Archive

Bonnie McCallum was the first publicity officer appointed by the ABC in Victoria way back in 1936. The Commission was in the early stages of becoming Australia’s largest entrepreneur in the concert field, as well as establishing orchestras in every State, and Miss McCallum’s job, as the book jacket says, was to act as ‘hand holder to the visiting artists as well as liaison officer between them and the Press.’

This is a most interesting, readable and, in a larger context, valuable book. It deals with written recollections collected from some 215 living veterans from the First A.I.F. (some have since died) – a list of their names is included as an Appendix – detailing how they felt about the War as it approached and when it commenced, and also what led them to enlist at the time. Each informant is allowed to speak for himself, with his own peculiar spelling, punctuation end style of writing; in effect, the outcome provides a broad picture of the social origins and nature of this cross-section of soldiers.

A virile energetic people inhabits the island of Malaita in the middle Solomons. From the time of first contact Malaitamen were prized for their ability to work, but they had to be handled cautiously, or their inherited pride and confidence would turn them to rebellion. Those who live on the sea-coasts are readily adaptable to innovation when they can see value in it, but they abandon tradition with some misgivings.

Envisaged Worlds is an important anthology, not for the claims it makes, but for the claims it doesn’t.

Ronald Anderson’s latest book explores the potential for deer farming in Australia, and gives at least the initial information to someone wishing to establish a deer farm. By page eight of the book the profit potential of deer is already apparent. Their costs of production are relatively low, while product prices are extraordinary. For example, at the time of writing, New Zealand farmers were receiving $4.75 per kilogram for venison, some six or seven times the price of beef. As if this were not enough, there is the annual crop of velvet or immature antler, harvested without slaughter from the stags. Used as a component in Asian medicines, this returns no less than $110 to $150 per kilogram to the farmer or at least $300 per stag per year. Not satisfied? Then try the ‘by-products’ also obtained when the deer are slaughtered for venison. These range from mature antler (for jewellery) to frozen deer tails at $6 each (for culinary use) and from deer foetuses ($3 to $45 depending on stage of pregnancy) to deer penises! The last, which must be ‘...complete with testes and a tassel of hair…’, are graded (by length!) and frozen and return about $9 each to the farmer. In exploring the reasons for farming deer, Anderson raises one important issue early in the book and returns to it in several places. This is the hunter’s ‘...ambivalent attitude to deer…’ and to deer farming. To the hunting fraternity, says Anderson, deer are to be shot, not farmed. Unless, of course, they are farmed to provide stocks for shooting. The problem is that strong lobbying, based on such an attitude, would make it even more difficult than at present to obtain enough deer to stock a farm. The same attitude, prevalent in West Germany, led to a virtual embargo on the import of farm venison from New Zealand, in favor of ‘real venison’ shot in the wild, with obvious consequences for New Zealand’s deer farmers.

Karobran (Togetherness) by the late Monica Clare is not a great (or even a good) novel, but it is an important work and, as such, deserves to be widely read.

If you’re a kid, finding a tap at school that doesn’t spurt can be what life is all about. Perhaps Glen Tomasetti’s story ‘Ella makes a Friend’, highlights the tone of The Kids’ Own Book – gentle stories to help children lean evenly into life.

Kenneth Cook’s latest book is a parable for adults. At the end of the second millennium A.D., God remembers the duty he has overlooked at the end of the first, destroys life on earth. However, no doubt due to his advanced age, he is a little careless, and in a valley in the in the middle of the United States, two mice survive. They and their rapidly multiplying descendants inherit man’s civilization, including thought and speech, but otherwise not memory. They have to develop theory and institutions from scratch, guided by reason and reading.