Mini-Review # 1 - A Shorter History of Australia

It recently struck me how, in the more than two decades since I first moved to Australia, I had never read a book about the country’s history. Part of that must have been due to the myopia of typical history classes in school. I studied history throughout my basic schooling—first through primary school in Mexico, then GCSEs in the UK and Malaysia, then Years 11 and 12 in Australia. I’m pretty sure I spent half that time either memorising the names of the Niños Heroes or the conditions of the Treaty of Versailles.

But that’s no excuse for the years since then. I feel like it’s about time I learned a little more about the place I (sort of) call home. Hopefully I’ll get to understand the origins of some of the trends that continue to both amuse and frustrate me about the place.

I’ve decided to read a handful of different books about Australia—from mainstream perspectives to radical revisions to unadulterated piss-takes—and document some interesting things I come across along the way in a set of mini-reviews. I’m starting with Geoffrey Blainey’s A Shorter History of Australia.

I have to admit, I didn’t know much about Blainey except that his name sounded vaguely familiar, and that’s more than I could say for any other Australian historians. It didn’t take too much Googling to realise that his telling of history was going to be a predictable one, yet at the same time controversial in this day and age, and for valid reasons. However, you need to start somewhere, and if you just focus on the facts and the sequence of events he lays out, and ignore any of his grand narratives, it’s a perfectly passable stenographer’s account of the country’s post-colonial history.

You get the balanced timeline and Greatest-Hits feel that you’d expect from someone who’s written more than 30 books of history prior to this one: pre-colonial throat clearing, First Fleet, early misery in a harsh climate, gold rush, migration, drought, Federation, iron rush, Gallipoli, some stuff about Catholics in the Labor Party (?), Japanese bombing, more migration, a chapter that sounds like a Forrest Gump montage, coal rush, rich 80s hucksters buying property, John Howard and boat people, another coal rush, and finally, to end it all, like a wet fart after a 10-course meal… the election of Tony Abbott.

Blainey has a tendency to season his writing with cricket clichés (e.g. he calls Gallipoli “a drawn game gallantly played on the enemy’s tricky homeground”) which might be his attempt to inject some cheeky spice into what is largely a bland, humourless book.

At the same time, I appreciate his attempts to point out unsung and overlooked achievements in Australia’s past—like the traditional bush medicine used to help combat seasickness, made from corkwood tree leaves, which was later used by the Allied forces sailing into Normandy; or the way Eric Ansell built the world’s 2nd largest condom company in the world out of a small factory in Richmond, Victoria. It’s not the kind of thing one often hears about, and I can imagine he must have been tempted to leave some of that out and dedicate 5 pages to Ned Kelly and Donald Bradman. (Thankfully, he kept it to one line for the former and two for the latter. No offence to Ned and the Don, but I feel like they’ve received enough ink through the years.)

All in all, this is probably the story that Australia (or some portion of it, at least) likes to tell itself about itself: a plucky nation, a bit rough around the edges, but making the best out of the deal it’s been given.

We’ll see what other writers have to say about that in the next few books.