Cooees across the strand: Australian travellers in London and the performance of national identity

Australian Historical Studies

Volumn 32, Issue 116, 2001, Pages 109-127

  White, Richard ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY   (Australia)

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EID: 33745280539     PISSN: 1031461X     EISSN: 19405049     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/10314610108596150     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. All history is collaborative but this article is particularly dependent on the generosity, knowledge and expertise of others. For their assistance variously with history, literature and language, I have to thank Alan Atkinson, Jill Barnes, Pru Black, Sue Butler, Philip Butterss, Bill Casey, Nick Evans, Heather Goodall, Melissa Harper, Andrew Hassam, Julia Home, Philip Jones, Jan Kociumbas, Philippa Martyr, Roy MacLeod, Bruce Moore, David Nash, Olwen Pryke, Marian Quartly, Jill Roe, Penny Russell, Jane Simpson, Peter Spearritt, Hsu-Ming Teo, Tess Thomson and Richard Waterhouse. I must acknowledge my debt to such wonderful research tools as W.S. Ramson, ed., The Australian National Dictionary: A Dictionary of Australianisms on Historical Principles (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1988)
2. J.A. Simpson and E.S.C. Weiner, eds. The Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)
3. H.W. Orsman, ed., The Dictionary of New Zealand English: A Dictionary of New Zealandisms on Historical Principles (Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1997)
4. E.E. Morris, ed., Austral English: A Dictionary of Australasian Words Phrases and Usages (London: Macmillan, 1898); the Australian Literature Database 〈http://setis.Iibrary.usyd.edu.au/ozIit/〉; and to H-Net: New Zealand and Australia Discussion List 〈H-Anzau@h-net.msu.edu〉, where I first found many of the 'cooees' cited here
5. For the performative possibilities of words see Judith Butler, Excitable Speech: A Politics of the Performative (New York: Routledge, 1997)
6. Matthew Flinders, A Voyage to Terra Australia ⋯ in the Years 1801, 1802, and 1803, vol. 1 (London: G. & W. Nicol, 1814), 67
7. Australian National Dictionary; W.H. Leigh, Reconnoitering Voyages and Travels with Adventures in the New Colonies of South Australia (London: Smith, Elder & Co., 1839), 85
8. Paul Carter, The Sound In Between: Voice, Space, Performance (Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1992), 28, picking up an aside by
9. Ernest Giles, Australia Twice Traversed, vol. 2 (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1889), 18
10. See, Mary Durack, Kings in Grass Castles (London: Constable, 1959), 111. More research in both history and linguistics is needed on this question
11. Carter, 27. For examples: white to black: John Hunter, An Historical Journal of the Transactions at Port Jackson and Norfolk Island (London: John Stockdale, 1793), 149
12. black to white: Joseph Hawdon, The Journal of a Journey from New South Wales to Adelaide (Melbourne: Georgian House, 1952), 15, 23 January 1838
13. Peter Cunningham, Two Yean in New South Wales, vol. 2 (1827; revised ed., London: Henry Colbum, 1827), 23
14. John Dunmore Lang, Phillipstand; or the Country Hitherto Designated Port Phillip: Its Present Condition and Prospects, as a Highly Eligible Field for Emigration (London: Longman Brown Green & Longmans, 1847), 85
15. Anon, 'Australian Colloquialisms', All the Year Round (30 July 1887): 67
16. Cited in Kathleen Fitzpatrick, Sir John Franklin in Tasmania, 1837-1843 (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 1949), 194, 297
17. Charles Griffith, The Present State and Prospects of the Port Phillip District of New South Wales (Dublin: William Curry Junior, & Co., 1845), 65
18. Charles Rowcroft, Tales of the Colonies: Or. the Adventures of an Emigrant, vol. 1 (London: Saunders & Otley, 1843), 82
19. Peter Bromley Maling, Samuel Butler at Mesopotamia, together with Butler's 'Forest Creek' Manuscript and his Letters to Tripp and Acland (Wellington: Government Printer, 1960), 46
20. According to William Landsborough. See James Stuart Laurie, ed., Exploration of Australia from Carpentaria to Melbourne (London: Thomas Murby, 1866), 24n
21. 'Not to ⋯ is always accounted the greatest barbarity'. See, A Clergyman [John Morison], Australia as It Is: Or Facts and Features, Sketches and Incidents of Australia and Australian Life (1867; reprint, Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1967), 187
22. The Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 3 (Sydney: Grolier, 1963), 39
23. Lorimer Fison and A.W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kumai: Group-Marriage and Relationship, and Marriage by Elopement (Melbourne: George Robertson, 1880), 283
24. Daisy Bates, The Native Tribes of Western Australia, ed. Isobel White (Canberra: National Library of Australia, 1985), 224
25. Richard White, 'The Outsider's Gaze and the Representation of Australia', in Australia in the World: Perceptions and Possibilities, ed. Don Grant and Graham Seal (Perth: Black Swan Press, 1994), 22-8
26. For Australian travellers in England, see Andrew Hassam, 'Double Visions and the Desire for Recognition on Foreign Shores', Journal of Australian Studies 53 (1997): 89-98
27. K.S. Inglis, 'Going Home: Australians in England, 1870-1900', in Home or Away? Immigrants in Colonial Australia, ed. David Fitzpatrick (Canberra: Australian National University, 1992), 105-30
28. Richard White, 'Bluebells and Fogtown: Australians' First Impressions of England, 1860-1940', Australian Cultural History 5 (1986): 44-59
29. David Burn, A Picture of Van Diemen's Land (Hobart: Cat & Fiddle Press, 1973), 92-3 (originally published in The Colonial Magazine, 1840-41)
30. John West, The History of Tasmania (1852; reprint, Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1971), 330
31. Hugh Anderson, Goldrush Songster (Melbourne: Rams Skull Press, 1958), 34-5
32. Mrs Edward Millett, An Australian Parsonage: Or, the Settler and the Savage in Western Australia (London: Edward Stanford, 1872), 84-5
33. An Australian [Maude Wordsworth James], The 'Coo-ee' Call (Adelaide: Sands & McDougall, [1917?]), 32
34. [J. C. Hotten], The Slang Dictionary, or, The Vulgar Words, Street Phrases and 'Fast' Expressions of High and Low Society (London: John Camden Hotten, 1864), 107. Significantly, other Australianisms did not enter until the 1873 edition
35. See Sidney J. Baker, The Australian Language (1945; reprint, Sydney: Sun Books 1966), 14, 18
36. Anon, 'Bungaree, King of the Blacks', All the Year Round (21 May 1859): 80
37. J.C.L. Fitzpatrick, When We Were Boys Together: Reminiscences of the Hawkesbury District (Windsor: F. Campbell, 1909), n.p. [25]
38. Other examples are The Queer Ways of Australia', cited in A.J. Vogan, The Black Police: A Story of Modern Australia (London: Hutchinson, 1890), 140
39. Eric J. Leed, The Mind of the Traveller: From Gilgamesh to Global Tourism (New York: Basic Books, 1991), 267-8
40. percy G. Adams, Travel Literature and the Evolution of the Novel (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1983)
41. Ernest William Hornung, A Bride from the Bush (1890; reprint, London: John Murray, 1908), 184
42. 'Jack Cornstalk', in Henry Lawson, Humorous Verses (Sydney: Cornstalk, 1924), 106. There are some differences from the original version published in When I Was King. Jack Cornstalk was Randolph Bedford, who was in London at the time
43. See Colin Roderick, ed., Henry Lawson: Collected Verse, vol. 2 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1968), 365
44. Peter Pierce, The Country of Lost Children: An Australian Anxiety (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); Pierce misses the significance of the cooee
45. Justin McCarthy and Mrs Campbell Praed, The Ladies' Gallery (London: Richard Bentley & Son, 1888), 1
46. Mrs Campbell Praed, Australian Life: Black and White (London: Chapman & Hall, 1885), 276
47. Mrs Patchett Martin, Coo-ee: Tales of Australian Life by Australian Ladies (London: King, 1891)
48. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Ware: Wordsworth Editions, 1992), 167
49. H.G. Wells, The Island of Doctor Moreau, ed. Leon Stover (1896; reprint, Jefferson: McFarland, 1996), 173
50. 'So, I Suppose, She's an Australian', Robert Leighton Coo-ee! A Story of Peril and Adventure in the South Seas (London: C. Arthur Pearson, 1911), 70
51. Will H. Ogilvie, 'Coo-ee!', in The Australian and Other Verses (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1916), 50, later set to music by C. Villiers Stanford
52. Kenneth Mackay, 'Bushed' in his Stirrup Jingles from the Bush and the Turf and Other Rhymes (Sydney: Edwards, Dunlop, 1887), 22-3
53. 'Coo-ee' (William Sylvester Walker), The Evil of Yelcomom Creek' in The Oxford Book of Australian Ghost Stories, ed. Ken GeIder (Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994), 150-1
54. cf. Will. Compton, 'Death's Cooee', in Convict Jim and Other Poems (Maryborough: Alston, 1894), 28
55. Marcus Claike, 'Pretty Dick', in Australian Tales (Melbourne: A. & W. Bruce, 1896), 15. The other extreme was to cooee, and be greeted by one's future wife, who happened to be named Cooee
56. See Dorothy M. Langsford, Cooee of Glenowie: An Australian Story (Adelaide: Gillingham, Swann & Co., 1922), 25-6
57. Signor Spagnoletti, 'Cooey! Popular Australian Song' (Sydney: James Reading, [1850s?]). Most can be found by entering cooee and its various spellings into the National Library of Australia catalogue
58. Frank G. King, 'Coo-ee Mary (My Little Gum Tree Queen)' (Sydney: W.J. Deane, [1908?])
59. See, for example, W.J. Turner and Howard C. Coghlan, 'Coo-ee: An Australian Ballad' (Melbourne: W.H. Glen & Co, [1890])
60. J. Capener and Alex Muirden, 'Coo-ee! Coo-ee! Over the Sea' in B. Williams Song Folio (Contralto or Baritone) (London: B. Williams, [1930?])
61. Richard White, Inventing Australia: Images and Identity 1688-1980 (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1981), 108
62. Ralph D. Christie, Coo-e-e: An Illustrated Shorthand Magazine of General Literature in the Corresponding and Reporting Styles of Phonography (Melbourne: R. D. Christie, 1878-80)
63. William Robertson, Cooee Talks: A Collection of Lecturettes upon Early Experiences among the Aborigines of Australia Delivered from a Wireless Broadcasting Station (Sydney, Angus & Robertson, 1928)
64. John Gunn, The Defeat of Distance: Qantas 1919-1939 (Brisbane: University of Queensland Press, 1988), 345
65. Cooee: The Windows Communications Manager: User's Guide (Sydney: NetComm, 1993)
66. Mimmo Cozzolino, Symbols of Australia (Melbourne: Cozbook/Penguin, 1980), 33-4, 106, 148, 172
67. C.M.H. Clark, ed., Select Documents in Australian History, 1851-1900 (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1955), 787
68. James, The 'Coo-ee' Call, 30
69. John Sandes, 'The Call', Argus, 8 August 1914, 5
70. Henry Lawson, The Southern Scout, or The Natives of the Land', in Henry Lawson: Collected Verse, ed. Colin Roderick (Sydney: Angus & Robertson, 1967), 224
71. Simon Gallaher, 'Federal Contingent', in Bards ofBurwood: A Collection of Poems by Various Writers Resident in Burwood or Contiguous Boroughs, ed. H.A. Stuart (Sydney: H.J. Murray, 1901), 1
72. John Meredith, The Coo-ee March: Gilgandra-Sydney 1915 (Dubbo: Macquarie Publications, 1981), 91-6
73. Coo-ee! The Journal of the Bishops Knoll Hospital Bristol. 1916-17
74. Athol Lewis, Diary, 10 March 1917, MSI0863, La Trobe Library, Melbourne, cited in Bart Ziino, 'Journeys to War: Experience of Australian Recruits in the Great War' (MA thesis. University of Melbourne, 1999), 73
75. Charles Ridgway, 'Sing Us a Song of Australia (Coo-ee-'Twill Remind Us of Home, Sweet Home)' (Melbourne: Dinsdales', [1916?])
76. A. Matchett, 'Coo-ee Australia', in Coo-ee: Gift Souvenir Dedicated to the Australian Imperial Forces (Melbourne: Norman Bros, [1916?]), 1
77. see also John Butler Cooper, Coo-ee-ee! A Tale of Bushmen from Australia to Anzac (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1916), 261ff
78. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1991), 7
79. The Daily Express cited in Gavin Souter, Lion and Kangaroo: Australia: 1901-1919 The Rise of a Nation (Sydney: Collins, 1976), 183
80. I. Nathan, The Southern Euphrosyne and Australian Miscellany (London: Whittaker, 1848), 102
81. Anon 'Yarns from the Sydney Bulletin', The Anzac Bulletin 61, 8 March 1918, 13
82. see also Sidney J. Baker, The Australian Language, 321, citing one of his 'outback correspondents'
83. Interestingly, the only comparison, in its seriousness about the cooee, its emphasis on Aboriginality (albeit from a very different perspective) and its 'high art' consciousness, is Paul Carter's 'Cooee Song: A Performance Work for Two Actors and Their Voices', Carter, 53-69
84. Roger Covell, Australia's Music: Themes of a New Society (Melbourne: Sun Books, 1967), 69
85. Gunner P. F. Harney, 'Coo-ee', Coo-ee! The Journal of the Bishops Knoll Hospital Bristol 1, no. 3 (20 January 1917): n.p
86. Without defining 'natural'. See The Australian Encyclopaedia, vol. 3, 39