UMA Bulletin - Digitised Collections

UMABulletin

UMA Bulletin, No. 24, December 2008 1

UMABulletin

No. 24, December 2008

NEWS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE ARCHIVES

www. lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives

Searching for a Forgotten LifeW.L. Baillieu in the Archives

Popular perception is a strange andfickle thing. I recently wrote ahistory of Australia’s Collins Class

submarines. I began that project sharingthe almost universal belief that thesesubmarines are ‘noisy as a rock concert’— I was rather surprised to find out thatthey are, in fact, the second quietestsubmarines in the world.

Since I have begun working on abiography of W.L. Baillieu I have discov-ered that, while the Baillieu family is wellknown, for most people WL (as he wasuniversally known) is remembered solelyas a landboomer who paid sixpence in thepound on his debts when the land boomcollapsed in the early 1890s. I suggest thisis like remembering Don Bradman for hisbowling or Robert Menzies for his contri-butions to the Wesley College magazine.

It is true that Baillieu was a leadingfigure in the Melbourne land boom of1885–1889, the wildest and most extra-ordinary boom in Australian history, andone of the notorious group who madesecret compositions with their creditorsin 1892. But it is easy to forget that hewas only 33 when this happened — andwhat is truly remarkable is the way herecovered from the collapse of his firstcareer and built a career in businesswithout parallel in Australia.

In September 1892 the real estate firmof Munro & Baillieu was dissolved andWL began his own business under thename W.L. Baillieu & Co. In spite of thedisastrous state of the economy, he madea success of this business, taking in hisbrother Arthur as a partner and devel-oping it into one of the largest real estateagencies in Melbourne under the nameBaillieu Allard. To the end of his life hedescribed himself as an ‘auctioneer’.

At the same time he took over thestricken stockbroking firm of W.J. Malpas& Co. and built up a stockbroking busi-ness with his brothers Edward (Prince),Clive (Joe), Norman and Maurice (Jac),which as E.L. & C. Baillieu has been oneof the leading stockbrokers in Melbournefor over 100 years. Throughout his busi-ness life WL worked closely with five ofhis brothers and, while he was alwaysacknowledged as the leader, their businesssuccess was very much a joint effort.

W.L. Baillieu played a large part in adramatic resurgence of Victorian gold-mining in the 1890s, promoting, man-aging and raising capital for several of themost productive mines, notably the Dukemines at Maryborough and the Jubileemines at Scarsdale. In the same decade healso worked closely with Theodore Finkto put together the Herald and WeeklyTimes group. He was a director of theHerald for about 40 years and was respon-sible for Keith Murdoch rather thanThorold Fink taking charge of the com-pany after World War I.

In 1905 WL joined with HerbertHoover, W.S. Robinson and FrancisGovett to establish the Zinc Corporation,and with Montague Cohen to establishAmalgamated Zinc. These two companiesdeveloped the minerals flotationprocesses which solved the problem ofseparating zinc from the complex BrokenHill ores and made the Broken Hill mineshighly profitable for another 70 years.At the same time he became the domi-nant figure in the North Broken Hill andBroken Hill South mining companies.It was the wealth from these mines whichfinanced most of his later activities andthey formed the core of the CollinsHouse group, an informal but close

alliance of companies, of which WL wasthe unofficial but unquestioned leader.The group was named for Collins Houseat 360 Collins Street, an office buildingbuilt and owned by the Baillieus in whichmost of the companies, as well as associ-ated professional partnerships such aslawyers Arthur Robinson & Co. andmining agents Bewick Moreing had theiroffices.

Closely associated companiesincluded Carlton & United Breweries —put together by W.L. Baillieu and MontyCohen in 1907, the Herald & WeeklyTimes, Dunlop, Yarra Falls textiles,Melbourne City Electric Company, andnumerous other mining, refining andsmelting companies.

At the outbreak of World War I overhalf the lead and almost all the zinc fromBroken Hill was sent to Germany orBelgium for smelting and refining. In1915 W.L. Baillieu negotiated thetakeover by the Collins House group ofBHP’s run-down lead smelter at Port Pirie,which was modernised and became thelargest lead smelter in the world. Thenew company Broken Hill AssociatedSmelters was jointly owned by theCollins House mining companies.

W.L. Baillieu, 1911.

UMA Bulletin, No. 24, December 20082

WL was also the driving force behind theformation of Electrolytic Zinc which builtthe zinc refinery at Risdon near Hobart,one of the world’s first refineries to useelectrolysis rather than distillation. It isoften forgotten that the Electrolytic Zincrefinery was on the same scale as BHP’ssteel works at Newcastle — with thecapital raising by E.L. & C. Baillieu thelargest in Australia to that date.

During World War I the CollinsHouse group also took over the copper-refining works of Electrolytic Refining &Smelting at Port Kembla — previouslyone-third German owned — and set upMetal Manufactures Ltd, one of Australia’slargest manufacturers. By the end of theWar the Collins House Group controlledthree of the four enterprises at the heartof Australia’s heavy industry — Port Pirie,Risdon and Port Kembla, as well as thelargest and most profitable mines inAustralia at Broken Hill.

In the 1920s the Collins House Groupled Australia’s industrial expansion withnew ventures in paper manufacture,textiles, cotton growing and many otherareas. New companies formed by orclosely associated with the Collins Housegroup included Associated Pulp & PaperManufacturers, Western Mining, GoldMines of Australia, British AustralianLead Manufacturers, ICIANZ and theCommonwealth Aircraft Corporation.The group also financed numerousattempts to find payable oil fields inAustralia and New Zealand, developedcopper mines in New Guinea — whichfailed because the only skilled workerswho would go there were fleeing fromeither justice or their wives — and turneddown the chance to develop Mt Isa onthe grounds that the transport costswould be too high.

Even while building up the biggestmining and industrial conglomerate inAustralia, WL was also an active politi-cian, being a member of the VictorianLegislative Council from 1901 until 1922and a minister from 1909 to 1917. Duringmuch of this period he was regarded asthe power behind the throne in both stateand federal politics, having particularlyclose relations with Alfred Deakin,Stanley Bruce, W.A. Watt and WalterMassey Greene, the latter two bothworking for Collins House after leavingpolitics.

When one thinks of the politicalhacks, plastic ‘celebrities’, third-ratesportsmen and petty criminals who havebeen the subjects of recent biographies, itis hard to disagree with the propositionthat W.L. Baillieu is the great unwritten

biography in Australian history. Why hasthere been no published biography?There have been several attempts to pro-duce one. Several hagiographies werewritten in the late 1950s and early 1960s,but fortunately they were never pub-lished. They were totally unbalanced andriddled with errors of fact, having beenbased solely on the recollections of a fewindividuals.

The next obstacle to a biography ofWL was the ‘landboomer effect’. In1966 Michael Cannon published TheLandboomers, a brilliant, if flawed, accountof the land boom and bust. This book hasbeen continually in print ever since, pop-ularising the view of the land boom as aconspiracy to defraud the public and thelandboomers as a criminal gang whoshould all have been jailed. It is not sur-prising that the reaction of many Baillieufamily members was to shy away frompublicity and public scrutiny. Collectionsof letters disappeared from sight andenquiries from historians were met withresponses ranging from polite evasion toblank refusals to cooperate.

A further obstacle was that the beliefdeveloped that WL was barely literateand consequently there could not pos-sibly be many letters. Michael Cannonwrote of WL that ‘handicapped by hiscomparatively low standard of education,he found it difficult to express himself onpaper’. Consequently the conclusion wasdrawn that there was not enough materialto write a full biography.

So when I was asked to investigate thepossibility of writing a biography of W.L.

Baillieu I was worried that it might end upbeing a very shallow study. I had just fin-ished a biography of Sir Ian Potter whichwas somewhat handicapped because therewere not more than four accuratelyrecorded facts about him before the ageof 33 and no more than half a dozen sur-viving letters written in the first half ofhis life — and he lived for 92 years.

However, there turned out to be nosuch problem with W.L. Baillieu. Afterabout a year of research the over-whelming problem has become the sheervolume of material by and about WL. Ithas got to the stage where I am almostscared to explore new avenues in casethey open up another cornucopia of WL’scorrespondence. Far from being a poorcorrespondent, WL was a prolific andarticulate letter-writer and literally thou-sands of his letters have survived. In addi-tion there are a smaller number of letterswritten by his brothers, numerous com-pany records, share registers, accountbooks and other documents — in factenough material to write several books.

My search for W.L. Baillieu began —as all such searches should do — in theUniversity of Melbourne Archives. I knewthat the collections held by the Archiveswould be the most likely place to findmaterial on WL, but I did not expect tofind the goldmine I did.

The papers of Clive Baillieu, WL’seldest son and the first Lord Baillieu, werethe obvious starting point. This collectionis everything a historian could ask for —comprehensive, well-sorted and listed,with a wealth of material about Clive and

Broken Hill Associated Smelters plant at Port Pirie, c.1915.


his career, and much about other familymembers. Clive Baillieu’s papers werereviewed by the legendary University ofMelbourne Archivist, Frank Strahan in1967. He wrote: ‘There is a wealth ofexcellent material. Certainly this is one ofthe greatest collections which could comefrom an Australian, and its significance issuch that it must rank as an outstandingcollection in a world context.’

WL and his eldest son were particu-larly close and there are numerous lettersbetween them. One that has particularinterest in the light of recent events is aletter written by WL from New York on29 October 1929, just after the stockmarket crash:

N.Y. gets on my nerves wonderful and all asit is, and the market collapse does notimprove matters. I had no idea until themarket commenced to crumble the unrealbasis upon which it was all built up. I fancyif I had appreciated it I would have beenready to take a risk on the Bear side.The Bull market has been an expression ofthe American’s mind that there is no end totheir greatness. When we arrived here, onall sides you heard of the unlimited value inthe equities of America’s Industry; in thisbelief they sat down contentedly on a stockyielding 2% or even 11/2% and kiddedthemselves the increment would offset it,and now that the market mania has ceasedand they have wakened up, the very samepeople are afraid to buy shares that show adividend position of from 5 to 8% and anearning position of 10 to 15%. The plug isout and no one can forecast what willhappen but I fancy for sound stocks thebottom is about to be reached and if I hadany of you here I should want to get intoselected stocks. Motor stocks would notattract me as they will be the worst hit bythe crisis. If they don’t peg the market atabout the present position then there mayeasily follow a financial crisis. I can onlysay it in a whisper but there is a lot of

satisfaction in it for me. I am wondering ifthey are going to be choked with their owngold. Today a lunch was arranged by ourfriends here to meet Keith Murdoch andme, but … only a few could turn up andlittle wonder — what do they want to hearabout Australia when their own house isburning down.

UMA also holds the records of all themajor Collins House companies: NorthBroken Hill, Broken Hill South, the ZincCorporation and Broken Hill AssociatedSmelters. These all have hundreds (itseems like thousands) of archive boxesfull of letter books, correspondence files,accounts, contracts, minute books,production reports, share records, detailsof investments, prospectuses, newspapercuttings ad infinitum. There are hundreds,probably thousands, of letters to and fromW.L. Baillieu. Most of these are businesscorrespondence but given that buildingup the Collins House group and its manybusinesses was the central work of WL’slife, and these letters show how this wasdone, they are absolutely critical forunderstanding his life.

The UMA also has several other col-lections of great interest for the biogra-pher of WL. Sir Hugh Brain worked withWL’s brother-in-law, Edward Shackell, atCollins House in a business which pro-vided company secretarial services to allthe Collins House companies, giving himgood insights into how all the businessesworked. While the collection is small, histyped reminiscences include manyrevealing stories about those who workedin Collins House. For example, Brainwrote:

The first company meeting I attended was aboard meeting of Electrolytic Zinc, chairedby W.L.B. Its General Manager, HerbertGepp had just returned from a trip toAmerica. In those days the GeneralManager’s expense account for his trip wasboard business and Gepp’s substantialclaims were being gone through. Abouthalf way through WL said ‘What are allthese medical costs, clinics and so on, youweren’t sick in America were you Gepp?’Gepp looking a bit shamefaced said, ‘No,Mr Baillieu but as a matter of fact MrsGepp had a child while I was there.’ TheChairman said, ‘God bless my soul, and youexpect us to pay for it?’ Gepp retired intoan embarrassed silence, broken by theChairman saying, ‘Oh well, I suppose we’vegot to meet it, but understand Gepp, infuture if I’m in for any transaction I’ve gotto be in from the start.’

Of greater importance, if lessentertaining, are the papers of W.S.Robinson. Robinson was W.L. Baillieu’schief lieutenant in the Collins Housegroup and there are many fascinatingletters between the two of them on themajor policy decisions of the Collins

House group, as well as more lightheartedletters on family matters, as the businessties between them were cemented whenWL’s son Harry married WS’s daughterMargaret.

And then I came to the Baillieu Allardpapers. I had been led to believe that thiswas a ‘dry as dust’ collection of the dailyaccounts of a real estate firm, and in myinitial plan I allowed about three days tolook at it. In the end it took over threemonths. It is an extraordinary collectionprimarily showing how WL and hisbrother Arthur built the real estate busi-ness up from the depths of the depressionin the 1890s to great success in the early1900s. But in addition it has many generalbusiness files showing how WL diversi-fied from real estate into gold andcoalmining and then into the Broken Hillmines. While there are not many lettersby WL, there are hundreds of letterswritten to him by Joseph Cram, who washis agent in London in the mid-1890s,and by his relatives when WL made hisfirst trip to London in 1897. One writtenby Edward Shackell expresses sentimentswhich I trust will still resonate withreaders of this journal:

Your note to hand and pleased I am to hearthat you are enjoying the trip and that bothMrs Baillieu and you are benefited by thechange. You speak of London as a greatcity. It must be and I look forward to thetime when I shall see it myself and compareit with the idea I have formed of it fromdescriptions read me. You are speciallyfavoured in seeing the great city during theJubilee celebrations. I feel quite envious.The occasion is I suppose without parallelin the history of the world and the odds area million pounds to a brick that the presentgeneration will never see such another.

One perplexing aspect of the BaillieuAllard collection was a series of largeleather-bound letter books which beganat number 60 in the early 1900s andcontinued into the 1920s — these mainlycontained trivia about rents, propertiesfor sale, insurance and so on, but Iwondered where the earlier ones were.It was only in March this year that Ifound out that numbers 36 to 60 weresafely in the care of a family member,together with many other account booksof various sorts from the 1890s and early1900s.

Book no. 36 begins in October 1892,immediately after WL’s partnership withDonald Munro was dissolved and WLhad just set up on his own. The new firmkept the same run of letter books going(if anyone knows the whereabouts of 1 to36 please let me know!). Many of theseletters were written by WL himself and

caption

W.L. Baillieu with his wife Bertha and daughter Vere.


Researchingthe MelbourneUniversity BoatClub – Australia’sOldest Boat Club

At the end of 2006 I applied for andattained the commission toresearch and write the history of

the Melbourne University Boat Club –my tenth such project. I knew nothingabout rowing or sport at the Universitybut quite a lot about the Yarra River andthe social history of Melbourne, havingwritten several books on related subjects.

I began with two searches for materialthat would form the basis of the work,the first was at the State Library ofVictoria (SLV) website for images of theYarra and rowing, the other a search ofUMA’s online catalogue for all materialrelating to the club at the University ofMelbourne. The latter produced lists ofminute books, correspondence and someboxes of personal papers.

There is no way to describe theexcitement that the first look at what aresearcher/author hopes will be the basisof a new work produces. Nor will anyonewho is not a researcher understand thetrepidation over what is clearly ‘missing’at this first glance. The images at the SLVceased around 1900, when newspapersstopped publishing the results of boatraces in their main pages and delegatedthem to the sports section. Many sucharticles had been accompanied by litho-graphs and photographs of such races.

The MUBC collection at UMA con-tained many minute books, plenty of cor-respondence and some photographs andcuttings from newspapers. The annualreports were pasted into the later minutebooks which had typed pages pasted in. It

they give an extraordinary picture of thedesperation and despair of the dark daysof the 1890s depression. Strictly speakingthese are business letters, but I don’t thinkit is being too much of the amateur psy-chologist to think that something can bemade from them. He wrote on 21October 1892:

My position I regret to say does not getstronger financially. Each day somethingdrops away that one regards as an asset.

Another letter says simply:

If you can forward cheque for anything ona/c it will be thankfully received.

He wrote to George Partridge ofChancery Lane:

I regret I have not heard from you in replyto my previous letters re your past due Bill.I regret still more that I am badly in wantof payment. If you are unable to let mehave cheque I must ask you to give me anew Bill that I might discount.

And to a tenant in one of his Malvernhouses:

Referring to your memo of yesterday’s date,I hope you will carry out your promise andget the rent settled up next week otherwiseI shall be compelled to adopt measures Imuch prefer avoiding.

As WL was 6 foot and 2 inches tall and aboxing champion in his youth, the hint ofa threat in the letter had some substance.

We sometimes forget that inMelbourne the depression of the 1890swas considerably worse than the depres-sion of the 1930s — unemployment washigher, asset values fell far more and ahigher proportion of businesses collapsed.The fact that the population of

Melbourne fell by about ten per centbetween 1890 and 1900 is a clear indica-tion how tough things were. WL’s lettersgive some idea of the desperate struggleneeded to survive in business.

I am grateful that I have been givenaccess to other collections held by thefamily, notably the letters written by WLto his sons on the land — Tom at Tongy(inland from Newcastle in New SouthWales) and Harry at Torrumbarry nearEchuca. These letters show a greatinterest in all things agricultural and pas-toral and suggest that WL’s dream wouldhave been to be the squire of a largecountry estate. Then there have been let-ters that have come from the Englishbranch of the family, the descendants ofClive, who in 1922 decided to live inEngland. Among these are the letters WLwrote to Clive expressing deep distress atClive’s decision and also letters WL wroteto friends and family in January 1931when he had a nervous breakdown. Theselast letters were never sent, but give anextraordinarily sad picture of a great manin a state of mental collapse.

The conclusion from my year in thearchives is that the real challenge inwriting a biography of W.L. Baillieu isnot, as was widely believed in the 1960sand 1970s, a lack of sources, but ratherthe vastness of the sources and theamount of work required to do justice tothe scale and richness of the materialavailable.

Peter Yule

Dr Peter Yule is a Research Fellow in the Departmentof History. His publications include histories of theCollins Class submarines and the Victorian Auditor-General’s Office and a biography of Sir Ian Potter.

W.L. Baillieu with his son Clive and grandsons.


was immediately evident however thatmany minute books were not there. As itturned out, a member of the club whohad intended to write its history had themissing minute books.

Notes on the club’s first president,Martin Howy Irving (the University’ssecond classics professor, taking the postin 1856), revealed much about the estab-lishment of the boat club and the kind ofplace the University aspired to become.Irving had won a Balliol College (Oxford)scholarship in 1848. An outstanding stu-dent, he was Oxford’s junior mathematicsscholar for 1850 and obtained first-classhonours in classics and second-class inmathematics (BA, 1853; MA, 1856). Anadventurous spirit brought him to thecolonies and to the fledgling Universityof Melbourne which had been establishedjust three years before.

There could hardly have been a finerexample of a mid-19th century gentlemanthan Irving. Over six feet tall, wiry andhandsome, he had been one of theleading oarsmen of Balliol College. Hebelieved that playing sport was as impor-tant to educating young men as academictraining. Four months after arriving inMelbourne, in July 1856, he helpedorganise the first recorded cricket matchfor a university team — with EmeraldHill.

The early years of the boat clubreflected the social strata to which univer-sity students and oarsmen belonged. Thenames of the club’s presidents, committeemembers and rowers read like a who’swho of 19th century Melbourne: Sir JohnMadden, Sir John Grice, Wolfe Fink, SirHenry Wrixon, Sir William Kernot andSir Thomas a’Beckett are just a few of thenames listed in the minute books. Otherrevelations included the importance ofthe first residential colleges, Trinity,Ormond, Queens and Newman, to theUniversity. During the first 50 years,more students lived on campus than offand university life was, therefore, a totalexperience, with many students residingfor three or four years and participatingin sports, plays, debates and enjoying thepleasures of an encompassing culture.

One collection key to the boat club isthe Clive Disher collection. Disher grewup on his father’s estate, ‘Strathfieldsaye’,in Victoria. After attending GippslandCollege at Sale, he finished his secondaryeducation at Scotch College and enteredMelbourne University to study medicine.His photographs of crews and dinnersand his study in Ormond College are amarked contrast to that of the AIF crewhe stroked at the 1919 Peace Regatta at

Henley-on-Thames after World War Iduring which he had served as a doctor.Faces of the young university men inhis pre-war photos shine like cherubsrevealing self-assuredness and calm, whilethat of the AIF crew, taken just five yearslater, reveals men who seem middle-aged,their bodies and faces worn by theirexperience.

The Peace Regatta, a race betweencrews from the allied forces andCambridge and Oxford University crewswas won by the AIF crew. His letters tothe boat club in Melbourne, begun whenhe was appointed to train the crew in thewinter of 1918–1919, to the time of therace in June 1919, reveal the spiritualjourney and healing provided by thereturn to life’s pleasures and the cama-raderie of pre-war life. It also marks anearly entry to international sport, just asWorld War I provided Australia’s entryto the world stage. Like many othermembers of the club, Disher remaineddedicated to it until the end of his lifein 1976.

Records also revealed that the firstMUBC men to participate in an Olympicregatta were Harry Ross-Soden andSimon Fraser who travelled to Stockholmin 1912 with a crew that was otherwisemade up of New South Welshmen.Although this crew was eliminated in thesemi-finals, they had proved their worthby winning the Grand Challenge Cupat Henley Royal Regatta as SydneyRowing Club.

The 20th century brought about adecrease in numbers of rowers resident ata college and coaches more determinedto make rowing available to any student

at the University who wanted to take upthe sport. Although it was easy to seehow changes at the club continued toreflect changes to life in Melbourne andat the University, it was surprising to findthat the actions of key MUBC individualshad caused changes to the entireUniversity.

The most important such individual(to me as a researcher of the club) wasthe dedicated record keeper John Langwho not only acted as secretary and treas-urer but wrote up the club’s missingrecords and kept up the club’s minutesand reports from the 1890s until hisdeparture for England in 1921. Theseyears of recording provided not only factsand figures but accurate accounts ofmeetings and races, descriptions of clubpersonalities, dinners and other socialevents. He kept up a correspondencewith many key figures. He was alsoinstrumental in setting up the MelbourneUniversity Sports Union. His records andminutes are written like a time capsule,with a clear eye to the future and theknowledge that someone would one daywrite the story of the club.

In more recent years the club hasbecome a major centre for elite sport,with members represented at many WorldChampionships, Commonwealth andOlympic Games.

As with the records of so many organ-isations the club’s activities have not beenso well recorded in the 1990s, when com-puters began to be used to send minutesof meetings and the old and excellenthabit of pasting these into a hardbackbook became obsolete.

Each such history of the University’s

Henley on the Yarra, 1914. Opposite: Melbourne University Boat Club.

Because archives arise fromadministrative activities,we are professionally

predisposed to find bureaucracystrangely interesting. This isespecially so for many govern-ment archivists and really, anyof us whose collections mostlycomprise the records of largeorganisations.

In my case, it began as anundergraduate studying MaxWeber’s theories of bureaucracyand developed while a public servant in Canberra where beyondthe officially designated close-of-business (4.51pm), ourfavourite TV comedies were Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister.Eventually I found a copy of Jonathan Lynn and Antony Hay’sscripts published by the BBC (The Complete Yes Minister; The Diariesof a Cabinet Minister by the Right Hon. James Hacker MP), but they willalways be a pale substitute for the wonderful performances ofthe perfectly cast Paul Eddington playing Minister James Hackerand Nigel Hawthorne as Sir Humphrey Appleby.

The series titles became so synonymous with political andbureaucratic stratagems that in the UK they spawned another(and serious) text by Antony Jay entitled How to Beat SirHumphrey: every citizen’s guide to fighting officialdom (Long Barn Books,1997). Appropriately, the cover has a Gerald Scarfe cartoon ofSir Humphrey wrapped in red tape.

Not surprisingly then, as retirement approached, mythoughts turned to one of the classic statements of bureaucraticperfection. It was written by the great English archival theoristHilary Jenkinson in 1922 in A Manual of Archive Administration.Because records were ‘a convenient form of artificial memory’,any administrator returning from an absence or replacingsomeone should be able to ‘find a summary of all that has been


Red Tape – Some Retiring Thoughts

activities adds to the fabric of knowledgeabout the University, but there is muchmore of interest here; the story of thecity, its river, its society and its place inthe world can all be traced through thematerial that has taken me two years totrawl through, from which I have createda story that I hope will be interesting toall readers, not just those interested in thebeautiful sport of rowing.

Dr Judith Buckrich

The history of the Melbourne University Boat Club willbe published in 2009.

In addition to her many publications historianDr Judith Buckrich is an Honorary Research Fellowof the University of Melbourne’s Cultural HeritageUnit and a Consulting Fellow of the World InnovationFoundation. She is also Chair of the International PENWomen Writers’ Committee and Vice-President of theMelbourne Centre of PEN.

done in the past [on a particular matter] … in his files’. ThusJenkinson coined ‘the golden rule of archive making’, somethingakin to the religious injunction to try always to be ready to meetone’s maker. One ‘must have [one’s files] … always in such astate of completeness and order that, supposing himself and hisstaff to be by some accident obliterated, a successor totallyignorant of the work of the office would be able to take it upand carry it on with the least possible inconvenience and delaysimply on the strength of a study of the Office Files’.

Jenkinson’s rule sounds anachronistic in these days ofrelentless email, abolished registries, succession planning andcorporate memory, but it harbours a kernel of timeless goodsense. I hope my successors don’t end up cursing me, but willleave my mobile charged up and turned on. If Jeremy Lewis iscorrect, however, it probably won’t ring, even if my file equiva-lents had been model summaries and my shredding minimal.

As I cast around for the right farewell speech quote, Lewis’sedited anthology The Vintage Book of Office Life (Vintage, 1998)saved the day. In his introduction to its final section, ‘The end ofthe road’, Lewis explained that retirement itself was beyond thescope of his book. ‘For a while,’ he wrote, ‘the names and reputa-tions of office tyrants and office characters live on in memoryand folklore; for a while they return to haunt the scenes of theirpast. But every time there are fewer left who knew them, andless and less to say; in the end the connection is broken, andnothing more remains.’ Good recordkeeping means a little mayin fact remain to inform or bemuse posterity. And while we donot seek it, the memory of archivists (whether tyrants or charac-ters) can live on in the thoughts of researchers, and more tenu-ously through the collections we built and managed.

Michael Piggott

University Archivist and Manager of Cultural Collections, Michael Piggott retires atthe end of 2008.

AIF Crew at the 1919 Peace Regatta at Henley-on-Thames.

continued from page 5

Left to right: Kathryn Wood, Project Archivist; Nilufer Aylav, ArchivesAdministrative Assistant; Denise Driver, Co-ordinator, CollectionManagement and Storage.


Caitlin Stone, Curator, Malcolm Fraser CollectionIan Samson, The Case of the Missing Books(Harper Perennial, 2006)Israel Armstrong is excited about his new job asa librarian in a small town in Northern Ireland.He arrives to discover the library has been closedand that his job will be to drive the new ‘mobileinformation centre’ (or ‘bus’). What’s more, allof the books are missing. The first in the ‘mobilelibrary’ series provides an entertaining and some-times scarily familiar read about the world ofinformation management.

Sue Fairbanks, Collection ManagerSimon Winchester, Bomb, Book and Compass:Joseph Needham and the great secrets of China(Viking, 2008)The latest in Simon Winchester’s very readablehistories interweaves the story of scientist Joseph

PrincipalArchivistReport

The second half of theyear seems to hold asurfeit of Archives and

Records-related conferences.The dilemma is which tochoose? What area of special-isation? The privilege ofworking at the UMA is in thediversity of the collections, notonly in terms of content, butalso their media; and theresultant choices for profes-sional development come inan array of fields.

In August I attended back-to-back conferences in Perth.ICHORA4, the Fourth Inter-national Conference on theHistory of Records andArchives was held from the3 to 5 August at the StateLibrary of Western Australiaand at the picturesque campusat the University of WesternAustralia. With a theme of‘Minority Reports: indigenous

and community voices inarchives’, the program wasdiverse, filled with a widerange of both Australian andinternational speakers.

The Australian Societyof Archivists (ASA) AnnualConference followed, basedat the Parmelia Hilton, also inPerth. I delivered a reporton activities of the BusinessArchives Taskforce at themeeting of the Business, Cor-porate and Labour SpecialInterest Group. Strong ses-sions on emerging digitalissues and on business archiveswere very relevant, and UMA’sMelinda Barrie, SeniorArchivist, Rio Tinto andBusiness, presented a paper oncorporate social responsibility.

In September I attendedthe Records ManagementAssociation of Australasia’sConvention. I presented apaper on the management ofphotographic collections inthe digital age which waswell received. While the gov-ernment sector is well repre-sented in terms of managingphysical collections in digitalspace, those archives andrecords bodies which fall out-side of their ambit are oftenleft to struggle ahead on theirown. As a result an onlineforum for discussion has beenformed through the RMAAwebsite.

I returned to Sydney inOctober to follow up with site

visits and explore what otheruniversities and cultural her-itage groups are doing interms of collection manage-ment and access. A part of thisvisit was to explore the meansof making some of our studentcards, dating to pre-1912,available digitally. Softwarehas been purchased and a trialproject is currently underway.

We have had a number ofstaff changes in the secondhalf of the year:

Reference ServicesCoordinator, Jason Benjaminwas recently appointed to theposition of Co-ordinator ofConservation Programs withinthe Cultural Collections (theentity within which UMA sits).

Coordinator of Repositoryand Systems, Maria Gionis hasleft us to take up a position atRMIT University.

Photographer LindsayHowe is back with us, digitisingthe Jack O’Brien photos of1950s Fitzroy, as described inour previous edition. Theimages will soon be online onour image catalogue UMAIC

and also available throughPicture Australia

Kathryn Wood is a projectarchivist who has beenengaged to work on a numberof arrangement and descrip-tion projects, including theShell Australia archive. Thisvery large collection coversthe company’s activities from1901 to 1996 and is full ofunexpected riches.

Christine Kousidis hascontinued her work on theAXA/National Mutual archive,which concludes at the end ofthe year.

The Collection Review isdrawing to a close, and we arenow in the midst of planningfor the installation of newshelving. This means that weare unable to receive any newaccessions until March 2009;however our Reading Roomopening hours will be return-ing to normal: Monday toFriday and the first Saturday ofeach month, when we reopenafter the Christmas-New Yearbreak on 5 January 2009.

Helen McLaughlin

Needham’s love affair with all things Chinese, thestory of the multi-volume CUP publishing project,Science and Civilisation in China, of which Needham’sfirst volume appeared in 1954, and the story of3,000 years of Chinese invention. I found this afascinating insight into Chinese history.Now to read Science and Civilisation in China …

Barbara Nicholls, Acting Coordinator,Reference ServicesClaire Thomas, Fugitive Blue(Allen & Unwin, 2008)This first novel tells of an art conservator whobecomes attached, obsessed even, by thepainting she is working on and its image of twoangels in a blue background of lapis lazuli. Thisstory begins and ends the book but interwoventhrough the present-day tale is the creation andhistory of the painting. As the painting is beingrestored, the central character’s relationship withher long-term boyfriend disintegrates, as a parallelmotif. The author is currently undertaking a PhDat the University of Melbourne.

Jane Ellen, Archivist, Access and OutreachBarack Obama, Dreams for my Father(Text Publishing, 2008)This nuanced and perceptive account of hismulticultural heritage and negotiation through blackAmerican adolescence and manhood would makeinteresting reading even if one had never heard ofBarack Obama. His presidential victory makes itenthralling.

Denise Driver, Repository CoordinatorRoger Deakin, Wildwood: a journey through trees(Hamish Hamilton, 2007)Deakin’s final book is a wonderful evocationof how trees are intimately enmeshed in ourpersonal and cultural fabric. The naturalist JohnMuir wrote that ‘When we try to pick out anythingby itself, we find it hitched to everything else inthe Universe’ — perhaps none more so thantrees. Deakin’s writing is a celebration of the slowaccrual of quiet observation.

Recently Read


UMA BulletinEditors: Jane Ellen andStephanie JaehrlingDesign & Layout: Jacqui Barnett

Produced by: PublicationsInformation ServicesUniversity of Melbourne

ISSN 1320 5838

The University of MelbourneArchivesUniversity of Melbourne,Victoria 3010, Australia

Opening Hours:Mon, Tue, Thu, Fri 9.30 am–5.30 pmWed 9.30 am–7.30 pmFirst Sat. of each month1.00 pm–5.00 pm

Phone: +61 (03) 8344 6848Fax: +61 (03) 9347 8627

Email:[email protected]

Website:www. lib.unimelb.edu.au/collections/archives

Collection management teams getjust as excited about shelving andthe latest in archival-quality

preservation packaging as they do aboutthe collections which they store. So theUniversity of Melbourne Archives is gladto announce that we have permission topurchase and install two new ranges ofshelving in early 2009.

In 1960 the first University Archivist,Frank Strahan, commenced eclectic andenergetic collecting of University, busi-ness and community records. With hiskeen eye for exhibition material, he alsocollected the pictures from the walls ofcompanies, office equipment such astypewriters and company seals, desk fur-niture and a huge range of memorabilia.From the University alone he collectedsporting trophies from the Sports Union,framed photographs of academic staff,

scientific equipment belonging to profes-sors, sleeping bags of Antarctic explorersand clothing such as sporting blazers andfootball jumpers. From building compa-nies and architects’ practices he collectedplans and drawings which are now a vitalsource for students and Melbourne’s con-servation architects alike.

In the 1970s the then LabourArchivist, Andrew Reeves, began to col-lect trade union memorabilia. NowTinsmith’s Union armour, eight hour dayribbons and the first deed box of theTrustees of the National Trades Hall andLiterary Institute (now the VictorianTrades Hall Council) compete for spacein the UMA repository in Brunswick.

These objects are currently occupyingshelves and plan cabinets at the northernend of the repository and need to bemoved before the new shelves areinstalled. They will eventually bereturned to the shelves, and on thisaccount the new shelving design will be adeparture from our standard configura-tion. Our new shelving ranges will incor-porate plan cabinets for posters and archi-tectural drawings into the lowest bays,thus saving space and providing a saferworkplace for staff. Aisles betweenshelving ranges will be wider to allowfacing plan cabinets to open completelyand safely into the same space, but stillmaximise the use of the space available.

There will be an area for hangingthose items of clothing which are robustenough to hang, while other clothing and

textiles will be stored in boxes on shelves.A purpose-built hanging frame for rolledbanners and similar textiles has beenincluded in the design. Objects will be re-boxed and stored on shelves. There willbe more shelves per range to avoid wastedspace and the need to stack boxes on topof one another.

Thanks to a grant from theUniversity’s Miegunyah Fund, an ObjectCurator will be appointed in 2009 tocatalogue and pack objects for reshelving.In fact development and trials of thecataloguing and packaging system havecommenced this year with the help of avolunteer, art history and curatorshipstudent Stacy Jewell. Stacy’s job has beento unpack, catalogue and rehouse smallobjects currently stored together in largerboxes. She has enthusiastically embracedthis project and her pioneering effortswill be of great use in setting up thelarger object project next year.

The downside of all of this wonderfulimprovement in housing for the Archives’collections will be that for up to eightweeks early in 2009, some collectionscurrently housed in plan cabinets maynot be available to researchers whileshelves are installed and plan cabinetsare relocated.

So, better shelving, an improvementin storage and control of objects, betterstaff working conditions — what is therenot to be excited about?

Sue Fairbanks, Senior Archivist,Collection Management

Select Documentsfrom the Archives

How to Writea Letter of Complaint

Victorian XXXXXX Co. Cheltenham[Undated but c.1960]

To Sands & McDougall Pty Ltd Melbourne

Sir,You have impertinently sent us a bill for £3.15.0 for displays in

your directory. We did have a rogue call on us claiming that you werecollecting information for the pink pages of the telephone directory.We had no use for the villain. He was shown the door for we do notrequire or desire such publicity. What information that he got wasunscrupulously obtained from neighbours or manufactured as nonewas given by us.

It is our opinion that your directory is of no merit or of any useto decent, honest merchants. Well do I know that it is made use of byevery spiv in the city of Melbourne. If the announcements relating tous are not withdrawn immediately from this corrupt publication it isour intention to seek the aid of the courts to enforce the matter. I willrepeat myself and again state that we do not wish to be called on bythe type of fly-by-nighter who makes a practice of gaining a miserableexistence moving from one announcement in your scurrilous andiniquitous door-stopper to another.

Should a copy of this scandalous tome arrive at our factory,I will personally go to the trouble of finding out when the next boardmeeting of Sands & McDougall’s is taking place when I will make it mypleasure to personally throw the rotten thing straight at the chairmanwhilst he is at his accustomed place at the head of the table.

We do not intend to be pestered further in this matter. Let thisbe the last we hear from you.

We are,Your obedient servant,

etc.The offending tome andprospective weapon.

The Dreamsof Archivists

Library Digitised Collections

Author/s:

University of Melbourne Archives

Title:

UMA Bulletin : News from the University of Melbourne Archives : Issue 24

Date:

2008

Persistent Link:

http://hdl.handle.net/11343/116393