The Resident Judge of Port Phillip

Stuff the British stole (ABC) Shots Fired I heard this program advertised some time ago on the radio, but I could never catch the title! However, I finally tracked it down and listened to this episode on Invasion/Australia Day. I can remember feeling angry that the Gweagal shield was being returned to the British Museum after being on exhibition in Canberra as part of the Encounters exhibition at the NMA, where it was identified as being ‘collected’ at Botany Bay. But now that the custodianship of the shield by the British Museum is being challenged, it seems that it was probably not the shield dropped as part of the first contact at Botany Bay in 1770 after all. It raises questions about the relative worth of an artefact, the stories attached to it, and the politics of retaining or repatriating it.

The Daily (NYT) One of the first things that Joe Biden did on becoming president was tear up the Keystone Oil Pipeline. Good thing, too. This article from February 2018 has been read as a podcast and it goes through the history of American climate change activism, starting with Bill McKibben and 350.org, and focussing on five activists called The Valve Turners who deliberately trespassed while shutting off pipelines to ensure that they would front a court so that they could argue the necessity to act against climate change. Middle aged, upper middle class, educated Quakers and Unitarians… I’m proud to hear this, and I doff my cap to their bravery.

My Anne Lister-fest I finished watching Gentleman Jack (starring Suranne Jones) last night and I was curious to know more about Anne Lister and how accurate the Sally Wainwright-directed depiction was. First I listened to the History Extra Podcast Anne Lister, the Real ‘Gentleman Jack’ which featured Anne’s most recent biographer Angela Steidele. I think that her biography, Gentleman Jack: A biography of Anne Lister, Regency Landowner, Seducer and Secret Diarist was originally written in German and translated by Kate Derbyshire. I wasn’t quite convinced by Steidele’s unfamiliarity with English gentlewomen’s diaries which (from the limited experience I have with them) are almost always boring, and there seemed a lot of emphasis on the ‘coded’ part. This same Kate Derbyshire the translator was a guest on The Dead Ladies Show Episode #12 Anne Lister where I was disconcerted by the tittering and male guffawing in the audience, something that the presenter seemed to be playing up to. I noticed that in the TV series, credit was given to Jill Liddington, so I sought her out. I found a series of videos on ALBW – Anne Lister Birthday Week- which was planned for 2020 before COVID intervened. They have bravely rescheduled it for April- then, July 2021- I am not hopeful. Jill Liddington seemed more a historian’s historian, who gave equal weight to the context of diary-writing and the English class system. Jane Liddington: The Inspiration of History is a one-hour interview with Pat Esgate (American organizers of the ALBW).

The Guardian. I have a friend from Brazil, and since I’ve been learning Spanish I am more interested in Latin American/South American affairs. I saw the appalling news about the shortage of oxygen in Brazil, so I was interested in Why Brazilians are taking the Covid crisis into their own hands. The reporter in this podcast, Tom Phillips, thinks that the tide has turned on Bolsonaro because of his handling of Covid. I’m not so sure.

Latin American History Podcast Continuing on with The Conquest of Mexico- Part 4, the podcaster Max Serjeant pulls a bit of swiftie here. He starts off telling the story of a European explorer meeting with an indigenous culture, going off, returning, getting killed and that’s the end of the story. This explorer is not Cortez of course, (I’ll let you guess or find out who it is) but he raises some interesting questions about how the appearance of a ‘stranger’ fits into pre-existing cosmology. Cortez meets envoys from the Aztecs, and is rebuffed in his efforts to meet with Montezuma, who rather foolishly keeps sending him gifts which just happen to include gold – thereby highlighting the desirability of Aztec wealth. Cortez teams up with the Totonacs, who had been defeated by the Aztecs in the old “enemy of my enemy” scenario.

Heather Cox Richardson. Returning to her Thursday series on Reconstruction in America, on 31 December she looked at two groups who were excluded by the 14th Amendment: the indigenous American tribes and women. For some reason, I always avoided doing American history and I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t realize that the ‘Indian’ Wars took place during (as well as before and after) the Civil War. It was interesting to juxtapose these wars, treaties and land swaps with what was happening in Australia with our indigenous people. However, I disagree with her definition of ‘suffragist’ vs ‘suffragette’ (she sees it as a US vs UK thing) rather than a difference in strategy.

Heather Cox Richardson. I’m listening to her history of Reconstruction. Her talk on December 18 2020 picks up on Congressional Reconstruction. After Lincoln was assassinated, there was a long hiatus until Congress reconvened, and in that time President Johnson (a Southern democrat) tried to tie everything up so that the South could come back to Congress as if nothing that happened. And, they pretty much got away with it.

Nothing on TV is Robyn Annear’s homegrown podcast drawing on the newspaper resources of Trove. In the episode The Suburban Ghost she regales us with reports from all over Melbourne of a ghost, sometimes described as ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ who would jump out of bushes, pull back his cape to reveal his phosphorescent chest, thereby terrifying a friend-of-a-friend who passed on the story (as all good urban legends do). The reference to ‘Spring-Heeled Jack’ sends Robyn back to the British newspapers and an earlier history of such ghostly appearances.

The Daily (NY Times) I was impressed with the New York Times podcast about the riot at the Capitol, and so I’ve added it to my favourites. What Kind of Message Is That? is a rather depressing podcast about how Trump-supporting Republicans think about the riot. Biden might be President but there are millions of these people believing genuinely that the election was stolen, citing dogs or dead people who voted (whose existence has never been proven). I do ask myself though: if I were in a country where an election was stolen (and heaven knows there are enough of them), what would I do? Hopefully, though, I’d be acting on evidence instead of hearsay.

ABC Fictions. I heard about this particular episode before Christmas, but I hadn’t got round to listening to it. Paul Daley and Van Badham, who often write for the Guardian Australia pick up on Paul Kelly’s song How To Make Gravy and write a short story from the point of view of one of the characters in the song. Paul Daley’s story is told from the point of view of Dan, and Van’s story is from the angry sister Mary. Have a listen to the song, then to the podcast How to Make Gravy: a tribute to the Australian classic

The Documentary (BBC). I am opposed to capital punishment. Full stop. I was appalled by Trump’s orgy of executions carried out in the last weeks of his tenure. Lisa Montgomery: The road to execution tells the story of the woman who was one of those executed prisoners, the first woman executed in seventy years. She committed a hideous crime – almost beyond words – but no one (including me) wanted her set free. What a terrible life. What a terrible outcome.

The Latin American History Podcast. The Conquest of Mexico Episode 3 starts with a consideration of the various sources for our knowledge of the conquest. Most, but not all, Spanish sources generally portray the conquest rather benignly (although one Spanish source was so graphic in its depictions of violence that it was banned). The conquistadors themselves had their own agendas. Then there are the Aztec codices, drawn by Aztec men who were there (albeit somewhat after the conquest) – what an amazing resource. He then goes on to describe Cortez’ first battles with the Maya, drawing a distinction between a leader and a commander, and the procurement of Malinche who was to play such an important and controversial role.

The Daily (New York Times) What does it mean to be the last two females of a species? A Mother and Daughter at the End is about Najin and Fatu, the last two remaining Northern White Rhinos. (Interestingly, the Guardian also had a different article about them recently too). Born in a European zoo and with numbers falling precipitously, they were sent back to Kenya in the hope that going ‘home’ might spur procreation, even though Kenya did not have Northern White Rhinos. They needed to be taught rhino behaviour by a southern white rhino. The only hope for survival of the species is through assisted reproduction.

The Documentary (BBC World). The episode The Digital Human: Sacred looks at objects that are imbued with special meaning because of the memories they hold. Some end up in museums, some are cherished personally: a camera, a mobile phone.

Latin American History Podcasts Back to The Conquest of Mexico, Episode 2. The Aztec were already on edge before Cortez even set foot on land, with a number of strange happenings and premonitions presaging momentous events. Imagine Cortez’ surprise when what he should stumble upon but Spanish-speaking shipwreck victims who had been in Mexico for years, who acted as very handy intermediaries.

Heather Cox Richardson. With all that’s happening in America at the moment, I’m hooked again on her current affairs chats. You can find them on her Facebook page. The Tuesday videos are her responses to current questions, and at the moment all the questions are about what is happening in America today.

History West Midlands. I enjoy these history podcasts from the Midlands of England (Birmingham etc.) which mainly focus on industrial-revolution era social history, with a mattering of Roman and English Civil War history. Women Chainmakers: the ‘White Slaves’ of England looks at the system of outwork in the manufacture of chains by women working in small forges attached to their houses in the town of Cradley Heath. In 1910 they achieved the breakthrough wage of two and a half shillings an hour, but had to strike against their employers to actually receive it as the bosses tried to finagle their way out of paying. There’s a fascinating page showing different types of sweated domestic labour here. It was part of a 1906 public exhibition to raise awareness of the conditions under which small items of manufacture were made.

Radiolab. I actually heard this being played on Earshot during their summer season of repeats. More Perfect: Sex Appeal is about the way that Ruth Bader Ginsberg used a court-case of discrimination against men to establish the principle that the 14th amendment could apply to gender as well as to race. RBG’s case went down in history, but immediately prior to that case in court that day was another case (Craig v Borum) based on drinking laws and a Honk and Holler outlet. This is the story of that largely-forgotten and rather fumbled case.

Full Story (Guardian Australia) I was surprised to learn that ethnographers and linguists were still studying the Noongar people of south-western Australia until the 1930s. In Kim Scott on reconnecting to Noongar identity through story, author Kim Scott talks about a project linking government and European historical records, with Noongah stories of country. These Noongah stories are based on interviews with the children and grandchildren of the informants to ethnographers, and family stories handed on through generations. It is linked to Scott’s essay that he wrote in the Guardian in August 2020 as part of the Fire, Flood and Plague anthology, edited by Sophie Cunningham

The History Listen (ABC) A couple of re-runs for the summer season. Oh for a properly-funded public television and radio system that didn’t have to shut down from November to February every year and subsist on re-runs. Two Spoons- the general who plotted to kill Hitler is about a man who delves into his family history to find out the truth about a long-lost relative, Georg Von Sodenstern, who was reputed to have tried to kill Hitler (the ultimate what-if history). Imagining a family castle and a shining hero, he finds that the story is more complex than goodies/baddies. Actually, I found this podcast a bit hard to follow. I don’t know whether I was distracted, or whether it was so many unfamiliar names, but I found that I had to listen to it twice.

Heavenly and demonic: the story of the saxophone is, as the title suggests, the history of the relatively-recently invented saxophone (invented in about 1840) , which had a hard time being accepted as a ‘serious’ instrument. During the early 20th century, it was picked up by jazz musicians, but was still rejected as ‘devil music’ by churches. Who would have thought that Lisa Simpson would be the saviour of the saxophone by attracting young girls to play the sax.

Heather Cox Richardson I woke up on 7 January to hear that mobs had stormed Congress after attending a Trump rally nearby. Driving down to the beach, I listened to Heather Cox Richardson who was live at the time, obviously shell-shocked by what had happened. She had predicted violence in her podcast of January 5, but listening to her live on January 7, you could just hear the shock in her voice at what she had seen. She suggested that Trump would resign within a couple of days- I wonder if that will happen.

Big Ideas I had just finished reading Jenny Hockings The Palace Letters (review coming soon), so I listened to her Dymphna Clark Lecture, delivered in November 2020 and broadcast on 3 December 2020. In her lecture “For the Sake of the Monarchy: How the Palace Letters have recast the history of the dismissal of the Whitlam government” she goes through much the same information as in the book.

Next up on the phone came Francis Fukuyama, not particularly one of my favourite historians since his gloating about the supremacy of liberal democracy a few years back. In Will a Biden presidency revitalize America at home and abroad , Fukuyama distances himself from Trump but there was nothing here that I hadn’t heard before. A bit ho-hum

Sydney Institute I can hardly believe that I listened to this podcast from the Sydney Institute, but I did. Having listened to Jenny Hocking’s talk on the Palace letters, I thought I’d get the perspective from Paul Kelly and Troy Bramston, both from The Australian, a paper which I do not read. The Truth of the Palace Letters (the name of their book) agrees more with Hocking’s book than I thought it would, although they exonerate the Palace from any involvement at all, (which I don’t agree with- I believe that there was tacit encouragement to use the reserve powers -albeit in his own right- on the part of Sir Martin Charteris, and beyond some early advice, a deliberate avoidance of the instruction to tell the Prime Minister). Gerard Henderson moderated the discussion and reminded me why I don’t listen to Sydney Institute podcasts.