ARTHUR FREDERICK WILLIAM HADDON, 1927-2011

Arthur Haddon was born in Rosebery, Sydney, on December 1, 1927. His mother, Winifred Benison Forbes, had married Arthur William Herbert Haddon earlier in the year and Arthur would be their only child. The marriage faltered while he was still quite young and he and his mother began living with her parents, Freda and Frederick Forbes. Arthur became very close to his grandparents as a result. Winifred became very close to a near neighbour of her parents, Cecil James Duncan. Within a year of her divorce from Arthur (the father) in 1935, she and Cecil married and Arthur (the son) assumed his step-father’s surname. It was at around this time that his interest in science fiction began when he discovered sf stories in the English three-penny boys’ magazines, such as Chums, The Rover and Boys Own, that he obtained from local book swap shops. So it was as Arthur Duncan that, at Sydney Boys High School in 1941, he met Graham Stone. Arthur’s recollection was that he saw a note posted on the school notice board seeking others interested in sf. Graham has no memory of doing this, but in any case, they met and started combing the secondhand bookshops together on Saturday mornings. Arthur also learned of other fans, fanmags and the Futurian Society of Sydney via Graham. He started attending FSS meetings and surprised the other Sydney fans by announcing his intention to publish his own fanzine, Venus, even before being elected a member of the Society in September. Shortly after this, however, he agreed to take up publishing Spaceward, the bulletin of the Futurian Federation of Australia. This proved to be an unhappy decision. Of his early fanmag publishing ambitions and cruel realities, he wrote years later:

Being young enough to be insanely enthusiastic I decided that I needed to bring out a fanzine of my own and as I could talk to Graham between classes he became the technical expert for the publication. We toyed with the idea of flat bed hektograph for a while until we considered that it would be too messy (we would have been working in my grandmother's kitchen, having already been thrown out of my mother's for making and testing gas masks). Our final disastrous choice was a home made flat bed duplicator. The silk screen was not very well made, the stencils were badly cut and ink passage was uneven and not entirely legible. I blamed Graham and we were barely friendly for a number of years.

Venus never appeared and Arthur was so embarrassed by the quality of the third Spaceward that he refused to distribute it and even offered his resignation as FFA Coordinator. He was persuaded to continue for a few months and in 1942 served as Vice-President of the FSS until it was dissolved in November. When its replacement, the Southern Cross Futurian Society, moved away from sf, Arthur and Vol Molesworth organised the resurrection of the Futurian Society of Sydney before all activities were suspended because of the war. At high school, Arthur had been a naval cadet. In March 1945 he was working as a junior metal worker when he was mobilized into the Royal Australian Naval Reserve. It was his turn to be surprised. He learned that Cecil Duncan had never legally adopted him, so his surname was still Haddon. At around this time his mother’s marriage to Cecil also ended. (Neither of Arthur’s parents was particularly lucky in love. Winifred married for a third time in 1949. His father also remarried twice, in 1939 and 1948. The second ex-wife remarried also and introduced Arthur senior to her new husband, who then swindled him out of ₤1,000.)

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'" ..

----

{'!lICE 1/1 e ..

DUNCAN SfR\NGS SURPR\SL NtW fANt1AG BY Nt\J t I\N . .

Not long ago no f an had heard of f.rthur Williem Duncan. It was only three weeks ago that he met a fan othClr than Graham Stone . Now he is going to publi sh a fanmag. · That is r ather fast work.

Grahe:ii Stone, a l ways on the lookout for new f ans , thought of Duncan as a casua l, and nothing more . Than his inter es t suddenly increased.He wanted to see more fans , and their collect ions.He met Eric Russell , Deve Evans , and others. He saw fenmags . He r ead fan",a~s, And then . • . .

He wmounced tha t he would shortly publish "Venus" a school magazine , sel!li-stf. This \'Ias to be ca r bo.1-copied , more o f inter est. to school" l:lates than to fans

Came next vJeekend. Once again Duncan oat scionce fiction fans. Once again he r ead fanmags. And then, ••

He a:mounced tha t ' Venus" would b<3 hel{toed instcad of car-boned. No altGcation was made in t he policy. It was s t ill to b e a school magazine.

No t satisfied with this , Duncan's next step was to scra p the hekto idea , and announce that Venus would be mimeoed. I.nd \Vi th thi s came the announcement tha t tho policy had changed .Venus Vlould now be' e. str a i ght fa."l­mag, inst ead of a half-a nd-halfer .

hs we said before, tha t is f ast wor k . It is also progr e ss . Duncan ha s still to become acquai nted V!i t.h (cont. page 4) .

-S'fQp-PRESS--····_-- _._- - .-.-.

Arthur was transferred to the Royal Australian Navy in April 1946 as an Ordinary Seaman. His naval career began in seamanship schools at HMAS Penguin in Sydney and HMAS Cerberus on the Mornington Peninsula near Melbourne, after which he became an AB, or Able-Bodied Seaman. The first two vessels he served on were both ‘Tribal’ class destroyers, the HMAS Warramunga and HMAS Bataan, part of the naval component of the British Commonwealth Occupation Force based in Kure, Japan. Arthur had two tours of duty with the BCOF between 1947 and 1949. Patrolling the ports of Sasebo, Nagasaki, Yokohama and Tokyo and adjacent waters as far south as Hong Kong, their role included boarding merchant ships to check for contraband cargoes and illegal immigrants. Arthur later wrote: “Our job was to show the flag, chase the pirates and, Lord help us, let them know that we had won”. Ashore, they helped clear wartime debris, engaged in inter-services sports competitions and were able to enjoy night clubs and theatres. HMAS Warramunga Not all of Arthur’s service was overseas. In mid-1948 the Warramunga cruised along the Queensland coast, with open inspections for the public at various ports. In July, Arthur was provisionally promoted to the rank Leading Seaman. The following year the Warramunga transported servicemen stranded by the coal strike between Melbourne and Sydney and its crew offloaded coal from commercial vessels in Port Philip Bay. In August, the vessel became the “attendant destroyer” to Australia’s first aircraft carrier, HMAS Sydney, during its working-in period. This included a cruise on the Barrier Reef in September, with the crew allowed recreational time fishing and dancing with female tourists ashore. 1949, however, was not Arthur’s finest year. In March he and another sailor off the HMAS Bataan were charged with drunk and disorderly behaviour in Hobart. This incident―hardly unusual for a sailor―was followed by another in September when he was on shore leave in Cairns, but this time he was also charged with assaulting a policeman. His rank returned to AB as a result. In 1949 Arthur also married for the first time, to Marjorie Helen Hobbs. They remained together for over 20 years and had two children, but it has been suggested that they separated on less than cordial terms. Arthur himself was silent on this question, but it is noteworthy that in the eulogy read at his funeral, Marjorie and their children were not even mentioned. In his final year in the RAN, Arthur was transferred to HMAS Sydney and participated in joint exercises with RNZN vessels in Australia and New Zealand. He was discharged from the Navy in September 1950. Throughout his service period, Arthur had kept in touch with efforts by Vol Molesworth, Graham Stone and others to revive the Futurian Society. He was very enthusiastic about the resumption of fan activities in letters sent to the first post-war fanzine, The Sydney Futurian, from far-off Kure, Hong Kong and Tokyo. He also contributed a short article, “Cross Roads”, in which he argued that for the revival to succeed, Sydney fandom would need a unity of purpose and an increase in active members to avoid the divisions it had seen pre-war.

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By late 1950, when he rejoined fandom, the scene lent some weight to his views. Activity had dwindled, executive positions of the FSS had been combined and only a third of the library remained; a Trust had been created to preserve it in case the Society folded. William Veney called a conference to discuss the situation in July 1951. The creation of a new club in Sydney was mooted and he and Arthur were appointed to examine options. They argued that resuscitating the FSS was the best choice and other fans agreed. At the next meeting of the Society, Arthur was elected as Secretary. He held the post for two years (and served as Treasurer for a shorter period afterwards).

By the end of 1951, Arthur had acquired an Adana hand letterpress. This was similar to the one Vol Molesworth used for Futurian Press, but with a cracked platen that caused Arthur some problems. With this he printed a booklet of the Society’s revised constitution and rules and, in addition, he published the first issue of his own new fanzine, Telepath. Making up for his tragic pre-war experience, this was a very professional-looking fanzine (similar to Nick Solntseff’s Woomera) and it contained a mix of local and overseas content.

The following month, in the lead-up to the first Sydney convention, Arthur gained permission to have a circular about the con inserted in the December 1951 British Reprint Edition (BRE) of Astounding Science Fiction. But there was a catch, as Doug Nicholson explains:

On agreeing to the request, the company told him that the flyer had to be in their hands at the beginning of the next business day. For those who do not know about hand-set letterpress, it involves taking one type-metal letter at a time, placing it in its position in a form, knocking it firmly into place with a block of wood, then proceeding to the next. The set type is inked, pressed down onto the paper and voila! You have one printed sheet. Arthur did not sleep that night. He composed the text, set the type, and printed twelve hundred copies. A bicycle trip into the city then allowed him to make the deadline. The Convention that followed converted Sydney’s science fiction fan group of barely ten people into a community of more than fifty that, over several years, met, published, argued and held more conventions.

The success of the 1952 convention led to a jump in the number of people engaged in Sydney fandom, the need for a larger meeting room and the formation of another club by a group of younger fans, the North Shore Futurian Society. Discussion on how best to coordinate local fandom followed, with one idea being the creation of a Council of Fandom with represent-atives from a number of bodies. Arthur suggested an alternative which would have seen the FSS in a lead role, but with an expanded Executive elected annually and meeting separately from the general membership to make decisions. His proposal met with opposition and in the end neither plan was taken up, but his concept of an expanded executive body was adopted several years later. The first convention also led to a greater number of women joining fandom during Arthur’s period as FSS Secretary, with some controversy arising over their admission as full members which Arthur much later helped to explain [see Mumblings 26]. Of another consequence, incidents of extra-marital relations, he was less forthcoming. In fact, his own liaison with xxx

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Diana Wilkes was notorious at the time since it led to a fight between Arthur and her husband Alan. Doug Nicholson recalls that this started at the Lincoln Coffee Lounge, a popular meeting place for students, artists, writers and bohemians (and thus now claimed as one of the birth places of The Sydney Push):

How often Arthur went to the Lincoln, I don't know, but that was where the challenge was issued. Arthur immediately accepted, claiming choice of weapons: Bare knuckles, Queensberry rules. I think they drafted seconds and referee on the spot, and repaired to the Domain for the blood-letting. The referee was George Dovaston… Arthur said he was too tolerant as a referee, as he allowed Alan to get away with some Jujitsu moves, but Arthur won anyway.

The entrance to the Lincoln Coffee Lounge, c.1950

Graham Stone adds several ironic notes:

Much later Ian Driscoll, who was Alan Wilkes’ second for the bout, told me that when Wilkes approached him he thought at first from Wilkes’ grim expression that he at least suspected that Driscoll had also been involved with Diana. Diana ridiculed the fight; she suggested they make it “bad language at ten paces”.

Later in 1952, Arthur became involved in another type of dispute over the Trust created to look after the FSS Library. A majority of the trustees had already departed when the librarian resigned and Vol Molesworth requested that a new home for the collection be found. Arthur and Graham Stone both offered to take it. Arthur’s offer was accepted. Graham objected, resigned as a trustee and Arthur was elected in his place. The dispute was referred to a Futurian Court of Inquiry and in the meantime Arthur felt it was inappropriate to make the Library available to members. The Court eventually found that the library should be returned to the Society’s control, but it did not become operational again until April of 1953 and the

lengthy delay contributed to growing dissent in Sydney fandom. Arthur was also Secretary and Liaison Officer of the 1953 con and he again had circulars inserted into a BRE issue of Astounding and also placed ads in several overseas sf magazines (like the one here, from Nebula SF). In addition, he had volunteered to arrange the venue for a cocktail party to kick off the convention, but: Disaster!!! I had the party organised with a family friend who was a commercial caterer at a local golf club. When I rang a few days before the event to advise on numbers he told me that as I had not confirmed or paid a deposit he had not booked the event. Our hide was saved by Bill Veney from memory, who managed to get us into a nearby garden restaurant, so we had to maintain a vigil at the golf club and redirect everyone to the restaurant.

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Recriminations about this lapse added to other arguments now amplifying divisions in local fandom. These came to a head at the 1954 convention:

Convention No.3 was probably about the time that the wheels fell off fandom in Sydney. That the Official Report and an unofficial report put out by me vary somewhat would possibly be an understatement [but] then I was always outspoken so that may not mean much anyway. The interesting piece though was that the motion that the NSFS should stage the 4th Convention was carried. That really fueled the fires of discord.

It was Arthur who moved the motion regarding the organisation of the 1955 convention and Michael Bos, one of the founders of the North Shore Futurian Society who seconded it. Arthur argued that this would give FSS members a break and allow the younger fans an opportunity to show what they were capable of. The NSFS was actually being supported by a number of former FSS members, but the motion was carried by almost a 2:1 majority at the business session. This infuriated Graham Stone, who distributed a flyer announcing “No Convention in 1955”. The rival group (including Arthur, Bill Veney, Doug Nicholson and others) fought back by launching Scansion, a newsletter which frequently criticised Stone and the Futurian Society. What the younger NSFS fans proved capable of was not much. As the convention date grew nearer, even Scansion began questioning their lack of action. In the end, the organisation of the 1955 convention was largely done by Arthur:

I organised the site through another family friend, but I was a little wiser this time and kept it all on a reasonably business like footing without being officious. Dunbar House is a heritage building on the waterfront at Watsons Bay that is just inside Sydney heads on the southern shore with a clear view straight down the harbour of our famous “coat hanger”. Really a top spot and the warm weather made it even better. Opening night was fancy dress and I was the Green Man of Graypec, orange loin cloth and body coated with malachite green dissolved in polyethylene glycol 4000. It did not totally come off for days. We were going to have Prof. Harry Messel as one guest speaker but he had to decline and sent his Reader in Physics, Dr. Blatt. The other guest speaker was an ex-RAAF officer who was a Counsellor in Dianetics (this was not long after Hubbard had started it and before it became Scientology). Our piece de resistance however was being fortunate enough to have Arthur C. Clarke as Guest of Honour. Arthur was in Australia with Mike Wilson scuba diving on the Barrier Reef. How we actually secured him and who was the genius that achieved it I can not recall, but it was fabulous. The business session on Sunday afternoon revealed a lot of the chancre that was eating away at Sydney fandom. I can not think of anyone who either did not have an axe to grind or a mouthful of innuendo and scarcely veiled digs at ‘them’. We finished on the Sunday with a Norma Hemming play and several movies, having passed the baton to Melbourne.. For my part, somewhere about here I gave it all away due to personal and business reasons quite apart from just plain disgust with it all.

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Vol Molesworth’s history refers to Arthur heading up an Albion Futurian Society formed just after the 1955 convention, but when questioned about this his response was short:

I have absolutely no recollections of that organisation, if it existed in reality, and as for Vol being Secretary to my President -- people who knew us then are still laughing.

At an ACI Closures function, 1975

Arthur focused on his work instead. Upon his discharge from the Navy, he had found work as a furnaceman whilst training as a metallurgist. In the early 1950s, he worked as a chemist for a number of firms, including Columbia Pencils and G.H. Norton & Company. The latter marketed a range of goods including Ready-Master hectographs and supplies, so it was no coincidence that the second (and last) issue of his zine Telepath, in 1954, was hectographed. Eventually Arthur joined Australian Consolidated Industries as an industrial chemist. He stayed with ACI for most of the remainder of his working life.

In the 1960s he helped to form a chemical technicians guild, but his work in ACI’s Closures Division (“closures” being the caps, lids or bottle tops sealing various product containers) eventually saw him elevated to a managerial role. His ACI work also affected his personal life, for it was at a company function in July 1973 that he met and developed a strong, mutual attraction for Jeanette Clay. They married the following year. The couple enjoyed travelling overseas, to Norfolk Island, the UK and (for Arthur) a return trip to Hong Kong, and, in 1977, they moved to Melbourne when ACI transferred Arthur there. Arthur finally left ACI in 1980 to take up a managerial position with HD Lee, the clothing manufacturer, in Albury. A decade later, when most people would retire, the couple bought a general store in Swansea, on the coast north of Sydney. Afterwards they ran another small business, a tobacconist shop in nearby Belmont, for several years before they finally did retire, to Coffs Harbour, in 1994. Keen to remain active in retirement, Arthur volunteered his services for a number of charities and institutions in Coffs Harbour, including Meals on Wheels and the Returned & Services League, mainly helping with budgeting and financial management. He also took up many hobbies, including gardening, beer brewing, chess and word puzzles, and returned to his early passion, connecting with a number of past and current fans via memoriesscifi@dodo.com.au, the email account he set up in 2009. Throughout his later years, Arthur had to have numerous small skin cancers removed, but in 2007 a malignant melanoma was discovered in his chest. He responded to treatment at the time, but it was a recurrence of this condition which sent him to Baringa Private Hospital in 2011 and he passed away there on July 3rd.

Arthur sporting his Navy tattoos on his 80th birthday.

Rest in peace, Arthur.

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FROM THE ANTIPODES TO OTHER WORLDS: An annotated index to Australian and New Zealand fan content in Other Worlds and related

fantasy and science fiction magazines (1950-1958)

The last few issues of Mumblings from Munchkinland have listed Aussie and Kiwi readers’ letters, reviews or mentions of fan activities in Amazing Stories and its companions. Editors Ray Palmer and his protégé, William Hamling, both left Ziff-Davis to publish their own sf magazines, so it seemed logical to cover these next.

Palmer’s first title was Other Worlds, which made a promising start before declining rapidly. It was renamed Science Stories in 1953 and Palmer acquired Universe Science Fiction soon after. The former faltered after four issues; the latter saw ten issues before Palmer decided to change it back into Other Worlds. In 1957, it morphed again into Flying Saucers from Other Worlds before becoming a straight UFO magazine. Bill Hamling, meanwhile, launched Imagination in 1950 with Palmer’s help. In 1954 it also gained a companion, Imaginative Tales, which also changed title, in 1958, but as Space Travel it lasted only three more issues. None of these magazines, with the exception of early issues of Other Worlds, published much notable fiction. However, they all continued the fan-friendly policies that former fan Palmer had instilled in the Ziff-Davis magazines of the 1940s, so letter columns, fan news articles and fanzine reviews all featured. Inevitably, these included content generated by the fans Down Under. Especially conspicuous are Roger Dard from W.A. (again) and the Melbourne SF Club’s Etherline, edited by Ian Crozier, but virtually all of the other names here are those of known fans (as opposed to casual readers). Year Issue Mag Page Type: Author Notes on contents with quotes of interest Location 1950 Jul OW 159-

160 Loc: Dard, Roger. Criticises first issue, notes improvement in third,

applauds editorials and Personals feature (short personal ads). [WA]

Oct Im 4 Mention: Ackerman, F.J. Guest ed. by 4E notes first use of Imagination

was on a Los Angeles club organ from 1937 that was "read all over the world--in France, England, Canada, Germany and Australia".

[US]

OW 53 Ad: Dard, Roger. Lists items he wants to buy or trade for. [WA] 53 Ad: Harding, Ralph H. Wants US magazines and letters from fans. [WA]

1951 Jan OW 161 Loc: Solntseff, Nick. "I would like to make the announcement that the first Australian post-war fanzine has been published. It is called WOOMERA and it is a 12-page zine, duplicated on semi-foolscap paper... Contributions to the zine are needed badly...". Gives details of subscriptions and submission requirements. Also comments on OW, a few stories and the columns.

[NSW]

(Woomera was actually preceded after the war by both the Sydney Futurian and FSS News, but it was the first independent post-war zine.)

Jun Im 152 Mention: Review of Fantasy-Times notes that it includes reports on sf activities in various countries, including Australia, quite regularly.

[US]

Jun-Jul

OW 61 Ad: Dard, Roger. Lists items he wants to trade for. [WA]

1952 Jan Im 145 Fanzine review: Woomera, Feb. 1951 issue. Names the American

representative and describes issue contents. "If you're interested in learning more about fandom Down Under, get in touch with Roger Nelson. And get a copy of Woomera, too."

[NSW]

(No mention of editor Nick Solntseff!) - 9 -

Jan Im 145 Review: Blinded They Fly (Futurian Press, 1950). "This isn't a fanzine, really. It's a fantasy novelet by Australian fan Vol Molesworth...in the Lovecraft tradition... It would be of interest to collectors of this type of story, or to collectors of Australian fantasy in general, but the price, $1.50 for thirty pages, is pretty steep for any others."

[NSW]

Jun OW 161 Ad: Cohen, Dave. Offers Out of the Silence, Adventures with Mermaids,

Thrills, Inc. and other Australian and UK material for trade. [NSW]

1953 May Im 152 List: Forerunner (ed. R.D. Nicholson) included in list of fanzines

received. [NSW]

Jul Im 150 Mention: Review of Spaceship (ed. Silverberg) includes: "And Roger

Dard reports from Australia. There's an interesting publishing field down there, from the sound of his review."

[US]

Oct Im 150 Mention: Review of Spaceship (ed. Silverberg) includes: "Roger Dard

reports on the state of science fiction in Australia. Import troubles in the Land Down Under."

[US]

Nov Im 152 Fanzine review: Perhaps (ed. Leo Harding). "a new fanzine, and a very

good one, too. Dick Jensson's cover is exceptionally fine...the fans down under are determined to be an active group..."

[Vic]

Dec Im 148 Fanzine review: Forerunner (ed. R.D. Nicholson). "a really good, and

rather off-trail magazine... There's almost nothing…here that couldn't be published in a profesional magazine... Douglas Nicholson's 'Young Man of Middle World' would be tops no matter where." Other authors included Molesworth, Royce Williams and Norma Williams.

[NSW]

(Forerunner was literally intended as the forerunner of a professional sf magazine in Australia. Nicholson had had a story, 'Far from the Warming Sun', published in Galaxy just a few months earlier.)

151 Mention: 1953 Australian con noted in review of Fantasy-Times. [US] 1954 Jan Im 147 Fanzine review: Bacchanalia (ed. Race Mathews) "a very well done

zine... Dick Jensson's cover is one of the best I've seen in a long time." Also compliments 'Random Notes on H.P. Lovecraft' by Tom Cockcroft.

[Vic]

Mar Im 153 Fanzine review: Perhaps (ed. Leo Harding) "if you're Down Under you

can get a copy from Editor Drummond [sic] for 2/6... Perhaps the best thing in the magazine is Roger Dard's article on 'Witch Hunters of the Atomic Age' about censorship, book-banning and the democratic way."

[Vic]

(Harding lived on Drummond St., Carlton, hence the name confusion. Censorship and confiscation of books and magazines was a subject close to Roger’s heart, given his long battle with Australian Customs.)

Apr Im 121 Mention: Review of Spaceship (ed. Silverberg) includes: "And Roger Dard reports on Australian fan activities."

[US]

Jun Im 120-

121 Fanzine review: Question Mark (ed. Heron & Wheelahan) "?, as its title

appears on the cover, is the latest arrival from Down Under... articles on Dianetics.. are stressed..."

[Vic]

Aug Im 114 Mention: Roger Dard is listed among contributors to Spaceship (ed.

Silverberg). [US]

Sep Uni 118 Mention: Review of Taurasi's Fantasy-Times notes that it "has

correspondents all over the US and in Europe, Canada and Australia..." Oct Im 116-

117 Fanzine review: Sonic (ed. Bos & Hubble) "a slim fanzine, mostly

dealing with club notes and reviews...". [NSW]

(Sonic was also known as the North Shore Futurian Society Notesheet.)

Dec Im 117 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier). Reviewer concentrates on Lyell Crane's comparison of conventions in Canada, US and UK, and a story by John Hitchcock set on Alpha Centauri IV.

[Vic]

118-

119 Mention: Review of Fantasy-Times (ed. Taurasi & van Houten) includes:

"Especially interesting are overseas notes from England, Australia, [etc.]"

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[US]

1955 May Im 120-1 Mention: Review of Fantasy-Times notes: "keep up to date on the American science fiction field here -- and on the British, Australian and non-English speaking stf fields as well."

[US]

125-6 Loc: Jefferson, Peter. Compliments various aspects of Madge. "To sum

up, Imagination strikes me as a vigorous, well-proportioned, well-produced and friendly magazine." Asks for correspondents or swaps.

[NSW]

1956 Apr OW 51 Ad: Itzstein, Barry. Offers to exchange British magazines for US

paperbacks or magazines. [WA]

(Surname appears as Itytein. Follows a letter from Roger Zelazny.)

Aug Im 99-100 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier) gives "a surprising indication of how U.S. sf has infiltrated everywhere" by including a bibliography of Simak's work, reviews of prozines and "the inevitable article on films by Forrest J. Ackerman... If there's one thing wrong with Etherline it is the dearth of actual Australian news".

[Vic]

Sep ImT 129 Loc: Dard, Roger. Compliments the magazine's "action-adventure

policy" as sf "badly needed [a] shot in the arm". Notes he often meets with Bert Chandler when the latter travels via Western Australia.

[WA]

OW 15 Ad: Sebel, Roger. "Get mc2, Australia's newest fanmag, 20c (40 pages

and photo cover) from..." [NSW]

Nov OW 92 Ad: Dard, Roger. "Australian collector wishes to trade for the following.

Authentic Life of Wild Bill Hickok (Atomic Books), Cheesecake and American Phenomenon (Hillman Periodicals)..." [etc.]

[WA]

92 Ad: Jefferson, Pete. "...has a great many brand new novels...to trade..." [NSW]

1957 Jan OW 94 Ad: O'Donoghue, B. "...would like to correspond with any SF or fantasy readers, especially collectors. Exchange Australian for American and Canadian fanmags"

[Qld]

Feb Im 98 Fanzine review: Fanzine Time (ed. Mike Hinge) "features colored illos

on glossy stock and much speculative material on UFO" and seeks material and comments.

[NZ]

Apr Im 95 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier) notes Author Story Listing,

global sf news and reviews. [Vic]

Jun Im 99 Loc: Dard, Roger. A "Cosmic Pen Club" entry. Roger writes he would

like to swap for comic sections of US Sunday newspapers as he keeps "bound files in my collection".

[WA]

(Repeated in the July Imaginative Tales.)

Jul ImT 121 Loc: Dard, Roger. [WA] (Same as previous entry.)

Oct Im 121-2 Fanzine review: Focus (ed. Mervyn Barrett) "an Anzac magazine [with] material by such prominent New Zealanders as Don Ford and William Rotsler, plus letters from colonial types like Redd Boggs, Ron Ellik, Greg Benford, etc...after reading this magazine, you put it down and suddenly realize that your eyes are out of Focus."

[NZ]

122 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier) "featuring such Aussie types

as Forrest J. Ackerman, Arthur C. Clarke, and somebody named Bloch..."

[Vic]

Dec Im 122-3 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier). Again notes Ackerman's

film column and author story listings. [Vic]

1958 Jun Im 120-1 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier) "a fanzine written in

Australian, with a somewhat 'international' flavor... At present, only Etherline seems to be a permanent up-and-comer from down under".

[Vic]

Oct Im 127 Fanzine review: Etherline (ed. Ian Crozier) "this longtime journal of

Australian science fiction fandom...is firmly established... Right now there's quite a bit of preoccupation with the Sixth Annual Australian SF Convention, scheduled for Melbourne".

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[Vic]

COLLECTING FIRE OF THE DESERT

Geoscience Australia has a geological time walk outside the main building. You’re probably familiar with the concept -- a one kilometre course, each step of which represents millions of years of Earth’s history. All of human history is condensed into the last few centimetres, of course, so to make sense of the rest of the walk, plaques describe major geological events and rock and fossil specimens illustrate what formed or evolved when. Acquiring the specimens can involve a lot of travelling to quite remote parts of the country, so the collecting geologist has to be accompanied for safety reasons. The most avid collector is a large, gregarious fellow who has a passion for rocks and minerals, Peter Butler. He’s an enthusiastic library user, too, so I mentioned to him that I had experience in the field and he took the hint. Last year we set out to find a suitable sample of boulder opal. Opal is found in a variety of forms around the country, mainly in New South Wales, Queensland and South Australia. The story goes that some aborigines called it “fire of the desert” because of the bright, multi-coloured flashes of light it produces in rather dull source rock. While most people will think of stones set in jewellery, what we needed to find was a sizeable boulder consisting more of the parent rock in which the opal formed than the opal itself. Too light a boulder or one with too much opal simply would not last long outside our building. Peter had been contacting opal miners and dealers for a while and had identified several with promising boulders in southern Queensland, so we were headed north.

After a delay of a week due to reports of floodwaters closing two river crossings on our route, we finally started out on a foggy Canberra morning in April. Our target: Eulo, 60 km west of Cunnamulla, around 1000 km nor’-north-west of Canberra and literally “back of Bourke”. It’s a long, full day of driving up through Cowra, Forbes, Parkes and Nyngan, with the stretch between Nyngan and Bourke the dullest as it is almost as straight as it looks on the map. The day was enlivened, however, by Peter’s stories of his earlier trips, on both land and sea. Under a former name, Geoscience Australia had its own research vessel, the RV Rig Seismic, and Peter was aboard for a number of marine surveys. He’s travelled widely ashore, too, and was able to point out quite a number of rock and fossil sites along the way, many of which are on private property and thus not well known to casual fossikers. His most memorable tale, however, was about his encounter with an emu whilst speeding along a country road on his motor-cycle as a youth. The impact was fatal for the bird and highly embarrassing for Peter until he had a chance to hose himself down.

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We arrived in Cunnamulla well after sunset, found our hotel, had a feed and then had a very sound sleep. Out and about the next morning I wandered over to the train station opposite for a look. It’s one of only three in the state still with a covered platform, but has seen better days. Cunnamulla is a railhead and Queensland Rail still runs passenger services to it twice a week, but not by train--it’s now a bus service. Most freight is delivered by road, too. After breakfast we drove out past the Cunnamulla Fella (bronze sculpture of the swagman sung about by Slim Dusty) and Christmas banners (!) to complete the last leg to Eulo. There’s not a lot to Eulo: pub, police station, town hall, a handful of houses and the general store. The latter burnt down a few months after our visit--quite a blow to the small community--but was intact when we visited, thankfully, for one of the opal dealers we went

to see was set up out the back. Peter took a look around and sighed. There were bucket loads and piles of opal of various grades all over the yard. While he happily inspected probably every single piece (twice), I had a look at another feature of the yard, the Eulo Air Raid Shelter. Constructed of curved corrugated iron sheets--like the Anderson shelters in England during the war, but long enough for 50 people--this was still in pretty good shape. I suspect it never had to withstand an explosion until the gas cylinders in the general store adjacent blew up, but it was a nice short diversion for me. Peter, meanwhile, had found the boulder opal we had come to see and was weighing them by eye and considering the ‘show’ of opal in each. He identified several suitable boulders and sounded the dealer out

about a price range before we headed on further to see a few other dealers on the Yowah Opal Field. We also managed to have a quick look at a date palm plantation and mud mounds just outside of Eulo. The latter were formed by hot mud being forced up through ground fissures by the pressure of the Great Artesian Basin, the largest body of ‘fossil’ water in the world. The extraction of water via agricultural bores has since reduced the pressure to such an extent, however, that the mounds are no longer active. [Continued on p.15]

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THE READER SQUEAKS Bert Castellari, Curtin, ACT 21 June 2011 Re: Garry Dalrymple's interest in Futurian links with the BAA in 1940. Apart from that meeting I didn't have any other contact with BAA people myself. From memory, the lectures we attended were difficult to follow and we did not attend again. The astronomers were mostly middle-aged and older and were quite welcoming. They seemed to like having a few young people there. One day in the mid-sixties when I was working for The Sydney Morning Herald I was assigned to go up to the Blue Mountains (forgotten exactly where) to interview an engineer who was also an astronomer. Nobody could tell me just what the interest was (which sometimes happens in newspapers--news editors or COSs think there might be a story). This bloke just wanted to see us. Anyway, when we got there we found he had a quite substantial observatory he had built himself. Why did he want to see us? All he wanted to talk about was his niece who had been living with him. She had left and gone off with her boy friend. He was very concerned about this but the concern seemed to be about his and her relationship--something dysfunctional which he never made clear. He may have been infatuated with her but it was difficult to discern. There was no story and the SMH certainly wouldn't want to be involved. I managed a tactful withdrawal. I rarely thought about it again until I was reading the copies of Futurian Observer Graham had sent me. One of the names in the report on that BAA meeting gave me a memory jolt. He was the man in the mountains! How can I be sure? Because I know how my brain works, particularly with names. [Hmmm…astronomers, heavenly bodies…no, let’s not go there.]

======================================================================== Leigh Edmonds, Ballarat East, Vic. 5 July 2011 The plans I had to think about a fan history sort of evaporated when we got back from Aussiecon 4 to find panic messages from the ATO because the Commissioner wanted to talk to me about the history I'd written for them. I hadn't told them that we would be away for a few days and since there were floods in the region at the same time they thought that perhaps we had disappeared in the water. Several quick trips and some rewriting later and the book was finally published. Since then I've been catching my breath and then getting on with the next commission. So much for excuses. I'm so much out of touch that this was the first I'd heard about Don Tuck's death. I never met him but, like many fans from earlier decades, he had quite an effect on what I did and how I did it. In many ways the fanac of Don, Graham Stone and others of that generation seemed rather antiquated in comparison to what we were doing and thinking in the 1960s and 1970s. This may have been as a result of the changing status of sf in the wider community so that I did not feel particularly out of step with the wider world. The social and cultural changes of the 1960s that I and others of my generation were part of probably also had something to do with this kind of attitude. The summary from promag letter columns is fascinating, little snippets from the past about things long past. Also lovely to read the letter column and to see people like Grant Stone, Race Matthews, Eric Lindsay, et al. I don't think I could agree with Mark Plummer that uncertainty about the time when the MSFC arrived at Somerset Place is anything particularly Australian. As part of my education as a historian I spent a semester in a course on the English Civil War in which we had to do no more than decide on Cromwell's intentions at the time of the dismissal of the Rump Parliament, using the few remaining snippets of information from that time. At the time everyone knew what was happening so nobody wrote it down in enough detail for it to mean something to us, and so it is with the move to Somerset Place. That's what makes the study and art of history so interesting.

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[continued from p.13]

After a few days of this, we wound up back at the Eulo General Store with Pete negotiating a deal for the boulder opal we had already seen. This went very well. Shortly afterwards the dealer was at the wheel of his forklift, loading up our ute with not one but several boulders, not to mention a crate of smaller samples to be sold from the shop at work. The following morning we set off on the long haul back to Canberra, but somehow the extra weight of the rock on the vehicle’s tray slowed us down. Towards dusk we decided to break the trip and at the next town we came to, we found rooms in an old-style country pub. Had we realized it was payday for many of the roustabouts in the area we might have had second thoughts, for they partied on into the wee small hours. Half-woken by their hearty farewells I thought I heard someone calling out for everyone to grab some opal off the back of a truck in the parking lot, but perhaps it was a bad dream. In the morning our cargo was still secure. The remainder of our return trip took us half of the next day. The largest boulder was soon deposited at its appropriate spot on the walk (in the Cretaceous, in case you were wondering). Several of the smaller boulders were placed in the Library, since it features an atrium with an “arid zone” rock garden in the middle. It’s a wonderful memento of the trip and fun to see the expressions on visitors’ faces when they spot our very own fire of the desert. ================================================================== Thanks and acknowledgements this time go first and foremost to Jeanette Haddon for all of the photos and information about Arthur she provided. I also drew upon the correspondence he and I had for over 15 years and other sources. Doug Nicholson and Graham Stone commented on an early draft of the article herein, which was appreciated. Graham also sent a copy of the Science & Fantasy Fan Reporter issue which introduced Arthur to the wild world of fandom back in 1941. There are no photos of Arthur in The Green Man of Graypec outfit he wore at the 1955 convention, as far as I know. The best I can do is give you two interpretations of characters from Pragnell’s work, by Paul (at right) from the original serialization in Wonder Stories in 1935 and, on the back cover, by Bok, from the 1950 Greenberg edition of the book. The HMAS Warramunga steams in from the Royal Australian Navy’s website and the Lincoln Lounge was found among the State Library of New South Wales’ flickr contributions. Thanks also go to everyone who locced the last issue. Apologies to those who have become WAHFs: Lloyd Penney, Robert Lichtman and Eric Lindsay. Comments on this or any of the previous issues of Mumblings (hosted online at www.efanzines.com thanks to Bill Burns’ continuing support) are always welcome and can be directed to:

Chris Nelson,

25 Fuhrman St., Evatt, ACT 2617 Australia

or

nelsonleeoz@hotmail.com

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