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In early 1988 I left Bicentennial-mad Australia for six months
of travel across China and two years as an expatriate in then
British-ruled Hong Kong. While living in that EurAsian city with the highest
population density in the world, I struggled to learn two Chinese languages
and teach English, acted in a major local film and lived with a Hong Kong
Chinese boyfriend for a year. Hong Kong was my 'grandmother country' --
geographically close to the heart of my father's Chinese mother's ancestry
-- and a place to explore those different opportunities and experiences.
Although England was literally my 'mother country' (my mother having left
London with her family for Australia at fifteen), the United Kingdom -- which
I perceived as culturally very similar to Australia -- was a low priority
destination.
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However, as Stephen Alomes explains in his When London
Calls, for many Australian expatriates from the end of World War II
until the end of the 1960s, the ultimate choice of destination was London --
the "mecca [sic] of the English-speaking world" (13). "Going overseas"
usually meant going to Britain (13-14). As the blurb on the back cover
informs, "for some the journey was an extended holiday, but for many
actors, painters, musicians, writers and journalists, leaving Australia
seemed the only path to personal and professional fulfilment". These
'cultural refugees' fled from "a land of provincialism and mediocrity, of
materialism and even egalitarian repression of the different and the
talented" (5). Still, some of these 'ex-pats' feared becoming 'pommyfied'
(30) or classified as 'ex-patriots' (98), while others embraced the very idea.
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By the Sixties the "centre of the ex-empire" had become a 'world
city' known as 'Swinging London' (166-7). While the advent of the
Boeing 747 jumbo jet and cheap air travel allowed mass transit to London in
the early 1970s, the Oz magazine indecency trials of 1971 signalled that the
bubble of pro-British cultural idealism had burst. The new Whitlam
government and Sydney Opera House symbolised the beginning of the end of
Australia's status as a 'cultural backwater'. Rather than migrating to
England, Australians sometimes chose London from many possible holiday
destinations.
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When London Calls finely traces this post-World War II
history of cultural changes in Australia and Britain, with the expatriation
of Australians to Asia and the United States also discussed. However, the
selection of certain types of creative artists over others, and the gender
imbalance among those chosen is problematic. There are two chapters on
journalists included under the rubric of "expatriate creative artists" but
none on dancers, or recent popular music and screen artists. Tied to this is
an unfair focus on heterosexual male artists.
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The continual devotion to the mostly-monogamous lifestyles of
married couples seems uncalled for. There's Leo McKern and Jane Holland,
Sidney and Cynthia Nolan, Arthur and Yvonne Boyd, Peter Finch and Tamara
Tchinarova, Murray and Jenny Sayle, Geoffrey Robertson and Kathy Lette ad
nauseum. The more intriguing personal life of say,
"Irish-Chinese-Australian artist and designer" Jenny Kee, is collapsed into
two phrases. Surely, Kee was more than "an intimate friend of John Lennon
and later partner of Michael Ramsden from Sydney Oz" (177) who along
with Germaine Greer played the "'groupie role'" (233) in Sixties London.
Even so, any insight into this aspect of Kee's life would have at least
offered a glimpse of the (also très gay) 'Swinging London'
against which Alomes has kept the door and windows firmly shut.
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Several women artists are discussed in detail. These include
Germaine Greer, Jill Neville, and Marsha Rowe. Yet there is a gender
imbalance, with some women (alongside Kee) seemingly included as adjuncts to
male partners rather than as creative forces in their own right. Important
female artists are not mentioned. For example, actor Coral Browne, who
played Mercy Croft in the landmark London lesbian film, The Killing of
Sister George (1969), and married Vincent Price late in life. Another
notable exclusion is Maggie Kirkpatrick who
played the enormously popular lesbian character,
'The Freak',
both in Prisoner
on Australian television and in the stage version of the series in London.
Besides the description of Gillian Hanscombe as "a contributor to feminist
debate and lesbian literature" (184) the only mention of lesbians is Jill
Neville's perception of Sydney's 'unappealing' "ferocious ball-breaking
lesbians" (112) of the 1970s. Oh, please!
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In focusing on married straights, Alomes also downplays the
experiences of queer male expatriates. He mentions only "theatrical
designer Loudon Sainthill ... [and] his lover, the writer, art critic, and
later curator of the Redfern Gallery in London, Harry Tatlock Miller" (33),
"partners ... Charles Osborne and Ken Thomson" (115), and "Jim Anderson,
the gay counter-culturalist" (177). There's no further discussion of the two
male couples. Many important queer creative men are mentioned only in
passing: Martin Boyd, Sir Robert Helpmann, Sumner Locke Elliott, Hal Porter,
Donald Friend, Jeffrey Smart, Stuart Challender, Richard Wherrett, Justin
O'Brien, and Patrick White. However, there is nothing to reveal their (gay
or bi-) sexuality or (for those whose sexuality is known by the
reader) any details of their queer relationships. Others are ignored.
These include actors (Cyril Ritchard, Errol Flynn, John-Michael
Howson), costume designers (Oscar winners
Orry-Kelly
and Tim Chappel), theatre directors (Nigel Triffitt), cultural analysts
(Paul Taylor), visual artists (Roy
de Maistre, David McDiarmid), all-round performers (Peter
Allen, Reg Livermore), dancers (Kelvin Coe), and writers/activists (Peter
Blazey, Dennis Altman, Peter Tatchell)...
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Instead of these many influential queers, Alomes discusses two
heterosexual males who were perceived as effeminate or homosexual.
Firstly, Michael Blakemore, the 'straight poofter' (or "artistic
and cultural outsider in a conservative upper middle-class milieu"),
and secondly, Barry Humphries who was ridiculed as one of the
"'pooftahs', i.e. gays" (218) at school. Ho hum! Thanks for the translation!
What of real gay men's struggles against the (often brutal) realities of a
homophobic culture?
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The chapter "The Expatriate Search for Fame" neatly caps the
lives of three heterosexual "Antipodean muskateers" (242): Germaine
Greer, Barry Humphries, and Clive James. Greer, for example, was the
feminist who claimed she would "rather fuck an Australian than an Englishman
any time" (234). While correctly recognising their talents, Alomes ignores
the fact that the blatant heterosexuality of the trio contributed much
toward their eventual fame as satirical critics of Australian culture. Their
ostensible real-life heterosexuality provided an important cover for their
sexually-transgressive play: Greer flirted with lesbianism,
Humphries cross-dressed as Dame Edna, and James fashioned himself as a media
voyeur of both beautiful women and muscular males (245).
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Alomes explains that these 'megastars' visited Australia in the
late 1990s to speak at public engagements, with their views of Australia
read as anachronistic in a changing multicultural nation. At the launch of
the 1996 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras (and later in the media),
returned expatriate Noel
Tovey related his tale of survival as a gay Aboriginal in
1950s Australia. He had endured removal from his parents as a child,
sexual abuse by foster parents, life on the streets and in jail, and
publicised arrest for the then crime of private participation in consensual
homosexual male acts. Ostracised by both straight and gay
society, Tovey left for overseas, attended the Stonewall Riots and the first
Pride march in London, and became an art collector, lecturer and acclaimed
theatre director. Alongside those of privileged white middle class
heterosexuals (Greer, Humphries, James et al.), Tovey's fascinating
life deserved at the very least a couple of paragraphs of explanation in
Alomes' book, but he wasn't even mentioned.
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There is nothing wrong with Alomes providing a cultural history
of famous white, heterosexual expatriate Australian creative artists, as
long as he acknowledges and explains the placing of this set of limitations
on his chosen subject field. If inserting "Heterosexual" before "Creative
Artists" in the subtitle proved too cumbersome, Alomes should have at least
had a fair go at recognising the broad scope of contributions made by gay
men (and lesbians?), and of their
critical importance, to his topic. It is true, as he claims in the
introduction, that "the map of the Australian cultural landscape from which
the expatriates departed in the 1940s to the 1960s is still more one of
outline than of detail" (4). Nonetheless, a large number of historical
materials have been compiled about gay men who became
expatriates and about their perceptions of homophobia in Australia (and
Britain). Alomes could have drawn on these texts, biographies and media
reports (as he has done with the straight subjects in his text) to sketch or
flag their stories.
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Elliptical references are annoying. William Dobell and Sumner
Locke Elliott did not simply "echo ... Albert Tucker's [parting]
declaration ... 'I am a refugee from Australian culture'" (35). Unlike
Tucker, Dobell and Elliott were more significantly refugees from an
ultrahomophobic 'Ocker' culture. Or, have I missed
reading something between the lines? What exactly were Albert Tucker's
"personal reasons" (77) for leaving Australia? It is not sufficient to
simply say in conclusion that some expatriates left Australia "concerned
about their parents' possible views of their homosexuality" (256) without
any prior specific discussion of these gay (and lesbian?) creative artists.
Again, who were these queer refugees and what happened in their
particular lives?
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Apart from the snap of a lone Charles Osborne ("an exotic plant
in a London Garden"), the two photo essays in the book provide a
visual reification of the textual Australian Who's Who of
straight Caucasian families, couples and singles. When London
Calls could have included the photograph from Osborne's autobiography
which shows the author with his male partner outside a Brisbane nightclub in
the 1970s. Without the inclusion of such 'exotic' pictures of same-sex
expatriate couples, queerness is further erased.
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For this creative gay part-Chinese Australian who is planning a
move to London next year, When London Calls offered almost
nothing about the history of the many expatriates from Australia who were
non-white or non-straight (or both). Moreover, there is nothing specific
about the racism and homophobia they may have left behind or encountered.
With its lack of such queer scope, Alomes' study of expatriate Australian
creative artists leaves a lot to be desired.
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Details
Stephen Alomes. When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1999.
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Citation reference for this article
MLA style:
Simon-Astley Scholfield. "Straight and Narrow Journeys: 'When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain'." M/C Reviews 13 Sep. 1999.
[your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/london.html>.
Chicago style:
Simon-Astley Scholfield, "Straight and Narrow Journeys: 'When London Calls: The Expatriation of Australian Creative Artists to Britain'," M/C Reviews 13 Sep. 1999,
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/london.html> ([your date of access]).
APA style:
Simon-Astley Scholfield. (1999) Straight and narrow journeys: 'When London calls: the expatriation of Australian creative artists to Britain'. M/C Reviews 13 Sep. 1999.
<http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/reviews/words/london.html> ([your date of access]).
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