The Forgotten Rebels of Eureka - Clare Wright

 

Of all the events of Australian history I know least about - Eureka is the top of that list.  Perhaps that is bad, perhaps I am negligent, and perhaps that is reflected in my personal dislike of Unionism.  I don't know.  It does seems somewhat unpatriotic though, it does seem too churlish to not know anything (or at least remembered anything from school) about Eureka, the stockade, the killing of the miner Scobie and the burning of the Hotel owned by the Bentley's.  I feel even more ashamed as Wright articulates that this is “…what all school children know.”  I don't.  Things get worse as I have to teach a unit of Eureka in my Yr. 9 History class in but a few weeks time.  Arggghh.

Wright quotes Blainey:

"Eureka is like a great neon sign with messages that flick on and off with different messages for different people on different occasions." (p xii)

Wright is seeking to use Eureka to "...illuminate issues of gender bias in our collective bedtime stories."  This sort of lefty proposal doesn’t sit well with me.  I was even more concerned when I read the endorsement in the inside cover from the Marxist left review:

“It is exhilarating to encounter a historian who thinks that writing women into history in not about emphasising family life, or portraying women as victims of men, separate from the big struggles for democracy and justice.”

Whoa, what about that then!  As I embarked, I wondered if the Marxist left and I were reading the same book.  Other reviews were closer to fact – the Courier Mail was one:

 “Beautifully written, her book takes readers on a vivid journey of what life was like for the families of the miners, merchants, prostitutes and police … It’s a great story.”

Wright's book is a gambolling ride through the 1850's in Victoria.  Wright is an outstanding story-teller and a truly wonderful writer.  Let me share two wonderful sentences, lightly peppered with alliteration and imagery. 

"But it was not just ideology that wove women into the fabric of the goldfields society.  In the hard-nosed way of British bureaucracy, there were structural provisions made for the reality that woman would be integral to the colonial economy." pg. 135. 

Wright shares that one major difference in the Californian Gold rush and the Victoria one was the abundance of Women on the Goldfields.  This was an ideological ploy, as it was believed that women were a civilising element and that the Australian Goldfields would not degenerate into the lawless frontier that was in the America's.  However, let's look at the writing.

I've marked the alliteration in the text; wove women, British bureaucracy, women would and the pièce de résistance, colonial economy.  Economy, having an iambic foot, sounds like alliteration (actually assonance) because of the unstressed ‘e’ and the stressed ‘c’.  Wright’s writing is sometimes so poetic.  She really is a wonderful writer and I think that I’ll be reading more of her as a result.  Then, of course, there is the fact that the imagery of weaving – working with fabric – is the metaphor used in the first sentence. Finally, there is the lovely way that this sentence is beefed up, injected with testosterone, by beginning with a preposition. It is just marvellous.

The stories are truly wonderful, the tales of immigration and the stories of Sarah Hanmer and Clara Du Val are fascinating, even more so as they develop throughout the book.  The stories of travel sickness and death in unsanitary conditions of the ships, along with the celebrations of crossing the equator line were riveting. The walk to Ballarat, particularly the asides, like how Wright mentions 'The Gap' at Bacchus Marsh.  A place where the dray's got stuck crossing the ravine and had to be pulled out.  They waited for days for this to happen and a good deal of money was made by those who did the pulling out.  This is contrasted with the "nifty rollercoaster stretch" of the Western Highway that we travel today.  It made me scurry along to Google Map to try to locate it.  Of course, the Stockade itself too.

The Scholarship is outstanding and the conclusions drawn do not seem forced.  Janet Kincaid's rather nasty letter to her husband is an interesting find.  Sarah Hanmer and Clara Du Val's lies about themselves demonstrate the desire to make new identities for a New World.  Culminating in the most provocative thesis of the book.  At the end of the chapter 'Parting with my sex' Wright illustrates how Ballarat in 1854 was a functioning township, not a miner's slum or frontier outpost.  She states that Gov. Hotham believed in the inveterate ability of women to humanise and bring order to society.  However, Wright ends, Ballarat '...was heading for a train wreck.  And the women weren't hauling on the brake.  They were stoking the coals.'

Wright's book is a page-turner, comparable to the best fiction writers, yet with the scholarship of a responsible historian.  A truly great read and a chance to learn a lot.  I never felt that I was being assaulted by the left - or an ideology shoved down my throat.  I found myself engulfed in a by-gone era and challenged to think differently.  Truly great writing.

5 Stars

The Alternberg 16 - Suzan Mazur

Independent Journalist Suzan Mazur has written a cracking book about the current state of Evolutionary Theory.  When I say 'cracking' I mean that It was easy to read and that I learnt a lot from it.  There are many drawbacks in her writing style too, so let's not misinterpret 'cracking' for well-written.

Richard Dawkins tells us that Evolution is fact.  However, this book shows that his statement needs to be carefully nuanced.  Here is a veritable list of incredibly clever men and women working in the field of evolutionary biology who dissent from the neo-darwinist claims.  All of them believe in evolution, as in biological change over time, however, the centrepiece of the neo-darwinist modern synthesis is that 'natural selection from random genetic mutations' is the main driver of the evolutionary process.  In 2008, a bunch of academics got together in Altenburg, Vienna to discuss an Extended synthesis that drives biological change.

This book is a series of blog-like posts that Mazur has put together.  It can make for very frustrating reading.  There is no plot, or unveiling of a narrative.  It is a series of interviews, some from those who attended the Altenburg meeting and others who demur with the Modern synthesis.  Dawkins is interviewed too, his hubris is truly ever-present.

I the found the Lima-de-Faria (a cytogeneticist) interview absolutely fascinating.  Quotations like the following are eminently interesting:

"Selection is a political not a scientific concept.  At the time of Darwin it fitted perfectly  the expanding colonialism of Victorian England.  At present, Darwinism has been equated with evolution in an effort to convert it into the ideological arm of globalization (sic)...everybody knows that selection occurs in nature, but the chromosome and the cell circumvent its effect by many molecular mechanisms." (pg.86)

Wow, the fallowness of Dawkins's brazen oversimplifications are manifest in the concerns of many, particularly in the question "What drives evolutionary change?"  I came out of this book further affirmed that we just do not know.

The book is subtitled "An exposé of the Evolution industry."  Nowhere in the book is that more explicit than the interview with Roger Buick (great name), an Australian (trust us to say it as it is), who is head of Earth Sciences and Astrobiology at the University of Washington.

"I don't think academics are co-opted into anything.  But they do tend to follow the money.  There's no coercion in it.  Academics are greedy for cash like anybody else." (pg.160)

Science, like anything, is subject to the whims of man.  Where there is money, the research will follow.  Dr Chris McKay sums up the real problem with neo-darwinism.

"The Darwinian paradigm breaks down in two obvious ways.  First, and most clear, Darwinian selection cannot be responsible for the origin of life.  Secondly, there is some thought that Darwinian selection cannot fully explain the rise of complexity at the molecular level." (Pg. 213)

Dr Chris McKay is a NASA astrobiologist.  In the only personal touch in the book that didn't make me roll my eyes, but made me laugh, Mazur says,

'Over the phone I detect a touch of William Shatner's Kirk in the voice of NASA astrobiologist Christopher P. McKay." (pg.200)

The evolution industry is beset by political pressure, money and High priest-like dogmatism and is muddier than what it's apologists would lead you to believe.  Mazur's book shows some of this and it is no wonder that the PZ Meyers of this world vehemently decry it's worth.  It is not really well written and can be a difficult book to grapple with because of it' structure.  However, Mazur is an intelligent journalist and she knows her stuff, asks the right questions and draws coherent conclusions.

Some interesting content, too much repetition, too much with the familial statements - could have been better presented.  Also, while the book contains full transcripts of interviews, the salient details could have been extracted for a book 2/3's it's size.  Good to ensure context - lots of laborious reading.

3 out of 5 stars.