Australian Public Intellectual [API] Network

Network Scholars

Buy Australiana: Diggers, Drovers and Vegemite

Susie Khamis
2003 marks the eightieth anniversary of Kraft’s Vegemite. For most supermarket products, this would constitute a commendable achievement, a show of impressive endurance in an otherwise unpredictable consumer climate. Octogenarian feats aside, it is fair to suggest that longevity alone does not fully explain the place of Vegemite on Australia’s cultural map. Over the last few years the national value of brands like Vegemite has surfaced with remarkable symbolic potency, with ‘value’ understood here is an index of sentimental patriotism. From Louie the Fly to the Flying ...
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Network Review of Books

Bush Heroes: a people, a place, a legend (2002)

Reviewed by David Crawford in the October 2002 issue.
Bush Heroes, a regional history of Western Australians in the First World War, was released in May 2002, the same month that the last Anzac veteran, Alec Campbell, passed away aged 103. He arrived at Gallipoli at the age of 16. The veteran was sceptical of his growing fame of recent years, as newspapers reported the deaths of the remaining Gallipoli survivors. He insisted he was just an ordinary chap. Welborn's well-researched history similarly is about the character and experiences of ordinary rank and file West Australian members of the First AIF, drawn from their enlistment attestation ... read more.

Adventures in Pop Culture (2002)

Reviewed by Dean Durber in the March 2003 issue.
The term 'Australian Literature' makes my skin grow cold. Whenever I hear the term my head fills up with painful images of dusty homesteads, dusty men on horses and dusty dust beneath the harsh summer sun. It is this kind of (outback?) out-land-ish setting that seems to get all the attention in the most prestigious reviews and awards for fiction in this country. It's the type of image you can see on the front cover of all the Australian 'best-sellers'. It connotes a world not quite relevant to the present; some ideal place of never-never. Perhaps that is the reason, then, why this recent ... read more.

Invisible Invaders: Smallpox and other diseases in Aboriginal Australia 1780-1880 (2002)

Reviewed by Lorenzo Veracini in the July 2002 issue.
This study in many ways supersedes Noel Butlin's (1983) on a similar subject. The role played by 'Old World' diseases in Europe's ascendency is a field of studies that in recent years has witnessed renewed interest. Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs and Steel (1997) and, partly, Tim Flannery's The Future Eaters (1995) are very successful examples of this trend. Yet, while Invisible Invaders sets to challenge the many 'myths' that surround smallpox and its role in the disarticulation of Aboriginal Australia (by deploying a model of analysis based on current epidemiological knowledge), the focus is on ... read more.

The Prince's New Clothes: Why Do Australians Dislike Their Politicians? (2002)

Reviewed by Tony Smith in the October 2002 issue.
Considering that media consistently present negative images of Australian politics and that some professional 'politicians' undermined their own credibility during the 1999 constitutional referenda, it is a relief to find a work that rationally explores the idea of a crisis in trust. This valuable collection begins with a dispassionate examination of the level of dislike so far as it can be gleaned from data produced by polling agencies, focus groups and social science surveys. The longest chapter, by Murray Goot, investigates and provides a historical perspective on the notion of distrust, ... read more.

Pacific Prospects: Australia, New Zealand and Future Conflicts (2002)

Reviewed by Eliza Matthews in the January 2003 issue.
'Military leaders are trained to expect the unexpected' (p i). Thus begins the Preface of Pacific Prospects: Australia, New Zealand and Future Conflicts, a very useful read for anyone from lay historians to academics who are interested in how Australia, New Zealand and their militaries fit into the broader scheme of world conflict and peacekeeping. The book is a compilation of some of the speeches made by high ranking defence diplomats from the United Kingdom (Jonathan S Day), Australia (Gary Waters, Philip Flood, Hugh White), New Zealand (Gerald Hensley) and the United States (James A. ... read more.

Life on the Ice (2002)

Reviewed by Christy Collis in the Aug/Sep 2003 issue.
Few can have missed the fact that we are in the midst of an Antarctic renaissance: Antarctic books crowd the shelves of bookshops, audiences queue to watch Antarctica on IMAX screens, and many dream of travelling to the Ice. Journalist Roff Smith's Life on the Ice is a part of this renaissance, but it differs from much recent Antarctic material in exciting and important ways. Rather than another book about Scott or Shackleton, Smith's Life on the Ice is a stimulating first-hand account of Antarctica as it is today, and as such it contributes significantly to understandings of the polar ... read more.

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