go off and check details, and then too write this story.

I still have no idea how the group came to perform at the Newmarket. Presumably someone knew someone. I do feel honoured and grateful to have been there.     

Media round up on Australia's rim

Note to readers: This is a post that ran out of control. I have explained why at the end.

This morning, I decided to do a short tour of the media in Australia's immediate region.

New Zealand

Over the ditch in New Zealand, the New Zealand Herald has, not unexpectedly,  a fair bit of coverage of last night's Rugby test between New Zealand and Australia; the Kiwi's won 30-14. I watched the second half of the match. It was a fairly comprehensive win, but not without its good points for Australia.

Rupert Murdoch may be in a tad of trouble in the UK, but in NZ there is speculation that Sky may be able to buy cash-strapped rival TV3, as the Australian owners look for a way out of the channel's crippling $560 million debt.

A NZ Government report suggests that NZ small and medium enterprises are better at innovation than their Australian counterparts, although neither are especially good by global standards. From my own observations, NZ business has been more innovative simply because it has to be.

As in Australia, the response to the latest global economic troubles centres on good exports plus stable government. Finance Minister Bill English said New Zealand was better placed than many countries and, with debt staying below 30 per cent of GDP, there was no need to panic.

PNG

In Papua New Guinea, the National reports that new Prime Minister Peter O’Neill has announced a 14-member caretaker cabinet while calling on the outgoing government to respect parliamentary democracy in his election to the top post. The former Government seems disinclined to accept this view, despite the size of the vote on the floor of the House (70-24). Australian PM Gillard has rung the new PM to congratulate him on his appointment.

The trouble dates back to the illness of Sir Michael Somare. The Post-Courier has a more detailed account of the tumultuous events immediately before the election.

Meantime union leaders continue calls for repayment to the National Superannuation Fund of 125 million Kina ($A54 million) Kokopo infrastructure project. Kokopo became capital of East New Britain after the the volcanic destruction of Rabual. In other economic news:

• Plans by Japan’s leading Fishing company Ikegami Hiroshi International invest up to $US500 million in the Pacific Marine Industrial Zone (PMIZ) project at Bidar outside Madang were disrupted by the change in Government.  According to the Post-Courier report, PNG is the best fishing ground for tuna in the world and investors are flocking in. Existing licences issued by the National Fisheries Authority (NFA) indicate that Taiwan holds the highest number of fishing licences followed by the United States, Japan and China.
• INTEROIL and Pacific LNG Operations Ltd have clinched a deal to supply Noble Clean Fuels Ltd, a subsidiary of the Noble Group, with one million tonnes per annum of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf LNG project.
• Canadian company PNG Gold has raised C$38.4m to fund exploration and development work on the company’s Imwauna and Sehula properties on Normanby Island in Milne Bay and for general working capital.

In other PNG news, it appears that the PNG bid consortium has not given up hope of gaining a spot in the Australian National Rugby League competition, although it appears an outside chance. Rugby League is the most popular national sport in PMG.

PNG is a former Australian colony that gained independence in 1975. It is the closest country to Australia geographically,with parts of Western Province literally a canoe ride from Australian territory. Cairns is about  one hour 46 minutes flying time from Port Moresby.

Australian knowledge of PNG has declined since independence, something that I think is a potential problem. Among other things, the PNG population is projected to rise from around 6.7 million now to 13.5 million in 2050. What happens to that population in terms of health, economic and social development will clearly be important to this country.

East Timor

Moving west, we come to Indonesia and Timor-Leste.

East Timor is a bit over 700k north of Darwin, so within an easy plane flight.

The Jakarta Globe reports that long-running violence in a district just outside East Timor’s capital ended last week with a dance, a prayer, a speech and the sacrifice of a goat and a pig. The paper's story links this to a mediation process that had been going on since the troubles in 2006. It's actually quite an interesting story.      

Meantime, an Al Jazeera story reports that former militia men who took the Indonesian side  during  and after the vote for independence and who were responsible for massacres in the wake of the vote for independence from neighbouring Indonesia in 1999 that claimed 1,500 lives and forced more than 250,000 - one-fourth of East Timor's population have found an ally in East Timor's president. Jose Ramos Horta has come out in favour of amnesties for them to allow them to return from the West Timorese refugee camps. This is obviously a sensitive issue in East Timor.

Indonesia

Indonesia is Australia's largest immediate neighbour and also borders East Timor and PNG.

In a story with direct Australian implications, the Jakarta Globe reports  that compensation negotiations relating to the 2009 Timor Sea oil spill that spread into Indonesian waters have been delayed yet again, this time over political changes in Thailand.

Masnellyarti Hilman, the Indonesian government’s chief negotiator, said the signing of a memorandum of understanding with PTTEP Australasia, a subsidiary of Thailand’s PTT Exploration and Production, had been deferred until later this month from the initial date of August 3.

In another story, The Globe also reports on Asian moves to calm markets down. In Kuala Lumpur, Yeah Kim Leng, a senior economist with financial research firm RAM Holdings, described Asia as a "relative sea of stability" compared to the volatile European and US markets. In an editorial, the Globe said in part:

In 2008, the last time the world faced such economic uncertainty, Indonesia managed to sail through the crisis relatively well. It will need to be resilient again. Fiscal discipline will be critical to maintain investor confidence in the rupiah and the bond markets. Investors will be looking for certainty in the face of global turbulence and Indonesia, if it plays its cards right, could be a major beneficiary.

in a way, this links to a point that I have made in a number of posts recently, the nature of the mismatch between current currency importance and the changing patters of world economic activity. If, as I expect and hope, Indonesia continues to strengthen its economic position, then it will emerge as a growing economic power in its own right.

Conclusion

I have had to stop here. What happened is that as I went around just this limited range of stories, I started checking past posts for background material. As I did so, I realised how fragmentary they - the background posts - were, just how many gaps there were.

You see, in just this simple range of stories as well as those I looked at but did not have time to include, I found that there was so much background material that would better inform the stories that I ran out of time. As it was, what was meant to be a simple controlled regional media round up took me over five hours!

What to do?

I have just drawn a line, and now have a dozen posts that I need to write to consolidate and fill gaps! I am going to do some of that over the next week or so.