Manning Clark Addresses the 21^st National Folk Festival

This bootleg cassette is a copy of a recording made by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation given me by an agricultural scientist from LaTrobe University. In his address Clark touches on some of his favorite subjects—the writings of Henry Lawson, the necessity of a national mythology, and the future prospects of Australia. Here are some of my notes from the address, unprocessed.

Early on, the invocation of Henry Lawson. [I wonder if Clark did this in every major address? Was Lawson always his touchstone?]

Clear theme at the outset: the need to become Australian—to “drop your tweeds,” as they used to say.

For much of their early history, Australians borrowed their culture, mainly from British sources. Even on ANZAC Day, which might have been a day for bitterness against things British, the borrowings were from there—Kipling chiefly.

Interlude—“The Scot of the Riverina”

Nevertheless, alongside the cultural tie to Britain, there existed from the start a culture of protest, including folksong—“The early songs were songs of protest.” They were spiked, too, with humor that sprang from a “raging inferiority complex” amid “a sardonic people.”

Interlude—“The Bold Gendarmes”

By the 1880s there emerged from the folk tradition a literature in which the bush was central. First important realization: it was beautiful! Reference to Banjo Paterson’s “song of love” [love is important to Clark as man and as historian], “The Man from Snowy River,” and to “Clancy of the Overflow.” Also to Dorothea MacKellar, who proclaimed, “The wide brown land for me!”

Coupled with this inspiration of the bush was a faith in “the brotherhood of man” and “the mission of labor.” Parcel to this was the “Australian dream” of a fair go. Mateship was elevated as a value, replacing Christian hope.

Along these lines, return to Lawson, who wrote those “marvelous stories that told Australians who they were.” [Definition of mythology.] Trotting out all his favorite Lawson characters from the bush.

Bush culture, however, was doomed to irrelevancy by industrialization, for in the 20^th century Australia became “a nation of suburbanites with a desert at its heart” [note at least two levels of meaning in that phrase]. How could a country produce “a myth of suburbia”? This new Australia embraced American popular culture, including Broadway musical comedy, music for people “who had lost their faith but kept their puritan morality.”

Interlude—“Walking My Baby Back Home”

The next generation produced “a different sort of pop culture” with television; it responded to the “new human situation” with a cynicism born after WW II in the atomic age and Vietnam era. There was a loss of faith in human perfectibility (Clark was a great reader of Tocqueville) during this “era of greed and titillation culture.”

This generation also produced a new crop of songs of protest, which however “lacked the survival power of their predecessors.” The spirit of the time was nihilist.

“Nevertheless, I don’t despair.” Moving on to current issues, reference to Australia being a nation of immigrants, and needing to produce a new myth again. On what basis? “The one thing we have in common is the earth of Australia.”

Production of the new story is a task for all, for, “We are the makers of our own history. [Again, at least two levels of meaning.] We have to decide what baggage we will take through to the future.”

• Aboriginal creation myth

• Lawson stories

• Novels of Patrick White

• Poetry, including Judith Wright and David Campbell

“We will take with us all those who speak to our condition.” [Note posture—present in dialog with the past, choosing what to keep to compose its history.]

“Our history is a book of wisdom.” [More like a riddle, because, how do we decide what to choose from it?]

“I think we have a chance to become a society of lovers and believers,” not a nation of “mockers.” [There’s that idea of the historian as lover again.]

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