Sometime, I just don’t get the one-eyed views of our modern world, how we discern that one aspect of an issue is important, but other aspects aren’t! Our current anti-domestic violence campaigns are a classic example of blinkered views. The whole domestic violence issue, which for many decades has been a problem swept under the rug, has recently – thanks to a public outcry, and government incentives – had one corner lifted for a good spring clean.
Let’s get one thing straight right from the start – I am not trying to trivialise domestic violence! I detest any “man” who raises a hand to a woman, or a child! It is the ultimate abuse of trust, and power! It is pure cowardice! I grew up in a generation where this just did not happen – or so we thought, as it was either well hidden, or people just turned a blind eye!
What I don’t get is – why are we only focusing on one aspect of domestic violence…that of men-to-women! Why is female to male, female to female, and male to male domestic violence been overlooked? Surely that ANY form of domestic violence happens should be of concern to all of us! That one woman a week dies as a direct result of domestic violence is a frightening statistic. However, the fact that the “One In Three” site exists – dedicated to female to male domestic violence – speaks loudly that the problem is a lot bigger than that being focused on. The definition of domestic violence from their site is “Family violence and abuse is a serious and deeply entrenched problem in Australia. It has significant impacts upon the lives of men, women and children. It knows no boundaries of gender, geography, socio-economic status, age, ability, sexual preference, culture, race or religion. Domestic violence between partners, boyfriends and girlfriends (also known as intimate partner violence or IPV); violence between other family members (siblings, parents, children, aunts, uncles, and grandparents); most elder abuse, child abuse and sexual abuse are all different forms of family violence. Thankfully reducing family violence against women and children has been firmly on the agendas of government for many years. Now is the time to move to the next, more sophisticated stage of tackling the problem: recognising men as victims as well.” (http://www.oneinthree.com.au/).
According to their statistics, one in every three instances of domestic violence is a male. 94% of these instances is committed by a female. Between 2010 and 2012, 75 males were killed as a result of DV by a woman. This equates to one death every 10 days. Yet these acts of DV are neglected by government agencies such as Our Watch, and ANROWS.
Imagine this personal scenario from the early 90s. I was picked up one night in a local gay bar my a guy – Graeme, who I fancied – and his partner Peter – who was okay – for a threesome. Everything went fine back at their home, with no indication of any undercurrants…until breakfast the next morning. Right in front of me, as if I wasn’t there, Peter openly abused and humiliated Peter almost continually. It was incredibly uncomfortable, and not just for me. After breakfast, Greame drove me back home, apologising for the incident almost as if it had been his fault. When I asked him in for a coffee, he declined, saying that the clock was on him, and he had to get home to avoid any further problems. I was staggered that I had actually witnessed these events. Fortunately for Peter, the relationship did end. Funnily enough, we ended up as fuck-buddies for the next five years. In that time, he never discussed that issue with me, nor did I ask.
The statistics all round are frightening. No one – adult, child, male or female – should ever have to suffer violence as a way of control, or power play, or anger outlet. It is time to shift the focus from male-to-female violence, and rackke the oroblem in its broader context.
A 1985 fluff piece by Adam Carr for “Outrage” magazine. Adam was visiting Sydney to report on Mardi Gras, and was a friend of my boyfriend at that time, Damian Guy. We were living in Kellett Way in The Cross at the time, behind a strip club. He came to visit us for dinner, and the next thing we knew…we were an article! Again, a lot of editorial license is used, and it is quite a funny piece. For the record, there was NO pink in the flat – it is one of my hate colours – and NO mantelpiece of tiny ornaments lol. For the sake of identification, Damian became “Shane” and I became “Tony”. We had no idea he was writing it, and the look on my face when reading it in Outrage, and the dawning on who it was about, must have been priceless.
This group hold their place in gay history due to their two-years surveillance of Margaret “Mother” Clap’s coffee shop (Molly House), thus bringing about its closure in 1726, after a police raid in which about 40 customers were arrested.
Society for the Reformation of Manners[1] was founded in the Tower Hamlets area of London in 1691.[2] Its espoused aims were the suppression of profanity, immorality, and other lewd activities in general, and of brothels and prostitution in particular.
One of many similar societies founded in that period, it reflected a sea-change in the social attitudes in England following the Glorious Revolution of 1688, and a shifting from the socially liberal attitudes of the Restoration period under Charles II and James II to a more moral and censorious attitude of respectability and seriousness under William and Mary. Although inspired and fed by the moral excesses of London, branches were set up in towns and cities as far afield as Edinburgh, where Daniel Defoe was a member, though the societies never flourished in rural areas.
“A woman of all trades from Covent Garden”. The caption on this engraving is a euphemism for a prostituteThe Society was arranged in four tiers, with the “Society of Original Gentlemen” at the top. These eminent professionals (lawyers, judges and MPs) along with the original founders, provided the expertise and financing to enable prosecutions to proceed. The next tier was the “Second Society” which consisted mainly of tradesmen, and whose role it was to suppress vice. Among other methods, the “Second Society” employed a blacklist which they published annually to shame the alleged offenders. Below the tradesmen was the “Association of Constables” who took a more active role in arresting the miscreants who offended the public morality. Finally the fourth layer consisted of informers: a network of “moral guardians” throughout the City of London, with two stewards in each parish, to gather information about moral infractions.[2] The central committee of “Original Gentlemen” collected the information with a view to passing the information to the local magistrates, so the malefactors could be prosecuted and punished. The Society would pay others to bring prosecutions, or bring prosecutions on its own account.[2]
A prominent supporter of the Society was John Gonson, Justice of the Peace and Chairman of the Quarter Sessions for the City of Westminster for 50 years in the early 18th century. He was noted for his enthusiasm for raiding brothels and for passing harsh sentences, and was depicted twice in William Hogarth’s A Harlot’s Progress series of paintings and engravings. In around 1770, the Society denounced Covent Garden as:
“…the great square of VENUS, and its purlieus are crowded with the practitioners of this Goddess. One would imagine that all the prostitutes in the Kingdom had decided on this neighbourhood…”[3]
The Society sought and gained the patronage of both Church and Crown: John Tillotson, the Archbishop of Canterbury between 1691 and 1694 actively encouraged the Society and his successor Thomas Tenison commended them to his bishops, while Queens Mary and Anne both issued Proclamations against Vice at the Society’s urging. The Society also had influence within the House of Lords, demonstrated by a declaration of support signed by 36 of the members. While there were undoubtedly MPs that shared the Society’s viewpoint and some which were members, there was little relevant legislation passed during the period of the Society’s activities and the Society paid little attention to the House of Commons. Jonathan Swift wrote a supportive tract in his A Project for the Advancement of Religion, and the Reformation of Manners (1709), although some detect satirical intent in the otherwise serious proposal.[citation needed]
The Society also brought lawsuits against playwrights whose plays were perceived to contain insufficient moral instruction. The new attitude to the theatre may be judged from the anti-theatre pamphlet Short View of the Immorality and Profaneness of the English Stage by Jeremy Collier, from 1698, who attacked the lack of moral instruction contained in contemporary plays, such as Love For Love (1695) by William Congreve and The Relapse (1696) by John Vanbrugh, signalling the end of the popularity of Restoration comedy.
The Society flourished until the 1730s, with 1,363 prosecutions in 1726-7.[4] There was a series of raids on “molly houses” (homosexual brothels) in 1725. One prominent victim of the Society was Charles Hitchen, a “thief-taker” and Under City Marshal. He acted as a “finder” of stolen merchandise, negotiating a fee for the return of the stolen items, while extorting bribes from pickpockets to prevent arrest, and leaning on the thieves to make them fence their stolen goods through him. His business may have been undermined by the success of his competitor Jonathan Wild. In 1727, Hitchen was accused of sodomitical practices, and tried for sodomy (a capital offence) and attempted sodomy. He was sentenced to a fine of 20 pounds, to be put in the pillory for one hour, and then to serve six months in prison. He was badly beaten while in the pilory, and died soon after being released from prison.
The Society was revived for a period in the 1750s, triggered by the libertine excesses of the Hellfire Club, and was recognised by George II. A later successor was William Wilberforce’s Society for the Suppression of Vice, founded following a Royal Proclamation by George III in 1787, “For the Encouragement of Piety and Virtue, and for the Preventing and Punishing of Vice, Profaneness and Immorality”.
From Wikipedia
1 ^ In 17th century English, “manners” meant “morals” rather than etiquette.
2 ^ a b c Reformation Necessary to Prevent Our Ruin, 1727, Rictor Norton.
3 ^ Burford p.192
4 ^ Commentary on Conjugal Lewdness (1727) by Daniel Defoe, from the Literary Encyclopedia.
To many tourists, Bondi, in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs, is just a beach, a long expanse of sand and surf. However, Bondi beach itself is divided between the suburbs of Bondi and North Bondi – and don’t try to tell any local they are all the same area! North Bondi us partly situated on a long point of land creating the northern head of Bondi Bay. Wrapped around the point are steep cliffs, and rugged rocks that are lashed by the full fury of the surf. This barren area is known as Ben Buckler.
Map of North Bondi/Ben BucklerBen Buckler is the name of the northern headland of Bondi Bay. There are many conflicting stories about how a headland came to have a male name, but what is undisputed is that the first recorded use of the name was in 1831, when a land grant to Richard Hurd at North Bondi was described as being ‘…to a point called Ben Buckler’. The three most common theories about its naming are:
• It was named for a convict Benjamin Buckler or Ben Buckley, who lived locally with the Aboriginal people from 1810. His friend and fellow convict James Ives claimed he was killed near the point now bearing his name when the rock shelf on which he was standing collapsed. He also claims that the headland was formerly known as ‘Ben Buckler’s leap’.
• A variation on the story has a bushranger called Ben Buckley who, after taking part in many adventures and after obtaining his liberty, lived in a cave in the rocks at the northern end of Bondi Beach and was a known local character.
The rugged cliffs and rocks of Ben Buckler• Obed West (1807-1891) claimed that it was a corruption of an Indigenous word ‘benbuckalong’. Others have claimed that the Indigenous word was originally ‘baal-buckalea’.
But is there a Governor Lachlan Macquarie connection? This was first raised in an anonymous letter to the Sydney magazine the Australian Town and Country Journal on 25 May 1878. The writer, using the nome de plume, ‘Old Colonist’ claimed that the name Ben Buckler was a corruption of a name bestowed upon the headland by Macquarie. He went on to argue that Macquarie named it ‘Benbecula’ in honour of the island of the same name located in the remote Outer Hebrides off the west coast of Scotland.
Macquarie was born on one of the Hebridian Islands, Ulva, and would have been familiar with other islands in this group. The west coast of Benbecula has golden sand beaches, including one long sweep of beach Poll na Crann, with sand dunes behind them, the same coastal environment as Bondi Beach had before its development. Macquarie was born on island of Ulva in the Inner Hebrides, Scotland in 1762 and may have visited Benbecula, although this cannot be confirmed.
Macquarie would have travelled along the South Head Road, (now Old South Head Road) which had been constructed in 1811 and along parts of this Bondi Beach and its northern headland would have been visible. Did it look like Benbecula from a distance?
In 1906 the discussion began again in a local paper The Bondi Weekly when a land subdivision on the headland, known as the Queenscliffe Estate, began rumours that Ben Buckler’s name was to be changed to Queenscliffe.
On 29 June 1915 Captain J. W. Watson of the Australian Historical Society decreed that ‘the name of Ben Buckler is a corruption of Ben-becula, the name given by Macquarie.’ There is no primary evidence for any of the claims for the name Ben Buckler, making the debate about it all the more fascinating.
Published by Waverley Library from Local History source material, 2012.
The Big Rock
The Big Rock aka Mermaid RockOn the flat rock platform below the cliffs of Ben Buckler, Bondi’s northern headland, sits a huge boulder. Attached to its side is a brass plate which reads:
“Municipality of Waverley. This rock weighing 235 tons was washed from the sea during a storm on 15 July 1912. January 1933. J. S. MacKinnon. Town Clerk.”
It was fixed to the rock on 16 March, 1933. On Saturday 13 July, 1912 Sydney was under the influence of monsoonal activity resulting in a steady downpour of rain. Conditions deteriorated the following day and the weather was described by The Daily Telegraph as ‘a cyclonic storm – a bleak southerly gale raging, with fierce rain squalls. During the afternoon the rough weather on the coast continued with, if anything, greater fury.’
The Sydney Morning Herald described the weather as coming ‘from a cyclonic disturbance between Lord Howe Island and the central coast of NSW’ reporting that the wind was up to 113 k.p.h. along the coast, from Manly to Long Bay, beaches sustained serious damage. The wild weather continued over the weekend with newspaper reports describing waves at Tamarama as ‘rolling in like mountains’ and sea spray breaking at points ‘which had previously been unvisited by the waters of the Pacific’. Bronte Baths were damaged by this storm and the force of the sea threw huge boulders into the Bogey Hole.
Plaque placed by Waverley CouncilOn Bondi Beach the ocean had washed up to the edge of the concrete wall which then ran behind the beach, completely covering the sand. At Bondi Baths a gigantic plank, probably a diving board, described as being ‘about a foot in thickness’ was snapped in half.
The Watts family who lived in the old ‘Castle’ Pavilion, the forerunner to the current Bondi Pavilion, right on Bondi Beach reported being terrified by the storm as the south-facing beach bore the full front of the weather. It was after this wild weather subsided that a giant boulder on the North Bondi rock platform was first noticed. It was reported that the force of the mountainous seas which swept along the beaches during these storms had thrown up this enormous submerged sandstone rock from the ocean onto the rock platform. In November, 1932 it was grandly titled ‘Bondi’s Gibraltar’ by the Sydney Morning Herald which reported on Waverley Council’s decision to put a ‘tablet’ on the rock twenty years after its presence was first recorded, in order to record its history.
Cover of the Bondi View, June/July 2002.
Did it fall down – or was it thrown up? The long-accepted position on how The Big Rock came to be sitting on the North Bondi rock platform was that the boulder had been thrown up during the wild storms of July 1912, something that those who witnessed it had no trouble in believing. Soon after the storms a scientist, Carl A. Sussmilch, took measurements of the rock, talked to locals and calculated its weight at 232 tons. He noted deep eroded grooves near it which ran along the rock platform toward the sea and deduced that the force of the storm lifted the rock up from under the sea, flipped it over and with the aid of the strong wind skimmed it along the surface of the platform.
Cover of the Bondi View, June/July 2002He believed it had been turned over, leaving a new surface on top and marinegrowth on the underside. Local residents were divided; some believed the rock had always been there, claiming that they had frequently changed into their swimming costumes behind it. Another view was that there used to be many smaller rocks around this huge one and it was these smaller ones which were washed away during the storms, leaving The Big Rock exposed and prominent in a way it hadn’t been before and leading to the belief that it had suddenly appeared.
Regardless of some views to the contrary, the position that The Big Rock was washed up in the July 1912 became the accepted one and this position is repeated in most histories of Bondi Beach. In mid-2002 Bondi resident Lee Cass, then editor of local paper The Bondi View disputed the long accepted theory that The Big Rock was thrown up by the sea. His detailed rebuttal analyses the accepted wisdom about The Big Rock and finds it all wanting. He proposed an alternative view, that The Big Rock fell from the headland at Ben Buckler and furthermore that it was in place as long ago as 1888. His article ‘The Big Rock: exploding the myth’ appears in The Bondi View June-July 2002 edition a copy of which is available in Waverley Library in the Reference, i.e. non-lending, serial collection.
The Big Rock becomes Mermaid Rock in April 1960. For decades afterwards, despite having no mermaids, the rock continued to be referred to as Mermaid Rock. However that name, along with the memory of the mermaids who made it their rocky throne, has now almost disappeared and the boulder has gone back to its first, and basically self-descriptive title The Big Rock.
In June 2012, almost 100 years since the ferocious storm which is generally believed to have thrown up The Big Rock from its former watery home, extraordinarily powerful weather hit the east coast of Australia. This battered our beaches and the accompanying wild winds caused extensive damage. At Bondi huge seas rolled in, covering the sand and sending enormous waves crashing against the breakwater at the northern end of the beach and overrunning the promenade. Emergency service workers described it as possibly a ‘one-in-100-year storm’ it seems well-timed indeed.
Published by Waverley Library from Local History source material, 2012. Reference: ‘The Big Rock: exploding the myth’ from the Bondi View June-July 2012 ed,
The Mermaids
Mermaids looking out to seaThere were originally two Bondi mermaids who sat on the Big Rock at Ben Buckler.Because the mermaids used to sit there this rock is also often referred to as Mermaid Rock. Only the remains of one of the mermaids is still in existence. She is on permanent display in a special perspex case on the 1st floor, Waverley Library, 32-48 Denison Street, Bondi Junction. The mermaid statues were modelled on two local women:
• Jan Carmody, who was Miss Australia Surf, 1959
• Lynette Whillier, champion swimmer and runner-up in the Miss Australia Surf, 1959
The MermaidsSculptor Lyall Randolph created the mermaids from bronze-coloured fibreglass that he filled with cement. He first tried to sell the idea of the mermaids to Waverley Council, but the Council refused to pay for them.
So Lyall erected them on the Big Rock at his own expense. He claimed that because they were placed a certain distance offshore the space they occupied was not under the jurisdiction of Waverley Council, but the Department of Lands. He claimed that the Department had approved his statues. The mermaids were installed on 3 April 1960.
One month after they appeared university students chiselled mermaid Jan from the Big Rock and removed her as part of a Commemoration Day prank! She was later recovered under mysterious circumstances at the Engineering School, Sydney University. Repaired, she was restored to the Big Rock to rejoin her fellow mermaid Lynette. The cost of repair met by public subscription – the public loved the mermaids so much that they paid for Jan to be put back together again.
The surviving mermaid in Waverley LibraryHeavy seas claimed Lynette in 1974; swept off the Big Rock in a storm she disappeared forever. Jan lost an arm and her tail in the same storm. For two years Jan sat alone on her rocky throne until Waverley Council removed what was left of her in 1976, storing her in a Council Depot where she was forgotten for many years. Re-found in the late 1980s she was moved to Waverley Library, where, in 1999, the Friends of Waverley Library paid for her remains to be preserved by Sydney Artefacts Conservation.
Aboriginal Rock Carvings
Contemporary Bondi Beach is popular with surfers and sun-lovers. In earlier years, Aboriginal people also found it an attractive place, with its abundant nearby fresh water, fish and rocky shores full of shellfish. The name Bondi, also spelt Bundi, Bundye and Boondye, comes from the Aboriginal ‘Boondi’. According to some authorities, this means ‘water tumbling over rocks’, while the Australian Museum records its meaning as ‘a place where a fight with nullas took place’.
Early British arrivals identified Aboriginal pathways running from Port Jackson to the coast. In 1882, Obed West described Aboriginal men walking from Sydney harbour to Coogee or Bondi with bark canoes on their heads, looking for the best fishing spots. A midden of shellfish debris and artefacts at the edge of the dunes has now disappeared under modern development.
In 1899, a large cache of stone artefacts that came to be known as Bondi points were found at the northern end of the beach. These long thin blades were shaped to use as spear points and barbs and were first called ‘chipped-back surgical knives’ because they are shaped like scalpels.
Situated on the southern or sea side of Bondi Golf Course, adjacent to a sewerage treatment plant, there stands a substantial panel of Aboriginal rock carvings depicting various fish species. They are carved into the flat sea-cliff at a fishing rock known to the Indigenous people as Murriverie or Marevera. They were formed by pecking at the rock surface with pointed stones or shells, and extended over 60 metres southwards.
The largest group shows an eight-metre figure of a shark that appears to be attacking a male figure that could be an iguana or lizard. This could be the first record of a shark attack at Bondi. It was earlier thought to be a whale, as there are two other rock engravings of whales at Bondi, but the dorsal and pectoral fins identify it as a shark.
A separate panel shows two fish and a boomerang. The southernmost portion of the group has been cut deeper and is probably of an older date, possibly up to 2,000 years old. Ancestral footprints (mundoes) that once led to the site have now faded. It is assumed that the carvings were linked to a ceremonial ground overlooking the ocean.
A low chain fence now encloses the site. The carvings were retouched and fenced in 1951. A plaque commemorates a misguided attempt in 1964 by Waverley Council to preserve the engravings by re-grooving them. They are listed on the State Heritage Inventory but are poorly drained, blistering, and in danger of being damaged. They deserve serious attention as evidence of the Aboriginal occupation of Bondi long before the blonde-haired surfers arrived.
The Ben Buckler Gun Battery
The Ben Buckler Gun Battery was constructed in 1892 as one of a set of three coastal defence fortifications for Sydney Harbour, the other two being Signal Hill Battery at Watsons Bay and the Shark Point Battery in Clovelly. These fortifications were the last link in Sydney’s outer defence perimeter, which was intended to defend Sydney from bombardment by an enemy vessel standing off the coast. The fortifications built in the 1890s around Sydney’s eastern suburbs were the culmination of some twenty years of construction of harbour defense installations that reflected the changing policy of the time to meet new technologies, threats and styles of warfare.
Gun emplacemen
The Ben Buckler Battery is a rare, intact concrete 1890s gun emplacement, which was designed and developed for the new BL 9.2 inch (234 mm) Mk VI breech-loading ‘counter bombardment’ British Armstrong ‘disappearing’ gun. The Australian colonies bought 10 of these, three for Sydney, plus an extra barrel, four for Victoria at Fort Nepean and Fort Queenscliff, and two for Adelaide, South Australia, purchased in 1888. The Adelaide guns were never installed at Fort Glenelg and the British government bought them back in 1915. The barrel of the gun that had been installed at Signal Hill Battery survives on public display at the Royal Australian Artillery Museum at North Fort, North Head.[citation needed]
The Ben Buckler gun, Serial Number 7319, is the only complete 9.2-inch in Australia and was the largest gun in New South Wales. The gun barrel weighed 22 tons and it took a total of thirty-six horses to transport the barrel from Victoria Barracks in Darlinghurst to the battery in North Bondi; the transit took over three weeks.
Soon after its arrival, the gun was installed on a hydraulically operated disappearing mount. The gun was located below ground level and beneath a domed iron shield set into a wall of reinforced concrete that was ten meters in diameter. The domed metal shield that covered the pit was intended to protect the gun from incoming shells.
Once the gun was loaded, the hydropneumatic action shunted it forward and up through a slot in the shield. After discharging, the recoil mechanism forced the gun back into its pit. This protected the gun crew while loading and made the gun a very difficult target for an enemy ship to hit.
Sometime in the 1950s the army vacated the site. The government was unsuccessful in finding a scrap metal buyer to remove the gun, so it buried the gun and gave the site over to parkland. The gun’s existence was forgotten until it was rediscovered in the mid-1990s by Water Board engineers planning a new pipeline. It is now classed as an architectural relic and is under the protection of the Heritage Council.
The “Spanish Proclamation”
From The Secret Visitors Project
High above Bondi Beach with spectacular views out to sea you will find a small rock engraving which became one of the proofs used by aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave in support of his theory that the Spanish had landed in eastern Australia in 1595. He thought that the Spanish had made this carving as their official record of their presence and possession of the land, and termed it the Spanish Proclamation. Hargrave’s argument convinced very few people and the story associated with the engraving remains largely forgotten.
Hargrave is best known for his aeronautical experimentation, for which he is rightly recognised as a pioneer. Much of this took place in the late 19th century; once the Wright brothers flew successfully his work was superseded by others. Perhaps in part driven by relevance deprivation, during mid 1906 Hargrave was inspired by the discovery of a cannon in Torres Strait and his own memories of work in the same area in the 1870s to develop a theory that the Spanish mariner Lope de Vega in the ship Santa Isabel [or Ysabel] had been separated from Alvaro de Mendana de Neira’s expedition to settle the Solomon Islands and had instead travelled as far south as Sydney Harbour, where they stayed for perhaps 3 years before being rescued.
Figure 1. Hargrave’s recording of the ‘Spanish Proclamation’.
Hargrave presented his theory to newspapers and in a lecture to the Royal Society of NSW in June 1909. The second part of his talk was presented in December 1909 to strong negative reaction. The published Royal Society papers, and later self-published documents and newspaper letters introduced a range of evidence to support his theory. One of his key proofs was the engraving at Bondi.
The engraving Description
The engraving [Figure 1] is located on the headland to the north of Bondi Beach, known since at least the 1830s as Ben Buckler. Later it was also called Meriverie [various spellings, earliest being Meriberri], which was also the name of the quarry that mined a basaltic dyke on the headland. The engraving is on exposed rock near the edge of the cliff, partly within a shallow natural depression that holds a few centimetres of rainwater. About 50 metres to the south is a large rock exposure that contains a number of Aboriginal rock engravings, later re-cut by Waverley Council. Immediately to the northwest is the tall chimney of the Bondi Ocean Outfall Sewer. The engraving is currently surrounded by a small chain fence.
The engraving shows two sailing ships in profile. Around and over them are a series of letters – BALN ZAIH – and other engravings such as a cross within a circle. They are engraved into the surface of the sandstone. They are oriented to be read from the west. The full set of motifs are:
Ship 1 – port side view, curved hull, suggestion of rudder, sterncastle and two part forecastle, bowsprit. Measures 660 mm long by 220 mm high.
Ship 2 – starboard side view, curved hull, delineated keel, sterncastle, bowsprit, about 12 portholes marked by dots. Has deteriorated too much to allow measurement, but scaled from existing drawings is about 1000 mm long by 250 mm high.
Lettering – first line B A L N, second line Z A I H, third line W O. The O is divided into quarters with a vertical cross. Lettering height ranges from 135 mm for the Z to 150 for the B. The first two lines are about 500 mm long.
Line – a line 400 mm long with a small triangle at either tip.
The engravings were first noted by Campbell in his 1899 recording of the nearby Aboriginal engravings. He mentioned that these engravings looked much less weathered than the Aboriginal motifs [Campbell 1899: 11]. Watson and Vogan [Watson 1911] detected two different hands at work, while Hargrave conceded that the N, I and H were scratched rather than chiselled in [Hargrave 1914: 34]
When inspected in March 2010 the engraving was found to be in poor condition. Recent wet weather had resulted in part of the engraving being covered with standing water. The lettering is clear, as is Ship 1 at the bottom of the panel. The outline of Ship 2 to the right had all but disappeared, and could only be faintly detected.
Parts of the rock platform surface are exfoliating, where the hardened surface rind of stone had detached from the bedrock and popped off completely, exposing softer stone. The chains that had been erected around the panel are also dragging on the rock and abrading the stone. Interpretation
Hargrave read the motifs as being a single coherent and purposeful message, cut into the shallow depression in one episode. In his scheme it was the semi-official proclamation of the survivors of Lope de Vega’s expedition, made after their rescue by the Santa Barbara in c.1600. In his reading the two ships are the Santa Isabel [or Ysabel] and the Santa Barbara. The lettering Hargrave interprets as Santa BArbara, Santa YZAbel for the ships and ‘L‘, ‘N‘, ‘H‘ being initials of the senior men present. ‘W‘ was the name they gave to this country. The cross in the circle was Spain’s symbol for conquest in the name of God.
Read together the symbols and letters meant, ‘We in the Santa Barbara and the Santa Ysabel conquered W… from point to point. By the sign of the Cross.’ The initials represent Lope de Vega and his three witnesses, N, I and H. This version appeared in his 1911 booklet and he maintained it essentially as is until his death. One variation that appeared in his later thoughts is that he thought W… referred not more generally to the eastern Australian coast but to an island formed from the higher land between Randwick to South Head, believing that this was separated by swamp or open water from the rest of Sydney in 1595.
Hargrave also believed that the name Meriverie itself was Spanish in origin, being Mare-y-ver-e = ‘Sea view’ [Hargrave 1914: 34]. History of the engraving Hargrave’s interest
The headland at Ben Buckler had already been the scene of significant European activities before Hargrave’s attention was drawn to it. Quarrying the ‘white metal’ basaltic dyke at O’Brien’s Bondi Quarry began in 1860-61 and continued for decades. In 1888 a sewer vent was installed near the engravings as part of the Bondi Sewer. In 1910 it was replaced with the current sewer tower.
The engraving first came to notice when Aboriginal carvings were being recorded by WD Campbell, who produced a detailed corpus of engravings in the Sydney district for the Geological Survey of NSW. After describing the Aboriginal engravings immediately to the south he noted:
[s]ome clue as to the slow rate of decomposition of the rock surface is afforded by a small carving which has been done with a chisel, by a white man evidently. It is one chain north-easterly from the north end of this group; it represents the hulls of two small vessels with the old-fashioned high poop and forecastle in vogue at the time of the founding of the Colony. Although this is considerably weathered, it is not anything like so much as that which the group above has undergone [Campbell 1899: 11].
The earliest mention of the Spanish Proclamation by Hargrave is a 1:1 tracing that he made of the engravings onto linen sheet. The annotation that the engravings sat in a shallow depression that may have prevented ‘wanton vandalism’ is dated 12.3.1910 [Hargrave 1914: unnumbered]. Apart from this there is a note in his personal papers held in the Powerhouse Museum Archives dated to 18.4.1910, which follows the form Hargrave used when he had a bright idea and wanted to document it properly within his files. The note identifies the lettering and their equivalents which he would later propose as the translation. Other undated material in his papers includes comparative hull profiles of the Santa Barbara, Santa Isabel and Columbus’s Santa Maria.
The President of the Royal Australian Historical Society James H. Watson had already disagreed with Hargrave publicly over the origin of engravings of human and animal figures at Woollahra Point, suggesting that rather than being of Spanish origin they were done by convicts early in the colonial period. In Watson’s view the outstretched arms were meant to show a convict tied to a whipping frame [Watson 1909]. When Hargrave ventured more public comments in 1911 Watson issued a strong critique in a newspaper letter.
Regarding the Ben Buckler engravings the carvings on the Bondi cliffs, to my mind-and also to that of Mr. A. J. Vogan, who accompanied me when I inspected them have been done at different periods, the larger ship being much older than the other. The royal-forecastle of the smaller appears to have been added, as also the bowsprit, and is not a part of the original. The letters look much more recent than the ships. [Watson SMH 15.9.1911 p. 5]
The letter is interesting in several ways. Clearly, Watson was systematically examining the evidence Hargrave put forward in support of his theory. Secondly, he mentions Arthur J. Vogan, who was to shortly embark on his own even more fanciful analysis of Aboriginal engravings and evidence for prehistoric migrations into Australia and the Pacific.
In 1911 Hargrave wrote to the Spanish Consul seeking support to protect the engravings at Woollahra Point and Ben Buckler but without success. Around this time he also approached the Mitchell Library to see if they could fund the recovery of ‘the most important document in Australian history’ as he called the Bondi carving. They declined, suggesting instead the Australian Museum [1914: unnumbered]. An upset Hargrave wrote to his two daughters in Britain, saying that this was unacceptable, as the Australian Museum staff were wedded to the Aboriginal engravings idea. Hargrave was at the same time working with Museum staff to excavate a midden on one of the Woollahra Point blocks near his home, in the hope of finding evidence to support his theory. His exasperation at the treatment of the Spanish Proclamation spilled over into an angry letter to the Sydney Morning Herald, in which he says
Your liberal-minded readers will understand better what “discredited” means when I tell them that the Mitchell Library declines to preserve the oldest document in Australia, the Spanish proclamation at Meriveries; that the Australian Museum tells me the few things that I say relate to Spain are all rubbish; that the Historical Society, through their president and secretary, ascribe the industry of certain in telligent convicts as being accountable for things I render reasons for being Spanish. [Hargrave SMH 12.9.1911, p. 7]
One possible convert that Hargrave made in this debate was Norman Lindsay, then an illustrator at the Bulletin magazine. Lindsay was deeply interested in historical ships and was a proficient model-maker, as well as being a very competent craftsman and artist in a range of media, a trait that probably endeared him to Hargrave who admired practical skills. In the magazine The Lone Hand in 1913 Lindsay wrote his own appreciation of the Lope de Vega story, illustrating it himself. The illustrations of the Lope de Vega story cover the ship, the carving of the Spanish Proclamation [see Figure 2 below], the last castaway making the bamboo figure een by Hargrave on Ugar Island in Torres Straits and the alleged shipwreck on Facing Island.
Lindsay’s belief in the story was qualified. In discussing the Spanish Proclamation he says ‘What the lettering accompanying these carvings means I prefer to leave out of this discussion. Mr Hargrave has his theory, which is very ingenious and may be right.’ [Lindsay 1913: p. 274].
Figure 2. Norman Lindsays depiction of the engraving of the Spanish Proclamation
Hargrave maintained his belief in the inscriptions and his overall theory until his death in early 1915. Almost no-one later admitted to having followed and supported his belief, something that Hargrave himself did not find a concern:
Still, it is better to be always in a minority of one and state your views as plainly as your ability allows than to have the support of a majority who do not know the meaning of the things you have attempted to portray. [Hargrave SMH 12.9.1911, p. 7] After Hargrave
Hargrave’s death effectively ended the speculation about these engravings. The inter-war period generally was very quiet in terms of speculations about secret visitors, a phenomenon we have yet to fully understand. Some significant new information did appear that helps us to understand the possible origin of the engravings.
A letter was published in the Sydney Morning Herald by CW Peck in 1928. Peck had written a number of books and newspaper articles on Aboriginal legends and was involved in the Anthropological Society of NSW. While he was generally sympathetic to Aboriginal people and their past he strongly disagreed with the idea that they were necessarily responsbile for the rock engravings around Sydney. He believed this on the basis of no recorded evidence by early European settlers. It was in this context that he critiqued others who believed that Aboriginal engravings were authentic, arguing that some at least were the work of whites.
There are at the present time living in or near Sydney two brothers, both over 70 years old, and both native born. … Out Palm Beach way there are aboriginal rock carvings (sic) done by these brothers in the days of their youth. … I think they sat back and laughed when Lawrence Hargreaves found out so much about the visits of some old Spaniard to Ben Buckler, and they certainly laugh at the naming of the high pooped ships crudely drawn. … Will it not be funny when the Ben Buckler drawings are fenced in, and school children are marched down to see the pictures of the Spanish ships that came here in the sixteenth century. [Peck SMH 4.10.1928: 6]
He went even further in a letter in the Sydney Sun:
The Spanish galleons on the rocks at Ben Buckler were cut by two employees of the Dredge Service who were ardent fishermen about 60 years ago. [Peck Sun 11.9.1929].
Michael Terry wrote of the engravings, uncritically accepting them as part of a broader range of evidence for Spanish or Portuguese voyaging down the east coast [Terry 1969]. The next advocate for European voyagers was Kenneth Gordon McIntyre who, although he provides evidence in support of his claim that Spanish sailed down the eastern coast, does not mention any of Hargrave’s sites.
Gilroy featured the engravings in Mysterious Australia [1995: 237-239] although he mistakenly referred to them as being on the north head of Botany Bay. The tone of his description is also equivocal about their authenticity, which is unusual as Gilroy often embraces even quite implausible anecdotal accounts of discoveries.
This part of the headland has now become a golf course which is reasonably compatible with the retention of the engravings. The Aboriginal engravings were deepened to make the images stand out in 1951 and again in 1964, a practice that has severely affected their appearance. In 1986 the Spanish Proclamation engraving was recognised and added to the Waverley Council Local Environment Plan as an item of environmental heritage. There has been subsequent vandalism and addition of new graffiti but most remain clearly legible. The protective fencing however is now doing more damage than good. Analysis
How do we critique Hargrave’s reading of the engravings? It almost is too outlandish to even know how to start and how would we convince Hargrave that it was suspect? Clearly from 1910 Hargrave had lost all perspective on his Lope de Vega theory and was unable to rationally assess any arguments or evidence contrary to his scenario. He had delivered his second Lope de Vega talk to the Royal Society of NSW in December 1909 and the reaction was so negative that they declined to hear a third instalment. Hargrave was keen to find evidence that proved his argument, and the engravings at Ben Buckler seemed to fit the bill.
Unlike Hargrave’s reading of the Woollahra Point engravings as being non-Aboriginal there is no dispute regarding the European origin of these engravings. Hargrave went to great lengths to compare the ships with other more-or-less contemporary illustrations, such as those of Columbus’s voyages. While moderately successful in showing that they were not typical of late 19th century built ships the conclusion could not be pushed too much further.
The explanation of the lettering, however, really strains credulity. Turning a bunch of letters into an elaborate message conveying information about ship names, conquest and the names of witnesses simply does not work. At different times Hargrave pleaded the illiteracy of the crew and the Peruvian slave miners but this is at odds with the importance he places on the message as Lope de Vega’s parting memorial. The idea that such an important message would be so poorly composed was one he could never surmount, and made even sympathetic supporters, such as Norman Lindsay, question this fundamental basis for his theory.
Peck’s information about these being either deliberate fakes or simply old graffiti is very specific and places their creation at about 1870. Watson and Vogan [Watson 1911] noted that the two ship engravings were of different depth, which is now borne out by the almost complete disappearance of Ship 2, and Campbell also stated they were clearly much fresher cutting than the Aboriginal engravings immediately to the south, consistently with Peck’s claim. The earliest reference I have to O’Brien’s Bondi Quarry operating is 1861, which also allows for the possibility of quarry workmen being implicated in their creation as well. Conclusion
In conclusion there is second-hand but reasonable evidence that the engravings were done in about 1870, by known individuals. The condition of the engravings is consistent with a post-European date, and certainly not in the order of four centuries. The differing engraving of the motifs suggests a number of hands, and it is reasonable to suppose that they are a palimpsest made over time rather than representing, as Hargrave thought, a coherent group with a single meaning. Hargrave’s interpretation of the meaning of the engraving cannot be supported in any way. It stretches the limited content to fit his desired theory of Lope de Vega’s presence in Sydney. The reading is illogical and pushes credibility. In the face of alternative plausible explanations Hargrave’s interpretation cannot be accepted as the explanation for the engravings.
References
Gilroy, R. 1995
Mysterious Australia, Nexus Publishing, Mapleton.
Hargrave L. 1909
‘Lope de Vega’, Journal and proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, 43, pp. 39-54, 412-425
Hargrave, L. 1911
‘Australia’s discovery’ [Letter], Sydney Morning Herald, 12 September 1911, p. 5.
Hargrave, L. 1914
‘Lope de Vega’ annotated manuscript, amendment dated 23 February 1914, ML MSS 3119, Mitchell Library, Sydney.
Lindsay, N. 1913
The end of Lope de Vega’, The Lone Hand, 1 August 1913, pp. 271-277.
Peck, C.W. 1928
‘Rock carvings at Ben Buckler’ [Letter], Sydney Morning Herald, 4 October 1928, p. 6.
Peck, C.W. 1929
[letter to Editor], Sun [Sydney], 11 September 1929.
Watson, J.H. 1909
‘Supposed Spanish occupation of Woollahra Point’ [Letter], Sydney Morning Herald, 14 August 1909, p. 16.
Watson, J. H. 1911
‘Australia’s discovery’ [Letter], Sydney Morning Herald, 15 September 1911, p. 5.
To be checked
Campbell – unpublished original field recordings of the 1899 survey – held in Mitchell Library
Figures
Figure 1 – Published in Hargrave’s self-published booklet – Lope de Vega [1911]. This recording was made in March 1910, using a full-size tracing of the engraving, which was later both photographically reduced and redrawn to scale using a reduction grid. The copyright on this image has expired.
Figure 2 – One of the drawings created by Norman Lindsay to illustrate his article on Hargrave and Lope de Vega in The Lone Hand [1913]. The copyright on this image has expired. https://secretvisitors.wordpress.com/2011/03/20/the-spanish-proclamation/
To look at Tamarama beach today, it is hard to envisage that it was once the site of the largest open-air amusement park in the southern hemisphere, nor that there were attempts in the early 20th century to ban swimmers from the area.
Originally the site for the Royal Aquarium and Pleasure Grounds (commonly referred to as the Bondi Aquarium), it was an amusement park situated in Fletcher’s Glen at Tamarama beach.
It opened on the 1st October 1887 and touted a Great Military Band, merry-go-rounds, swings, shooting gallery, water boats, Camera Obscura, Punch ‘n Judy show, and dancing in the Grand Hall.
There were huge marine aquarium tanks featuring many fish varieties, sting rays, lobsters, turtles, wobbegong and tiger sharks. Seals shared a pond with a solitary penguin. There was a switchback railway, a roller coaster ride above the sand on Tamarama beach, two roller skating rinks, which eere “illiminated by the electric light”. Every Wednesday, Pain’s Grand Fireworks exploded overhead, and there were Sacred and Classical concerts every Sunday.
In typical early 1900s tradition, feats of daring-do were a must. Alexander, an Australian wire walker, walked a wire from cliff to cliff. Captain George Drevar floated on a “cask raft” in the surf. There was a Grand Balloon Ascent and Parachute Descent. Headliners from the Tivoli Theatre perforned on the Aquarium Curcuit.
Fire destroyed the Aquarium and Pavilion on 11th July 1891, but it rose from the ashes in September the same year, and continued on. The ladt known concert there was a fund-raiser for the Waverley Benevolent Society in 1906. Ownership and management chantes several times over the coarse of its existence, and it was finally sold by Mrs Margaret J Lachaume to William Anderson in 1906. He transformed and renamed it Wonderland City.
Anderson was a Prominent theatrical entrepreneur, leased the land in Tamarama Park, minus a 12-footbstrip of coastline, to allow the public access to the beach. He also leased a further 20-acres of land in Tamarama Gully – formerly Tamarama Glen, or “the Glen” – and started to transform it into an amusement park.
The main entrance was a large white weatherboard building in Wonderland Avenue near the point at which it joins Fletcher Street. The entry price was 6 pence for adults and 3 pence for children with all rides costing an additional fee.
Opening on Saturday, 1 December 1906 Wonderland claimed to equal ‘those amusement grounds… of the far famed Coney Island, New York, or White City, Chicago’. William Anderson also claimed “there weren’t sufficient trams in Sydney to transport the crowd … for the opening.” On this opening night approximately 20,00 people travelled out to Wonderland to go on fairground rides, view the novelty attractions and walk among the natural beauty of Tamarama Glen, which was lit by strings of electric lights and described as a ‘fairy city’.
Some of the attraction included an artificial lake; the first outdoor ice skating timk in Australia; a roller skating rink which doubled as a boxing ring; double-decker merry-go-round; Haunted House and Helter Skelter; steam-driven swutchback railway; maze; circus ring; fun factory; the Airum Scarum, an airship that moved on a cable from cliff to cliff, was supported at bith ends by huge wooden structures, and at high tide moved over the sea; wax works; Katzenjammer Castle; Hall of Laughter; Box Ball Alley; Alice the elephant; a sea pond and aquarium; Japanese tearooms; Alpine slide; and The King’s Theatre – a music hall – that could seat 1,000 people.
Employing over 160 people, Wonderland set a new standard for Australian outdoor pleasure grounds. Large crowds, estimated at 2,000 people came every summer weekend, with seventy turnstiles at the entrance doing a brisk trade. Wonderland was known for its novelty and ‘shocking’ acts, with William Anderson the consummate showman. He organised for a couple to be married at Wonderland, and then paraded through the grounds on the back of Alice the elephant. One daredevil performer, Jack Lewis, roller skated down a ramp, through a hoop of fire and landed in a tank with sharks – much to the horror of the crowd. Miraculously Jack always survived unharmed.
Unfortunately, conflict with swimmers was bound to happen. Despite the 12-foot public beach access strip being excluded from his lease, William Anderson erected a 8-foot high wire fence over it anyway, insisting it wss hecessary, as fare-evaders wrre using the strip as a way to access the park via his beachfront boundary fence.
The barbed wire fence extended down the cliff on the southern end of the beach, across the rocks and sand to the rocks at the beach’s northern end. However this wire fence also blocked access for swimmers to the beach. Some of these swimmers were influential businessmen and having their local beach cut off incensed them. The swimmers started an ongoing battle with Anderson; they would cut his wire fence, he would repair it and contact the police. The police would arrive and warn the swimmers and the following weekend the same scenario would be re-enacted. George B. Philip, the foundation President of the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club, was one of these swimmers and he later recalled how he got around one particular wire fence gatekeeper. ‘I scaled under the barbed wire fence practically every day, I knew every nook and corner of it – until I was caught by the gatekeeper. The outcome of this was that I came to an arrangement with him whereby that if I carried his billy of tea from the kiosk to (the) main gate at 5 o’clock each day, I could walk in and out when I liked (much to the envy of my mates, who were not caught)…’
The stalemate between the swimmers and William Anderson continued, with the swimmers eventually taking a deputation to NSW Parliament. On 6 March 1907, the Minister for Lands, James Ashton, issued an order to resume the 12-foot strip of land fronting the beach to “give free access for all time to the beach at Tamarama Bay.” At the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club’s centenary celebrations Ken Stewart, grandson of one of the original fence cutters Bill Stewart, reenacts his grandfather’s cutting of the barbed wire in 19061907 Many of these victorious swimmers formed the nucleus of a new surf club, the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club. On 11 February 1908 the first surf ‘gymkhana’, equivalent to a surf carnival, was held at Wonderland on Tamarama Beach and was held each year until Wonderland closed.
Meanwhile, bad publicity dogged Wonderland. The conflict with local swimmers and the wire fence incident soured the public image of Wonderland, as did complaints that the animals were being poorly housed and mistreated. The occasional breakdown of the Airem Scarem airship above the dangerous surf caused accusations of safety breaches and resident opposition to the weekend revellers at Wonderland grew.
The crowd numbers dropped but Williams Anderson fought back bringing in famous entertainers and more daring acts from his national touring circuit to perform at the King’s Theatre. Anderson responded with more elaborate public exhibitions, but the public was tiring of Wonderland and the crowds dropped. It struggled on from March 1908 to December 1910 with poor crowds and low revenue, finally closing in 1911. William Anderson is said to have lost £15,000 on Wonderland City. Wonderland was the precursor of Luna Park, setting unprecedented standards for popular outdoor entertainment in Sydney. In its day it was the largest open-air amusement park in the Southern Hemisphere, and its decline does not diminish the grandeur of William Anderson’s vision.
Although little visible evidence of Wonderland survives today, with the possible exception of the two paths on the northern boundary of Tamarama Gully, the NSW Heritage Office still considers the site to be of archaeological significance. Today a mural commissioned by the Tamarama Surf Life Saving Club on the side of their clubhouse celebrates the history of Wonderland and the part it played in the formation of their club.
Published by Waverley Library from sources in the Local History Collection, 2008.
Tamarama Beach today. The beach is popular with the gay community, and is referred to as “Glamarama” due to the number of muscle boys who like to pose around there.
Mike Leyland, MBE (4 September 1941– 14 September 2009) and Mal Leyland, MBE (born 1945), also known as the Leyland brothers, were Australian explorers and documentary film-makers, best known for their popular television show, Ask the Leyland Brothers. The show ran on Australian television from 1976 until 1984.
In November 1990 the Leyland Brothers opened the theme park Leyland Brothers World (32°37′3″S 152°4′48″E), on a 40 ha property at North Arm Cove on the Pacific Highway north of Newcastle, New South Wales. It included a 1/40 scale replica of Uluru, as well as amusement rides, playground, roadhouse, museum and a 144 student capacity bush camp. In a 1997 article in the Sunday Age, Mike Leyland said that the initial A$1 million loan blew out due to rain during construction and a 27% interest rate. In July 1992 Chris Palmer of BDO Nelson was appointed receiver and manager of the park when the Leyland Brothers company failed to meet its loan commitment to the Commonwealth Bank. Auctioneers Colliers Jardine estimated the yearly attendance of the park to be about 400,000 people, with 10,000 students for the bush camp. After an auction held by the receiver on 26 November 1992 the theme park was sold for $800,000, and continues to trade successfully as the Great Aussie Bushcamp.[ The brothers went bankrupt.
After the 1992 bankruptcy, Mike and his wife Margie ran a New Lambton video store and worked for the park’s new owner. In 1997 Mike sold part of his Tea Gardens property to fund the production of a far north Queensland film for Channel Seven. Mike and his wife Margie signed a contract with Channel Seven for 12 one-hour documentaries, the first of which aired in 1998 in The World Around Us slot. On 14 September 2009 Mike Leyland died from Parkinson’s disease. He was 68 years old. Mike is survived by his wife Margie, his daughters Kerry, Sandy and Dawn, his stepdaughters Sarah and Alison, and seven grandchildren.
Mal and his wife Laraine ran a photo processing lab in Queensland and launched a travel magazine. In 1997 Mal and Laraine launched a bi-monthly magazine, Leyland’s Australia. In 2000 Mal produced the television show Leyland’s Australia, with his wife Laraine, daughter Carmen and her husband Robert Scott – travelling around Australia in a caravan. In April 2000 Channel 9 cancelled the show after 6 episodes but the series was then picked up by Network Ten.
Leyland Brothers: Mal Leyland reveals financial rift tore popular brothers apart
Australian Story By Brietta Hague
Updated 16 Feb 2015, 11:34am
Mal and Mike Leyland in the Simpson Desert
PHOTO: Mal and Mike Leyland film in the Simpson Desert in central Australia, 1989.
MAP: NSW
Long before Steve Irwin was jumping on crocodiles, Mike and Mal Leyland were sailing down the Darling River in a chaotic dinghy without oars — all in the name of entertainment.
They were the television legends whose wild adventures captured Australia’s imagination.
Armed with a camera and a catchy song that few can forget, they pioneered a successful outback documentary format and made millions of dollars along the way.
But it was their disastrous decision to branch out into the tourism industry by building their theme park Leyland Brothers World that would end the brothers’ collaboration — and relationship.
Mike Leyland died in 2009 and his brother Mal, now 70, has now agreed to repeated requests from Australian Story to tell their story.
“This is the first time that I’ve publicly spoken about what happened to the Leyland Brothers and why Mike and I went our separate ways,” Mal Leyland said.
“We made a conscious effort to make sure that people thought we were still travelling together.
“We didn’t want people to feel as though we were actually ready to rip each other’s throats out.”
By the time the project collapsed in 1992, they had lost more than $6 million and were bankrupt.
“The receivers came in and took possession of the whole lot,” Leyland said.
Who were the Leyland Brothers?
Australian explorers and documentary film-makers
Best known for their TV show Ask the Leyland Brothers, which ran from 1976-1984
Starred in a following series called Leyland Brothers’ World
Both brothers were awarded MBEs in 1980
“In hindsight, Leyland Brothers World was a huge mistake, the biggest mistake we ever made.”
Amid the financial woes, media reports claimed the brothers had transferred more than $1 million of assets into their wives’ names over an 18-month period.
“I didn’t really mind losing the money. I objected to being treated like a criminal because I lost the money,” Leyland said.
“The partnership that Mike and I had for 29 years was crumbling before my eyes and I knew would never be the same again.
“And since there was now nothing left that we jointly owned, there was no need for us to stay in partnership, so for the first time we went our separate ways.”
Brothers were original Ten Pound Poms
Despite their quintessentially Australian characters, the brothers were born in England and arrived in New South Wales in 1950.
Even at a young age they were fascinated by the outback and all things Australian.
The Brothers first set off to explore the country with their cameras in 1961 when Mal Leyland was just 15 and television was first starting to come to Australia.
Mal Leyland speaks with Australian Story
PHOTO: Mal Leyland says the financial rift over the failed theme park ended up pushing the brothers apart. (ABC: Anthony Sines)
They were the first to film Uluru in the wet and first to travel the length of the Darling River in a dinghy.
“We had no idea what we were letting ourselves in for. We were so inexperienced; we had no oars and only an outboard motor,” Mal Leyland said.
The adventures grew in size and ambition.
Their decision to travel from Australia’s western-most to eastern-most point was a feat never before captured on camera.
It was this entrepreneurial take on filmmaking that led to their early success.
“We decided we would road show the film, we would take it around the country and hire town halls, cinemas if we could, and advertise it ourselves and see how we went,” Mal Leyland said.
It was a risk that paid off.
“At the end of the two-week season we’d recovered $15,000, enough money to buy three houses at the time,” he said.
And so the Leyland Brothers were born.
Before long, their quirky television program Ask the Leyland Brothers was attracting some of the highest ratings of the 1970s and 80s, and the theme song is still a familiar tune to millions of Australians.
“Their place in television history is there forever. Historically, the films are incredibly important,” said entrepreneur Dick Smith, whose decision to make his own travel documentaries was inspired by the success of the Leyland Brothers. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-02-16/mal-leyland-reveals-financial-rift-tore-popular-brothers-apart/6091042
Above 2 photos taken in 2002. Private collection of Tim Alderman (Author)
I hate my parents! No…perhaps that is a bit strong, having now written it. I dislike my parents…closer to the point, but now a little too soft.. I’m indifferent towards my parents is perhaps closer to the truth. Yes, I choose to ignore them, and in many instances, regret having to admit that they ever existed at all.
Maybe they loved each other, maybe they didn’t. God knows, love wasn’t exactly a subject openly discussed or displayed as my brother, Kevin, and I grew up. It is sad that Kevin had to be the one to pay the price for whatever did not exist (https://timalderman.com/2012/04/23/kevin-pickhills-the-unspoken-name/) and for what was not discussed, in their relationship. Did we have a happy childhood? In truth, I would have to say yes, though I’m aware that having said that, it is only myself that I speak for. Kevin may have been of another opinion, though, of course, we will never know if that is so.. He has been in his grave for the last 49 years, but I can assume that he would agree with me on that one point – a happy childhood.
It wasn’t difficult to have a happy childhood in the 50’s, and early 60’s. In fact, it appeared that childhood was destined to be that way, almost as if preordained. The weather was perfect – though there are those who say that idyllic weather is part of a co-joined memory of everyone’s childhood – we had perfect neighbour’s, perfect house, perfect pets, and apart from the fact that this is Australia we are talking about, it could almost have been a real-life episode of ‘Father Knows Best’. I was given reasonably free rein to roam Sylvania with my mates, and my dog, Trixie. Kevin in those days was a bit of a millstone around an older brothers neck, but who did not see younger siblings in that light? A necessary evil, in fact.
My childhood, like most who lived through those times was, in many respects, an urban myth. Up until the end of the first decade of our lives, the Easter bunny still delivered Easter eggs, the tooth fairy still left money for dearly departed teeth, and Santa stll came on Christmas Eve to deliver pre-ordered gifts. The only swear word I knew was ‘bloody’ – and had my backside beaten for using it – girls were definitely yucky; and when a school pal whispered into my ear one day about what I actually had to do to a girl to get her pregnant, I screamed, threw my hands in the air and ran!. Nobody would ever do anything that disgusting! Perhaps an inkling of my future lifestyle there! Anyway, I had watched a movie on television by this time, and had it on full authority – in my own mind – that women got pregnant by being kissed, which is why I went out of my way to avoid those situations.
Was it obvious that my mother was unhappy, and planned to desert our happy home? I wouldn’t say it was obvious, but I certainly knew that something wasn’t right. When I got home from school the afternoon she left, and found her gone, I can’t say I was really surprised. In later years, when I was temporarily reunited with her after my fathers suicide, she confided to me that she knew my father was having an affair.. I was more concerned with the issue of her leaving us with a father who was to prove mentally unstable. She claimed that when she left, she had no idea where she was going, or what she was going to do. She couldn’t have managed dragging two young children along with her. I accepted that explanation though must admit to never being entirely happy with it.
That my father was unfaithful to her, I never doubted. Within a fortnight of her leaving, a housekeeper named Nancy was suddenly introduced into the home. It wasn’t that she was identified as ‘housekeeper’ so much as the fact that she knew a little bit too much about us, was a little too familiar with the house. Add to this the fact that she spent the first night on the divan on the back verandah, then suddenly moved into the master bedroom – on my mother’s side of the bed – and even a twelve-year-old doesn’t have problems doing the math. Kevin and I hated her from day one. She was trying to act like a mother, but she knew she wasn’t, so discipline was a problem from the beginning. I hated her because she wouldn’t take orders – well, not from me at any rate. As far as I was concerned, housekeepers took orders. That was something else I learnt from television, and it also proved to be a lie.
For my poor brother, life became an absolute misery. You have to remember that these were still days of witchcraft, and ignorance. If my brother had lived another ten years, he would inevitably have been diagnosed with ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder). However, in a time of witchcraft, his chronic disobedience, his problems with learning, and his hyperactivity were considered to by symptomatic of mental deficiency, and that was exactly how Nancy treated him – as someone who wasn’t ‘all there’. I had no problems with him, he was my brother, and pain in the neck or not, I had the patience of a saint with him, teaching him language, and reciting nursery rhymes to him until he knew them verbatim. He spoke what my parents referred to as ‘double Dutch’, and even though they had trouble understanding a single thing he said, I was always there to translate. I could never work out why they could never understand him! He spoke quite clearly, as far as I was concerned. But Nancy wasn’t even liberal enough to want him to have a translator. She just wanted him out. She was about to get her way.
Nag! Nag! Nag! God, if Nancy could do anything, she could nag. Some women are just born to it, and she was one of them. She treated Kevin and I like criminals and outcasts. We were watched 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and nothing crept by her – believe me, I tried. But worse than dobbing on me to my father for my occasional raids on the sacred biscuit tin, worse than alienating us from our friends and neighbours – you wouldn’t believe how many people she poisoned my father against, or in turn poisoned them against us – was that she picked on Kevin. I couldn’t protect or defend him from her. She was like an unrelenting demon from hell. If he looked at her the wrong way, if he spoke to loudly, played when she wanted him to sleep, spoke when she wanted him to be silent, she was on his case. And she made sure the old man knew all about it when he got home from work – and that was ever the threat. Finally he cracked, just caved in to what she wanted.
Fuck, he was a weak man! I think that shits me more than anything. He sprouted all the morality and principles on God’s earth, but when it came down to brass tacks, he just gave in to whatever was easiest. I could never believe that just getting rid of Nancy never seemed to be an option. Fuck knows, nobody else would have put up with her. Compared to my mother, she lived a life of royalty. I have tried to work out over the years how she
managed to stretch the money my old man gave her to do things that mum never seemed able to manage. The only conclusions I can come to are that he either gave her a hell of a lot more money than mum ever saw, or she had an income outside of what she earned housekeeping for us. It is a question that will never be answered now. Christ, she even moved her son into the house, who in turn became Demon from Hell #2. My old man even did up a car for him, and moved him into my brothers bed, which heaven knows he had no need for, being dead at this time. Which I guess brings us to Nancy’s revenge, and what was to be her downfall.
That Kevin would never have gone over The Gap at Watsons Bay, on that fateful 16 December 1965 night if Nancy had not come along is not even a debatable point. It would not have happened. Full stop! Even my mother suffered unaccountable guilt over my fathers actions, beating herself up over leaving home, leaving us in such volatile predicaments. Did Nancy herself ever feel guilt over what happened? In my observations…no! To her, a problem had been removed and life went on. Her alienation of people we knew now carried over to visiting sympathisers, close family, the media! She closed ranks, and not because it protected anyone, but because it was a further extension of her power. My curiosity at trying to come to terms with what had happened, trying to comprehend the sheer personal magnitude of it, was met with icy emotion, steel resolve that nothing and nobody was going to offer me any enrapturing arms, or sympathetic tears.
While all this turmoil went on, several other events occurred – I was, at no time, informed about what was going on with my father! I was kept completely in the dark, and apart from what I have been able to glean from press reports at the time, I am still in the dark about. I wasn’t even notified of his court cases! There was an attempt by my mother to take me back, which happened with such sudden and unexpected ferocity that it had the opposite effect on me to what it should have had…it scared the life out of me, and sent me bolting to a neighbours home for protection. And there was a custody battle between my mother and father, accompanied by threats – truly – from my fathers sisters on what I was to say to the judge to ensure my father – certainly not my parent of choice – retained custody. Nobody gave a flying fuck about what I wanted…it was all about spite, vindictiveness and control! Being a 12 year-old in the 60s was not to have any rights. You just did what you were told!
As for my fathers brief incarceration, there was one visit, and I was “encouraged” to write regularly, whether I wanted to or not. Upon his release, Nancy stage managed his coming home to be a scene out of “Leave It To Beaver”, complete with me running up the road and into his loving arms! It was done reluctantly, I can assure you. My father and I effectively had no relationship from that time on, and when he committed suicide via carbon monoxide poisoning in 1978, there were no tears shed on my part. After his return, life’s disruptions continued, with the selling of our Melrose Ave home, moving to a shoebox flat in Kogarah – still with Nancy in tow – a name change from Pickhills to Phillips, and me having to change schools, leaving behind everything and everyone I knew. I ended up at a Marist Brothers boarding school in Campbelltown.
Still, there was one consolation – and again, it was unexpected, and came like a bolt from the blue. Dad arrived home at the flat one day, just in time to hear Nancy in one of her vitriolic tirades at me, for having helped myself to a biscuit from the Sacred Biscuit Tin! Now, whether he suspected that this may have been going on, or whether he was surprised to find it going on I will never know. Suffice it to say that, for the only time in our relationship, he stuck up for me, and bundled me into the car and took me to an aunties. I never saw Nancy again! Like ai cared!
My father and I never reconciled over Kevin’s death. Like with most of the unpleasant things that occurred in his life, he just pretended it never happened. Not Nancy, not my father, nor any of his family ever mentioned Kevin’s name again. It would be 35 years later before I felt comfortable, and able, to write about his death, to tell his story. A reconciliation with my mother just after his death likewise proved futile and fruitless. Too kuch water under the bridge by then. I believe she is still alive, and in her 80s. If my stepfathers death is any gauge, I will hear of her death several years after the event. I am not expecting to shed tears over that event, either’!
The current “trendiness” of genealogy, and the push by sites like “Ancestry” to get people interested in their family history has a downside – apart from hundreds of trees that are started and then deserted – for those of us who take it seriously. I do use “Ancestry” – indeed, have my whole tree up there – and it can be very useful for filling in gaps that you can’t find information for…though only if the names you draw from other peoples research have themselves been researched. Like many others, my tree is public, and anyone is free to take information, sources, documents and citations from it. However, there is a tendency for many trendies to want to take shortcuts, so just take information from trees without researching themselves, thus passing on information that is often not correct, which in turn has a pyramid effect as others take the information and add to their own trees. There are also those who are just headhunters and only interested in how many people they can add without checking anything at all. A guy on a genealogy page recently was bragging about the 20,000 people he had on his tree. When challenged about whether he had checked the sources for all of them, his comments suddenly stopped. Obviously…no!
I have just add d a convict to my tree – one of several who are closely related. This one is directly related to my maternal Grandmother’s sisters son’s wife…in other words, the wife of a first cousin. Thinking to check information against other trees, the results were fascinating, and a lesson on checking sources. Incorrect spellings of a prominent name, due to an obvious transcription error, was shared amongst the three trees I looked at. Incorrect naming of children, adding children twice – they were using census…as most of us do for England…but had added, for example, an Evangeline D born 1838, and an Evangeline Dorinda born 1838. The error there seems pretty obvious to me! They had made this error with three children, as if the family wasn’t big enough already without an extra three. They had poor Thomas Street arriving here in 1811 to start a 7-year sentence, then arriving again in 1816 to serve another 7-years. Poor bugger! A bit of research, and tying together some facts from the Colonial Secretary’s Papers – it’s all there – would have shown the 1811 arrival to be correct. As it is, the guy has a really interesting history here, and made quite a bit of money after being pardoned – something they don’t seem to have picked up on.
And people hate being corrected when they make mistakes. I have commented on three trees about inaccuracies, and been ignored. One woman, who I had quite a bit of correspondence with, made three errors with MY bloodlines…she added one colourful son to a cousin (he not only had different parents, but was born in a totally different area) who, despite my pointing out the incorrect parentage, is still there in her tree. She also had an incorrect birth date for a GG aunt, and had attributed her to a non-conformist meeting house record…despite the Priscilla she attributed it to having a different mother. All three errors are still there. Needless to say, I don’t trust any of the information on her tree.
I love seeing an interest in genealogy, but making people think that you just type in a name and off you go, and a little leaf popping up next to a name will give you all the correct information you heed is total bullshit. It is all about filtering and researching. There are no shortcuts!
You have to hand it to the Abbott government – they are the regift that keeps on being gifted! If nothing else, they provide self-opinionated people like me – and the radical media – with plenty of ammunition! They are a constant living reminder of why you NEVER put conservatives in charge – I’m sure our American friends who oppose the GOP will agree with that – and the need for us to press for a secular state. Religion and politics just DO NOT mix, nor should they be allowed to wander through our lives, hand-in-hand!
Yesterday, not for the first time, our government managed to make a total ass of themselves not just locally, but on the world stage. Never in the history of this country have we seen such shonky politics, economics, and misjudgement; a prime minister (small P and small M) and a frojtbench that are so self indulgent, lacking in moral grit, and so divorced from the voices of their constituents governing us to nowhere! One can but pray that this is their death knell!
They are continuing to drag the marriage equality debate on and on, despite the majority of Australians wanting it to happen. Once again yesterday they spent hours at a party room meeting – instigated by Abbott at the last minute, naturally – arguing on whether to have a conscience vote on the issue. This has been going on not for weeks but for years now, and despite the issue not going away – as Abbott hoped it would – he continues to complicate and delay what will, in the end, be inevitable! Yesterdays tactics – which fooled no one – are again an rxample of a pm out of touch with the voters. Having had several members of his frontbench speak out against the party line policy regarding Same Sex Marriage, and with many of the backbench lending their support, he resorted to bully-boy tactics. By inviting the National Party – the most conservative of the conservatives – into the party room meeting to be included in the vote on whether there should be a conscience vote on the issue, he effectively ensured he got his way by the very blatant ploy of branch-stacking – the vote was 60-30 against. On the upside, at least 30 are not going to tow the party line! The fact that Christopher Pyne, Malcolm Turnbull and the Attorney General George Brandis stood up against him are positive moves indeed, and increasingly shows a pm out of touch with not only his own frontbench, but with his government overall! Thefeactures are getting deeper! It seems that we are now, due to all this government indecision, heading to a plebiscite (referendum) on the issue at the next election, which thankfully is not far off. The rediculous thing about this needless expense is that the outcome is inevitable…change will come!
Not being happy with sticking their noses into the bedrooms of all Australians, they then decided to further insult our intelligence by pandering to both their anti-Labor stance, and to climate change deniers with their – excuse me while I laugh hysterically – climate change policy! Fuck me…where do thus mob get off! Can one take a government who eliminated the portfolio of Science Minister seriously when it comes to climate change! I think not! They have always openly accused the opposition – who have a realistic approach to the SCIENCE of climate change – of having climate change policies that will increase the cost of living to the general population by an increase in electricity prices! Meanwhile, they dismantled the last governments Emissions Trading Scheme – despite the fact that it was working, and bringing money into the governments coffers – cut back funding to renewable energy resources, denigrated the benefits of wind farms, openly encouraged the opening of massive coal mines – recently stopped by the High Court after a massive public outcry – which not only threatened environmental vandalism, but endangered our Great Barrier Reef in the name of corporate greed, and at one stage just after their election threatened to decimate protected old growth forests in Tasmania! And what have they replaced this with? Well, renewable energy targets well below those proposed by other countries world-wide, carbon pricing that will be a burden to industry and the climate, and will in quick time do what they accuse the opposition of doing – increase the cost of living as businesses increase costs to cover the losses incurred by their policies. This is not policy with the environment or climate at it’s core, but policy designed to attack the opposition and hooefully gain favour with those who don’t really understand – or care – what it is all about! They have even nanaged ti take into account technologies that have not even come into being yet…if ever! If the government spent half as much time debating the issue of climate change as they did same sex marriage we may – though probably not – have seen some common sense prevail!
So, a week where we have seen our government pander to the climate change deniers, and deny their citizens the right to love whoever the like! Abbott is, beyond doubt, the worst and most destructive prime minister we have ever had in the political history of our country! His place in history will be as an example of stubborness and stupidity that is really unforgivable. His government is divided and seriously fractured by his need to impose his own morality and ideals upon those over which he governs. When his government fails, there will be no one left to blame but himself! And bring it on, I say! Bring it on!
We recently reported on the launch of a new anti-gay organisation in Australia, calling itself ‘Marriage Alliance.’ The organisation appears to have been set up by people affiliated with the Catholic Church, with the sole purpose of campaigning against marriage equality. We prefer to call it an unholy ‘alliance.’
As part of their efforts, Marriage Alliance produced a TV commercial alluding to some vague, horrible consequences for our society, to children, sex education in schools and our ‘rights’, would marriage equality be recognised in Australia. In our previous article we linked to the ad for your critical consideration and analysed some of the claims put forward by Marriage Alliance.
The TV commercial in question was rejected outright by Channels 7 and 10, however, it is being shown on Channel 9 and Foxtel. Marriage Alliance was quite upset by the rejections, and saw it as an affront to their ‘freedom of speech’. Meanwhile they are continuing to ban just about everyone on their Facebook page who expresses a view at odds with their hyper-inflated, and utterly unsubstantiated claims, including our Editor-at-large.
While the gay community was less than shocked by Channel 9 playing along with this new ignorant and homophobic ‘play-group’, we can’t say the same about Foxtel.
Foxtel is reportedly a good corporate citizen when it comes to the treatment of its LGBTI employees, although it does not take part in Pride in Diversity, and does not feature in AWEI’s 2015 top 20 Australian employers for LGBTI people. However, Foxtel is a proud, public corporate supporter of marriage equality. These factors make their decision to air the commercial even more baffling.
The ‘copy and paste’ Foxtel PR response to unhappy customers doesn’t help:
Hi [Name], Thanks for getting in touch. Foxtel is acutely aware that its decision to carry advertisements for the Marriage Alliance has caused hurt and distress to some our customers.
This decision was not made lightly and was made with the active involvement of gay senior executives. Foxtel has and will continue to express support for Marriage Equality.
However, as in Ireland, we believe this debate should be won by the force of the argument in favour of reform, not by refusing to engage in debate or to allow contrary opinions to be put. LGBTQI people were silenced for centuries. We do not believe that the same tactic should be used now against the opponents of Marriage Equality.
As a company Foxtel is a strong supporter of Australian Marriage Equality.
After all Foxtel’s ‘gay senior executives’ approved airing the commercial! Who are you to judge and question? We presume these are the same ‘gay senior executives’ whose jobs depends on playing the usual corporate games and whose bonuses depend of Foxtel’s profitability. Clearly Foxtel is confident that any losses from cancelled subscriptions will be offset by the ad revenue. And that’s fine, after all Foxtel is a business with the primary role of generating revenue for shareholders but, in the words of Judge Constance Harm of The Simpsons, ‘don’t spit on my cupcake and tell me it’s frosting.’
We also appreciate Foxtel, and its ‘gay senior executives’, might genuinely believe we should engage in a ‘debate’ with opponents of marriage equality, and allow ‘contrary opinions’ to be put. We believe Marriage Alliance is likely to advance the cause of marriage equality in Australia by highlighting the ridiculousness of anti-LGBTI religious bigots, however giving a significant national platform to what can only be described as ignorant, homophobic fear-mongering is another story.
Consider this for a moment: replace ‘same-sex marriage’ with the constitutional recognition of Aboriginal Australians in the commercial in question, warning Australians of the ‘many untold dangers’ of doing so – would Foxtel air such a commercial, and how would it be received in the wider community?
Foxtel is setting a dangerous precedent for any bigoted hate group that can cobble together the money for a TV campaign and assert they just wish to have a ‘debate’.
Where is the ‘debate’ in ‘opinions’ long discredited across the liberal democratic world? Where is the ‘debate’ in bigoted, unsubstantiated fear-mongering using the same old, long-demolished arguments that have been thrown around for the better part of the past two decades about marriage equality, involving children, religious freedom and the infamous slippery slope into social anarchy? And would someone please think of all the bigoted, homophobic bakers, florists and wedding photographers who may be subjected to witnessing love and happiness they disapprove of because … Jesus?!
Despite our non-theistic value system, here at The Vue Post we do support the right of people of faith to observe their respective religious beliefs. However, in a secular, liberal democracy that right cannot be unfettered. For example:
religious beliefs cannot be equated with, or override, proven observable facts and social and scientific theories; and
freedom of religion must give way when it comes into conflict with the dignity of human beings.
There must also be very limited role for religious institutions in public policy, especially in secular, liberal democracies. Religious ‘morality’ has little role to play in modern public policy and society.
Only public policy which is guided by common decency, human dignity and fairness and is informed by proven observable facts and social and scientific theories will be good public policy. Such policies will arguably also always satisfy the fundamental principles of religious beliefs, without importing the uninformed bigotry and prejudices developed and retained by their institutions over the centuries.
In a modern, liberal secular democracy we simply cannot have laws that entitle citizens and public business to discriminate against a group of their fellow citizens on the basis of so-called ‘deeply held beliefs’. Would we allow a Christian business owner to deny goods and services to Muslim or Jewish customers on the basis of their ‘deeply held beliefs’, or vice-versa? Would we allow LGBTI business owners to ask if a customer has a particular belief that considers homosexuality a sin, and then refuse to serve them on the basis of his or her ‘deeply held belief’ about such views being abhorrent and out-of-bounds in a modern, liberal secular democracy?
We think not. Society could not properly function and peacefully co-exist under such conditions.
We do support the right to an informed debate, the discussion of ideas and concepts and challenging the status quo. However, speech infused with bigotry, hatred and prejudice, such as homophobia, misogyny or racism by their very nature lack the ‘informed’ component. That’s why we don’t give a platform to people who still deny the holocaust or question the intellectual equality of people of colour and women to white men, and we would just laugh at someone who suggested the Earth is flat or the Sun revolves around us. But, sadly, ignorant homophobia is still seen as perfectly acceptable, even by an organisation that ‘prides’ itself on its support for the LGBTI community, in the name of ‘freedom of speech.’
An ‘opinion’ in the absence of evidence and facts to support it is usually just old-fashioned bigotry, hatred and prejudice, and so it is arguable that no one is entitled to an opinion, especially when the opinion in question has no foundation in facts, or has been conclusively and inarguably debunked. In our view, you are only ‘entitled’ to what you can coherently argue and factually support. For bible-based arguments against homosexuality and marriage equality that ship had long sailed. And make no mistake, Marriage Alliance is not an ‘independent alliance.’ It has deep and undeniable connections to the Catholic Church through every single person who has been publicly associated with the organisation.
Foxtel, and Channel 9, are misguided. They are not contributing to a ‘debate’ by showing the commercial. The ‘debate’ has been over for quite a while now. We are now in a war of attrition on the subject of marriage equality and Foxtel, and Channel 9, just awarded a free-kick to the opposition. A bigoted, homophobic and ignorant opposition, driven by extremist religious ideology which at its heart is opposed to the very existence of the LGBTI community.
Consequently, we cannot accept the explanation given by Foxtel for airing the Marriage Alliance commercial. Doing so is inexcusable, and their ‘freedom of speech’ argument in defending their actions rings as hollow, and intellectually and morally bankrupt, as the Marriage Alliance commercial.
The same applies equally to Channel 9. But at least the LGBTI community is not paying for the privilege of watching Channel 9, unlike with Foxtel’s expensive, subscription-based service, only to be verbally assaulted by a bigoted anti-LGBTI message in the safety of their own home, by a service they pay for.
timalderman 
