8 Talks and Other material
1 Roy Hay, 'Industrialisation and urbanisation in Scotland, 1700-2000', Lecture to a course on Scottish history at the University of Melbourne.
Industrialisation in Scotland 1700-2000
2 Roy Hay, Social History, a contribution to a postgraduate seminar at Deakin University.
3 Jennifer Kloester, Georgette Heyer's Regency World, Random House, London, 2005.
Roy Hay launched Jennifer Kloester's marvellous book on Georgette Heyer's Regency World at Griffiths bookshop, Ryrie Street, Geelong, on Wednesday, 7 December 2005.
Isn’t it exciting to have a local author launched in the best bookshop in Geelong with a guaranteed best-seller on a world-renowned writer who created a whole new genre by the power and appeal of her work? Georgette Heyer is single-handedly responsible for our understanding of the Regency period in England by the power of her historical research and the skill of her writing. Her books have been devoured by a devoted readership around the world and a new generation is discovering her works thanks to Random House’s reissue of the whole canon of Regency novels, some of which you will find on Griffith’s shelves, incidentally. But even Georgette Heyer, who had some lovely, arch and yet typical correspondence with at least one of her Australian readers around the time of the Second World War, could not have imagined that her work would be revivified by someone as sensitive, scholarly and brilliant as Jennifer Kloester.
Jenny Kloester is a wonderful writer, but above all she is someone who had a big idea and pursued it. She always wanted to write a compendium to the novels of Georgette Heyer and started work on the project more than a decade ago. It was my good fortune to have Jenny as a student at Deakin when the idea began to crystallise and she was able to go on to the University of Melbourne to underpin it with a doctoral thesis on Heyer as a writer and historical scholar. That gave her the solid research base, just like Heyer established for her writings, from which to create the book we are launching tonight.
Like Heyer, Jenny Kloester, is one of these remarkable people, who can make what is extremely difficult and painstaking and time consuming, appear simple and clear and engaging. It is the art which conceals art. Take for example the illustrations which abound throughout the book. Jenny researched them all, she created composites of contemporary items and people, and provided the material from which the extraordinary artist, Graeme Tavendale, drew the fabulous line drawings which complement the text. There was a touching moment at the Melbourne launch last week when Jenny met Graeme face to face for the first time, having done all their business to that point by phone, letter and email. Simon Clews in his witty introduction offered some wonderful Regency etiquette advice for modern Australians which I will not attempt to repeat, but you can find it all in the book.
The historical research on the Regency period, that Jenny completed to round out her knowledge is profound and scholarly, but none of this intrudes into the way she presents that material for your pleasure. Turn to any topic which occurs in any of Heyer’s Regency novels and you will find something in this compendium to enrich your understanding. I only have time for a single example. What is a quizzing glass, you ask? Look at pages 218–19 and you will find a brilliant little vignette on the subject. We get the technology of quizzing glasses, their social usage and the relevant Heyer reference. ‘In The Corinthian, Sir Richard Wyndham used his quizzing glass to such good effect that its was considered one of society’s deadliest weapons against any form of pretension.’ And there is much more like this throughout this superb compendium. There is something to be learned and enjoyed on every page.
A pat on the back to Random House for its sensitive publication of the book under the Heinemann label, Heyer’s original publishers and a word of thanks, which Jenny will amplify to Georgette Heyer’s surviving family, her previous biographers and scholars and libraries around the world who have assisted Jenny in the production of the work. She charmed them all by her commitment and verve and you will realise in a moment what a combination of intellect, talent, and perseverance she is.
But I will end with a prediction. The BBC which does all these superb historical dramas which are shown on television in this country and sometimes made into feature films, has done Jane Austen, the Brontes, George Eliot, Dickens, Trollope, Galsworthy, Wilde and Hardy to death. The next big thing in historical drama has to be Georgette Heyer’s Regency World with a scripts and screen plays by Jenny Kloester. When this happens you will all be able to say you heard it first, here at Griffiths in Geelong, in December 2005. So get your copy of Jennifer Kloester, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World, get it autographed by the author as evidence that you really were here tonight and I can promise you it will be the ultimate collectable, and your grandchildren will be so proud that you did so, and they will dine out on the proceeds. So with that I am hugely pleased to launch the book of the year, Georgette Heyer’s Regency World by Jennifer Kloester.
4 A short history of Croatian soccer in Victoria, 1954-1994
Short history of Croatian soccer
5 Launch of Innovation and Enterprise: A History of Backwell IXL by G A Maclean.
Roy Hay, review of G A McLean, Innovation and Enterprise: A History of Backwell IXL, 1858–2008, Sampford IXL, Geelong, 2008, Investigator, vol. 43, no. 3, September 2008, pp. 121–123.
It is a privilege and a very real pleasure to be asked to speak at the launch of Innovation and Enterprise: A History of Backwell IXL, 1858-2008 by Dr. Al McLean. That’s not just a conventional response for I want to share with you my thought that this is an exceptional book about an exceptional company by an exceptional author. Let’s start with the company and put it into perspective.
We know a fair bit about the economic and industrial history of Geelong and its region through the work of a number of first class scholars. Philip Brown’s Clyde Company Papers, Walter Randolph Brownhill’s History of Geelong and Corio Bay, Ian Wynd’s additions to that book, his Geelong: The Pivot and his studies of the municipalities, Margaret Kiddle’s evocation of the pastoralists of the Western District, Norm Houghton’s accounts of the timber industries in the Otways and transport systems. And we could go on by naming Peter Alsop, Louise Johnson, Warwick Eather, Anne Riggs, Lorraine Huddle and others. Our author tonight has made major contributions, but I will talk about those later.
So we have the outlines of the story of a town and then a city which grew up on the western shore of Corio Bay, had aspirations to be the fulcrum of the Port Phillip economy, and which eventually became the gateway to the pastoral and agricultural areas of the west of the state of Victoria and a significant manufacturing centre supplying first its own citizens and then exporting to its hinterland and beyond. We like to believe that it was only by the use of dodgy maps that Melbourne was able to overtake Geelong as supplier to the goldfields and major population centre and state capital, but there were deeper reasons (or some would say shallower reasons) why this happened. Geelong was to weather some of the storms of the later nineteenth century better than Melbourne and gradually put together a significant manufacturing sector which employed the domestic population and successive waves of migrants in the twentieth. Lots of people would want to pick out the contribution of the large companies which developed a presence here from the 1920s onwards, Ford, Shell, International Harvester, British Wire Rope and the like, but if you are to understand the history of the Geelong economy you have to appreciate the cumulative efforts of a myriad of small and family businesses.
And this where we have a huge gap in the records. We have very few company histories explain what happened in detail in Geelong and why it happened and why some companies survived and others did not. The shelf in my study is almost bare. We have Ivan Southall, The Weaver from Meltham, Peter A. Walker, My grandfather's clock : C. Nash & Son, the story of a family business 1854 to 1954, and Richard Annois, With Respect: The Story of Geelong Lawyers Harwood & Pincott, 1840–1992. Even the big companies have had little or no analytic work done on them. Marcella Hunter, Shell Geelong Refinery: 50 years in Geelong and Warwick Eather’s work on Ford are two rare examples. Now we all know the statistics about small companies, that 60 per cent of foundations are gone within three years. So most are not going to leave much trace in the records. But what about a firm whose existence is almost coterminous with the history of Geelong itself, Backwell IXL?
Ebenezer Blackwell set up his blacksmith’s shop in Aberdeen Street in 1858, within about twenty years of the first Europeans settling in Geelong. He did so at a time when economic circumstances were not propitious, and as our author makes clear, started a pattern which has continued through the life of the company. When things got tough, Backwell got going, invested in new products and production equipment and set itself to make money when things improved. And that money was ploughed back into the business so that the amount which had to be obtained from outside sources for investment was minimised. Investment was prudent. Of course mistakes were made, some products did not justify the effort put into them, but no major project was allowed to put the survival of the company at risk for too long. It was this balancing of risk and innovation which is at the heart of the story that Al McLean tells so well.
He is able to do so because he understands the economic history of Geelong better than anybody else I know. His thesis on Geelong’s industrialisation in the nineteenth century gave him the firmest of groundings on the structure of the economy and its changes. His doctoral thesis on the Geelong Regional Commission is a path-breaking study, which our current generation of politicians and planners should be reading now. He has run small businesses, he has helped create the environment in which they could flourish and he has absorbed all the tools of scholarship required to analyse and present the research he has undertaken. So Backwell has been perceptive in its choice of the person to present its history, because he has asked the right questions and provided the best answers available from the memory of the family members and others he has interviewed and the records he has consulted.
And it is a fascinating story he tells. He could simply have given us a chronological account, but by organising the material around the product cycles as the firm evolved, we have a much clear sense of the challenges faced at each period, the markets, the technology, the skills, the innovations required. On this last point, let me once again suggest that while in economic history we love to point to the great inventions — the steam engine, the locomotive, the electric light, television — it is arguable that the greatest improvements in production and productivity come from a host of small, cumulative, improvements to the original concept, by firms and their workers. You can see this happening at Backwell IXL through Al McLean’s meticulous account of the product development in the firm.
There was flesh and blood behind all this, and though Al tells us that he was writing an economic history, not an account of the social and personal lives of the founders and their successors, you can get a sense of the dynamics of the operation. Some of the key decisions were driven, successfully or otherwise, by enterprising individuals, so alternative paths were always possible and always had to be thought and argued through. I loved that quote from Brian Backwell to Ron Read in the enamelling shop, ‘You can do anything you like as long as you don’t spend any money.’
Selfishly I would like to have had more of the internal relationships between key individuals and groups and the industrial relations of the firm as it grew and changed. On another key point which underpins the success of the firm over the long haul, I would like to know more about whether the focus of the firm on the markets it learned and knew well in Geelong and the western district was a carefully planned strategy to avoid being too successful and hence vulnerable to take-over by outside interests? When we were discussing this evening, Brian Backwell expressed disappointment that Backwell had not reached the iconic status of Hill’s with their hoist, or Vegemite. But as he noted himself the Tastic brand and the IXL stoves were probably in a significant proportion of Australian houses at one time or another so Backwell was and remains more than just a blip on the radar.
Backwell IXL is also an example of living history. And there is more history to be written of this firm. Al McLean has given us a lot, and it would be churlish to ask him for more, but the story of the workers in the firm and the social impact of its products would be fascinating tales to tell. The firm also has a future. There is a new story being made as Sampford IXL with Robert Backwell as its chair. The future is in good hands.
So I want to congratulate Al on his research and analysis and story-telling, Roy Walshe for his brilliant design of the book, the Backwell family and the firm for continuing its innovation and enterprise by investing in this first class history, which breaks new ground as I have tried to show, and all those who have contributed to the firm over the years for this is your history of which you should be very proud.