A selection of Canberra inspired ballads
Originally published in Gough and Johnny were lovers
RF Brissenden
Penguin 1984
Category Archives: Canberra region history
Kerr at Bruce Hall 1976
Humphrey McQueen
Article headed Down Under Brunuel by Humphrey McQueen
Published by Meanjin Quarterly Vol 35/2 June 1976
Describes chaotic scenes at an ANU event attended by then Governor-General Sir John Kerr.
Riches beneath the flat
by Ross Mainwaring
Extract from the book Riches beneath the flat: A history of the Lake George mine at Captain’s Flat
Published by the Light Railway Research Society of Australia 2011
You can purchase a copy from lightrailwayresearchsocietyofaustralia.cart.net.au
Captains Flat – Boom to bust – And back again From 1883
By Susan Pryke, Janet Van Straaten & Alan V Walker
Two chapters from the book Captains Flat – Boom to Bust – And back Again From 1883
Published by the Captains Flat Task Force 1983
Chapter 8: Miners at Work
Chapter 9: Strikes and Lock-outs
Navvies rocked this city – Canberra 1911-16
Navvies rocked this city
Canberra 1911-16[1]
Humphrey McQueen
Canberra Historical Journal, New Series, 67, December 2011, pp. 17-24.
For the Federal Area to become a Federal Capital on the ground as well as in law, hundreds of navvies had to construct before tradesmen and other labourers could build.[2] Continue reading
Canberra Laborite with a long memory
The late public servant and ALP official, Bill Byrne, was an engaging link to Labor’s history in Canberra, Stephen Holt writes. Continue reading
The ideological war over our first MP
Stephen Holt
February 5, 2013
Labor’s first federal preselection contest in the ACT was conducted after the Chifley government awarded Canberrans parliamentary representation. The resulting preselection turned out to be a fraught affair indeed, replete with chicanery and religious sectarianism. Continue reading
Billy Hughes and his radical son
by Stephen Holt
This is a condensed version of a longer article published elsewhere on this site under the heading Billy Hughes’ Canberra Son. Continue reading
Billy Hughes’ Canberra Son
Stephen Holt
William Morris Hughes remains the archetypal Judas-figure in the demonology of the Australian Labor Party. He was a leading figure in the early party but split from it in 1916 over the issue of military conscription and threw in his lot with the anti-Labor forces in federal politics. There was no reconciliation with his former comrades.
What is still vaguely remembered, though, is that Billy Hughes had a son who in the grim years of the 1930s was involved in organised agitation in support of unemployed workers thereby creating a piquant contrast with his father’s act of desertion. This latter-day embrace of the labour cause within the Hughes family took place in Canberra and forms a significant episode in its local political history. Continue reading
Book review: ACT Labor 1929-2009 – A Short History
Stephen Holt
Review of ACT Labour 1929-2009 – A Short History
Chris Monnox, Ginninderra Press, Port Adelaide 2013
The Australian Labor Party is not a terribly alluring outfit these days. Any core cohesive beliefs are difficult to identify while its membership base badly needs resuscitating and is still under the thumb of factional hacks. This unattractiveness makes it harder for the ALP to produce stable reforming governments anywhere in the continent. Continue reading
Harry Holland
Frank Mines
There are a number of reasons why we should remember Harry Holland. For one reason, he is the only significant political figure to have come from the Canberra district. Continue reading
2011 ASSLH conference – A Leftist in Cold War Canberra: Bruce Yuill
A Leftist in Cold War Canberra: Bruce Yuill
Stephen Holt
Abstract
On 29 July 1953, the Canberra Trades and Labor Council, the city’s peak employee body, re-elected a boisterous young Labor man named Bruce Yuill as its President. The Council’s vote of endorsement meant that Yuill, a flamboyant socialist, headed the trade union movement in Australia’s federal capital at a crucial time politically, with the Cold War well underway and the Australian Labor Party teetering on the historic schism of 1955.
2001 ASSLH conference – The working miners of southern New South Wales: Subsistence men, entrepreneurs or proletarians?
Barry McGowan
Australian National University
Abstract
European miners in the colonial and post-Federation period worked in one of three ways: independently on their own account, in co-operative groups, or as wage employees for companies or syndicates. Continue reading