Mr John Clarke

The National Library of Australia is a large and impressive contemporary building looking out over Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra. Among the documents on display there at the moment are very early maps and atlases, Cook’s Endeavour journal, records from Bligh’s unusual voyage, the original sheet music for Waltzing Matilda and the handwritten notes passed between Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm in the loud and freezing cockpit of the Southern Cross as they flew across the Pacific in 1928.

Downstairs is a Newspapers and Microfilms reading room which holds millions of records. It’s a researcher’s dream and is full of people working on their projects. Some of the records are available only on site and among these is a copy of the New Zealand Electoral Roll for 1893. Not only do you have to be in the building to view this; you need to be on a particular computer. I was there this week and I went to this otherwise unremarkable device, sat down, opened the New Zealand Electoral Roll for 1893 and typed in the name of my great grandmother. Eliza Jane Fox. Up she came. Eliza Jane Fox. Waiapu electorate. Gisborne resident. Married. The 1893 New Zealand election was the first election anywhere in the world in which women voted. I can’t tell you how pleased I am to have a runner in this event.

I also looked up Eliza’s mother, Matilda Keys. Not there. No appearance Your Worship. Matilda was also eligible to vote in this election but perhaps chose not to. Maybe it was all too modern for her. She’d crossed the world from Enniskillen, a perilous journey which took nearly half a year, she’d lived in often very tough circumstances, had five children, buried two husbands and had survived and made her own way, but perhaps voting was a bridge too far.

For Eliza, as for many of her generation of New Zealand women, suffrage was a significant advance but was only a beginning. She was part of the effort to get a hospital for Gisborne and she later played a role in this and in other aspects of local politics. She came from immigrant stock and perhaps recognised the opportunity given to those who settle in a new land, to define themselves in a context different from that of their parents. Eliza’s parents were from the old world; she was from the new. They were formed and shaped and taught in Ireland; she grew up in New Zealand. Her parents were Roman Catholic; she was a free thinker who was married in the Knox Presbyterian church in Dunedin when she was slightly pregnant and she sometimes played the piano in a church in Gisborne which she refused point blank to join.

Eliza’s life falls within other great patterns of her time. Born in the Victorian goldfields in 1862, she arrived in Dunedin as a baby when the Otago gold rush was attracting people from all over the world and at the age of twenty she married a man from Dublin who played rugby for Otago and Poverty Bay and was the New Zealand rowing champion. Together they brought up seven children, most of whom I knew.

If I were the New Zealand government I’d publish the names of all of the women who voted in the 1893 election. And I’d hope that anyone related to them or descended from them or living in the same area today would consider doing some research. What happened to these women and to their children? It’s still only about a hundred years ago. These are the women whose sons went to the First World War. Eliza lost a nephew at Gallipoli. One of her sons was gassed in France. Her grandsons went off to the Second World War, one with the New Zealand Division in North Africa and Italy, the other a decorated pilot and the only survivor of his original squadron. Her daughters and grand-daughters included teachers, writers and organisers.

If we don’t do some work on our own history, our great grandchildren will have to pay to access it online or find it on a special computer in someone else’s library.
Most of the women who voted in 1893 would have been photographed. If we try really hard we might find images to match the names. Here is Eliza Jane Fox in later life, with her grandson.

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After the Christchurch earthquakes the Australian golfer Peter Thomson contacted the Shirley golf club and arranged to come over and visit the course. He wanted to know how he could help. He has friends there he has known for fifty years.

Peter won the New Zealand Open golf title nine times. When I was growing up, you knew it was summer when there were nectarines on the ground and pictures of Peter Thomson in the paper. He looked elegant, compact, determined and ironical. I’ve played a bit of golf with Peter over the years and have had the opportunity to study him at close hand. He is elegant, compact, determined and ironical.

After winning the British Open five times Peter retired and came home. He became an excellent writer and commentator, flirted with politics and now runs a successful international business designing golf courses.

I asked him recently if he’d always been competitive. ‘I think I’ve always been pretty competitive, yes’ he said. ‘I had brothers and we were all competitive.’ Then he thought for a moment. ‘I’ll tell you how competitive I am’ he said. ‘My oldest friend in golf is Kel Nagle. I’ve played golf all over the world with Kel. We won the Canada Cup together. We’ve been through a lot and he’s a great friend. And it has occasionally occurred to me that Kel would be a nicer bloke if he didn’t putt so well.’

When the Presidents Cup was played at Royal Melbourne in 1998, the first ball hit down the first fairway in the first match on the first morning was hit by a New Zealander. The Presidents Cup is between the USA and a team of Internationals. The captain of the International Team that year was Peter, and he’d selected two New Zealanders among his twelve players. They weren’t ranked in the top fifty in the world but Peter thought they could do some damage. He was later asked by the media why he’d sent the New Zealanders out first. ‘New Zealand is two hours ahead’ explained Peter. ‘They’re awake a bit earlier’.

And so it was that Greg Turner and Frank Nobilo went out and beat Mark O'Meara and David Duvall who were ranked 2 and 3 in the world. Greg’s brother Brian and his wife and I had followed them around the course and as Greg came off the 18th we considered the prospect of lunch. ‘No’ said Greg, who was pretty pumped at the time. ‘Let’s go out to the 8th and cheer Ernie and Vijay through. If we can get away to a start today we might get amongst it’.

So we walked out to the 8th and at about driving length on the 8th fairway, sitting on his own with his feet up on the dashboard of a buggy with ‘Presidents Cup Captain’ written on it, was Peter.
‘Hello Greg’ said Peter. ‘You and Frank played very well. I thought you two might do that. Good on you.'
'Yes. It was good’, said Greg. ‘I don’t think you’ve met my brother Brian and his wife Barbara.'
'Nice to meet you,’ said Peter.
As they said hello, Brian congratulated Peter on his excellent speech at the opening ceremony the previous evening.
‘Thanks,’ said Peter. ‘That’s very kind of you.
Brian is the senior Turner brother. He’s a fine poet, a mountain man and a wily judge of sport. He captained the New Zealand hockey team, caddied for Greg and plenty of others on the tour and he sometimes tosses up between a cup of tea and a bike ride around the South Island.
'Yes, I thought your speech was excellent’ continued Brian, warming to the task. ‘Telling the Americans they were the greatest assembly of golfing talent ever to come to this country. That was brilliant.'
'Thank you Brian’ said Peter. ‘I’ve actually just been sitting here thinking about what I might say at the closing ceremony’.
‘Have you worked it out?’ asked Brian.
‘Yes’, said Peter. ‘I thought I might thank them for coming’.

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Marjorie Jackson is about my mother's age and the people in photos of Marjorie when she was younger look like the people in my mother's photos. The photos are in black and white and a lot of them are taken at beaches and other places where young people met, looking good, possibly for mating purposes. A noticeable feature of these photos is that there's nobody obese or overweight in any of them.

In June of last year I met Marjorie at her daughter's house, where we'd arranged to discuss her remarkable sporting career for a documentary.

Marjorie was about to turn 80 and looked very fit. She was courteous, quick and lively, and her memory was excellent. In later years she was the Governor of South Australia and she served in many national and international roles, but it was in talking about the world she grew up in, that she located the values she has lived by all her life.

Her story is a famous one. She came from Lithgow and was the first Australian woman to win an Olympic gold medal on the track. When she was a schoolgirl champion, her father had got a local man, Mr Monaghan, to coach her. Mr Monaghan had been a runner and they trained in the evenings after they'd both finished work. When it got dark Mr Monaghan would park his car at the end of the track with the headlights on and sometimes, when it was foggy, Marjorie wasn't sure exactly where the car was while sprinting directly towards it.

'How I didn't break a leg or something I'll never know.'

Marjorie's father sent away for a pair of running shoes. They cost five guineas and were so precious he built her a pair of protective rubber soles into which she could sit the spikes, so she didn't damage them while walking around. A couple of times when we were talking about her childhood and these teenage years she looked away and shook her head slightly. 'We were so poor' she said. 'We really did have nothing.'

The big star of the 1948 London Olympics was the Dutch sprinter, Fanny Blankers-Koen, who won four gold medals. In 1949 Fanny came to Australia to run in some exhibition races against local opposition. Marjorie was seventeen and she travelled down to Sydney to compete in the first of the three races. To Fanny's very great surprise, Marjorie won the first race in a time that would have won her the gold medal in London.

When she arrived at the track for the second race, Marjorie was told she wasn't allowed to run. When her coach found out about this he insisted that she go back and run, so she returned to the start-line. At this point Fanny withdrew from the event. In the third and final race, Marjorie got away well and although she felt the Olympic champion on her shoulder at about the 60 metre mark, she won again without much trouble. Fanny said there'd been a pothole in the track but the journalists who went out and searched the track reported that they couldn't find one. After the race Marjorie realised she'd forgotten to remove the protective rubber soles from under her shoes. She'd been running without spikes.

Marjorie was getting pretty famous by this stage and when they heard that the Olympic Athletics track in Helsinki would be made of cinders, the people of Lithgow took up a collection and put in one lane of cinders at the local grass oval, for her to train on. When she went down to Sydney to compete in the NSW championships where she hoped to qualify for the Olympics, the car she was travelling in was hit by a truck and rolled over and Marjorie was taken to hospital. The women's sprint events at the NSW Championships were postponed that year because the other women refused to run until Marjorie was well enough to complete. Marjorie's voice went a bit soft when she was describing this, which she said was one of the greatest things that happened to her in sport.

The 1952 Australian Olympics team flew to Helsinki in a plane. The trip took a week. The first stop was in Darwin. After a couple of days team management said 'Get up and move around. Go for a walk. Change seats. Introduce yourselves to each other. You'll be sitting down for a while.' Marjorie found herself sitting next to a cyclist from South Australia. They got on very well and by the time they got to London, he'd asked her to marry him. 'I only knew his name' she smiled. 'Didn't know anything else about him. I thought, fancy waking up with this gorgeous hunk.' Team management were appalled and counseled caution but Peter Nelson and Marjorie Jackson were a match for life.

Marjorie won both the 100 metres and 200 metres in Helsinki, broke world records in both of them and set a new standard for Australian track athletes.

I'd watched both these races on YouTube and observed that she'd won them by a good margin.

'Really?' She said.

At this point our sound operator got his phone out and found the 1952 Helsinki Olympics Women's 100 metres final on YouTube. 'Here we go' he said.

An enduring memory of this wonderful day is watching a small group including Marjorie and her daughter, crowded around watching this great race on a very small screen. 'Oh yes', conceded Marjorie after the race had finished. 'I did win quite well.'

After we left, Marjorie asked her daughter if the 200 metres final would be on YouTube. It is, and they found it on the computer and watched it together. Marjorie won it by miles. She turned to her daughter Sandy and said 'Do you know why I ran so fast in Helsinki?'

'No Mum' said Sandy. 'Why did you?'

'Because I'd just met your father. And I knew he was there, in the crowd'.

When she returned to Australia, the aircraft flew low over Lithgow on its way to Sydney and when it banked Marjorie could see the people of the town lining the streets to greet her. She would not be there for many hours. The honour of making these people so proud was a considerable reward for Marjorie.

Also in Lithgow that day were her parents, of whom she spoke with admiration and gratitude. She misses them still. She wishes they'd lived to see more of the lives of their children.

Marjorie's mother never saw her run.

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In mid July last year I met the Olympic swimmer Murray Rose at the North Bondi Surf Club. Our small film crew was setting up to record an interview with him for a documentary about the importance of sport in Australia. Meeting at North Bondi was Murray's idea. He loved the place.

He remembered being a small boy, arrived from England and living near the Sydney beaches. One day he was playing on the shoreline when his small toy yacht drifted beyond his reach and began to bob further and further out to sea. A man in a rowboat saw this happening and rowed over to the little yacht, picked it up, brought it back in and handed it to the boy. 'Here you are son' he said. 'Can't you swim?' 'No' said Murray. It was at this point he decided to learn.

July 15th 2011 was a dirty day in Sydney, wild and squally. Rain drummed on the surf club windows and lanyards beat on flagpoles. When Murray arrived he showed me around the upstairs room where they keep the photographs of surf lifesavers going back 50 or 60 years. Murray knew who they all were and remembered what they'd done. Murray was one of the greatest swimmers in history but he wasn't just a pool swimmer. He loved the sea and these were his people.

I'd spoken to Murray a couple of times on the phone and we'd discussed what we might talk about in the interview. His areas of expertise ranged across the history of Australian swimming, the Olympic movement and its ideals, drugs, suits and technology, broadcasting, literature, other swimmers, coaching, psychology, the feeling of being in the water, strategy, bodysurfing, philosophy and self-reliance. His voice was soft, with a slight accent from his years in America. He saw the universal and the particular as Astaire and Rogers. His memories were well formed, his manner was relaxed and easy and his point was always clear. He knew what he thought and he wanted to get it right.

When he worked out that I came from Palmerston North, Murray recalled swimming there, at the Municipal Baths, in the late 1950s (I was there, with some other local squirts watching these tall, blond, actual Greek gods swimming in our pool). He explained how, in the relay they'd rustled up an Australian team by instructing the team manager to go and change and swim the first leg. (They won by so much it wouldn't have mattered if the manager had swum in a full dress tartan. We were so impressed we ate a lot of ice-cream).

Murray's favourite event was the 400 metres freestyle, which he won in Melbourne and again in Rome. It was tough and required sprinting speed but was long enough to be a tactical race, which he liked. His early hero was John Marshall, who broke 28 world records and was killed in a car accident in his 20s. Murray said he tried to swim like John Marshall until one day his coach asked him what he was doing. 'I'm swimming like John Marshall' said Murray. 'No you're not' said his coach. 'You'll never swim like John Marshall because he's unique. But so are you and if you swim your own stroke, one day you'll swim faster than John Marshall.' Be yourself. Know yourself.

Murray's father had grown up with rheumatic fever and had to be careful with his health. He found a vegetarian diet at one stage and started eating cereal and vegetables. Murray went along with this and quickly developed a reputation for having a very weird diet, which in some versions of the story consisted largely of kelp. By this stage Murray was a competitive swimmer and he let the story circulate because it helped other swimmers create a reason he might beat them.

Swimming has changed a lot. In 1956 there were no goggles and no tumble turns. Murray and Dawn Fraser shared the distinction of having their Olympic careers cut short by buffoons in admin. They both kept swimming of course and at the age of about 40, Murray started doing tumble turns and his times started coming down. He was swimming faster than he had in Rome. At 72 he swam the Hellespont and he wanted to do it again. When we met, he'd been reading Byron, a previous titleholder in the event. Murray still swam most days, often in the sea, at Bondi.

One of the significant examples of the value of the Olympic movement at its best is the story of Murray and the Japanese swimmer Tsuyoshi Yamanaka.
Here is Murray:

‘When I was growing up, when I was three or four, I was part of a propaganda campaign for the
Australian war effort. And the headline was something like 'Will the Japs Come Here With Their Big
Ships, Daddy?’ And it was a fairly intense campaign. Fast forward a few years and I’m swimming at the Olympic Games and my main rival and competitor is Tsuyoshi Yamanaka and we happened to
meet each other in every heat and every final. And by the time we got to the last swim we’d developed a pretty healthy respect and friendship. The last individual event at the Olympics in 1956 was the 1500. And then after we’d finished we embraced across the lane line and a photograph of that moment was taken and was picked up by newspapers all over the world. For one main reason. The date was the 7th December 1956; the 15th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour. So it became symbolic of two kids who’d grown up on opposite sides of the war, had come together in the friendship of the Olympic arena.

Here are two more extracts from near the end of our conversation:

‘I’m still learning about swimming technique. Every time I go in the water I’m conscious of my
technique and I’m looking at new ways of relating to the water, and learning, as the elite
swimmers and elite coaches are today. They are still learning. We’re not done with this. You never
become a master, until you’re able to go out there on Bondi and watch and be a dolphin, which
we do sometimes.’

‘We had an experience one day last year; there was a fairly big surf coming in and the sun was
shining, the wind was coming off shore and we were looking for waves. And then a rogue set
came up from the back, so we swam pretty hard to make sure we got over it. And half way up the
face of the first wave I knew that I was going to make it. So I just relaxed and streamlined, and the
power of the wave just shot me almost up to my ankles out of the water because it was a fairly
big wave. And the spray was being blown by the wind and it caught the sun and I was literally
flying in a rainbow.’

Murray Rose. 1939-2012.

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