Admiralty House on republican land

One of the many strands of irony that lace through the republican debate in Australia involves Admiralty House, the official Sydney residence of the Governor-General of Australia, being built on land that was once owned by a prominent republican convict, Thomas Muir. Admiralty House is located in Kirribilli, on the northern foreshore of Sydney Harbour adjacent to Kirribilli House, which is the Sydney residence of the Prime Minister. The local aboriginal tribe, 'Cammeraygal' knew the area as a fertile fishing ground, and called it "Kiarabilli", (good fishing spot), while the tribal name was later adapted for the suburb of Cammeray.

The story of Admiralty House and of its site at Kirribilli begins in the 18th century with Thomas Muir, the Scottish constitutional reformer and one of the five celebrated “Scottish Martyrs".

Republicanism was an ongoing issue during the 1790s as the British state was suffering from both the aftermath of the American Revolution and the alarming proximity of the French Revolution. The protests and demands that had been raised in France before and during the Revolution were paralleled in England, Ireland and Scotland. The various outspoken English reform societies had their equivalent in Scotland in groups calling themselves the “Friends of the People” and in Ireland in branches of the “United Irishmen”. Leaders of all groups were drawn from middle-class professionals and artisans.

In December 1792, the first Convention of the Scottish “Friends of the People” was held in Edinburgh. The Convention protested against longstanding abuses of political power. A vigorous campaign of public speeches and distributions of pamphlets and tracts had resulted in the formation of branches of the “Friends of the People” in practically every Scottish town, although some branches were weak. There was a claimed membership of tens of thousands when delegates, joined by representatives from English societies, gathered in Edinburgh. The Convention president was Thomas Muir a twenty-seven year old lawyer and the secretary was William Skirving, a university-educated expert on agriculture. They called for equal representation of the people in parliament and a shorter duration of parliament. The Convention leaders were political reformers not revolutionaries who wanted to repair not replace the British political system. They were middle-class thinking reformers who were challenging people’s ideas, not advocating physical action. Even so, Muir and a number of his colleagues were charged with sedition. On reflecting in the 1850s on the trials of the “Scottish Martyrs”, Lord Cockburn defined sedition as,

uttering, writing or publishing material which would lead to disorder in the realm and possibly the overthrow of the government. The emphasis of allegations against each martyr would be, therefore, not only on what he had done or said, but the intention of his words and actions.

In the trials of the “Scottish Martyrs” the juries were selected to ensure conviction. In Britain, the middle-class supporters of reform societies renounced violence and launched a petitioning campaign to support their proposals for reform in the British parliament.

The first of the “Scottish Martyr” trials occurred at the moment when the British government felt besieged from all sides by republican action. This charge of sedition was certainly a reaction to the events in France. The “Reign of Terror” was at its height in revolutionary France. When Muir stood trial in 1793, the French King had just been executed, Thomas Paine had just released his revolutionary republican tract in America, The Rights of Man (1792), and Britain had declared war on republican France. The British government could not allow republican dissent, real or perceived, to occur on their own island without swift and firm action. In his defence Muir stated,

Constitutions of government are the work of men; that constitution is the most perfect which can be easily amended … There are constitutions, which, step by step, without convulsion and without blood, have advanced to superior degrees of perfection; which by their own internal energy, have effected their own reformation, and avoided the calamities of a revolution … How grateful we should be … that our constitution possesses in itself the power of amendment, that without a revolution it can rectify its abuses; and that, silently and without disorder, it can advance towards the chastened liberty, which constitutes human felicity.

Muir’s claim that there was no fixed British constitution was to be the basis of constitutional republican thinking in nineteenth-century colonial Australia. The British parliamentarian Charles Fox had been talking of the idea of a “disguised republic” since the end of the eighteenth century. The opinion of the Scottish judges was that it was not possible for the British constitution to evolve as it was fixed and the best in the world. Thus, constitutional reform was not possible.

Parliamentary representation in the late eighteenth century was based on landed interest. It was considered only those people who owned land had a stake, or interest in the country. Those who did not possess land were considered transient and therefore did not have a right to participate in the decision-making of the country. Although Muir had stated the objectives of the “Friends of the People” had been simply parliamentary reform he was sentenced to seven years and transportation to New South Wales. The example of the “Scottish Martyrs” was paralleled in the colonies with the labelling of those colonists who desired parliamentary reform as republicans.

The “Scottish Martyrs” were linked to republicanism through their sympathies with the French system, their imitations of French forms in the Conventions, and Gerrald’s avowed admiration of the American republic. However, they all denied in court they were republicans. They did not want to overthrow the monarchy but rather they wanted to reform a corrupt system that did not represent the people. Even so, they were transported under a charge of sedition as incipient republicans.

Before 1795, there had been little reason for concern about republican activity in New South Wales, however, with the arrival of HMS Surprize in 1795 a change occurred within the political tenor of the colony. Onboard the HMS Surprize were the “Scottish Martyrs”, middle-class Scottish and English dissenters with a reform agenda. The “Scottish Martyrs” had an influence over a number of the young men Governor Hunter had brought to the colony as his assistants. Also onboard HMS Surprize was John Boston, who had been accused during the voyage of toasting, “damnation to the King, his family, and all crowned heads”, and who had described himself as “an avowed Jacobin”. Boston was to continue his outspoken Jacobinism in the colony.

The five “Scottish Martyrs” were officially perceived as Jacobins, another word for republicans. Jacobins was a term used for those sympathetic to the French revolution and who agitated for reform. Fifty years later the fear of Jacobin republicanism pervaded the New South Wales colony. In 1842, the Sydney Morning Herald challenged the colonists of New South Wales to choose between, “the rights of the constitution or the rights of man? Monarchy, or republicanism? The doctrines of Magna Carta, or the doctrines of Tom Paine?” The Sydney Morning Herald was pleased to announce that the majority of the colonists were not radical republicans, “and that while you prize beyond life your own rights as British commoners, you pay cheerful homage to the throne of your Sovereign.” The article continued with a definition of “Loyalists and Jacobins”. British loyalists asserted, “the graduated rights of Kings, Lords, and Commons … [and were] firmly attached to the British constitution as a limited monarchy.” Jacobins were described as,

Levellers … whose undisguised principles strike at the very root of monarchical government … a compound of English and Scotch radicals and Irish repealers – democrats of the deepest dye – chartists, agrarians, anarchists, mobcrats.

Certainly they were referring to the “Scottish Martyrs” in this list. Yet the “Scottish Martyrs” were all well-educated and highly respected men.

When Thomas Muir was sentenced to transportation for sedition as a political prisoner he was treated as an exile rather than a convict. In 1794 he was granted a farm “across the water” from his cottage on Sydney Cove beside the Tank Stream. This farm he named “Hunter’s Hill” after his father’s home in Scotland; it included all of Kirribilli. However, as there was little restriction placed on his movements he escaped with ease from the colony in 1796 aboard an American brig, never to return.

In 1800 the property was granted to a Robert Ryan for services in the Marines and in the New South Wales Corps. A year later it passed into the hands of merchant Robert Campbell who built Australia's first shipbuilding yards in 1807, where the Royal Sydney Yacht Squadron is located. The property was used for grazing by Campbell's friend James Milson, after whom 'Milson's Point', the next point west from Kirribilli is named. In 1842, five acre of the site was leased to Gibbes to build a home on the site.

The original house was a private dwelling, built in 1843, by Colonel John George Nathaniel Gibbes, Collector of Customs for New South Wales and a portrait of him from 1808, hangs in the house. It later served as the residence for the Commander in Chief of the Royal Navy's Australian Squadron from which the name Admiralty House was introduced. Between 1842 and 1843, a single-storey house with wide verandahs which Gibbes designed and named "Wotonga" was constructed. Local stone and timber was used and Gibbes engaged James Hume, a well known builder to supervise the construction of the building and stables. Completed, the house featured a double facade to maximise the building's magnificent, sweeping views across Sydney Harbour and monitor shipping traffic in and out of Darling Harbour and Circular Quay, where the Customs House was. Robert Campbell died in 1849 and the executors sold the house and five acres of land, to Gibbes for about £400. On 27 December 1851, Gibbes sold the property to James Travers, a merchant of Macquarie Place, for £1,533. In 1854 a little over an acre of the land was sold to Adolph Feez and Kirribilli House was built next door. This now serves as the official Sydney residence of the Australian Prime Minister.

Admiralty House may be a monarchical structure but it is built on once republican land. Although Thomas Muir absconded from his political prison it would be interesting to consider whether the transfer of ownership of the land was valid.

Australia’s republican sail

Joern Utzon, the Danish architect of the Sydney Opera House was asked in 1998 to comment on the idea of the world-heritage nomination of the Sydney Opera House.

“Please listen to me, Canberra. They should accept that an Australian building will be cared for, representing a time which is at the end of colony Australia and the beginning of republic Australia. The spirit of the building is independent of anything from anywhere. It could be the best example of what you’re going to do, because you’re to do that, to be a republic – with all respect for the royals! So I think these ideas fit beautifully together. Then you can hear beautiful music all the time in the future from a clean beautifully kept building.”

Utzon’s masterwork, one of the greatest buildings of the twentieth century, was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1973. However, in the eyes of its creator, it was the very essence of the spirit of republican Australia, resounding with the spirit of place, and of the very country in which we live.

In November 2008, Utzon died in Copenhagen at the age of 90. During the NSW State Memorial Service in March 2009, John Bell, of The Bell Shakespeare Company, read a tribute to Utzon called An Angel at Bennelong Point written for the occasion by David Malouf.

If, as humans, we had to name our supreme achievement in the realm of making, it would surely be that piecemeal work of hands and generations, the city.

Extraordinary, then, how often in such a collaborative enterprise, such a random collision of expediency and provisional hit-and-miss, of utilitarian dullness and commercialism and occasional caprice, a single building, the product of one man's vision, has made all the difference, providing a city almost overnight with what it lacked, a defining centre, or adding to an existing landmark a late-born twin and rival to create a new line of force.

Think of the Taj Mahal or the Golden Gate Bridge. Think of Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower.

If such a building catches the world's eye and finds a place there it becomes an icon, or what Wallace Stevens, speaking of poetry, called a "necessary angel": a presence that speaks powerfully to the senses but whose real message is for the spirit.

Set such a building down in the muddle of a great city and the whole field composes itself anew. The city is drawn in around it, as if it had been waiting for just this miraculous object to appear and claim its place.

That, of course, is how it was when this building, Joern Utzon's Opera House, first arrived at Bennelong Point.

And those of us who lived through the 15 years of its construction - the piling up over weeks and months in all weather of so many tonnes of structural material, the assembling of so many hands, the precise calculations and engineering and technical know-how, the bringing in of excavators, derricks, cranes, lifts, girders to a site that swarmed like the pyramids, all mess and mud piles and unfinished arcs and unseemly arguments - will recall, when all the heavy work was done and those millions of tonnes had found their proper place and tension, and the finished object was cleaned down and unwrapped, what a work of playful lightness it turned out to be, a shining thing from another order of reality that had miraculously stepped clear of the mind that had conceived it, shouldered off its crust, and was actually there, spreading its wings on a new shore

But a city is a living organism, an enterprise not simply of towerblocks and thoroughfares and squares, but of daily comings and goings, of human needs to be catered for and interests served. Those too are transformed by whatever new thing is set in their midst.

When Utzon's necessary angel alighted at Bennelong Point, the whole inner city shifted its ground. Circular Quay, The Rocks, Woolloomooloo and Walsh Bay took on a new existence. Macquarie Street found a goal, became what it was always meant to be, a grand boulevard running from Hyde Park to the water. And the lightness, the exuberant fantasy the building embodies and so powerfully spoke up for, provided a new vision of what a water city - and specifically this city, all light and vertical space and air - might aspire to be: a playground of the spirit, a model of how the useful and necessary may also, within the rules, become pure play.

Like all true works of art, Utzon's great house and explosive sculptural ensemble was a gift. Our role as the receivers of it is to honour the gift with our affectionate gratitude, and be taking it into our lives and using it as it was designed to be used, and passing it on.

The sun had just slipped over the horizon to kiss the Opera House sails when the people of Sydney gave thanks to Joern Utzon, who had given them the sail. A sail created to catch the republican wind.

Republican of the Year

Located at the foreshores of Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra is the Australian of the Year Walk. The Australian of the Year honours those Australians who have been recognised for outstanding contribution to our community through the Australian of the Year Awards. It recognises all Australian of the Year, Senior Australian of the Year, Young Australian of the Year and Australia's Local Hero award recipients since the inception of the Awards in 1960.

The Australian of the Year Walk comprises a series of plinths, seating and lighting along the shores of the lake by Commonwealth Bridge. Incorporated into the Australian of the Year Walk design are five metal strips set flush into the ground, forming the five stave lines to a music score, along with bollards to represent the notes of Advance Australia Fair. Each bollard is topped with a plaque representing a year in history and that year's Australians of the Year. The walk was opened on the 25th of January 2006.

Historian and author Mark McKenna describes the walk in 'The Nation Reviewed' - The Monthly, March 2008, No 32.

"On the southern shore of Lake Burley Griffin, along the promenade directly in front of the National Library, a series of stone plaques, erected in 2006, commemorates every Australian of the Year since the award's inception in 1960. Manning Clark and Alan Bond are there, as are Patrick White, John Farnham and Paul Hogan. Taken together, this odd precession of sporting champions, writers, artists, scientists, entrepreneurs, military heroes and adventurers offers some kind of insight into the sort of people we have become and the forms of human achievement we admire.

The plaques stretch from the southern side of Commonwealth Avenue Bridge, almost to the front of the National Portrait Gallery. Standing in front of the first, dedicated to Sir Frank McFarlane Burnet, and looking east along the lakefront, the remaining plaques take on a stark funereal quality, appearing like the tombstones of fallen soldiers. They are also a stunning example of the art of memorialisation. While each plaque memoralises an individual, en masse these individual identities are subsumed by a much greater presence: national pride. In some ways they remind me of Italian cemeteries, where the names of the Catholic dead are accompanied by photographs of the deceased - passport style headshots blanched pale and almost indistinguishable by the sun - forming a sea of faded faces staring back from times past, somehow making our attempt to make the significance of each human life all the more futile and all the more poignant.

When I first saw the plaques, last December, I counted at least another 40 standing beyond the one that bears the name and photograph of the 2007 Australian of the Year, Professor Tim Flannery. These blank plaques - memorials to the future - stand as if waiting for the years to pass before they can be filled in and become whole. Yet strangely they seem more intriguing than the plaques that precede them. It is possible to imagine the line of blank plaques stretching one endlessly, and their emptiness begs the question: What sort of nation will Australia become over the next few decades?"

The question is which of these blank plaques will inscribe Australia's first ‘Republican of the Year’.

Book Review: G Barns & A Krawec-Wheaton (2006), An Australian Republic

Almost ten years ago, 55 per cent of Australians rejected the opportunity to rid Australia of the British monarchy and allow our national Parliament to select an Australian head of state. In Greg Barns and Anna Krawec-Wheatons book An Australian Republic they state they believe republican fortunes could change rapidly. They examine how the opportunity can be grasped, how the conditions necessary for achieving consensus can be constructed and how the political will to tackle the complex issues of constitutional change can be generated.

Both have excellent credentials in this field: Greg Barns was national chairman of the Australian Republican Movement (ARM) from 2000 to 2002 and national campaign director for the 1999 referendum campaign YES case, while Krawec-Wheaton is a recent PhD graduate with a thesis focusing on Australia's republican movement.

In March 2006, John Howard acknowledged there was no guarantees about the English monarchy's future in Australia after Queen Elizabeth II dies or abdicates. In An Australian Republic Barns and Krawec-Wheaton argue that in 2006 the Australian public was broadly republican in sentiment and that forces within both major political parties were sympathetic. For Australia to move to a republic they argue there needs to be widespread receptiveness and enthusiasm for the issue: in other words a preparedness and readiness for change by the public. Polls conducted continue to show that Australians are ready for a republic.

But for an Australian republic to be delivered, more is required. Those underlying sentiments need to be given voice. They need to be captured by a social-movement organisation, as was the case in the 1990s with the establishment of the ARM. However, the central factor needed for the republican cause is agreement between the decision makers. There needs to be agreement upon what form a republic will take. As Barns and Krawec-Wheaton point out, the real problem is disunity inside the republican camp. This book is a blueprint towards building a consensus among the major players and advancing the republican cause in twenty-first century Australia. Rather than focus on the variety of possible models that a future republic might take, this book examines how the opportunity might be grasped.

The challenge ahead is how do we get to an Australian republic? Barns and Krawec-Wheaton have made some ground in showing us the way. The first step is unity between republican protagonists and compromise on an agreed model.

Can’t afford a carriage …

The British Royal family is universally acknowledged as being amongst the world’s richest people. Yet the Australian Government paid $1.8 million for the 2006 Royal visit for the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne and $250,000 for a royal coach glorifying Britain, but not Australia.

The royal coach has been described as a stunningly wrought piece of propaganda. Stories of conquest and the divine right of kings are etched on its panels in the powerful language of heraldry. Apparently it contains more gold than any carriage built since 1762 and the doorhandles are made of New Zealand gold encrusted with sapphires and diamonds. The leopards that decorated the standard of Richard the Lionheart occupy one compartment, others house the flowers of Britain: England’s Tudor Rose, the Irish Shamrock, the Welsh Leek and the Scottish Thistle. There is no Wattle present, though, nor any reference to Australia in any part of the vehicle.

The following article from ARMLET, February 2007 exposes the true cost of subsidizing the British Royal family to the Australian taxpayer.

A blow-out in the cost of the Royal Visit led to a departmental budgetary shortfall of $1.4 million, Prime Minister and Cabinet Department Assistant Secretary, Frank Leverett, told the Senate Estimates Committee.

“Royal visits are always a high expenditure item”, said Mr Leverett.

“1.4 million was the shortfall in the program and that was the shortfall of the entire administrative funding for the Department”, he said.

The Government also paid $250,000 to a Sydney man to help him build a carriage said to be an 80th birthday gift for Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen was 80 on 3 June 2006, but the carriage was still in Sydney”.

The builder, avowed monarchist Jim Frecklington, constructed a similar coach for the Bicentennial, which the Government also funded. This time, funding was obtained after he sent a letter to the Prime Minister in March 2006. The Government refused to release this letter.

Questions were also raised about due diligence in relation to the disbursement of funds: no-one from the Government had met with Mr Frecklington, sighted the coach nor confirmed if the coach had other sponsors.

“So, if you had sent a letter saying that I was making a coach for Her Majesty the Queen, I could have scored $250,000 too. I jest, but surely there is some due diligence on this?” enquired Senator John Faulkner at the Estimates hearings.

Faulkner: “Well, what was it?”

Leverett: “There was a very detailed glossy brochure produced by Mr Frecklington”.

As at 29 May 2009 the Royal coach had been completed but is still waiting on the Queen's approval before it can leave Australia to go to London. Why on earth did the Australian taxpayer’s fund this?

Not even a passing reference.

Surely Australia can come up with better reasons for a winter long-weekend than the birthday of a foreigner on a day that is not even her real birthday. Nick Pippos's reflection on his experience this year on the Queen's Birthday public holiday said it best:

We took the clan yesterday to the Redcliffe Peninsula on what was a glorious day. Children were on scooters. A group sat on pink canvas chairs in pink T-shirts under a pink tarpaulin eating cakes. Adults, who shouldn’t have, were inline skating. We all ate ice creams. At Margate beach, the markets were humming along.

The strangest thing was what I didn’t notice. No Aussie flags were flying. There was no incidental chatter about Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth; not toasts; no images.
On a magnificent sunny historical Queensland sesquicentennial long weekend, a passing reference surely was in order. Nothing.

Can we all stop kidding ourselves? Let’s keep the holiday. Let’s change the occasion. Long live the long weekend.

Courier Mail, Tuesday, 9 June 2009

You're job is safe, ma'am. Your sons, however ...

In two days time it will be the Queen’s Birthday public holiday in Queensland. Most 84 years olds are long retired, but not that trouper the Queen. But the Queen displays similarly robust health to her mother and there's no sign of her standing down.

In 2006 rehearsals began for the first time after midnight in the heart of London for the Queen's funeral. As happened for her mother when she also reached about 80, a mock funeral march has been staged. They'll do it every year. In the case of the Queen Mother, they'd had lots of practice by the time she died at 101.

During the Queen’s last trip to Australia during the 2006 Melbourne Commonwealth Games, Australia's then Prime Minister John Howard stated "I don't believe Australia will become a republic while the Queen is on the throne. Beyond that, I don't know". This was code that this may be her last visit.

But please let's not have any more visits from Prince Charles. His 2005 visit was lacking in crowd-pulling power and plain dull.

The common view is when the Queen dies or steps down and Prince Charles ascends the throne there will be a trigger for another push within Australia for a republic. This will change things because there is a reservoir of goodwill for the Queen which there isn't for Prince Charles. However, it would be much better and more dignified to see the debate happen well before such an event.