Sir Paul Hasluck
1905-1993
Sir Paul Meernaa Caedwalla Hasluck, journalist, government minister and Governor General of Australia, had a long and distinguished career in public life.
He was born in Fremantle, Western Australia on 1 April 1905. His parents, Major E’thel Meernaa Caedwalla and Patience Eliza (Wooler) Hasluck, served in the Salvation Army.
In his early years Paul lived in a number of Western Australian rural communities. He completed his secondary school education as a scholarship student at Perth Modern School, after which he went to work at the West Australian newspaper as a cadet journalist. His career at “The West” lasted for 16 years, during which he was eventually promoted to foreign news sub-editor. He asked for, and was granted, the opportunity to be drama critic at the paper, and also wrote historical essays under the pen-name of Polygon.
During these years, Paul’s historical interests found an outlet when he became a founding member of the Royal Historical Society. He also found someone to share his love of history over a life-time - Alexandra Margaret Martin Darker, author and historian, who became his wife in 1932. Together they had two sons, Rollo (d.1973) and Nicholas.
Studying part-time, Paul earned a Master’s degree in History at the University of Western Australia. He went on to lecture at the university from 1939 to 1940.
In 1941 Paul began a diplomatic career with the Department of External Affairs. A career highlight occurred in 1945 when he headed the Australian Mission at the San Francisco Conference that saw the birth of the United Nations.
He returned to Perth in 1947, resumed his lecturing work, but another career change was around the corner. He won Liberal Party endorsement for the first Federal seat of Curtin and served as a backbencher in the House of Representatives in the Menzies Government.
During his political career he was appointed Minister for Territories and later Minister for External Affairs. He stood for leadership of the Liberal Party in 1967 but missed the position, and thus the chance to become Prime Minister, by a close margin.
In 1969 he resigned from Parliament and became Governor-General of Australia. A further honour was conferred in 1979 when he was made a Knight of the Garter (KG) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II.
What Paul Hasluck said
The following quotations are taken by Paul Hasluck’s book, Light That Time Has Made, a collection of essays and reviews written in his later years.
“Tomorrow”
“To gain an Australian ideal on which the society of the future will be shaped, it is necessary that most of the people, lifted out of selfishness, form clearer and loftier ideas than they have at present about the sort of life they would like to live in Australia. The restoration of the vision can only come through each Australian. The “little” man and women must reassert themselves, but they cannot do so helpfully unless they form an ideal of what they want. As I see it, that is the biggest question mark for the future.”
“Thrift”
“Moving into the last quarter of the century one sees that thrift and the underlying idea that it was dishonest to spend more than you have are being discarded. The whole pattern of social life is an inducement to incur debts “ an encouragement to want more and more. There are merit and material benefits in spending and none in saving. Profligacy has lost its meaning. Thrift has no benison.”
“Goggling”
"Television in its nature is more than a new means of communication. It is not simply an improvement of the cinema or an additional medium for giving news and information. It has imposed itself on the pattern of living and has had an influence on human behaviour much more extensive than the cinema or the wireless. Television is part of a vast social transformation. The effect of the change will be even more remarkable as goggling becomes a substitute for thinking.”
Alexandra Hasluck
1908-1993
Dame Alexandra Margaret Martin Hasluck was born in Perth, Western Australia on 26 August 1908. She was the only child of John and Evelyn (Hill) Darker.
Alexandra (or “Alix”, as she was known) attended Perth College and the University of Western Australia, where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree. After graduating, she became a teacher at St Hilda’s Anglican School for Girls.
She married Paul Hasluck, who shared her love of history, in 1932. While fulfilling her roles as the wife of a diplomat, cabinet minister and Governor-General, she also contributed to Australian culture in her own right as an author and historian.
Her books included: Thomas Peel of Swan River, published by Oxford University Press in 1965; To Guide and Guard, a history of the guide dog movement in Western Australia, published by the University of Western Australia Press in 1964; and Portrait with a Background, about the Western Australian botanist Georgiana Molloy, published by Oxford University Press in 1956 and republished by Fremantle Arts Centre Press in 1988.
“Alix” was active in community life, serving as national president of the Girl Guides Association and the Australian Red Cross. She was also active in the Order of St John. She was made a Dame of the Order of Australia in 1978.
She died in Perth on 18 June 1993, just five months after the passing of her husband.
INSCRIPTION ON THE HASLUCK HEADSTONE
IN LOVING MEMORY OF
PAUL
MEERNAA CAEDWALLA
HASLUCK
K.G., G.C.M.G., G.C.V.O., K.St.J.
1-4-1905 - 9-1-1993
HISTORIAN AND STATESMAN
GOVERNOR GENERAL
OF
THE COMMONWEALTH
OF AUSTRALIA
1969 - 1974
PERFER ET OBDURA
ALEXANDRA
MARGARET MARTIN
HASLUCK
A.D., B.A., D. Litt (Hon). D.St.J.
26-8-1908 - 18-6-1993
HISTORIAN AND AUTHOR
DAUGHTER
OF
JOHN AND EVELYN
DARKER
NEC TENTE AUT PERFICE
HUSBAND AND WIFE, BELOVED PARENTS OF
ROLLO AND NICHOLAS, GRANDPARENTS OF
MELISSA, ANTHONY, JEREMY AND LINDSAY,
HASLUCK
PAUL HASLUCK
A FAREWELL MESSAGE
(Delivered by Nicholas Hasluck at the funeral service for Sir Paul Hasluck held on 20 January 1993).
It was the express wish of my father that no eulogy should be spoken. Perhaps it went against the grain of a former subeditor and historian that errors of fact might be made without him being given a chance to put them right.
In any event, he said to me: "Towards the end of a long life I feel contrition for what I have done badly and for my failure to do all the good I might have done. I seek no secular tribute for anything I might have done well. I also feel thankfulness to God for the happiness with which I have been blessed on earth in the deep and private enjoyment of the sweet simplicities of life."
Listening to music was one of his great pleasures. His taste ranged from the works of Palestrina, Bach and the composers of the English cathedral tradition to the American spiritual by James Black which will close today's proceedings.
Had my father been with us today I am sure he would have urged us to go straight to the next hymn without further ado. But as he himself mentioned his enjoyment of "the sweet simplicities of life", before we move on, I feel it is incumbent upon me to illustrate what he meant. I won't tempt fate by citing facts. I shall rely upon the truths contained in his own words.
His autobiography, Mucking About (1977), includes a passage called "Growing up in the Bush".
“After ploughing there was harrowing and seeding and then around to the harvest again. Whatever the operation, my mates and I used to go out when school was over and sit on the gateposts until the day's work was ended and the horses were unhitched. Then we would be lifted on to the back of a horse for the ride home, barebacked and without bridle or reins. The horses knew the way. First to the waterhole. They set off trudging, weary from the days work, perhaps still feeling the drag of an imaginary plough behind them. As they neared the waterhole the walk quickened. Their heads came up. They waded into the water, sniffed it, ruffled the surface with their lips and began to drink. Their flanks heaved. Through my bare legs I could feel the contentment of the animal. After drinking, they stood awhile, looked around, savoured the distance, swished their tails and then slowly heaved themselves around and out of the water and up the bank and set their heads for home. Their walk was now purposeful and steady. It livened up a little and, in sight of the stables, they broke into a fumbling trot. We wobbled about on top of our mounts. Then into the stable and each to his stall and we could clamber down on to the rails and to the earth, giving a last fond pat to the withers.
I would linger awhile in the gloom of the stable just to hear for a little longer the steady munching of their feed, the occasional fluffing through their nostrils and the sound of horses munching again a lovely sound of peace, contentment, work done and animals safe at home and cared for in their stalls.”
Many years later his love of horses brought him enjoyment of a different kind. This passage comes from A Time for Building (1976):
“I recall the happy personal associations I had and the friendships I formed with my Dutch colleagues ... I found it very refreshing to be working with men who, when business was over, could talk of something else and who, when business was on, could examine a question against a wide background of knowledge and pick up an allusion or understand a phrase with some exactness ... At Canberra the Netherlands Ambassador, Tony Lovink, had become a personal friend mainly because, early in our acquaintance, we started horse riding together on Sunday mornings. At that time we each had a retired racehorse as a hack and memory still recaptures in vivid detail that long grassy upward slope on the outskirts of Canberra where, on stinging cold mornings, with the wind in their nostrils, we let the horses have their head and galloped laughing side by side for a mad and glorious mile.”
That book, A Time for Building, describes Sir Paul's work in the administration of Papua and New Guinea. It is interesting to note that vivid sensory perceptions play an important part in the narrative. For example:
“The year 1962 seemed to me at the time to be a turning point in the history of Papua and New Guinea. Hard work below ground had been done and progress seemed to quicken.
In this period I had many occasions of encouragement in the opening of hospitals, schools, roads, bridges and other buildings and in little ceremonies arranged to welcome the first fruits of one activity or another ...
[I recall] a visit to a newly opened patrol post at Nomad, high in the mountains of the Southern Highlands ...
The patrol post consisted of an airstrip, which was a bit hard to find among the clouds, and two or three native material huts perched at the edge of a great declivity. Down below, a river ran invisibly but audibly between intertwined jungle growth. A score or so of the pygmies were watching from a distance when we climbed out of the two seater. One, a sort of spokesman, came close to us, gave a subdued greeting and fingered my clothing in curiosity ...
As the two young patrol officers and I made our inspection, the men slipped quietly from one obscure place to another and looked at us around the corners of the huts ... They were naked, except for a tough, hard belt of bark around the soft part of the body, protecting liver and spleen from the arrows of enemies. Each man carried a bow as tall as himself and a clutch of arrows. They had not yet consented to lay their weapons down when they came into the patrol post.
The pilot and I had some food and a yarn with the two boys ... They had only been there a few weeks. There had been no incidents. These boys were completing the policy of bringing the whole of the Territory under administrative control. As keenly as ever, I felt the immensity of the task that had been done over the last ten years and was thrilled with the young Australians who had done it. Less than three years later the Nomad people were voting for the House of Assembly.
These visits were among the most interesting I had during twelve years as Minister. I flew mostly in a two seater single engine charter aircraft down the magnificent gorges of the central mountain spine or over the vast waterlogged plains of the Fly and Strickland Rivers, sometimes amid great cloud turrets whose grandeur and majesty, touched with evening light, had an unearthly beauty. In a mosquito sized aircraft among great mountains of cloud one gains a sense of immensity and self becomes insignificant. This brings its own calm, for one is only a small speck in great space. I had come under the spell that so many lonely travellers have felt in the New Guinea wastelands.
I had developed a deep affection for the land and its people and had begun to develop some of the characteristics of the 'old hands'. We had worked for this country when few others showed much interest. We had stored up pleasant memories. I had yarned on clear tropical evenings in remote places with those who had taken an earlier part in the exploration of Papua and New Guinea and made first contact with its people. I had talked with the people in their villages.
I had responded to the grandeur of its mountains and the whispering warmth of the sea on its coast. My sympathy for the indigenous people and hopes for their future had been kindled. In its own subtle way Papua and New Guinea had taken possession of me. Perhaps this showed. Perhaps some of the newcomers and one week journalists thought I had been deluded into thinking I owned the place, when in fact I was the one who was possessed.”
In a passage towards the end of his fine war history, The Government and the People 1939 1945 (1970), my father also reveals an understanding of what it took for Australia to become a nation:
“To the people the war had brought sorrow. It had also brought pride. The consolation of those who mourned lies in the privacy of their minds. When it was expressed in public it would seem to have been the consolation of knowing that a husband, son or brother had acted worthily. He had done his best, had stuck by his mates, had come through the testing time, had given his life for something greater than himself, had defended what was right. No one should reject or mock the well worn phrases for behind them is the sadness and the pride of a noble people, and each word hides the grief at the loss of what one human being had loved more than anything else on this earth.
That personal grief and pride were shared by many more when the troops marched. Anyone who stood in wartime in an Australian city, immersed in the crowd, and watched the troops go by knew the strong and binding comradeship that a shared grief and pride can bring to men and women. It was not at the moment when the crowd cheered, but at the moment when emotion quietened them and the tears came unbidden while the men who had fought, strong, sun tanned, tight jawed and fit, swung past with that loose and confident stride that only Australian soldiers have; and, as rank succeeded rank, thoughts turned to those who had not come back and hearts were deeply moved by the patriotism which brings the dedication of men and women to causes that lift them out of themselves.”
It occurs to me that only a poet with a deep love of the land and an understanding of 'the sweet simplicities of life' could have written such passages. So let me now refer to a poem from Dark Cottage (1984), a book my father wrote in retirement. The poem is called 'Space Probe':
“You went away loudly and have come back
To the small hushed ripples of the sea.
You have explored the surface of the moon
And outer space and gazed on silvery earth
From far away, found stars beyond the stars
And still know nothing more than I have known
On one small hilltop, drowsing at mid day
Where on a swaying thistle stalk
A winter robin perched.
And the brilliant declaration of its breast
Shone as a revelation of all life.
The emptiness of space
Shrinks to the fullness of this patch.
Here flames the red breast truth.
From here the living Me,
Lifted in exultation,
Inhabits without vehicle the whole universe
Hearing the singing sound of space illimited
And the small noise of beetles in the grass."
I began by mentioning my father's love of music. I will conclude by reading his 'Footnote to the Last Poem in the Book':
“Of recent years, for a number of reasons including the noisiness of suburban life, most of my listening to recorded music has been in the loneliness of a patch of bushland in the hills behind Perth. Listening in the still hush of noon, looking out on gumtrees, blackboys, zamia palms and the mingled green and brown of untouched forest with brilliant patches of blue sky beyond, I realised that this is both a natural and a perfect place to hear Palestrina. The sound belongs to the setting. The setting enhances the sound.
A century or two ago people who thought of such music felt like exiles sad and sick for home. I listen to it feeling that it belongs to my home.
What recorded music has done for sound the printed book has done for words, making them available anywhere and to anyone who can grasp their meaning. The score or the poem may have been formed in another land and at another time but they can now be our own possession and part of our own time. Our inheritance is not nostalgia for Europe but the fullness of a new experience in Australia."
ALEXANDRA HASLUCK
(Delivered by Nicholas Hasluck at the funeral service for Dame Alexandra Hasluck held on 23 June 1993)
Five months ago I delivered a farewell message at the funeral service for my father, Paul Hasluck; and now, too soon, I am here to say something about my mother, Alexandra Margaret Martin Hasluck.
Her forebears arrived in Sydney as free settlers in 1796. She always described herself, with a sense of pride, as a fifth generation Australian, and she also liked to recall that her own mother, Evelyn Hill, was one of the earliest women graduates of Sydney University.
Evelyn Hill came to Western Australia at the turn of the century to establish a school for girls. Soon afterwards, she met and married John Darker, an engineer with the Public Works Department. We must now refer to my mother's much admired autobiography, Portrait in a Mirror, for the next chapter in the story, an episode in which the author herself is introduced with a flourish:
“I was born in Perth in a house called Windhill, on 26 August 1908, which makes me an Edwardian. I was to be called Margaret Martin after the Martins of Galway connection, but my grandmother Hill, a devoted royalist, and admirer of Queen Alexandra, persuaded my parents at the last moment, practically at the font, I am told, that Alexandra was the name for me, so they tacked it on in front of the other two. I am grateful to her now for a beautiful name, but I certainly was not in schooldays, when the name was considered rather pretentious and I became Alix, and have remained so ever since to my friends.”
So let me call her Alix, and let me remind you that the details of her life and times as the wife of a journalist, a diplomat, a Cabinet Minister and a Governor General are fully dealt with in the autobiography. She carried out her duties with aplomb; at home and abroad, in the ante chambers of the United Nations, in the wilds of New Guinea, in the corridors of power in Canberra and in the precincts of Admiralty House and Yarralumla. In recognition of her public service she was a created a Dame of the Order of Australia and as a tribute to her intellectual qualities an honorary doctorate was added to the B.A. she obtained from the University of Western Australia in 1929. Today, however, I wish to speak of the private Alix, relying mainly on her own words, for it is there that we will continue to find her true spirit. To paraphrase Auden: time worships language and forgives everyone by whom it lives.
A passage from Thomas Peel of Swan River shows how the echo of an early settler's name intrigued her as a child, and led eventually to the writing of a memorable story set in a place she loved:
"When I was a child of ten, at the end of the Great War, as we used to call it then, I was a dreamy child and used to live in a world of my own, particularly at meals, which I considered a waste of time. Occasionally, however, my parents' conversation pierced that oblivion, and one of the phrases that seemed to occur very frequently contained a name, 'The Peel Estate', uttered in tones of denunciation, indignation and derision ... Only the name remained in memory.
Then it was my good fortune to make a friend for life. I was an only, and often a lonely, child. Another girl at school, Loulou Clifton her name was, asked me to stay with her for the holidays at her parents' fishing shack on the Murray River, some 50 miles south of Perth ... the Murray River then was one of the most strangely beautiful places in the world. It had a quality of absolute pristine freshness, belonging to the morning of creation ... Down still backwaters full of snags, submerged tree trunks rearing black and dragon like from the water we would row softly, fisherman's row, standing up pushing forwards to see the way ... A favourite place to go was that which we called 'the Shag Trees' four enormous eucalypts in a row, where the shags, or cormorants, from the estuary came to roost of nights. This was a good picnic spot, the way there involving dragging the boat over the bar at the mouth of the Murray and round the rushy point of Mill Island, with its old circular stone mill, and edging into the Serpentine. Then there was a long, long pull up that river's snaking windings, occasionally passing small palisades of sticks jutting from the banks into the water native fish traps, which we fortunately observed with the detail catching eye of childhood, for they are now all gone".
How fortunate we are that the details caught by Alix’s childhood were eventually reproduced in print. In the prologue to Unwilling Emigrants, one finds another fascinating insight into the way in which books come into being:
“In the year 1931, a small bundle of tattered letters was handed to the Western Australian Historical Society at one of its Council meetings by a member, Mr John Stoddart. The letters were in a grey kangaroo skin pouch, fur side out, envelope shaped and a bit torn. The bundle had been found in a crevice during the pulling down of the old police buildings at Toodyay, a country town 63 miles north east of Perth ... Some 20 odd years later, turning over some papers at home, I came upon the copies of the Toodyay letters made by [my husband], and was again moved by the pathos of the love expressed in them ... What sort of woman was Myra Sykes, poor and illiterate, yet whose words sometimes tear at the heart strings, and what sort of a convict did she write them to? What sort of man was it that could inspire such faithful love? What was his crime, and what became of him?
My mother wrote the two books I have just mentioned, unravelling the mysteries surrounding Thomas Peel and William Sykes, while my brother and I were completing our school years. We shared her enthusiasms and her adventures and did what we could to assist.
In the introduction to the 'Peel' book one finds this reference to my brother's nautical skills:
“Last but not least, I wish to thank my son Rollo for taking me cruising in his launch round Cockburn Sound in the track of the Rockingham, to reconstruct the conditions of its shipwreck; and for checking landmarks, currents and winds for me.”
In the 'Sykes' book one finds a less swashbuckling and somewhat ambiguous reference to her other son:
“I thank our son Nick for listening with patience and some interest while I talked out the problems that arose in writing, and for helping me visit and search various graveyards, with equal patience.”
Perhaps that passage contains a touch of irony. In her autobiography one finds a photograph of the son in question sitting on a tombstone under a gumtree, staring gloomily at his dog, while Alix, the indefatigable author, stands nearby, studying the landscape. The caption reads: 'Searching a country churchyard for the grave of William Sykes, with a weary son and bored poodle'.
The photograph tells one story. The words of the 'Sykes' book round off another, and those words not only bring back poignant memories of the summer afternoons we spent together but also are worth remembering:
“The more material traces of the convicts are fast vanishing. Many of the roads they made have been re surveyed and bulldozed out of new country. A few buildings whose purpose has been forgotten and whose walls are crumbling remain in country towns. Other quite handsome buildings in Perth and Fremantle whose design recalls the Old World from which their architects came, are marked for destruction by the hand of progress. Soon the convicts will have no monuments.
William Sykes has no monument. He was buried in a nameless grave in the cemetery at Toodyay, at the back of the Protestant section, outside the consecrated ground, in a part reserved for convicts, paupers and suicides, on the slope of a hill covered in summer with dry yellow grass. Two funereal cypresses and a yew shed a strong sweet scent on the hot summer wind, and William Sykes is in good company at last, for below him on the hill lie other bones that once were stout settlers, their lives given, like his, to their new country.”
These few glimpses should be sufficient to remind us that Alix led a full and energetic life. She wrote many of her books in the early hours of the morning before starting her daily round as a mother and political wife. It was a lonely life at times but that seldom showed. On social occasions she was warm, witty and vivacious. She enjoyed the company of other writers, especially the companionship of her close friend Henrietta Drake Brockman, and was a great supporter of literature through her association with the Fellowship of Australian Writers and the Society of Women Writers. When she suffered a stroke ten years ago she faced the ensuing disability with courage. Even though she had lost the use of her right hand she managed to produce one more book, Western Australia's Colonial Years.
In addition to the books I have already mentioned, her works included Remembered with Affection, Royal Engineer, Audrey Tennyson's Vice Regal Days and a history of the Guide Dog movement in Australia, To Guide and Guard. She also published a collection of short stories, Of Ladies Dead, the title of which comes from a Shakespearean sonnet which is pertinent now:
"When in the chronicle of wasted time
I see descriptions of the fairest wights
And beauty making beautiful old rime
In praise of ladies dead ..."
This is my chance to praise such a lady and I do so willingly, remembering both her beauty and her fortitude. She lived for 84 years and made the most of her experience as a gifted writer always does. Nothing was lost on her. These reflections lead me finally to the following passage from Portrait with Background about the last days of the pioneer botanist Georgiana Molloy, an ending which also reverberates today:
“February passed and the heat grew worse. Her wasted form developed bed sores, and she asked could they make her a hydrostatic bed, of which she had read in the newspapers. Captain Molloy, who had found a description of this contrivance in the Penny Magazine, tried spreading a mackintosh cloak over a trough of water, but the cloak was not big enough and let the water through. A more successful attempt was made with a new mackintosh [belonging to the Reverend Wollaston] which was bigger, and for a little while it brought some relief to the sick woman. Watching the concern for her comfort with which it was made must have caused her to reflect on Molloy's care for her, on the years of affection spent with her "excellent husband" as she had called him. A later generation may opine that it was to him she owed her present situation: she should never have had her last two children. But this thought would never have occurred to her. She would see only the years of struggle and happiness, the mingling of mutual interests, the love and respect that makes mere existence a minor detail when life has been lived to the full. With him she had created her posterity; with his help she had pursued her interest in the flowers and plants of her chosen country. In both she had fulfilled herself ...
She had not left her bedroom now for three months. A small, close room, it looked out over the garden and the river. Had its window opened towards the sea, the breeze might have relieved the heat, and at night she might have seen the strange light in the sky that had begun to cause wonder among the settlers. A long stream of light had appeared slanting up from the horizon on 5 March 1843. Some had guessed it to be a comet, though it was not fully to be seen. Wollaston described it in his journal on 8 March as of immense size, with the head just visible. It came more into sight as the nights passed and remained in the sky for about ten days, magnificently brilliant, ... causing wonder not unmixed with awe ... In ancient days it would have been regarded as a portent, and so it was to prove to Mrs Molloy. Each night fleeting onwards into space it left the world a little further behind, and so did she...
Strangely enough, it was not Captain Mangles, to whom she had written from her very heart, who set down the final epitaph on Georgiana Molloy It remained for George Hailes of Newcastle, who had had the greatest success in growing the seeds she had sent from Australia, to write to Mangles of a rare and gentle lady: "Not one in ten thousand who go out into distant lands has done what she did for the Gardens of her Native Country, and we have indeed as regards her specially to lament, that "From Life's rosy Chaplet, the Gems drop away".
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