🎭Long, long before megaplex cinemas, massive outdoor theme parks and home entertainment centres, Australians were discovering new outlets of activity to occupy their precious and increasing if hard-earned leisure time. In the 19th century one outlet for Sydneysiders which filled the bill was the suburban pleasure ground.
Europe: The Medieval fair
The origins of pleasure grounds in Australia can be traced back ultimately to British and European antecedents such as the Medieval countryside fairs, whose purpose was primarily trade and commerce but whose rituals included an important element of “merry-making” [www.medieval-life-and-times.info/]. In England these would be occasions to celebrate feast days and milestones in the calendar like Midsummer Solstice and St Swithuns Day, and would involve feasting and drinking, bawdy games, musical interludes, races and other physically active pastimes.The type of pleasure grounds that evolved in Australia also drew inspiration from the great English pleasure gardens of centuries gone by. These pleasure gardens, of which, Vauxhall Gardens in South London, was arguably the most famous in Britain, were the primary providers of mass, public entertainment in the 18th and 19th centuries. Vauxhall (AKA New Spring) Gardens charged admission to see performances of tightrope walkers, hot air balloon ascents, concerts and fireworks. Vauxhall and others such as its closest London rival, Ranelagh Pleasure Gardens, were the forerunners to the modern amusement park, eg, Luna Park/Coney Island, Blackpool Pleasure Beach [‘History of London: Pleasure Gardens’, www.history.co.uk].In Sydney pleasure grounds popped up at all points of the metropolitan compass during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. They could be found in districts as far afield as Prospect Creek/Fairfield (Latty’s Boatshed and Pleasure Grounds), Waratah Bay/Hawkesbury River (Windybanks’ Paradise), Vaucluse (Nielsen Park), La Perouse/Yarra Bay (Howe’s Pleasure Grounds) and the Kurnell Pleasure Grounds at the southern tip of Botany Bay.
🔺 The original Banks Inn
Joseph Banks Pleasure Grounds
One of the earliest such venues was the Botany (or Sir Joseph Banks) Pleasure Grounds (BPG), established along with the Banks Inn on 75 acres of land and seafront in the 1840s by Thomas Kellett. At its peak, BPG was described variously as “zoological gardens”, “a Victorian garden with arbours” and an aggregation of first-rate sporting fields.
BPG was a popular spot for annual St Patrick’s Day Sports Carnivals which comprised, in addition to sports, singing, dancing, drinking, the riding of penny farthings and various circus acts. The road from Sydney to the Pleasure Grounds was of such a poor condition that many visitors came to the Botany attraction by steamer – a round trip fare on the “Sir John Harvey” in the 1850s cost 10/-. An indication of the popularity of the grounds and hotel can be gauged by the fact that over 5,000 people attended on Boxing Day 1852 [‘Australia’s First Zoo’, The World’s News (Sydney), 15 March 1952].
Control of BPG went through many hands with new leasees and owners regularly being turned over. The zoo was introduced by leasee William Beaumont in the early 1850s. It was Australia’s first private zoo with a menagerie acquired from the original colonial zoo at Hyde Park that included Australia’s only elephant, Manila red deers, Indian goats, black Bengal sheep and Bengal tigers, both a Himalayan and a Californian grizzly bear, and an ape.
The Banks pleasure grounds and zoo were purchased in 1875 by Frank Smith, an entrepreneur and publican, and incorporated into the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel complex. A grand ballroom catering for up to 1,000 diners and a bathing house were also added to BPG [M Chaffey, ‘A review of Botany’ (Botany Library local history files) quoted in M Butler, ‘Botany’ (2011), The Dictionary of Sydney, www.dictionaryofsydney.org; ‘Sir Joseph Banks Pleasure Gardens Botany Bay’,www.prowse.com.au].
Sir Joseph Banks Athletics Track, Botany NSW
Sporting fields for cricket, football, archery and athletics were also appended to the Joseph Banks Gardens. Aboriginal runners from the Randwick/La Perouse area participated in foot races on the Botany track (quaintly known in the day as “pedestrian contests”). In the 1870s and 1880s BPG hosted Australia’s earliest professional footrace, the Botany Bay Gift, which attracted top international athletes and large crowds. 1888 was probably the high point of professional sprinting in Australia with £800 being offered in prize money at that year’s Bay Gift.
Wagering on the outcome of the Botany running contests was extensive and eventually the money involved led to some sharp practices occurring which affected the outcome of races. As a consequence, after several years the annual Gift was discontinued, though it was briefly resurrected in the late 20th Century. A well-known running club, the Botany Harriers (later the Randwick-Botany Harriers), had its beginning at the Sir Joseph Banks track [‘History of the Sir Joseph Banks Hotel’, www.thebanks.net.au].
Around 1908-1910, after yet another change in ownership, BPG became the Olympic Recreational and Picnic Grounds. In March 1908 the Joseph Banks Ground hosted the first-ever game of rugby league in Australia, a match between a South Sydney Probables team and a Possibles side which preceded the inaugural season of the Sydney Rugby League [‘Centenary of Rugby League’, www.monumentaustralia.org.au].
Fairyland Pleasure Grounds
Another suburban pleasure ground that greatly captured the imagination of Sydneysiders in its day was Fairyland Pleasure Grounds. It was situated on the Upper Lane Cove River in an area now incorporated into the Lane Cove National Park. From its inception as a pleasure ground in the early 1900s, up to when a main arterial road in North Ryde (Delhi Road) was linked with it, it was largely only accessible by boat to a wharf specially built by the operators of Fairyland (FPG).
The Swan family, owners of the bushland, initially cleared the area for market gardens but also constructed a timber siding on the river which they called “The Rest”. Robert Swan later turned the site into a pleasure ground for day-trippers to visit, adding a kiosk, a playground, a dance hall and picnic area. ‘Fairyland’ was chosen as the name for the pleasure ground apparently because it exuded the atmosphere of a magical and mysterious place, Swan enhanced this theme with fairy-like structures and motifs – quirky fairytale huts, a slippery-dip in the shape of a sleeping giant (thought to be modelled on the character ‘Bluto’ from the ‘Popeye’ comics), and cardboard representations of imaginary and supernatural creatures such as fairies and elves positioned high up in the trees [www.friendsoflanecovenationalpark.org.au].
Swan acquired a good deal of equipment from the closure sale at White City Fun Park in Rushcutters Bay in 1917 (from 1922 site of the White City Tennis courts✱). Amongst the items Swan brought to FPG were strength-testing machines, coin-operated machines through which you could view silent movies, and entertainment rides such as the’Ocean Wave’ (a “razzle-dazzle”) and a fairly rudimentary ‘Flying Fox’.
Just getting to Fairyland in the early days could be quite a lengthy exercise. Walter Baker, a schoolboy during WWI, recalled how it took one hour to get to FPG travelling by motor boat from nearby Gladesville! [reported in The Catholic Press (Sydney), 18 July 1918]. Many associations and organisations held their yearly outings at FPG. In 1963 Sydney radio station 2UW sponsored a “Rock ‘n Roll Spectacular” on the grounds. After WWII there was widespread availability of private cars allowing people to journey further afield, consequently Fairyland’s popularity declined [‘Heritage and History’ (FLCNP), www.froghollow.com.au]. It lingered on as a venue for leisure activities, but falling attendances aided and abetted by a series of floods and more modern leisure choices saw the pleasure grounds close in the early 1970s.
A similar pleasure ground to Fairyland was Palmer Pleasure Grounds, also on the northside at Castle Cove. Danish migrant HC Press started his entertainment venue in 1910 (which survived till 1964). Palmer (later Press) PG was replete with picnic area, pergolas, fernery, three dining pavilions, swings and slippery dips, swimming pool, wharf, and a 100-yard sprint track. Press charged for admission with crowds of up to 900 pleasure-seekers visiting daily [Gavin Souter, Time and Tides: A Middle Harbour Memoir, 2012]
Wonderland in ‘Glamarama’
Tamarama Wonderland
In Sydney’s eastern suburbs, Tamarama was the location of a popular if relatively short-lived pleasure ground, which was known under various names at different times, the Bondi Aquarium (though not situated in the suburb of Bondi), the Royal Aquarium, Wonderland City (this name resonates with the later sobriquet acquired by Tamarama, ‘Glamarama’). The Aquarium, opened in 1887, was the first coastal amusement park in Sydney. It comprised a collection of sea creatures including tiger and wobbegong sharks, seals and a solitary penguin. The distinguishing physical icon of Wonderland was the serpentine-like roller coaster (called the “Switchback Railway”) which weaved around the cliffs of Tamarama beach. The carnivalesque entertainments included a ‘camera obscura‘, ‘merry-go-rounds’ and vaudevillian acts. Later, a waxworks was added to the park.
In the early 1900s the Aquarium was purchased by theatrical entrepreneur William Anderson who revamped the complex (now renamed ‘Wonderland City’). Under Anderson, the ‘Airem Scarem’ (an airship tracked on a cable from cliff to cliff), an artificial lake and open-air ice skating rink, was added to the entertainment venue. A haunted house and maze further underlined Wonderland City’s position as a precursor to the later Luna Park at Milson’s Point. The opening night in 1906 lured an estimated 20,000 visitors (during summer-time on weekends 2,000 Sydneysiders regularly attended the Wonderland park).
Wonderland was dogged by controversies such as William Anderson’s attempts to block swimmers from the beach by erecting a barbed wire fence across the Tamarama site. After a tic-for-tac exchange between the disaffected local swimmers and management, the NSW Government eventually intervened in the conflict and re-established beach access. The bad press experienced by Wonderland over the blockade of the swimmers was followed by further adverse publicity – safety concerns over breakdowns on the Airem Scarem, complaints made about the treatment of the animals, local resident unhappiness about the disruptive nature of weekend revellers. By 1911, with attendances having declined for several years, Wonderland closed its doors. Anderson was said to have lost £15,000 on the venture [‘Wonderland City’, www1.waverley.nsw.gov.au; J Spedding, ‘Wonderland City’ (2011) in Dictionary of Sydney, www.trust.dictionaryofsydney.org].
Clontarf Pleasure Grounds (Source: Manly Art Gallery & Museum)
Other pleasure grounds in Sydney in the 19th and 20th centuries didn’t have quite the colour or pulling power of Fairyland and Wonderland, but were significant providers of popular leisure pursuits in their own right. The Clontarf Pleasure Grounds (CPG) in Sydney’s north was founded in 1863 by hotelier Issac Moore (see FN: at bottom of the page for the link between pub-owners and pleasure grounds in Australia), who provided an off-liquor license at the grounds. Day-trippers would arrive by ferry to engage in games (quoits, skittles, cricket, etc), dancing, swimming and picnicking. The steamer Illalong ferried visitors from Circular Quay to Clontarf in the last quarter of the 19th century for the sum of 2/-. CPG was a particularly favourite venue for picnics and anniversaries like St Patrick’s Day, and for the celebrations of religious and trade union organisations (eg, Catholics Youngmen’s Societies, United Protestant Societies, Telegraph Construction Branch, Amalgamated Slaughtermen).
🔺 Attempted royal assassination at Clontarf
Clontarf Pleasure Grounds
The Clontarf Pleasure Grounds had another association in the 19th century, this one noted for its infamy. It was the site of an attempted assassination on the life of Prince Albert, Duke of Edinburgh (Queen Victoria’s son) in 1868 by a Irish supposed supporter of the Fenian movement. Issac Moore’s sons took over the family business from their father and continued the Clontarf Pleasure Grounds for over 35 years…at one stage the sons sued The Bulletin paper for labelling the Pleasure Grounds’ dance event an ‘orgy’ [www.manly.nsw.gov.au; www.balgowlahonline.com.au].
St George and Shire Pleasure Grounds
The southern suburbs of Oatley and Como had their own pleasure grounds. Harry Linmark started Oatley Pleasure Grounds in the early part of the 20th century (the park where it was located still retains this name). OPG was popular for fishing and swimming parties and for picnics. When it acquired by Hartlands, they introduced a miniature zoo and a noisy wine bar which earned the ire of local residents. In 1934 Kogarah Council acquired the pleasure grounds and closed down the bar [www.kogarah.nsw.gov.au]. The nearby Como Pleasure Grounds was created in 1895 to celebrate the extension of the southern rail link to the Shire. It boasted a ‘RazzleDazzle’ circular ride (similar to the one in operation at Fairyland on Lane Cove River) which drew the crowds to Como by train [www.sutherlandshireaustralia.com.au].
Pleasure grounds in Sydney came into fashion in the 19th century, providing an outside outlet for people away from their everyday, often unexciting urban existences. The locations of pleasure grounds allowed workers to escape on the weekends by taking a nice train day trip or a ferry boat ride. The venues conveyed a romantic connotation for day-trippers, a kind of rustic paradise which promised carefree social and recreational activities. Some of the operations floundered financially and were closed down within a relatively short interval. Others that managed to achieve a measure of longevity, like Fairyland and the Botany Pleasure Grounds, eventually became simply “old hat”. Society had changed, there were new, slicker forms of entertainment that people preferred. The convenience and proximity of big amusement complexes in the city like Luna Park made them a more attractive option for workers’ leisure time, and as the pace of life quickened, the appeal of pleasure grounds as unhurried, bucolic ‘paradises’ receded.
🔺The Pleasure Garden: translated into Swedish for the title of this 1961 film gives the outdoor entertainment concept a quite different connotation
PostScript: Pleasure Grounds in Melbourne – a lesser feast for the public
Interestingly in Melbourne at that time, pleasure grounds/ gardens for whatever reason didn’t catch on to anywhere near the same degree as in Sydney. Probably the only one that rose to any significant heights, albeit ephemerally, was Cremorne Gardens on the Yarra River at Richmond – which acquired the somewhat pretentious appellation “Cremorne Gardens-Upon-Yarra” (CGUY). Under its proprietor, theatrical entrepreneur George Coppin, CGUY had an amusement park aspect to it, with trapezes, balloon ascents, dances, theatres, a Cyclorama (a panoramic painting set against a concave wall), a bowling alley, a menagerie, firework displays, with a few extra features taking advantage of the Yarra, such as regattas and gondola rides. It also had a hotel on-site as with many of the Sydney pleasure grounds. Coppin’s gardens was inspired by the prototype Cremorne Gardens in London.
Cremorne Gardens-upon-Yarra, 1865
Though Coppin poured a lot of money into it, CGUY lasted only from 1853 to about 1863, unable to attract the patronage required to sustain it as a viable enterprise. The wowser element in Melbourne played its part in CGUY’s demise, many in the community objected to the presence of alcohol and the use of the Gardens by prostitutes to ply their trade. Dreamland, on St Kilda Beach, was even less successful than Cremorne, winding up after barely three years in 1909 (although the same site became a permanent entertainment fixture a few years later with the advent of Luna Park) [R Peterson, A Place of Sensuous Resort, (Online edition), www.skhs.org.au]. Some people at the time concluded that the Melbourne weather (more inclement than Sydney’s) was not conducive to outdoor amusements [‘# 1933. Cremorne Gardens Plan’ (Picture Victoria), www.pictures.libraries.vic.gov.au].
FN: An intriguing if not exactly surprising footnote to the pleasure grounds in Australia were the large number of proprietors of the operations who were also publicans!
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✱ today the White City location is a reconstructed sporting complex known as Maccabi Tennis
NOW that Scotland have expressed an inclination, but not a preference, to secede from the Union with England (the UK), it would be interesting to take a gander at other secession attempts both closer to home and around the world. The impulse for or advocacy of secession by a section or part of an established, multi-ethnic nation state is a recurring feature in contemporary international relations.
The enthusiasm with which so many Scots embraced the notion of “going it alone” and their, so it seemed up to polling day, excellent prospect of pulling it off, is a fillip for long-lingering secessionist movements around the world – Catalonia, the Basque Country, Québec, Flemish Belgium, Kurdistan (although some of the several Kurdish groups seek only autonomy, not outright independence) [“The Kurdish Conflict: Aspirations for Statehood within the Spirals of International Relations in the 21st Century”, www.Kurdishaspect.com]
In the Southern Hemisphere, on this very continent indeed, in the state of Western Australia, an air of secessionism has tended to linger, much like the relieving breeze visited upon Perth in the afternoon from the Indian Ocean’s “Fremantle Doctor”. The Western Australians, from the very outset in 1900, were reluctant to join the Commonwealth of Australia…in fact the state’s name was conspicuously omitted from the original Federation document of 1 January 1901! A special provision (Section 95) guaranteeing that a planned inter-colonial tariff would only be gradually phased in, had to be added to the Constitution before the West would sign up. A further inducement that clinched it was the prospect of a transcontinental railway to be built linking WA with the eastern states.
The proposed colony of ‘Auralia’ – an irredentist goldfields colony
In the end, what swayed WA in joining (as argued by Tom Musgrove) was the affinity with the East held by recent settlers lured to WA by the goldfield discoveries. The huge population surge in the 1890s in WA, due to the influx of these Eastern fortune-seekers made them more numerous than the established residents on the coast who were, conversely, distinctly isolationist in their outlook. The miners formed a pressure group advocating that the eastern goldfields area (calling itself the colony of ‘Auralia’) break away from the rest of WA and unilaterally federate with the Commonwealth. The WA Parliament eventually succumbed to the threat of being splintered and losing the goldfields, and committed to the Federation [T Musgrove, ‘Western Australian Secessionist Movement’, The Macquarie Law Journal, www.austlil.edu.au; ‘Separation Movement on the Eastern Goldfields, 1894-1904’, West Australian Historical Society 1949, 4(5) 1953]. So, even prior to Federation, a bent for Western secession was evident.
Black Swan State
The secessionists succeed…or do they?
The threat of ‘Westralian’ succession has been a recurring theme in the state’s history since the early days of colony… lying dormant for years before being triggered into prominence by the emergence of some economic upheaval or issue (more recently over the distribution of mining revenues by the Commonwealth). In 1933 the issue of secession was actually put to the electorate of WA in a referendum held concurrently with the state election. The pre-conditions leading up to such a momentous development were brought about by the Great Depression. Wheat, WA’s top primary product export-earner was decimated (the price per bushel declined by less than half in three years) and unemployment in Perth reached 30 per cent. The WA Dominion League spearheaded by H Keith Watson agitated from 1930 for secession in the West. As a result of the League’s vigorous campaign (contrasting with the lacklustre campaign of the Federal League’s ‘No secession’ campaign), the referendum resulted in a greater than two-thirds vote (68 per cent) in favour of secession. Interestingly, the only region of the state to oppose the secession motion was again the goldfields!
The Electorate’s each-way bet!
Paradoxically at the same time, the WA electors dumped the incumbent Nationalist/Country Party Coalition from power (even though the NCPC had backed the ‘Yes’ camp), and elevated the Labor Party opposition, who had opposed secession, into office in the state. The apparent contradictory behaviour of the electors has been explained thus: support was given to the ‘Yes’ case because there was widespread dissatisfaction with WA’s situation vis-à-vis the eastern states (WA had long identified itself as the “Cinderella State” of the Commonwealth, it’s perception being one of it contributing more to federal funds than it receives back). At the same time, the unacceptable state unemployment situation in 1933 resulted in voters seeking to punish the incumbent conservative government by turfing them out (as was done federally to the Scullin Labor Government in 1932) [‘Secession 1929-39: Western Australia & Federation’ www.slwa.wa.gov.au].
The WA delegation bringing the petition to secede to London
Westminster or “Yes Minister”!
The new WA premier, Philip Collier, after some prevarication, appointed a delegation which took a petition for WA secession to the UK. Westminster, in a farcical turn of events which the writers of the popular 1980s TV series Yes, Minister would be proud to put their name to, simply sat on the issue! The British Government after a lengthy delay informed the WA Government that it could not act on the petition without the assent of Canberra. By 1935 the economy had recovered somewhat, the secessionist movement and the Dominion League lost momentum and the issue petered way for ordinary West Australians as they got on with the day-to-day task of making the best of what they could with the status quo[ibid.].
Western successionism, a simmering pot!
The media in WA helps to keep the issue alive with periodical appeals to the spectre of “secessionist redux” (with regular articles appearing with titles like “Why the West should secede” and “Secession still on our mind”). Secessionism has remained a rallying cry for disgruntled Western Australians whenever they feel aggrieved about what they see as the excesses and encroaching powers of Canberra. In the 1970s maverick millionaire/WA mining magnate Lang Hancock tried to revive the state’s secessionist trajectory with his short-lived “Westralian Secessionist Movement”, in effect a political campaign against the allegedly ‘socialist’ policies of the Whitlam Labor Government.Most recently this reared its head again in the concerted opposition to the Rudd and Gillard Labor Governments’ mining taxes.
‘Prince’ Leonard & his consort – in the ‘Principality’
PostScript: Fringe micro-secessionists – seceding from the secessionist state!
In 1970 West Australian wheat farmer Leonard Casley declared his 18,500-acre agricultural property near Northampton (south of Geraldton) to be ‘independent’ of the Commonwealth and the state of Western Australia when Canberra and the WA government tried to limit the size of his wheat crop. In true “comic-opera” style, the eccentric Casley turned his farm into the Hutt River Province Principality, adopting the title of “His Majesty Prince Leonard I of Hutt”, and in so doing spawned a whole new wellspring of tourism for the locality. Enthused with the spirit of commercial opportunity Leonard and his Hutt River ‘micro-nation’ has gone the whole hog…flag, coat-of-arms, royal seal, coins, stamps, medallions, passports, souvenirs, etc. The response from the Australian authorities to such a “bold act” of “unilateral independence” has been a “softly-softly” approach, not seeking to unduly push the matter, a bit surprising as the Hutt River ‘Principality’ purportedly owes the Commonwealth many years of unpaid taxes (although it does make rate payments to the local government authority, the Shire of Northampton)…the state and the federal governments seem to gravitate between being nonplussed and amused by the eccentric entity❈ and generally try to ignore it! [M Siegel, “Micronation Master: Prince Leonard of Hutt River”, 17 May 2012, www.businessweek.com]; ‘Principality of Hutt River’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wiki.org
﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋﹌﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋﹌﹋﹌﹋﹌﹋﹋﹌﹋
❈ the Prince’s pattern of bizarre and idiosyncratic behaviour includes trying to seize government land surrounding his farm to increase his wheat quota; invoking the 1495 British Treason Act as proof of Hutt River Province’s status as a de facto monarchy; and declaring war on Australia (for four days in 1977!)
Most Australians have at some time or other glimpsed the grainy old Cinesound newsreel footage or the still pictures of the dramatic events of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932. What should have been a moment of glory for the NSW Premier, Jack Lang, declaring open Bradfield’s engineering wonder of a bridge, was turned into a minor public relations coup for a shadowy fringe paramilitary group called the New Guard through an audacious act by one of its members.
De Groot’s ‘coup’
Just as the Bridge ribbon was about to be cut by the NSW Premier, Captain Francis De Groot who had attached himself undetected to the escort cavalry, rode forward and pre-emptively slashed the ribbon. In doing so he declared the bridge open “in the name of all decent and respectable people of New South Wales”. De Groot, the Irish-born antique dealer, furniture restorer and part-time soldier, with one outrageous swipe of his sword, secured his “15 minutes of fame”, embarrassed the Lang Labor Government and thrust the New Guard deeply into the consciousness of Sydneysiders at large!
Primrose’s ceremony at the Northern Pylon
Now all this is well known, but what is largely not known is what was happening at the northern end of the Bridge whilst attention was focused on the high drama at Dawes Point. Soon after De Groot “opened the bridge” in unorthodox fashion at the southern pylon end, another member of the New Guard cut the ribbon at the northern pylon. Hubert Leslie Primrose, Mayor of North Sydney, was an assistant adjunct and quartermaster-general in the New Guard. Primrose as mayor had organised his own bridge-opening ceremony from the North Sydney side. Although NSW Police (and Premier Lang) had decided reservations about Alderman Primrose’s Northside celebration of the Bridge, because of his involvement in a suspect para-military movement that was under investigation (the New Guard), they ultimately made no attempts to stop the municipal representative going ahead with his act of public ceremony.
So, remarkable as it may seem to us today, the opening of both ends of that most iconic of Sydney symbols, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, was accomplished by the New Guard. These deeds (one undertaken officially and the other without state sanction) were achieved by a small, para-military organisation that at best was only ever a marginal player in provincial Australian politics.
Harbour Bridge from Kirribilli
Primrose’s fascination with the New Guard, like many of its initial supporters, was short-lived. In June 1932 he was one of many New Guardsmen elected to the Legislative Assembly for the new conservative force in party politics, the United Australia Party (forerunner to the Liberal Party of Australia), later rising to the rank of UAP Minister for Health, and later Minister for National Emergency Services. Primrose Park in the northern Sydney suburbs of Cremorne and Cammeray is named in his honour, but clearly not for his activities on behalf of the New Guard!
Footnote: Apart from his right wing, para-military enthusiasms, Captain De Groot, the stealer of Premier Lang’s thunder on thatillustrious day, had a respectable day job as the proprietor of a successful antique furniture business in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. The plaque below stands on the site of the former shop in Rushcutters Bay.
␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣␣
[Refs: Australian Dictionary of Biography (Vol 11) 1988, HL Primrose, ADB, (Supp. Vol) 2005, FE De Groot, both artls by Andrew Moore]
I have long thought that one of the more intriguing back stories of 20th century Australian history is the rise and (rapid) fall of the New Guard movement. The New Guard which flourished in the early 1930s was Australia’s own home-grown, ‘wannabe’ fascist organisation, one of a number of disgruntled, peripheral Australian Alt-Right groups in the Depression years.
The New Guard was a fairly obscure fringe organisation in early 1931, formed by ex-World War I army officers who broke away from an existing organisation (the Old Guard) deemed by them to be too cautious in its anti-socialist methods❈. The singular incident associated with the New Guard that resonates most clearly in the public consciousness today is the intervention by Francis De Groot (divisional commander in the New Guard) in the opening ceremony of the Sydney Harbour Bridge in March 1932. The fanatical, sword-wielding De Groot, on horseback, upstaged the State Labor government by dramatically cutting the ribbon at the southern pylon of the bridge before NSW Premier JT Lang could do so officially.
At its height the New Guard had somewhere between 50,000 and 80,000 members in New South Wales❅ (men only, women were not permitted to join the New Guard). Included in these numbers were prominent Australians such as the famous aviators, Charles Kingsford Smith and Charles Ulm, Sir Thomas Henley (Nationalist Party MP), Hubert Primrose (Mayor of North Sydney, later NSW UAP Minister for Health), and leading business figures in industry and agriculture such as the Patricks (Patricks Stevedore and Shipping Lines) and the MacArthur Onslows (sheep barons). Interestingly, it has been alleged (though not substantiated) that Lyall Howard, the garage owner-father of former PM John Howard, was very likely to have been a New Guard member (Andrew Moore, ‘The New Guard & the Labour Movement 1931-35’, Labour History, No 89).
JT Lang in typical demagogic mood
.The background to the New Guard’s emergence was the societal dislocation caused by the Great Depression and the sudden and calamitous level of unemployment of the early 1930s. This gave the New Guardsmen the impetus to thrive as it did to right-wing authoritarian political forces in Europe during the same period. In October 1930 a left-leaning Labor Government was elected in NSW under the demagogic nationalist Jack Lang. Lang’s scheme to tackle the state’s catastrophic economic crisis comprised repudiating Australia’s international loan obligations and refusing to make any further interest payments to British bondholders (and re-channelling those retained monies into job creation for the state). This polemical stand not only enraged Big Capital interests but also made fringe groups on the right, especially the New Guard, flare up in hostile opposition to Labor.
Lt.Col Campbell
The leader of the New Guard (NG) was a Sydney North Shore solicitor, company director and WWI army officer of patrician stock, Eric Campbell. The attraction of men who followed Campbell into NG was that it appeared to offer a fresh, alternative solution to the problems of society to those espoused by the democratic parliamentary parties of the day⊚. NG viewed communism and socialism as having a corrosive and degenerative effect on Australian society. Campbell characterised the incumbent Lang government as avowedly socialist, and thus tried to relegate the Labor Party to the status of being abject co-conspirators with the communists working against the liberties of loyal Australians.
Lt-Colonel Campbell asserted that New Guard was “staunchly patriotic”, but by this he meant patriotic to the British Empire, so intricately linked in his mind was Australia with the ‘mother country’, Britain. In effect the New Guardsmen were undisguisedly über-British loyalists. So, when Lang signalled his intent to default on loans to British banks, this infuriated Campbell and loyalists to the Crown generally. Campbell and his executive redoubled the movement’s efforts to bring Labor down. NG believed in minimalist government and individualism, in “sane finance” as Campbell put it, in freeing up private enterprise to get on with business…Lang’s plans to expand the public sector to alleviate the unemployment crisis, put ‘Langism’ very squarely in the ideological cross-hairs of NG.
Campbell & his NG acolytes giving a familiar salute at a Sydney rally
By late 1931, disillusioned with parliamentary party politics, the New Guard adopted more aggressive tactics in the fight against the left. New Guardsmen also started to display some of the trappings of fascist parties (military uniforms and armbands, the Nazi salute, ID badges) and began to break up meetings of communists and the unemployed. NG’s unleashing of its paramilitary arm provoked the left into forming communist and Laborite militias which eventually led to pitched street battles with the NG forces.
The most significant, physical confrontation between these groups, occurring in early 1932, became known as the “Battle of Bankstown”. The New Guard in its coercive actions in Bankstown and elsewhere in Sydney did succeed in its aim to disrupt meetings of the labour movement, but these mobilisations ultimately proved counterproductive to the NG leaders’ attempts to consolidate the new movement. The Bankstown mêlée had two adverse effects for NG. First, the leadership’s decision to up the ante in NG’s strong-arm tactics against their ideological opponents alienated a lot of the movement’s rank-and-file and many disaffected members resigned in the aftermath of Bankstown. At an NG meeting soon after some members moved motions of no confidence in the leadership of Führer (the leader) Eric Campbell, ibid.
Secondly, the level of New Guard violence exhibited at Bankstown, and to a lesser extent at other NG mobilisations like Newtown, Drummoyne and Canterbury, following upon De Groot’s bridge antics, convinced NSW Police of the need to take the threat to law and order posed by Campbell’s organisation seriously. The promotion by Premier Lang of an uncompromising, aggressive Glaswegian, Big Bill MacKay, to Acting Metropolitan Superintendent, was the catalyst for a much tougher police line taken against the right-wing paramilitary groups. MacKay intimidated Campbell and De Groot and other NG leaders and exhorted the State police to respond with unrestrained force every time the New Guard initiated a public fracas.
Given free rein by Supt MacKay, the white-helmeted state police launched a savage assault on the trouble-making New Guardsmen, especially in an incident that became known as the “Liverpool Street Police Riot”. Campbell’s enthusiastic but volunteer guardsmen proved no match for a well-trained, disciplined and highly motivated police force. The largely middle class NG members who clashed with the police found the experience distinctly not to their liking. Under instructions from MacKay, the police went at the New Guardsmen full-tilt and absolutely brutalised Campbell’s militia. MacKay’s tactics of intimidation and savage counter-violence against NG paramilitaries kept the agitators in check and dissuaded many from continuing their active involvement in the right wing organisation (Moore, ibid).
Berrima Gaol, NSW
NSW Police in early 1932 undertook investigations aimed at unearthing a possible plot by Campbell to use his so-called Secret Army to launch a coup d’être against Lang’s Labor Government. It was widely rumoured in the press that the New Guard planned to overthrow the Government, kidnap and imprison Lang and his senior cabinet ministers in the disused Berrima Gaol in country NSW. ‘The revolution that wasn’t’ (www.matthewleecunningham.com). Whether Campbell was planning such a strike on democracy or not (he publicly denied it, whereas Major Treloar, disaffected NG deputy commander, informed police that this was indeed Campbell’s true intention)(Robert Darlington, Eric Campbell & the New Guard). The question became academic in May 1932 when the Governor, Sir Philip Game, sacked the Lang Government for withholding revenues deemed owing to the Commonwealth as part of the debt to British financiers. The incoming State UAP Government quickly shelved the CID’s investigation into the alleged New Guard plot.
⇓Gov. Game, co-conspirator?
In what sense could the New Guard movement be said to be fascist in nature? Historians have long debated whether the New Guard organisation was a fascist one or even a quasi-fascist one – as they have done with regard to Franco’s Falange Party in Spain and other authoritarian-right movements. If we stack the New Guard up against the classic Italian and Germany models of inter-war fascism, it is of course a ludicrous comparison. The New Guard movement, in addition to lacking a totalitarian systemic structure, falls well short even of fulfilling the criteria for a semi-fascist organisation like the British Union of Fascists, whose leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, Campbell expressed great admiration for. Campbell visited Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany in 1933 and came away deeply impressed by the Nazi and Fascist systems of rule, and subsequently did integrate some aspects of Mussolini’s Italian Corporatism into the New Guard’s ideology. The most that can be said about Campbell’s organisation however was that it was heavily influenced by the success of the European fascist movements and was openly sympathetic to fascism (Matthew Cunningham, ‘Australian Fascism? A Revisionist Analysis of the New Guard’, Politics, Religion & Ideology , 13(3)).
Real fascists ⇓
Nor can it be said that the New Guard had any claims to be considered as a mass movement in NSW politics. NG remained fundamentally a middle class organisation, the core of its base were urban professionals and small businessmen, like Campbell himself (Cunningham, Ibid.). Unlike many other fascist/authoritarian parties in Europe, it lacked for significant working class participation (Moore, op.cit.). Moreover, geographically, the New Guard was very limited in scope. It was confined almost entirely to one state, NSW, and even more, was essentially a Sydney metropolitan phenomena with only around 3,000 members from rural areas outside of Sydney (Cunningham, ibid.).
The staunchly pro-monarchist and pro-capitalist (and distinctly non-radical) positions of the New Guard demonstrates that the organisation didn’t cross over into a fascist character…contrast the monarchist fervour of Campbell and NG with the positions of Hitler and Mussolini in their countries, Hitler had no interest in restoring the exiled Kaiser during his Reich, and Il Duce merely ignored the powerless Italian King. Rather, the retention of these allegiances shows that the NG movement retained an essentially conservative authoritarianism in appearance (Cunningham, ibid.).
1930s New Guard propaganda against Premier Lang
Why did the New Guard decline and dissolve so swiftly in the mid 1930s? As alluded to above, one reason for the disaffection and eventual alienation of much of the respectable, middle class membership from the New Guard was the resort to more extreme violent means by the leadership from around the end of 1931. Vigilante action by the Fascist Legion, a splinter grooup within NG, did nothing to assuage the doubters in the organisation. In May of that momentous year a number of the Fascist Legion members, clad in black Ku Klux Klan style hooded capes, attacked and bashed Jock Garden, a prominent communist and trade union official in his Maroubra home (Garden was a close associate of Premier Lang). This violent act of what we now would call home invasion brought disastrous publicity to the New Guard (Richard Evans, ‘A menace to this realm’: The New Guard & NSW Police, History Australia, 5(3). This coming on top of the general perception that NG leadership was seriously contemplating taking extra-legal action against the elected Lang Government, made many people distance themselves from the increasingly extremist actions of the New Guard. Interestingly, afterwards the Deputy Leader of the opposition Nationalists came out in parliament denying any involvement by NG in Garden’s bashing, alleging it was a Labor “put-up job” in which Garden himself was complicit! (Darlington, op.cit.).
The ‘Maroubra incident’ 1932 Garden’s bashing by NG thugs
One week after the Maroubra bashing of Jock Garden, the State Governor dismissed Lang and at the subsequent election Labor was soundly beaten by the UAP led by Stevens. The removal of Lang-Labor had been the New Guard’s overriding objective, so with Lang gone and the conservatives firmly in control, a large part of NG’s raison d’être was at an end. The sacking of Lang released the tension that had been building up between the various opposing forces in the political crisis of 1932.
The gradual recovery of the economy starting from late 1932 encouraged many who had joined the movement from a fear of socialism to drop their political allegiance to NG (Darlington, op.cit.). The New Guard’s strength dwindled after 1932 and by 1935 the NG support base had largely eroded. In that year Campbell tried to revive the movement’s fortunes by forming a new political group, the Centre Party, and contesting the state elections. Campbell’s last despairing grab at some semblance of power, a electoral bid for the seat of Lane Cove, went nowhere, and soon after, he faded into political obscurity.
PostScript: The New Guard – the Mini-series? A few years ago I suggested to SBS that the story of the New Guard and its ambitious if deeply flawed leader, Eric Campbell, would have the makings of a first-rate mini-series for television, and that they might like to explore the possibilities of this. They never got back to me!
I think this episode in Australian history has the same kind of dramatic ingredients and appeal as the successful Bodyline mini-series made for TV in the 1980s where the English cricket captain’s s breaching of the rules of the “Gentlemen’s game of cricket” forced many Australians (momentarily at least) to question their loyalty to Crown and Empire. Lang’s refusal to back down and the establishment’s uncompromising response was the makings of a high political stakes drama set against the turbulent background of the depression and a very real chance of a bitterly antagonistic explosion of class conflict; the violence of the New Guardsmen and the counter-violence from organised labour, and the unleashed mayhem and retribution of the NSW Police; there are the colourful and complex personalities in the story, larger than life figures such as Jack Lang and Bill MacKay, the paradoxical and enigmatic Campbell. There was also Sir Philip Game – was he the political executioner of the rebellious Lang to safeguard the interests of international capitalism or was he the dutiful King’s representative, an honest broker bring to heel a dangerously out of line state premier?
Was there a conspiracy or not? – a coup, behind-the-scenes, shadowy figures intent on usurping by whatever means the premier, an arrogant demagogue but nonetheless a democratically elected head of a provincial government (a forewarning of 1975?). How far did NG infiltrate the Sydney establishment and the conservative Nationalist Party? Then there was the question of the bashing of the communist union official Jock Garden, who was really behind it? Many questions to explore.
The New Guard had something of a chameleon-like character, many in society and in the press didn’t take it very seriously with its pompous and overblown leader and his supporters who at times resembled a ‘Dad’s Army’ trying to imitate the real thing in Germany and Italy (the Labor press regularly referred to them as the ‘Boo Guard’). Some however were concerned, especially on the left, including European émigrés with an insight into the threats to liberty a nascent fascism might pose – these sectors viewed the New Guard’s brief ascendancy very gravely. Others in the community of a more traditional, conservative bent, well-connected politically and socially and often from the North Shore and the Eastern Suburbs, took a different and more sanguine view of the New Guard and endorsed the fringe group’s need and right to inject some new energy into the stalled world of parliamentary politics.
Drama, tension, intrigue, civil unrest, all set against an international context of fascism and communism on the rise. Unfortunately, SBS did not express any interest in this proposition, but I still maintain that the subject conveyed through a mini-series remains a most worthy project – done well! An expert academic history consultant for the period (such as Andrew Moore or Robert Darlington) working with a good screenwriter and some money, could produce a very good product, both as entertainment and as historical reconstruction of a not terribly well-known chapter of our history. Perhaps the ABC … budgetary constraints in the reality of a national Liberal government permitting.
_____________________________________________ ❈ the New Guard in rhetoric also distanced itself from the establishment conservative parties as well, the National (or Nationalist) Party and the Country Party (despite there being a good amount of conspicuous cross-membership!), seeing them as failing to take action against the communists and trade unions, and seeing itself as a legitimate, alternative right-wing movement ❅ an active membership of around 36,000 was claimed by NG leadership ⊚ Campbell himself had impeccable establishment credentials…a professional man, a Freemason, a company director, the Turramurra resident was a member of all the right clubs (Imperial Services, the Union, the NSW, Rotary, Royal Sydney Golf and Killara Golf), [Keith Amos, ‘Campbell, Eric (1893–1970)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/campbell-eric-5487/text9331, published first in hardcopy 1979, accessed online 31 May 2014].
Wonderland in ‘Glamarama’
In the early 1900s the Aquarium was purchased by theatrical entrepreneur William Anderson who revamped the complex (now renamed ‘Wonderland City’). Under Anderson, the ‘Airem Scarem’ (an airship tracked on a cable from cliff to cliff), an artificial lake and open-air ice skating rink, was added to the entertainment venue. A haunted house and maze further underlined Wonderland City’s position as a precursor to the later Luna Park at Milson’s Point. The opening night in 1906 lured an estimated 20,000 visitors (during summer-time on weekends 2,000 Sydneysiders regularly attended the Wonderland park).
🔺 Attempted royal assassination at Clontarf
Cremorne Gardens-upon-Yarra, 1865
