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Queen City Of The South: Gay And Lesbian Melbourne

Latrobe Journal 87

Queen City of the South: Gay and Lesbian Melbourne presents a history that will be new to many readers. Using archives, remembrance, experience and reflection, the various contributors bring new insights to our knowledge and understanding of Melbourne.

The articles in this special issue of the La Trobe Journal cover both historical and contemporary subjects ranging from the relationship between the two female pastoralists, Anne Drysdale and Caroline Newcomb, to an account of how museums and libraries are now dealing with LGBT related material.

There is also a strong focus on the 1970s, the decade of Gay Libertaion, including memoirs and a portfolio of photographs taken by Rennie Ellis during Gay Pride Week in 1973. There are also reflections on what is GLQ history and how tyhis is new and emerging history practised.

The Matrix

Bruno Leti's matrices reveal themselves in the play of light and shadow, illuminating his practice as artist and printmaker.

While the matrix is essential for the production of a print, it is often discarded upon use. Yet, in the act of printing, the matrix is transformed, re-configured by ink or paint.

Looking at them closely, these matrices go some way toward uncovering the beauty and mystery of the printmaking process.

We observe the first tiny scratches, the physicality of the artist's gesture, and sense the matrix’s resistance and the way in which materiality gives itself over to the artist's vision.

Bruno Leti’s matrices reveal themselves to us in the play of light and shadow, their rectangular forms criss-crossed with lines and markings, scratched into metal like a secret language. Elusive and unknowable, they present themselves as mysterious objects, illuminating Bruno Leti's practice as artist and printmaker.

This book celebrates the matrix, with extraordinary photographs of works from Bruno’s studio, accompanied by illuminating texts by Bruno as well as Sasha Grishin, Anne Kirker, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Alan Loney and Des Cowley.

The Garden Of Ideas: Four Centuries of Australian Style

The Garden of Ideas tells an inspiring and engaging story of Australian garden design.

The Garden of Ideas tells an inspiring and engaging story of Australian garden design. From the imaginings of emigrant garden-makers of the late-eighteenth century to the concerns of twenty-first-century gardeners, this book charts its way across four centuries through a handsome and satisfying fusion of images and text.

The Garden of Ideas is embellished with an unparalleled array of images-paintings, drawings, prints, plans, and photographs-each richly evocative of their time and most never previously published. Unearthed from around Australia, and many from overseas, these images carry the story of Australian garden style down the years, in the process criss-crossing social and cultural history across the wide extremes of our continent.

Richard Aitken, whose book Botanical Riches was published in 2006 to popular and critical acclaim, brings a lifetime of experience to The Garden of Ideas. He achieves fresh insights and presents our passion for garden-making with wit and flair.

The Garden of Ideas is a valuable source book for the sophisticated gardener and an indispensable companion for the garden lover.

Beyond Reasonable Drought: Photographs of a Changing Land and Its People

Foreward by Don Watson.

There has been nothing like it in living memory. Theories about cycles and seasons struggle to explain it. It is beyond reasonable drought. Early this century, a group of photographers crisscrossed the nation, and captured a seismic shift in the way Australians were living their lives. Caught in these photographer's lenses were the faces and the stories of communities caught in this shift. People whose lives were being transformed as the rains over much of Australia's bread basket and beyond stopped falling regularly and the land altered. These concerned photographers formed Many Australian Photographers (MAP) Group with the intention of showing us all the true state of the nation - the resilience, the ingenuity, the despair and the hope of Australia - as we leave the safety of history and head into an unknown future.

Australia Through Women's Eyes

When Louisa Meredith arrived in Van Diemen’s Land in 1841 after a year living in New South Wales, she was struck by how much the colony resembled her homeland.

Finding signs of ‘home’ in both the landscape and social life of the colonies is a theme that recurs in the writings of female colonists. All were fascinated by the evidence of white civilisation emerging in this strange, yet somehow familiar, continent.

But in celebrating this progress, these narratives also marginalise or silence Indigenous experience; for Australia to be ‘home’, it seems, it must also be white.

The West And The Map Of The World

Inspired by antique mapmakers and their global vision, The West and the Map of the World presents the past as a single narrative in which European history is an offshoot of Asian history.

Matthew Richardson explains that the dominating ethos of the modern West owes more to hordes of Asian nomads, who colonised Europe, than to the classical civilisation of the Greeks and Romans. Surprising insights include reappraisals of the historic roles of Chinese bureaucrats, Greek cities, Christian explorers and the Dieppe Maps, which spark arguments about Australia's discovery.

Lavishly illustrated with more than 100 outstanding maps from the State Library of Victoria, and based on ancient and medieval writings, this book reaches striking conclusions about the modern success of the West.

Matthew Richardson is a history editor who writes books drawing on research in history, classics and Asian and Australian literature. Originally from Canberra, he practised briefly as a lawyer in Sydney. He lives with his family in the Blue Mountains and works as the publisher for Halstead Press. A fellowship with the State Library of Victoria enabled him to pursue his interest in exploration and maps, and to research this book.

Previous books include The Penguin Book of Firsts, The Halstead Treasury of Ancient Science Fiction, Imagination, War in Words and Once a Jolly Swagman.

When We Think About Melbourne: The Imagination Of A City

What exactly makes Melbourne unique? And why do we always struggle to describe the city’s differences? Journalist Jenny Sinclair went in search of the answers and discovered that it’s actually all in our head – or, more prosaically, our collective imagination.

When We Think About Melbourne is a wry and whimsical survey of the city’s x-factor. It observes with a keen and appreciative eye the changing physical, social and cultural landscape of Melbourne through its literature, music, art, maps, travel and transport.

Imagination, Books and Community in Medieval Europe: Papers of a Conference Held at the State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia 28 March-15 June 2008

With extensive illustrated essays by Jeffrey Hamburger and Margaret Manion, accompanied by papers presented by sixteen further scholars in the field, this 256 page publication presents a rich range of studies on the subject of Medieval books and also elaborates on the extremely successful exhibition held in Melbourne in 2008. This new book is lavishly illustrated with color images relating to the papers, but also reproduces many of the works featured in the exhibition and its catalogue - particularly medieval books from Australian and New Zealand collections.

La Trobe Journal Indigenous Victorians

Jointly edited by Professor Lynette Russell and John Arnold, Deputy Head of JAS, “Indigenous Victorians: Repressed, Resourceful and Respected” was launched at the State Library of Victoria as a special issue of the La Trobe Journal. ”Indigenous Victorians: Repressed, Resourceful and Respected” makes a major contribution to the understanding and appreciation of the lives and aspirations of Victorian Aborigines and their interaction with white Australians from the beginnings of European settlement to the present day.

Sunday's Kitchen

Sunday's Kitchen explores life behind-the-scenes at Heide, the celebrated haven for progressive modernist artists and writers. Heide was the home and personal Eden of John and Sunday Reed, two of Australia's most significant art benefactors. Settling on the fifteen-acre property in outer Melbourne in 1935, the Reeds transformed it from a run-down dairy farm into a fertile creative space. They extended their hospitality and resources to now-famous artists such as Sidney Nolan, Albert Tucker, Joy Hester and Charles Blackman, and developed a culture of collaboration, eclecticism and idealism that changed the course of Australian art.

At the centre of activity was Sunday Reed, a passionate cook and gardener, who ensured the artists she championed received sustenance for the body, not just the mind. Drawing on her experiences in the south of France, her emphasis was on home-grown produce, seasonal cooking and a self-styled domestic aesthetic that became an inspirational model.

Based on the reminiscences of friends and intimates, Sunday's Kitchen introduces the history of food and eating that went hand-in-hand with the living and loving at Heide. It is richly illustrated with art, photographs and recipes from Sunday's personal collection, revealing another dimension of Heide's complex and compelling story.

A Future In Flames

What is it about Australia that makes it so prone to fires?

What is it about Australia that makes it so prone to fires? Have humans made things worse, or better? Is it possible to live in the Australian bush but be safe from fire?

No other continent on earth is as susceptible to bushfires, over such a large area, as Australia. Fires are a constant and ongoing part of our history, ecology and culture. Yet despite repeated disasters, across all states throughout the last two centuries, we seem to be no better at surviving bushfires today than we were when fires burnt through the first European settlements.

A Future in Flames is a personal journey of discovery that looks at what we have learnt from the lessons of the past and attempts to understand why, after so many years, people are still dying in bushfires.

Danielle Clode lives on a bush block in the fire-prone foothills of the Kinglake Ranges. She is a researcher at the University of Melbourne who has held a number of prestigious fellowships, and is an award-winning author of Australian natural history.

Capital: Melbourne at the Centre of the World 1901-1927

In 1901 the Australian colonies came together to form a new nation which, for the next twenty-six years, was governed from Melbourne. It was a small city, a place where people knew each other—not just the people who mattered, but those who didn't yet—where small changes loomed large and the import of big changes could scarcely be imagined. Yet in the extraordinary first quarter of the twentieth century the world lurched headlong into a new era. And this overgrown town, in all but name the nation's capital, oversaw the birth of modern Australia.

In Capital, Kristin Otto describes how it happened. She looks at the developments that shaped the world we know today: from the story of Helena Rubinstein and the invention of the cosmetics industry, to the world's first feature film, to confectionery king Mac Robertson, packaging pioneer and author of the city's first motor car fatality. And she traces, with the lightest of touches, the web of influence, friendship and sheer coincidence that held it all together.

For anyone who knows Melbourne, Capital will be a fascinating conversation with an old friend. For anyone who doesn't, it will be a compelling introduction to a new one.

The World of the Book

French poet Stephane Mallarme understood that books hold the world's stories. From the earliest known myths and legends to postmodern fictions, books are mirrors of real worlds, windows into imagined worlds and keepers of powerful ideas.

Beyond Reasonable Drought: Photographs Of A Changing Land And its People

There has been nothing like it in living memory. Theories about cycles and seasons struggle to explain it. It is beyond reasonable drought.

Early this century, a group of photographers crisscrossed the nation, and captured a seismic shift in the way Australians were living their lives. Caught in these photographer's lenses were the faces and the stories of communities caught in this shift. People whose lives were being transformed as the rains over much of Australia's bread basket and beyond stopped falling regularly and the land altered.

These concerned photographers formed Many Australian Photographers (MAP) Group with the intention of showing us all the true state of the nation - the resilience, the ingenuity, the despair and the hope of Australia - as we leave the safety of history and head into an unknown future.

Botanical Riches: Stories Of Botanical Exploration

Century after century, intrepid plant hunters and botanists travelled to exotic climes, collecting seeds and specimens. Searching for plants with economic value, medicinal benefits, or purely for lavish display, these botanical explorers carried their treasures home to their own lands.

Botanical Riches is magnificently illustrated with some of the world's most glorious engraved, lithographed and hand-coloured botanical illustrations. From the earliest Renaissance herbals, to the more elaborate and beautiful volumes from the birth of printing, books celebrating plants from far-off lands brought with them a sense of wonder.

Travel to ancient Sumer and discover where the first grains were domesticated for agriculture, through Egypt, the land of papyrus, to the Silk Road and the rice paddies of the secretive East, to the tulips of the Ottoman Empire. Then voyage through the rich wonders of the New World, the exciting flora of the Cape of Good Hope, the showy rhododendrons of the Himalayas, and the eucalypts and banksia of Australia.

With illustrations of extraordinary splendour and beauty, Botanical Riches is a colourful history and enthralling tale of botanical exploration.

Voyages To The South Seas: In Search Of Terres Australes

Voyages to the South Seas recounts the epic journeys of French explorers to Australia and encompasses a remarkable period of French and Australian history--when Australia was France's Mars and marsupials were her aliens.

Cyril Hopkins' Marcus Clarke

Cyril Hopkins, brother of Gerard Manley Hopkins, was a close friend of Clarke and draws on memories of their schooldays together in Highgate and Clarke's letters from Australia, for this biography.

Hopkins gives a fascinating picture of the mercurial immigrant's ups and downs as he moves from banking to jackarooing, before emerging as a controversial journalist. Clarke's career as theatre critic, bon vivant, librarian and author of the classic novel His Natural Life is vividly and movingly captured. Equally present are the bustling and variegated character of a colonial city, the rugged outback mining towns, and the vast bush, little understood by the new colonial society.

The Cowen Gallery

This beautifully illustrated catalogue provides a comprehensive guide to the State Library of Victoria's Cowen Gallery. This space, built as the Stawell Gallery in 1892 for the National Gallery of Victoria, and subsequently used by the Museum, was renovated and reopened to the public in November 2003. It houses a permanent exhibition of 150 paintings and sculptures, drawn from the Library's Pictures Collection, the oldest visual documentary collection in Australia. The catalogue provides background information on the Cowen Gallery and the Library's valuable Pictures Collection, which documents change and progress in Victoria over the past 150 years. Each piece in the Cowen Gallery collection is shown in the catalogue and accompanied by expert notes. Author Michael D Galimany was the first curator of the Cowen Gallery, and worked at the Library as a librarian and curator for 13 years.

Literary Melbourne

Created to mark the celebration of Melbourne becoming a UNESCO City of Literature, this anthology draws together a selection of the best Melbourne and Victorian writing. Extracts from eighty writers across different genres - crime, literary fiction, poetry, Indigenous stories, migrant tales, theatre, children’s fiction and others - provide a colourful and insightful snapshot of Melbourne’s rich literary heritage.

Read an extract from Literary Melbourne

Miss D and Miss N: An Extraordinary Partnership The Diary of Anne Drysdale

In 1839 Miss Anne Drysdale sailed from Scotland to Port Philip. She was 47 years old, had a small inheritance, and was determined to be a sheep farmer. Soon after arriving in melbourne she took up land near Geelong and formed a partnership with another enterprising woman, Caroline Newcomb. They established a successful pastoral business and for thirteen years lived and worked together on their properties Boronggoop, on the River Barwon, and Coriyule, on the Bellarine Peninsula. The daily lives of these remarkable women were recorded in Anne’s diary and four of its five volumes have survived, providing a rare, detailed account of domestic and farming life in the 1840s. Substantial extracts from the diary are published for the first time in this book, and were selected and edited by Bev Roberts to trace the story of two extraordinary Victorian pioneers.

Bottersnikes And Other Lost Things: A Celebration of Australian Illustrated Children’s Books

Lazy Bottersnikes in outback rubbish tips, Sir Pronoun's dilemma about standing in Miss Noun's place and the story of how Jack built a house, a hut or a shack are all to be found in this treasury of Australian children's illustrated books.

Exploring everything from schooldays to fantasy worlds, from its nineteenth century beginnings to the twenty-first century, this compilation is remarkable for its breadth of coverage, encouraging new ways of seeing the Australian child's literary history.

Bottersnikes and Other Lost Things: A Celebration of Australian Illustrated Children's Books is beautifully illustrated and includes works from some of Australia's best known and loved writers and illustrators: Mem Fox and Patricia Mullins, Bob Graham, Libby Hathorn and Gregory Rogers, Gary Crew and Shaun Tan, Pamela Allen and old favourites such as May Gibbs and Ida Rentoul Outhwaite.

Juliet O'Conor is responsible for the State Library of Victoria's Children's Literature Collection of more than 100 000 Australian and overseas children's books. This collection has been the inspiration for her to pursue further research via postgraduate study in children's literature. Completion of a State Library fellowship in 2004 led to commencement of her doctorate at Deakin University in the field of Indigenous Australian traditional stories. O'Conor shares her expertise through public talks, publications and advice on research strategies in the field of children's literature.

Running The Show: Selected B.A. Santamaria Documents: 1939-1996

B.A. (Bob) Santamaria was perhaps the most controversial figure in recent Australian politics. An anti-Communist and devout Catholic, he was also one of the most prolific writers in Australia’s history and a strong campaigner for social justice, and his impact on this country’s social conscience was profound.

In the 1940s he founded the Movement in Australia, an anti-Communist organisation. He was known to earlier generations as a key figure in the tumultuous Split in the Australian Labour Party in the 1950s, and to later ones as a public commentator on his TV program Point of View and in his weekly column in the Australian.

Fiercely independent, he maintained his traditionalist stance, combatting Communism in Asia and permissive and nihilistic trends in Western society, particularly in the field of bio-ethics.

Writing was a key part of his political activity—on every matter of importance to him he turned out exhaustive analyses and rejoinders. Running the Show features some of the many unpublished documents Santamaria produced during his six decades of continuous public activity. It includes speeches, strategic papers, reports to his superiors, memos to politicians, positions papers, personal statements, aides-mémoire and political analyses.

Running the Show brings together a selection of documents written by B.A. Santamaria, and throws new light on a number of crucial episodes in his career. In the poet James McAuley’s words, he ‘set a match against the age’s mind’.

Making Modern Melbourne

From illegal village to modern metropolis, Melbourne is a city of many layers. Jenny Lee observes them with a sharp eye, sampling the city's marvellous and not-so-marvellous moments and reintroducing some of the unconventional characters who've shaped its history.

The Chinawoman

The police-hunt for the murderers of an English prostitute fanned anti-Chinese hysteria in colonial Melbourne. The horrific crime was enveloped in mystery for months, until political pressure broke the silence and two Chinese suspects were delivered up to the English.

It was a delicate time—the interests of all their countrymen in the colony were balanced against those of a few. The Chief of Detectives schemed to ensure his investigation was a success, while honest men warned: ‘Justice seeks to arrive at Truth, the policeman aims at a conviction’.

At the sensational trial before hanging-judge Redmond Barry, the detectives’ star witness intoned: ‘I am Fook Shing. I must tell the truth. If I do not tell the truth may thunder kill me and fire come from heaven and burn me up’. Two men were convicted on the basis of highly suspect and circumstantial evidence, though public disquiet remained about police methods and the fairness of the trial.

Your Most Obedient Servant: B.A. Santamaria Selected Letters 1938-1996

Bob Santamaria was involved in Australian public life from before World War II until his death in 1998. His letters reveal facets of his personality and activities that the public was not fully aware of in his lifetime.

He began as an agent and champion of the Catholic Church, and was a key figure in Australian politics, namely the ALP-DLP Split in the 1950s. He also ran a lesser known anti-Communist Movement throughout Asia for decades, at the same time as his Australian Movement.

The political activist and journalist Santamaria spent much of his last decades opposing the current activities of the Catholic Church. Spanning more than sixty years, this selection of letters to friends and members of the public reveals a person more subtle in his views than his adamantine public persona would suggest. Your Most Obedient Servant is a rare glimpse into a mind that was preoccupied on a daily basis with world events and ideological controversies.

Perils Of The Studio: Inside The Artistic Affairs Of Bohemian Melbourne

Bohemians or businessmen? Moral behaviour or misbehaving with the models? In the early 20th century, there was much speculation about what was going on behind the curtains of bohemia. With its heady mixture of cheerful poverty, promiscuity and inspired creativity, the resonance of the studio is as powerful today as it was several decades ago. 'Perils of the Studio' reveals how the romance and mythology of the artists’ studio defined the character of the Australian artist. Focusing on inner-city bohemia before 1940, including the famous Grosvenor Chambers at 9 Collins Street, this book is the first attempt to examine the role of the studio in Australian art. With over 100 rarely seen works by painters, photographers and cartoonists, Alex Taylor combines stories and anecdotes drawn from newspapers and magazines in a unique cultural history. Author Alex Taylor has studied art history at the University of Queensland, University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Melbourne. He works at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in Melbourne and writes on contemporary art for several magazines.

Treasures Of The State Library

The State Library of Victoria, established as the Melbourne Public Library in 1854, is the custodian of material that records and reflects Victoria's history and culture. From manuscripts and maps to comics and computer game, the Library's collections offer unexpected insights into what makes Victoria and Victorians unique. Treasures of the State Library of Victoria, published to celebrate the library's 150th anniversary in 2004, encourages readers to discover the changing face and nature of life in Victoria since the time of first contact between Aboriginal and European cultures. The lavish publication showcases more than 200 images, sourced from the library's world-class collections, including those of rarely seen photographs, prints, publications, letters, maps and memorabilia. Every chapter highlights special aspects of the collections and demonstrates their astonishing depth and diversity, covering topics as broad as settlement and separation, the discovery of gold, Ned Kelly, the arts, Melbourne style, sport, natural history and more.

Mark Strizic: Melbourne, Marvellous To Modern

This magnificent collection of photographs arose from the creativity of a young photographer and his adoption of his new home town, Melbourne. His pictures were taken at a time when the Victorian elegance of the city once known as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’ was being punctuated by a wave of development and the modern architectural movement.

Today Mark Strizic is renowned as a photographer. In the 1950s he was a young science student from Europe playing with the possibilities of the camera. His enthusiasm for photography was encouraged by Melbourne artist Leonard French and academic David Saunders. As he gained work as a professional his commercial success was accompanied by the instincts and eye of an artist. His solid technicality was accompanied by the whimsy and wit that him the ‘poet of the fleeting movement’.

The versatility of his work shows us many aspects of Melbourne – its magnificent architectural heritage, its intimate and vibrant laneways, its grand arcades counter-posed against the sudden spaces of the wrecker, the brash intrusion of the glass and concrete skyscrapers, the poignancy of poverty in the run-down inner suburbs. We see the people, on grand occasions such as the 1954 Royal Visit, or just caught in their own world of travelling, shopping, resting, walking, working.

E.W. Cole: Chasing The Rainbow

'The reign of knowledge and humanity is coming.'

Lisa Lang introduces us to Melbourne's most eccentric entrepreneur, taking us on the journey from E. W. Cole's humble beginnings on the Victorian goldfields, to his bold establishment of the world's largest bookstore, and original publication of the iconic and enduring Cole's Funny Picture Books.

'Lang's little book is a simple and clear account ... A useful primer on a leading light of Marvellous Melbourne.'
– Bill Perrett

The Art Of The Collection: State Library Of Victoria Picture Collection

The Art of the Collection is a celebration of the State Library of Victoria's Picture Collection – the oldest visual documentary collection in Australia. Acting on its mandate to collect and preserve Victoria's documentary heritage, the Library acquires paintings, maps, diaries and documents that showcase all facets of Victorian life, past and present.

The Library has an extensive collection of art works and a permanent display of 150 works in the Cowen Gallery. The works illustrate Victoria's landscape, early Melbourne scenes, and significant events and figures in the European exploration and settlement of Australia.

The works range from early 18th and 19th century portraits, to contemporary portraits and scenes of Melbourne and Victoria. Works of some of our most celebrated and talented Australian artists are in the collection and showcased in this book: Eug ne von Gu rard, John Glover, Frederick McCubbin, Albert Tucker, Ian Fairweather, Lina Bryans, Jan Senbergs, Juan Davila and Howard Arkley to name a few.