‘The Great Australian Loneliness’: On Writing an Inter-Asian Biography of Ernestine Hill

Abstract

The Great Australian Loneliness (1937) is a famous book of travel reportage by Ernestine Hill (1899–1972), a key figure in the mid-twentieth century shaping of popular media culture in Australia. Through her journalism she disseminated debate about the great public issues of her day: the status of Aboriginal peoples, immigration from Asia and the state’s role in national development. In this paper, I take the White Australian ‘loneliness’ her title invokes as a methodological challenge to situate both her life and the ethnically diverse sociability she actually described in an inter-Asian framework of analysis capable of unsettling those bonds between ethnicity and nationality that many twentieth-century writers worked so hard to secure. In the process, I argue for an ‘Australian Asian’ approach to cultural history.

Keywords:

• Inter-Asia Cultural Studies
• Travel Writing
• Cultural History
• Asian Australian History
• Colonialism
• Racism

Acknowledgement

For the research underpinning this paper I gratefully acknowledge the support of an Australian Research Council Senior Fellowship (1994–1999); a Lingnan University (Hong Kong) Direct Research Grant (2002–2003); and a Faculty of Arts Collaborative Research Scheme grant on ‘Gender and Modernity’ from the University of Sydney (2010–2011).

Notes

[1] Most of the library and archival research for this project has been done by the professional historian Terri McCormack. My thanks to Terri for her patience with my slowness in making use of her remarkable work.

[2] Hearsay supports this but it has never been proven (Bonnin 1996). On Robert David Hill’s certificate of marriage to Jacqueline Scrivener on 22 February 1962, he listed his father as ‘Robert Clyde Hill’ (Queensland Registry, 25281–1402).

[3] ‘White’ for much of the twentieth century in Australia was a restrictive synonym for ‘British or Irish descended’.

[4] For a reliable biography of Daisy Bates, see Reece (2007).

[5] The exception to this was Hill’s first book, The Great Australian Loneliness. Published in 1937 by Jarrolds in the UK, it was revised for Australian publication by Robertson & Mullens in 1940, who reprinted it nine times before it passed to Angus & Robertson in 1963. Another version, heavily edited for racism, was published as Australian Frontier (1942) in New York by Doubleday, Doran, for the use of American servicemen stationed in Northern Australia during the Pacific War. Hill’s other works were published in Australia by Robertson & Mullens (Water into Gold, 1937); John Sands (Australia, Land of Contrasts, 1943); and Angus & Robertson (My Love Must Wait, 1941; Flying Doctor Calling, 1947; The Territory, 1951; Kabbarli, 1973).

[6] For an authoritative discussion of the difficult relations between Australian studies and cultural studies, see Turner (1996).

[7] As is often the case Hill (1940: 148) returns to this story elsewhere in a little more detail than her lists afford.

[8] My thanks to Juanita Kwok for expanding my knowledge of this important figure.