edmund james banfield - kouroo

EDMUND JAMES BANFIELD

BEACHCOMBER OF DUNK ISLAND

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

Edmund James Banfield “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

mailto:[email protected]?subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

mailto:[email protected] subject=Contribution to Kouroo Contexture

EDMUND JAMES BANFIELD EDMUND JAMES BANFIELD

HDT WHAT? INDEX

The Concord Saunterer has presented a couple of articles onEdmund James Banfield, “Australia’s Literary Beachcomber,” whosometimes signed himself “The Different Drummer” and is commonlyunderstood to have been influenced by the life and/or thewritings of Henry David Thoreau. While I was at the Universityof Queensland, since that university press has been reprintingthe works of Banfield for their historical and local interest,I took the occasion to ask around in Brisbane about this fellowBanfield. In what sense, I asked any number of people, mightBanfield be considered to have been “an Australian Thoreau”?I got no good answers. It turned out not to be possible torecover anything, either from Banfield’s writings, or fromrecords of his personal life, which might suggest to us thatthis Banfield had ever been influenced by anything that Thoreauwrote, or had ever been influenced in his life or in hisattitudes by anything that Thoreau has come to represent to us.Allow me to make a ready distinction here between varioussuperficial similarities and misunderstandings, on the one hand,and significant ones, on the other. As an example of asuperficial similarity, both Thoreau and Banfield were missinga body part: Thoreau a big toe (having chopped it off in an earlychildhood accident with the family hatchet). Banfield an eye(having gouged it out in a late childhood accident with an earlymodel of “bonecrusher” bicycle). I’m sure we can all agree thatthis is not the sort of soul sympathy that renders one aThoreauvian. Another of these superficial similarities would bethat there is a cairn of rocks at Walden Pond and the gravemonument to Banfield on Dunk Island erected in 1923 also is inthe form of a rock cairn. The best argument anyone offered me in Brisbane, that theirBanfield had been as they proclaimed a Down-Under Thoreau, wasalong the lines “Well, Thoreau wrote escapist literature, didn’the, going off to a cabin in the woods like that, and Banfieldwrote escapist literature too, going off to a tropical islandand then describing for us what a nice life he had there.... Sothey were both escapists, right, and that’s the similarity, see,and since Banfield (1852-1923) lived later than Thoreau andseems to quote from WALDEN, we say he’d been a Thoreauvian.”The proof text for this is what Banfield had instructed beinscribed on his tomb:

WALDEN: If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhapsit is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to themusic which he hears, however measured or far away.

DIFFERENT DRUMMER


http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf



HDT WHAT? INDEX

(omitting the final clause “however measured or far away”).A close reading of his life trajectory indicates that Banfieldclearly was what they indicate, an escapist — he was on DunkIsland off their coast in order to get away from them. As anexample of a total misunderstanding which can only spring fromignorance or inability to read, therefore, we can consider theconceit that this marked a similarity with Thoreau — Thoreaualso having been such a person, an escapist. I considered,however, that these Aussie folks must have had their hat-bandstoo tight. In 1911 Banfield’s 2d major effort in the escapistliterature genre, MY TROPIC ISLE, had been reviewed in thefollowing interesting manner by the Sydney Daily Telegraph:

So we have Thoreau being sniffed at in an Aussie newspaper,because this newspaper has learned that Thoreau emphaticallylacked a gentle and unaggressive humor. —And this newspaperliked what Banfield has had to say about “the aboriginals of theQueensland coast,” despite the fact that Banfield was just aboutas condescending in his evaluation of these dark people, as anystone racist might ever hope to be. (For instance, the newspapermade no objection to Banfield’s referring to aboriginal womenby the contemptuous term “gin,” which if translated intoAmerican English would need to be rendered as something like“n****r gal.”) –And this newspaper liked what Banfield has hadto say about “the plants, birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishesof his tropic isle,” despite the fact that one of Banfield’samusements happened to have been taking potshots at any raptorspecies he could get into his rifle sights, considering birdsthat ate other birds to be beneath his contempt.

This uninformed attitude toward natural predation explainspassages such as the following, in which he fancied that histarget practice was “avenging” a lesser “tragedy of the bush”:

Mr Banfield strikes us as being really as fond ofsolitude as Thoreau pretended to be. And he has onequalification which Thoreau lacked most emphatically,namely, a gentle and unaggressive humor, which colorsand brightens all the records of his observations uponthe aboriginals of the Queensland coast, and theplants, birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishes of histropic isle.

Our sea-girt hermitage is a sanctuary for all mannerof birds save those of murderous and cannibalisticinstincts.

A bold falcon ... swooped down upon a wood-swallow ...and bore it bleeding to a tree-top, while I stoodshocked at the audacity of the cannibal. A bulletdropped the murderous bird with its dead victim fastin its talons.

This is on page 61.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Banfield’s militancy extended beyond the shooting of avianculprits out of their trees. He was also in the habit, it seems,of correcting the morals of the more earthbound predatorculprits:

To say that this was jejune is to put a good face on it. Hereis what Banfield’s biographer Michael Noonan has had to offerin regard to intellectual influences: “He began to delve intothe philosophical writings of the leading naturalists of the day–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau– withwhom he found himself instantly in accord.” To characterizeEmerson and Whitman as having been leading naturalists is tosignal to us all, how little such a term has come to representin the trade press!In certain significant respects Banfield was not Thoreauvian atall, in fact revealed himself as quite clueless. He spoke forinstance very frankly of the tactics and strategies by which heobtained labor from the local abos (an island on which he was“isolated,” actually, only if one agrees to neglect to considernon-white persons such as his laborers and non-male persons suchas his housemaid and his wife), for such various repetitive ordirty chores as he was reluctant himself to perform. He spokeof the Chinese as the “alien race” that “does the hard work”while white owners, who are “mere idlers” such as himself,settle back, knowing how unsuited they are to tropic toil, toenjoy the status of “resident landlords.” –And yet he feared avery different future:

Cutting firewood in the forest one morning, I cameacross a carpet snake, 12 feet long, laid out andasleep in a series of easy curves, with the sunrevealing unexpected beauty in the tints and in thepatterns of the skin. Midway of its length was a tell-tale bulge, and before the axe shortened it by a head,I was convinced that here was a serpent that hadwaylaid and surprised or beguiled a fowl. Post-mortemexamination, however, proved once more theunreliability of uncorroborated circumstantialevidence. The snake had done good and friendly serviceinstead of ill, for it had swallowed a white-tailed rat— the only specimen that I have seen on the island.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Edmund James Banfield turns out upon inspection to have been anunabashed white supremacist. In today’s Australia such a personwould be a charter member of Pauline Hanson’s shameful “OneNation” local political grouping:

[T]he minor departments of rural enterprise in NorthQueensland are in a peculiar stage — a stage oftransition and uncertainty. Coloured labour has beendepended upon to a large extent. Even the poorestsettler has had the aid of aboriginals. But with thepassing of that race, and prohibition against theemployment of any sort of coloured labour, the questionis to be asked, Can tropical products be grownprofitably unless consumers are willing to pay alargely increased price — a price equivalent to thedifference between the earnings of those who toil inother tropical countries and the living wage of a whiteman in Australia? Fruit of many acceptable varietiescan be grown to perfection with little labour inimmense quantities. Coffee is one of the most prolificof crops ... a plentiful supply of cheap labour isessential to success. Those who by judicious treatmentof the aboriginals command their services have so farmade profit. A coffee plantation suggests pleasant,picturesque and spicy things. The orderly lines of theplants, in glossy green adorned for a brief space withwhite, frail, fugitive flowers distilling a sweet andgrateful odour, the branches crowded with gleamingberries, green, pink and red, present pleasing aspect.As a change to the scenery of the jungle, a coffeeestate has a garden-like relief. But picking berry byberry is slow and monotonous work, vexatious, too, tothose mortals whose skin is sensitive to the attacksof green ants. Then comes the various processes of theremoval of the pulp, first by machinery, finally by thefermentation of the still adhering slimy residuum;then the drying and saving by exposure to the sun ontrays or on tarpaulins until all moisture is expelled;and the hulling which disintegrates the parchment fromthe twin berries; then winnowing, and finally thepolishing. Do drinkers of the fragrant andexhilarating beverage realise the amount of labour andcare involved before the crop is taken off andpreserved from deterioration and decay?

The world is not so vast that any part of it —stillless a part so situated and so highly favoured as this—can be left unpeopled. If not peopled by Australiansor those of British blood, it will assuredly be bypeople for whom the average Australian entertains butscant respect.

This is on page 69 and following.

This is on page 77.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

In sum it would seem that we need to be much more selective thanthis, in determining whether a given person’s life and thoughthave been influenced by our Thoreau. Let us consider, while weare considering folks such as Banfield who flee to a tropic isleand write bios for escapist readers, <Humor Alert!> also ourmovie stars such as Errol Flynn, a Australian (well, Tasmanian,that’s pretty close) who while residing in Hollywood during WWIIhas been suspected to have been a Nazi sympathizer. He also musthave been influenced by our Thoreau? —for he wrote in 1933 forhis autobiography, which he desired to title IN LIKE FLYNN, that:

I am going to China because I wish to livedeliberately. New Guinea offers me, it is true,satisfaction for the tastes I have acquired which onlyleisure can satisfy. I am leaving economic security andI am leaving it deliberately.By going off to China with a paltry few pounds and noknowledge of what life has in store for me there, Ibelieve that I am going to front the essentials of lifeto see if I can learn what it has to teach and aboveall not to discover, when I come to die, that I havenot lived.We fritter our lives away in detail but I am not goingto do this. I am going to live deeply, to acknowledgenot one of the so-called social forces which hold ourlives in thrall and reduce us to economic dependency.The best part of life is spent in earning money inorder to enjoy a questionable liberty during the leastvaluable part of it. To hell with money! Pursuit of itis not going to mould my life for me. I am going tolive sturdily and Spartan like; to drive life into acorner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if I findit mean, then I’ll know its meanness, and if I find itsublime I shall know it by experience, and not makewistful conjectures about it, conjured up byillustrated magazines. I refuse to accept the ideologyof a business world which believes that man at hardlabour is the noblest work of God. Leisure to use as Ithink fit!

My goodness, no, I’m not making this up, this is what Eroll Flynn actually did offer us in his autobiography.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

June 8, Friday: The ship of Captain James Cook, the HMS Endeavour, visited Coonanglebah, a double-peaked 3 or 4 square mile piece of rain-forest paradise in the latitude the Great Barrier Reef, a mere 21/2 miles from the Queensland mainland of Australia, and the intrepid captain immediately redesignated the island as Dunk.1

JOURNAL: Friday, 8th. Winds at South-South-East and South; firstpart light Airs, the remainder a Gentle breeze. In the P.M. wesaw several large smokes upon the Main, some people, Canoes,and, as we thought, Cocoa Nut Trees upon one of the Islands;and, as a few of these Nutts would have been very acceptable tous at this Time, I sent Lieutenant Hicks ashore, with whom wentMr. Banks and Dr. Solander, to see what was to be got. In theMeantime we keept Standing in for the Island with the Ship. At7 they returned on board, having met with Nothing worthObserving. The Trees we saw were a small kind of Cabbage Palms.They heard some of the Natives as they were putting off from theShore, but saw none. After the Boat was hoisted in we stood awayNorth by West for the Northermost land we had in sight, whichwe were abreast of at 3 o’Clock in the Morning, having passedall the Islands 3 or 4 hours before. This point I have namedPoint Hillock,2 on account of its Figure. The Land of this pointis Tolerable high, and may be known by a round Hillock or rockthat appears to be detached from the point, but I believe itjoins to it. Between this Cape and Cape Cleveland the shore formsa Large bay, which I named Hallifax bay;3 before it lay theGroups of Islands before mentioned, and some others nearer theShore. These Islands shelter the Bay in a manner from all Winds,in which is good Anchorage. The land near the Shore in the bottomof the bay is very low and Woody; but a little way back in theCountry is a continued ridge of high land, which appear’d to bebarren and rocky. Having passed Point Hillock, we continuedstanding to the North-North-West as the land Trended, having theAdvantage of a light Moon. At 6 a.m. we were abreast of a pointof Land which lies North by West 1/2 West, 11 Miles from PointHillick; the Land between them is very high, and of a craggy,barren surface. This point I named Cape Sandwich;4 it may notonly be known by the high, craggy land over it, but by a smallIsland which lies East one Mile from it, and some others about2 Leagues to the Northward of it. From Cape Sandwich the Landtrends West, and afterwards North, and forms a fine, Large Bay,which I called Rockingham Bay;5 it is well Shelter’d, and affordsgood Anchorage; at least, so it appear’d to me, for having metwith so little encouragement by going ashore that I would not

1770

1. This naming was not, as has sometimes been supposed, in honor of Captain Cook’s patron, George Montagu the 4th Earl of Sandwich and the the 2d Baron and 1st Earl of Halifax, the 1st Lord of the Admiralty, and most definitely not in honor of the noble re-inventor of that Roman delight, the sandwich, the 1st Earl of Sandwich, but in honor of that dignitary the 4th Earl of Sandwich’s son John Montagu, who had upon receiving a bequest from the family of Sir Thomas Dunk adopted Dunk as a surname.2. Point Hillock is the east point of Hinchinbrook Island, which is separated from the main by a narrow and tortuous channel.3. The Earl of Halifax was Secretary of State 1763 to 1765.4. Earl of Sandwich was First Lord of the Admiralty 1763.5. The Marquis of Rockingham was Prime Minister 1765 to 1766.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

wait to land or examine it farther, but continued to range alongShore to the Northward for a parcel of Small Islands6 laying offthe Northern point of the Bay, and, finding a Channel of a Milebroad between the 3 Outermost and those nearer the Shore, wepushed thro’. While we did this we saw on one of the nearestIslands a Number of the Natives collected together, who seem’dto look very attentively upon the Ship; they were quite naked,and of a very Dark Colour, with short hair. At noon we were byobservation in the Latitude of 17 degrees 59 minutes, andabreast of the North point of Rockingham Bay, which bore fromus West 2 Miles. This boundry of the Bay is form’d by a Tolerablehigh Island, known in the Chart by the Name of Dunk Isle; itlays so near the Shore as not to be distinguished from it unlessyou are well in with the Land. At this time we were in theLongitude of 213 degrees 57 minutes. Cape Sandwich bore Southby East 1/2 East, distant 19 Miles, and the northermost land insight North 1/2 West. Our depth of Water in the Course of thisday’s Sail was not more than 16, nor less than 7, fathoms.7

June 11, Monday: The ship of Captain James Cook, the HMS Endeavour, ran onto the Great Barrier Reef off Australia.

JOURNAL: Monday, 11th. Wind at East-South-East, with which westeer’d along shore North by West at the distance of 3 or 4Leagues off, having from 14 to 10 and 12 fathoms water. Saw 2Small Islands in the Offing, which lay in the Latitude of 16degrees 0 minutes South, and about 6 or 7 Leagues from the Main.At 6 the Northermost land in sight bore North by West 1/2 West,and 2 low, woody Islands,8 which some took to be rocks aboveWater, bore North 1/2 West. At this time we shortened Sail, andhauld off shore East-North-East and North-East by East, closeupon a Wind. My intention was to stretch off all Night as wellto avoid the danger we saw ahead as to see if any Islands layin the Offing, especially as we now begun to draw near theLatitude of those discover’d by Quiros, which some Geographers,for what reason I know not, have thought proper to Tack to thisland. Having the advantage of a fine breeze of wind, and a clearMoon light Night in standing off from 6 until near 9 o Clock,we deepned our Water from 14 to 21 fathoms, when all at once wefell into 12, 10 and 8 fathoms. At this time I had everybody attheir Stations to put about and come to an Anchor; but in thisI was not so fortunate, for meeting again with Deep Water, Ithought there could be no danger in standing on.9 Before 10o’Clock we had 20 and 21 fathoms, and Continued in that depthuntil a few minutes before 11, when we had 17, and before theMan at the Lead could heave another cast, the Ship Struck and

6. The Family Islands.7. About here the Great Barrier Reefs begin to close in on the land. Cook kept so close to the latter that he was unconscious as yet of their existence; but he was soon to find them.8. Hope Islands.9. The ship passed just northward of Pickersgill Reef.

HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. IHIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. II




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/21/1821_CookVoyagesI.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/21/1821_CookVoyagesII.pdf


HDT WHAT? INDEX

stuck fast. Immediately upon this we took in all our Sails,hoisted out the Boats and Sounded round the Ship, and found thatwe had got upon the South-East Edge of a reef of Coral Rocks,having in some places round the Ship 3 and 4 fathoms Water, andin other places not quite as many feet, and about a Ship’s lengthfrom us on the starboard side (the Ship laying with her Head tothe North-East) were 8, 10, and 12 fathoms. As soon as the Longboat was out we struck Yards and Topmast, and carried out theStream Anchor on our Starboard bow, got the Coasting Anchor andCable into the Boat, and were going to carry it out in the sameway; but upon my sounding the 2nd time round the Ship I foundthe most water a Stern, and therefore had this Anchor carriedout upon the Starboard Quarter, and hove upon it a very greatStrain; which was to no purpose, the Ship being quite fast, uponwhich we went to work to lighten her as fast as possible, whichseem’d to be the only means we had left to get her off. As wewent ashore about the Top of High Water we not only startedwater, but threw overboard our Guns, Iron and Stone Ballast,Casks, Hoop Staves, Oil Jarrs, decay’d Stores, etc.; many ofthese last Articles lay in the way at coming at Heavier. Allthis time the Ship made little or no Water. At 11 a.m., beinghigh Water as we thought, we try’d to heave her off withoutSuccess, she not being afloat by a foot or more, notwithstandingby this time we had thrown overboard 40 or 50 Tuns weight. Asthis was not found sufficient we continued to Lighten her byevery method we could think off; as the Tide fell the ship beganto make Water as much as two pumps could free: at Noon she laywith 3 or 4 Streakes heel to Starboard; Latitude observed 15degrees 45 minutes South.

HIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. IHIS 3 VOYAGES, VOL. II




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/21/1821_CookVoyagesI.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/21/1821_CookVoyagesII.pdf


HDT WHAT? INDEX

May 24, Wednesday: On this day and the following one the ships of the exploring expedition of Edmund B. Kennedy, the HMS Tam o’Shanter and the HMS Rattlesnake, would be landing a party on Coonanglebah or, as it had been renamed by Captain James Cook in honor of his patron, Dunk, a double-peaked 3 or 4 square mile piece of rain-forest paradise in the latitude the Great Barrier Reef, a mere 2 1/2 miles from the Queensland mainland of Australia.

May 27, Saturday: The German National Assembly voted not to suppress any nationality.

Mr. Carson, the botanist of the Tam o’Shanter, planted a garden of cabbages, leeks, pumpkins, rock melons, and watermelons, and an orchard of pomegranate, peaches, and apples, on Dunk Island.10

1848

10. No trace of these intrusives has since been noted.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

September 4, Saturday: The Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal carried a synopsis of the introduction to Harriet Beecher Stowe’s UNCLE TOM’S CABIN:

Edmund James Banfield, the “beachcomber of Dunk Island,” was born in Liverpool, England. He would be taken by his family to Australia during the years of gold fever.

William MacGillivray had been working on a natural history of Deeside and Braemar in Scotland which he would not himself be able to get published, and in the process had fallen ill (also, his wife Marion Askill MacGillivray, mother of the couple’s 13 children, had recently succumbed). On this day he died at the age of 56 in Aberdeen. The body would be placed in Edinburgh’s New Calton cemetery.

Testament of Dr William MacGillivrayAt Aberdeen the Thirteenth day of December, in the Year onethousand Eight hundred and fifty two.In presence of Archibald Davidson Esquire Advocate, Commissaryof the Commissariot of Aberdeen Compeared John Clark Advocatein Aberdeen as procurator, and gave in the Testamentunderwritten, of the after designed now deceased Doctor WilliamMacGillivray, and craved that the Same might (along with theInventory of the said deceased’s personal Estate) be insert andregistered in the Commissary Court Books of Aberdeen, in termsof the Acts of Parliament 44 Geo[rge] III C[h]ap[ter] 98, and48 Geo: III Cap: 149. Which request the Commissary foresaidfinding reasonable, ordained the same to be done accordingly,and of which Testament the tenor follows, vi[delicet]z:- IWilliam MacGillivray Doctor of Laws, Professor of Natural andCivil History in Marischal College, Aberdeen, being desirous toprovide for the Management and disposal of my personal Estateafter my death, do hereby make, Constitute and Appoint MrsMarion MacCaskill or MacGillivray, my spouse, William JamiesonWriter in Airdrie, my son in law, Miss Isabella MacGillivray myeldest daughter, Alexander Thomson Esquire of Banchory, theReverend David MacTaggart Minister of Greyfriars Parish inAberdeen and John Clark Advocate in Aberdeen and the acceptorsor acceptor, survivors or survivor of them to be my soleExecutors and Administrators, with full power to them tointromit with my whole moveable Estate and Executry of everydescription, to give up Inventories thereof to confirm the same,and Generally to do everything in the premises competent toExecutors. And I do hereby direct and appoint my said Executorsafter making payment of my whole just and lawful debts and deathbed and funeral expenses and the necessary expenses Annexed withmy Executry affairs, to lend out or invest, on sufficientsecurities, the residue of my said Estate and to pay the whole

1852

READ THE FULL TEXT




http://www.gutenberg.org/author/Harriet_Beecher_Stowe


HDT WHAT? INDEX

free yearly interest and profits arising form the same to mysaid spouse for the support and maintenance of herself and ofsuch of our Children as may necessarily remain in family withher, and that during all the days of her life, and after herdecease, to distribute and divide my said Estate between andamong all my Children equally, share and share alike. Butdeclaring that the shares of such of my said Children as may notthen have attained majority and, if females, may be unmarried,shall not be eligible by them until their * [in margin] *majorityor if females until their [main text] marriage or majority,whichever of these events shall first happen, until which timemy said Executors shall apply the interest of their respectiveshares towards their support and education. But declaring thatit shall be lawful to, and in the power of my said Executors ifthey shall see cause, to advance, form time to time, for themaintenance education or advancement in life of any of my saidchildren in minority, out of their respective provisions, suchsums as they may judge proper for these purposes, and that beforethe said provisions became eligible. Declaring that theprovisions to my said children shall not be held to have restedin them until after the death both of me and my said spouse.Further declaring that if any of my said Children shallrepudiate this Settlement and claim their legal provisions inplace of the provisions hereby made for them or shall by anymeans prevent this Settlement from taking effect in whole or inpart, then such of my said Children as shall so act, shallthereby forfeit all right to any share or shares of that partof my Executry which I may freely dispose of by law and shallhave right only to their respective legal provisions, exclusiveof those portions which I am by law entitled to dispose of, whichshall in that event accresce and belong equally to my otherChildren who shall abide by these presents and accept of theprovisions herein contained. And it is hereby declared that mysaid Executors (a majority of whim accepting and acting at thetime shall be a quorum) shall not be liable for omissions, errorsor neglect of management nor singuli in solidum but each forhimself or herself and his or her actual intromissions only.Reserving always to myself my own liferent of the premises withfull power to me to alter, innovate or revoke these presents IWhole or in part at any time in my life or even on deathbed Butdeclaring that in so far as these presents shall not be alteredor revoked the same shall be valid and effectual though foundlying in my own custody or in the custody of any other personfor my behoof, undelivered at the time of my death. And I Consentto the Registration hereof in the Books of Council and Sessionor other Competent therein to remain for preservation and forthat purpose Constitute My Procurators &cIn Witness Whereof I have subscribed these presents (written onthis and the two preceding pages by John Clark Advocate inAberdeen above mentioned) At Aberdeen the fifteenth day ofDecember Eighteen hundred and fifty one before these Witnesses





HDT WHAT? INDEX

James Farquharson Student of Divinity in Aberdeen and ThomasMilne Clerk to the said John Clark, Witness also to mysubscription of the marginal note, written as the body.(signed) W. MacGillivray.James Farquharson Witness.Thomas Milne Witness.— Enacted on this and the eight preceding pages by me CommissaryClerk of Aberdeenshire C. WarrackWritten & Collated by Charles Warrack

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT








HDT WHAT? INDEX

Edmund James Banfield injured one of his eyes in a fall from an early model of bicycle. (We don’t know now which eye would be the glass one, although photos in which he favors his left profile indicate that probably it was the right one.)

For sport on his cattle ranch near Geelong in Victoria, Australia, Thomas Austin, rich and bored, imported 13 wild English rabbits (in 1950 the Australian government would be forced to wage biological warfare against the descendants of these thirteen rabbits, as they had come to constitute something of a “grey blanket” across their continent, threatening just about every other form of life).

Richard Henry Horne’s AUSTRALIAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY, prefixed to his AUSTRALIAN FACTS AND PROSPECTS.

LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD?— NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES.

LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.

1859








HDT WHAT? INDEX

Edmund James Banfield, who had long since injured an eye in a fall from an early model of bicycle, at this point needed to be fitted with a glass eye. We don’t know now which eye this was, although photos in which he favors his left profile indicate that probably it was the right eye.

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

1884








HDT WHAT? INDEX

After 15 years in Queensland with the Townsville Daily Bulletin, editor Edmund James Banfield suffered a physical and nervous collapse11 and, accepting the recommendation of a local physician, took his wife Bertha Golding “Whither Thou Goest I Will Go” Banfield and Irish maid Essie McDonough to begin a government-sponsored “homestead” and live on Coonanglebah or Dunk Island, a double-peaked island of about 3 or 4 square miles in the latitude the Great Barrier Reef, a mere 21/2 miles from the mainland of Australia. After some three months there with the employment of several aborigines “I knew my island, and was on terms of friendly admiration —born of knowledge of beauty spots— with all the others. I had become a citizen of the universe.” Banfield had become, to use the nonce term coined by James Michener, a nesomaniac, a person “mad about islands.”

If this was a hermit, be it duly noted, this was a hermit accompanied by an unacknowledged household staff.12

1897

11. According to his biographer Michael Noonan (A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: THE STORY OF E.J. BANFIELD, THE BEACHCOMBER OF DUNK ISLAND. St Lucia, London, and New York: U of Queensland P, 1983, page 94), “His condition has been said to have been a form of phthisis, a progressive wasting disease, possibly pulmonary consumption.” Whatever it was, it would not prevent his living to the age of 70.12. Well, almost unacknowledged — this spouse’s grave marker would begin with the word “Also.”





HDT WHAT? INDEX

West Mountain is near Lewisboro and North Salem, New York and Ridgefield, Connecticut, very close to the state line. On a hill to the north of Lake Rippowam, near Mountain Lakes Camp, there is a rock formation that in this year was recognized as “Sarah Bishop’s Cave”:

If this had indeed been Sarah’s den, its roof is barely three feet high.

1908

HERMITS





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Clifton Johnson went for a ramble on Cape Cod in October with camera in hand and then, with Emerson’s funeral oration at hand, produced an introduction for a new edition of CAPE COD:

Edmund James Banfield’s CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER; SCENES AND INCIDENTS IN THE CAREER OF AN UNPROFESSIONAL BEACHCOMBER IN TROPICAL QUEENSLAND about his life on an island off the coast of Australia allegedly included, in italics on its title page, a WALDEN quote:13

13. Strangely, while the terminal “however mentioned or far away” is present in what was allegedly a “Facsimile first edition” published in 1994 by the U of Queensland P, this alleged original epigraph is not preserved, nor is it referred to in the new introduction supplied by Banfield’s biographer Michael Noonan.

The men he loved were those of a more primitive sort,unartificial, with the daring to cut loose from thetrammels of fashion and inherited custom. Especiallyhe liked the companionship of men who were in closecontact with nature. A half-wild Irishman, or somerude farmer, or fisherman, or hunter, gave him realdelight; and for this reason, Cape Cod appealed to himstrongly. It was then a very isolated portion of theState, and its dwellers were just the sort ofindependent, self-reliant folk to attract him. In hisaccount of his rambles there the human element haslarge place, and he lingers fondly over thecharacteristics of his chance acquaintances and notesevery salient remark. They, in turn, no doubt found himinteresting, too, though the purposes of the wandererwere a good deal of a mystery to them, and they wereinclined to think he was a peddler.




Hey, almost an exact quote!


HDT WHAT? INDEX

This romantic record of a life of mere escapism also concluded with a WALDEN quote:


DIFFERENT DRUMMER


WALDEN: If the day and the night are such that you greet them withjoy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scentedherbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, –that is yoursuccess.






HDT WHAT? INDEX

There were, however, excesses of Thoreauvianism to which this author would not stoop, such as writing on the same topics (or writing as carefully as Thoreau), as witness the following:

In certain significant respects Banfield is not Thoreauvian at all, in fact proves to be entirely clueless.He speaks for instance very frankly of the tactics and strategies by which he obtained labor from the local aborigines, for various repetitive or dirty chores he was reluctant himself to perform. He speaks of the Chinese as the “alien race” that “does the hard work” while white owners, who are “mere idlers” such as himself, settle back knowing how ill they are suited to tropical toil, to enjoy the status of “resident landlords” — and yet he fears that a very different future awaits:

It may have been anticipated that I would, Thoreau-like, set down in details and in figures the exactcharacter and cost of every designed alteration to thisscene; but the idea, as soon as it occurred,was sternly suppressed, for however cheerful adisciple I am of that philosopher, far be it from meto belittle him by parody.




This is on page 44.


HDT WHAT? INDEX

Banfield turns out upon inspection to have been an unabashed white supremacist. Had he been living in today’s Australia he would have been a member of Pauline Hanson’s “One Nation” nativist political grouping! For instance, the following passage sounds very much like Waldo Emerson and not at all like Thoreau:







HDT WHAT? INDEX

“Frankly,” Banfield proclaims, his escapism was not at all self-serving. No, his great escape was due instead to a selfless and “sentimental regard for the welfare of bird and plant life.” Thus it was that, after he had lived on his retreat for a period, “one of the first ordinances to be proclaimed would be that of forbidding interference with birds. That ordinance prevails. Our sea-girt hermitage is a sanctuary for all manner of birds save those of murderous and cannibalistic instincts.” This uninformed attitude toward natural predation explains passages such as the following one, in which he fancies that his target practice is “avenging” a lesser “tragedy of the bush”:

Banfield’s militancy extended beyond the shooting of avian culprits out of their trees. He was also in the habit, it seems, of correcting the morals of the more earthbound predator culprits:







This is on page 77.

Emerson as depicted by Mark Summers.

Thoreau as depicted by Mark Summers.

This is on page 61.


HDT WHAT? INDEX

To say that this is jejune is to put a good face on it. Here is what Banfield’s biographer Michael Noonan has had to offer in regard to intellectual influences: “He began to delve into the philosophical writings of the leading naturalists of the day –Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau– with whom he found himself instantly in accord.”14

14. Noonan, Michael. A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: THE STORY OF E.J. BANFIELD, THE BEACHCOMBER OF DUNK ISLAND. St Lucia, London, and New York: U of Queensland P, 1983, page 31. Perusing such simplistic remarks, one is inclined to inquire in what sense Emerson was a naturalist, in what sense Whitman was a naturalist, which would match the sense in which Thoreau was a naturalist — but leave it alone.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Publication of Edmund James Banfield’s 2d major effort, MY TROPIC ISLE, which was reviewed in the following intriguing manner by the Sydney, Australia Daily Telegraph:

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1911


HERMITS








HDT WHAT? INDEX

In this year Orientalist fantasy was under pressure not only from the island fantasies of the likes of Edmund James Banfield but also from reality, with the Nationalist revolution of Sun Yat-sen bringing to its end the Dynasty of Purity (Ch’ing ) in China.15 The impact of this mass movement was being deeply felt in the British crown colony of Hong Kong.

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MINDYOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

15. A major financial backer of this Revolution of 1911 in China that overthrew the 6-year-old Last Emperor Henry Pu-yi was of course General Julian Shakespeare Carr of Durham, North Carolina.

US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xinhai_Revolution

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_S._Carr


HDT WHAT? INDEX

Edmund James Banfield’s TROPIC DAYS.

Gerard Manley Hopkins’s POEMS.

InversnaidTHIS darksome burn, horseback brown,His rollrock highroad roaring down,In coop and in comb the fleece of his foamFlutes and low to the lake falls home.

A windpuff-bonnet of fáwn-fróthTurns and twindles over the brothOf a pool so pitchblack, féll-frówning,It rounds and rounds Despair to drowning.

Degged with dew, dappled with dewAre the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn.

What would the world be, once bereftOf wet and of wildness? Let them be left,O let them be left, wildness and wet;Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

1918

HERMITS





HDT WHAT? INDEX

The “beachcomber of Dunk Island,” Edmund James Banfield, suffered medical complications. Isolated as he was from all medical support services, he died.

1923

A cairn has been raised above the grave, and on it arewords of Thoreau, words which the Beachcomber bothloved and lived:

If a man does not keep pace with hiscompanions, perhaps it is becausehe hears a different drummer.Let him step to the music whichhe hears.

THOREAU’S CAIRN

HERMITS




LAST LEAVES FROM DUNK ISLAND (1925), Introduction by A.H. Chisholm, page xxvi.


HDT WHAT? INDEX

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT


DIFFERENT DRUMMER


WALDEN: If the day and the night are such that you greet them withjoy, and life emits a fragrance like flowers and sweet-scentedherbs, is more elastic, more starry, more immortal, –that is yoursuccess.








Hey, almost an exact quote!


HDT WHAT? INDEX

The literary remainder of the “beachcomber of Dunk Island,” Edmund James Banfield, now deceased, was produced as LAST LEAVES FROM DUNK ISLAND. A local newspaper, reviewing this literary production, commented that their Banfield had had none “of the egoism discernible in Thoreau.”

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

1925








HDT WHAT? INDEX

Michael Noonan’s A DIFFERENT DRUMMER: THE STORY OF E.J. BANFIELD, BEACHCOMBER OF DUNK ISLAND was issued in Brisbane, Australia by the University of Queensland Press.

CABIN ESCAPISM AND HOW IT GREW:

1983

“We went to the wilderness because 100 years ago a man wrote a book.”

YEAR PERSON BOOK PLACE

1889 Philip G. Herbert, Jr. LIBERTY AND A LIVING Long Island

1951 Vena Angier andBradford Angier

AT HOME IN THE WOODS: LIVING

THE LIFE OF THOREAU TODAY

Hudson Hope,British Columbia

1968 Edward Abby DESERT SOLITAIRE Utah

1971 Charles Seib THE WOODS:ONE MAN’S ESCAPE TO NATURE

North Carolina

1974 Annie Dillard PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK Virginia

1978 George Sibley PART OF A WINTER mountains of Colorado

1983 Gilbert Byron COVE DWELLER Maryland’s eastern shore

1987 Anne LaBastille BEYOND BLACK BEAR LAKE Adirondack Mountains





This is the opening sentence of the Angier effort at Thoreauvian escapism.


HDT WHAT? INDEX

A facsimile of the 1st (1908) edition of Edmund James Banfield’s THE CONFESSIONS OF A BEACHCOMBER was issued in Brisbane, Australia by the University of Queensland Press.

The Concord Saunterer has presented a couple of articles onEdmund James Banfield, “Australia’s Literary Beachcomber,” whosometimes signed himself “The Different Drummer” and is commonlyunderstood to have been influenced by the life and/or thewritings of Henry David Thoreau. While I was at the Universityof Queensland, since that university press has been reprintingthe works of Banfield for their historical and local interest,I took the occasion to ask around in Brisbane about this fellowBanfield. In what sense, I asked any number of people, mightBanfield be considered to have been “an Australian Thoreau”?I got no good answers. It turned out not to be possible torecover anything, either from Banfield’s writings, or fromrecords of his personal life, which might suggest to us thatthis Banfield had ever been influenced by anything that Thoreauwrote, or had ever been influenced in his life or in hisattitudes by anything that Thoreau has come to represent to us.Allow me to make a ready distinction here between varioussuperficial similarities and misunderstandings, on the one hand,and significant ones, on the other. As an example of asuperficial similarity, both Thoreau and Banfield were missinga body part: Thoreau a big toe (having chopped it off in an earlychildhood accident with the family hatchet). Banfield an eye(having gouged it out in a late childhood accident with an earlymodel of “bonecrusher” bicycle). I’m sure we can all agree thatthis is not the sort of soul sympathy that renders one aThoreauvian. Another of these superficial similarities would bethat there is a cairn of rocks at Walden Pond and the gravemonument to Banfield on Dunk Island erected in 1923 also is inthe form of a rock cairn. The best argument anyone offered me in Brisbane, that theirBanfield had been as they proclaimed a Down-Under Thoreau, wasalong the lines “Well, Thoreau wrote escapist literature, didn’the, going off to a cabin in the woods like that, and Banfieldwrote escapist literature too, going off to a tropical islandand then describing for us what a nice life he had there.... Sothey were both escapists, right, and that’s the similarity, see,and since Banfield (1852-1923) lived later than Thoreau andseems to quote from WALDEN, we say he’d been a Thoreauvian.”The proof text for this is what Banfield had instructed beinscribed on his tomb:

1994


DIFFERENT DRUMMER






HDT WHAT? INDEX

(omitting the final clause “however measured or far away”).A close reading of his life trajectory indicates that Banfieldclearly was what they indicate, an escapist — he was on DunkIsland off their coast in order to get away from them. As anexample of a total misunderstanding which can only spring fromignorance or inability to read, therefore, we can consider theconceit that this marked a similarity with Thoreau — Thoreaualso having been such a person, an escapist. I considered,however, that these Aussie folks must have had their hat-bandstoo tight. In 1911 Banfield’s 2d major effort in the escapistliterature genre, MY TROPIC ISLE, had been reviewed in thefollowing interesting manner by the Sydney Daily Telegraph:

So we have Thoreau being sniffed at in an Aussie newspaper,because this newspaper has learned that Thoreau emphaticallylacked a gentle and unaggressive humor. —And this newspaperliked what Banfield has had to say about “the aboriginals of theQueensland coast,” despite the fact that Banfield was just aboutas condescending in his evaluation of these dark people, as anystone racist might ever hope to be. (For instance, the newspapermade no objection to Banfield’s referring to aboriginal womenby the contemptuous term “gin,” which if translated intoAmerican English would need to be rendered as something like“n****r gal.”) –And this newspaper liked what Banfield has hadto say about “the plants, birds, beasts, reptiles, and fishesof his tropic isle,” despite the fact that one of Banfield’samusements happened to have been taking potshots at any raptorspecies he could get into his rifle sights, considering birdsthat ate other birds to be beneath his contempt.

This uninformed attitude toward natural predation explainspassages such as the following, in which he fancied that histarget practice was “avenging” a lesser “tragedy of the bush”:


Our sea-girt hermitage is a sanctuary for all mannerof birds save those of murderous and cannibalisticinstincts.





This is on page 61.


HDT WHAT? INDEX

Banfield’s militancy extended beyond the shooting of avianculprits out of their trees. He was also in the habit, it seems,of correcting the morals of the more earthbound predatorculprits:

To say that this was jejune is to put a good face on it. Hereis what Banfield’s biographer Michael Noonan has had to offerin regard to intellectual influences: “He began to delve intothe philosophical writings of the leading naturalists of the day–Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walt Whitman and Henry David Thoreau– withwhom he found himself instantly in accord.” To characterizeEmerson and Whitman as having been leading naturalists is tosignal to us all, how little such a term has come to representin the trade press!In certain significant respects Banfield was not Thoreauvian atall, in fact revealed himself as quite clueless. He spoke forinstance very frankly of the tactics and strategies by which heobtained labor from the local abos (an island on which he was“isolated,” actually, only if one agrees to neglect to considernon-white persons such as his laborers and non-male persons suchas his housemaid and his wife), for such various repetitive ordirty chores as he was reluctant himself to perform. He spokeof the Chinese as the “alien race” that “does the hard work”while white owners, who are “mere idlers” such as himself,settle back, knowing how unsuited they are to tropic toil, toenjoy the status of “resident landlords.” –And yet he feared avery different future:






HDT WHAT? INDEX

Edmund James Banfield turns out upon inspection to have been anunabashed white supremacist. In today’s Australia such a personwould be a charter member of Pauline Hanson’s shameful “One







HDT WHAT? INDEX

Nation” local political grouping:

In sum it would seem that we need to be much more selective thanthis, in determining whether a given person’s life and thoughthave been influenced by our Thoreau. Let us consider, while weare considering folks such as Banfield who flee to a tropic isleand write bios for escapist readers, <Humor Alert!> also ourmovie stars such as Errol Flynn, a Australian (well, Tasmanian,that’s pretty close) who while residing in Hollywood during WWIIhas been suspected to have been a Nazi sympathizer. He also musthave been influenced by our Thoreau? —for he wrote in 1933 forhis autobiography, which he desired to title IN LIKE FLYNN, that:


I am going to China because I wish to livedeliberately. New Guinea offers me, it is true,satisfaction for the tastes I have acquired which onlyleisure can satisfy. I am leaving economic security andI am leaving it deliberately.By going off to China with a paltry few pounds and noknowledge of what life has in store for me there, Ibelieve that I am going to front the essentials of lifeto see if I can learn what it has to teach and aboveall not to discover, when I come to die, that I havenot lived.We fritter our lives away in detail but I am not goingto do this. I am going to live deeply, to acknowledgenot one of the so-called social forces which hold ourlives in thrall and reduce us to economic dependency.The best part of life is spent in earning money inorder to enjoy a questionable liberty during the leastvaluable part of it. To hell with money! Pursuit of itis not going to mould my life for me. I am going tolive sturdily and Spartan like; to drive life into acorner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if I findit mean, then I’ll know its meanness, and if I find itsublime I shall know it by experience, and not makewistful conjectures about it, conjured up byillustrated magazines. I refuse to accept the ideologyof a business world which believes that man at hardlabour is the noblest work of God. Leisure to use as Ithink fit!




This is on page 77.

My goodness, no, I’m not making this up, this is what Eroll Flynn actually did offer us in his autobiography.


HDT WHAT? INDEX

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2014. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

Prepared: August 27, 2014


“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

mailto:[email protected]

Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?

Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.







HDT WHAT? INDEX

ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested thatwe pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of theshoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What thesechronological lists are: they are research reports compiled byARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term theKouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such arequest for information we merely push a button.





HDT WHAT? INDEX

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obviousdeficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored inthe contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then weneed to punch that button again and recompile the chronology —but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary“writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of thisoriginating contexture improve, and as the programming improves,and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whateverhas been needed in the creation of this facility, the entireoperation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminishedneed to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expectto achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring roboticresearch librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place requests with <[email protected]>. Arrgh.

mailto:[email protected]




edmund james banfield - kouroo

Documents