Cilento's Centenary
The Triumph of His Topics
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600005110Keywords:
1959 Centenary celebrations, William Street library, Brisbane City Council's Centenary Pool, 'Centenary voyage'Abstract
The 1959 celebration of the Centenary of self-government in Queensland presented organisers with an opportunity to showcase the state at large, together with its character and potential. Public works – a supremely tangible stamp of governmental achievement – were foremost in two new facilities for approved culture and recreation: the new library on William Street and the Brisbane City Council's Centenary Pool on Gregory Terrace. Abiding links with Britain were evoked by the royal visit of Princess Alexandra, a service in Westminster Abbey and the ‘Centenary voyage’ of a British immigrant ship. Other aspects of the program celebrated Queenslanders simply being Queenslanders. Day-to-day events from local carnivals and festivals to sporting competitions were embraced by the Centennial organisers. The resulting celebrations revealed a state in transition, its abiding affection for royalty and the ties of Empire happily coexisting with a new relish for American leisure culture. They reveal more than that when we consider the execution of Centenary activities in more detail, and particularly those that sought to present an account of how and why the state had come to be as it was. The 1959 celebrations provided a moment when, in the full light of public interest and attention, a ‘sense of the past’ was mobilised in both formal and informal terms in an attempt to account definitively for the Queensland historical experience.
References
Fitzgerald, Ross, Megarrity, Lyndon and Symons, David, Made in Queensland: A New History (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 2009), 139–41. Google Scholar
This approach addresses constructions of history as both a critical and professional concern and a more universal, socially constructed form of knowledge. See Raphael Samuel, Theatres of Memory: Volume 1: Past and Present in Contemporary Culture (London: Verso, 1994); David Glassberg, Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001); and Chris Healy, From the Ruins of Colonialism: History as Social Memory (Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997) for relevant implications in British, American and Australian modes of ‘public history’.
See Fisher, F.G., Raphael Cilento: A Biography (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1994) and Finnane, Mark, ‘Cilento, Sir Raphael West’, Australian Dictionary of Biography Online (2006), www.adb.online.anu.eu./biogs/A170212b.htm, accessed 8 April 2008. Google Scholar
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Queensland State Archives (hereafter QSA) 6717 A/6546 B107/3/3 Memorandum to the Under Secretary dated 8 October 1957.
Fitzgerald, Ross, From 1915 to the Early 1980s: A History of Queensland (St Lucia: University of Queensland Press, 1984), 551-52; Raymond Evans, ‘Done and Dusted’, Griffith Review 21 (2008): 187 (my thanks to Jon Piccini for this reference).
QSA 6717 A/6546 B/107/3/0 minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 22 October 1957. Alongside Cilento and Lack, the original committee comprised Arthur Laurie (Historical Society of Queensland), Martha Young (Queensland Women's Historical Association), Allan Morrison (Department of History, University of Queensland) and librarians Colin Austin of the Historical Society, J.C.H. Gill of the Oxley Memorial Library and Parliamentary Librarian S.G. Gunthorpe, joined by representatives of the Royal Geographical Society, the Department of Lands Place Names Committee, and the Authors and Artists Association.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 6 November 1957. The discussions of the inaugural meeting were formalised as resolutions at this second meeting.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 22 October 1957.
QSA 6717 A/6549 B/107/7/1 minutes of Publications Sub-Committee dated 24 October 1957: 1–2.
QSA, minutes of Publications Sub-Committee dated 30 October 1957: 1–3.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 6 November 1957: 5.
QSA, minutes of Publications Sub-Committee dated 13 November 1957: 2.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 5 March: 4. Lack was appointed Associate Editor at the meeting of 3 September 1958 (see minutes of that date: 1).
QSA, minutes of Publications Sub-Committee dated 3 December 1957: 3.
QSA, minutes of Publications Sub-Committee dated 9 July 1958.
See Ruth Kerr, ‘Morrison, Allan Arthur’, Australian Dictionary of Biography Online (2006) www.adb.online.anu.edu.au/biogs/A150486b.htm, accessed 8 April 2008.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 27 November 1957: 5.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 8 January 1958: 3.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 23 April: 3.
Blarney, Geoffrey, ‘Scissors and Paste in Local History’, Historical Studies: Australia and New Zealand 6 (1954): 339-44 and Graeme Davison, ‘Community: The Use of Local History’, in The Use and Abuse of Australian History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2000), 202. Google Scholar
‘Foreword’, Triumph in the Tropics: An Historical Sketch of Queensland (Brisbane: Smith and Paterson, 1959), xv.
See also Medical Journal of Australia (April 1933), and Sir Raphael Cilento Collection, University of Queensland Fryer Library, Box 19 No. 114, ‘The Conquest of Climate’.
‘Foreword’, Triumph in the Tropics, xiii.
QSA 6717 A/6546 B/107/3/0 letter to R.J. Dixon from Sir Raphael Cilento dated 24 August 1958.
‘I Am Queensland’ (promotional flyer) (Brisbane: W.R. Smith and Paterson, n.d.) (private collection).
QSA 6717 A/6549 B/107/7/1, letter dated 23 September 1958. Lack wrote back stiffly: ‘Sir Raphael, myself and other members of the Historical Committee disagree with you on this point. I think the title is dignified, carries its own explanation, and is certainly not hackneyed. I take leave to doubt whether any better title could be suggested.’ Letter of 1 October 1958.
‘Don't judge this Centenary Book by its cover’, Courier-Mail, 24 October 1959: 2.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 28 October 1959: 2.
See QSA 6717 A/6549 B107/7/1, letter from Mr K. Smith of 9 January 1962 and subsequent correspondence and records.
Samuel, Theatres of Memory, 175-76.
QSA 6717 A/6546 B/107/3/0, ‘Pageants proposals discussed by Sir Raphael Cilento with Mr. F. Robertson’ (undated typescript note), n.p.
QSA, minutes of Publications Sub-Committee dated 13 November 1957: 5.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 30 July 1958: 4.
QSA A/6551 B107/8/2, minutes of ‘Landing of Governor Bowen’ Sub-Committee, circular letter dated 2 December 1958. The script was then circulated to members of the Historical Sub-Committee in February 1959 for their comments.
The decision was explained by Cilento at the 29 April meeting of the Governor Bowen subcommittee but not minuted: QSA A/6551 B107/8/2.
QSA A/6551 B/107/8/2, letter to the Insurance Commissioner dated 26 November 1959: 1.
Knudsen's ‘Sun-Girl’ title was noted in the minutes of the 4 March 1959 meeting; see also Barry J. Whalen, ‘Knancy’, in Christopher Beck (ed.), On Air: 25 Years of TV in Queensland (Brisbane: One Tree Hill, 1984), 89-97.
QSA A/6551 B107/8/2, Invitation lists, acceptances and regrets.
‘Two “Governors" in Drama of Birthday’, Courier-Mail, 11 December 1959.
QSA A/6551 B107/8/2, letter from committee secretary dated 23 June 1959 and letter in reply from Director of Native Affairs dated 6 July 1959.
Queensland Museum Library: ‘Re-enactment and Dramatization of the Arrival of the first Governor Sir George Ferguson Bowen, at Brisbane and the Proclamation of the Self-Governing Colony of Queensland. 10th December 1859’ (Second draft by Sir Raphael Cilento, Chairman, Historical Committee, incorporating suggested modifications, etc.)’ typescript: 12.
Cilento and Lack, Triumph in the Tropics, 159.
‘Pageant Led to “Havoc" in Gardens’, Courier-Mail, 12 December 1959.
‘Re-enactment and Dramatization …’, ‘Part Three’, 3-4. See also ‘Sir Henry Looks Ahead to the Second Century’, Courier-Mail, 11 December 1959. Abel Smith may have departed from his script, as he had earlier contacted the Centenary Celebrations Committee directly to express his ‘utter annoyance’ at its publication in the historical booklet prior to the event. QSA A/6551 B107/8/2, unsigned copy of letter to Sir Raphael Cilento of 3 December 1959.
QSA, minutes of Historical Sub-Committee dated 16 December 1959: 1.
