MIGRANTS DEFEND AUSTRALIA

Wanganui Chronicle, 23 December 1950, Page 12

MIGRANTS DEFEND AUSTRALIA

Columnist's Criticism Refuted

(From Cedric Mentiplay, Special Austraian Correspondent, N.Z.P.A. SYDNEY, December 1. —When English columnist Arthur Helliwell turned his barrage upon Australia and particularly upon Sydney, in a series of articles written for the London weekly “The People,” he found that the island continent, as well as New Zealand, did not lack defenders.

It is a remarkable fact that the keenest supporters of Australia prove to be English migrants, who reply to Helliwell’s criticism in the Australia idiom: “She’ll do us!” Mr. Helliwell wrote three articles aoout Australia, one each about Sydney, the outback, and Ds-rwin. Although his final conclusion was that Australia is “one of the lands of tomorrow,’’ he presented a highly coloured picture of its trials, hardships, inconveniences, petty rackets, and extravagances. His Sydney article emphasised the disreputable night life and gambling of some of the inhabitants, and his story of the outback told of graziers living in unparalleled luxury and illiterate shearers making £3OOO a year. Publication of these articles in an Australian paper brought hosts of critics of Helliwell and very few defenders. Here is a representative selection of what people had to say about Helliwell’s picture of Australia: “I’m a new Australian myself . . . and 100 per cent British,’’ writes E. Tattersfield (Victoria). “Having spent 12 months in Sydney I know that many of Mr. Helliwell’s statements are false or exaggerated. If he looks round the Old Country he will find all the snags that he goes to such pains to criticise here. “He must know that the industrial areas at Home are teeming with displaced persons, or Balts . . . that the possibility of the English background being lost is as great in England as it is here. “Housing in England is just as bad as it is here. As a former member of a large city council there I can say that of a population of 275,000 more than 14,500 people were waiting for houses. “Has he ever heard of England’s pitch-and-toss schools, the same game as two-up, and played on the moors, canal “banks, and any other place where the police can be escaped “I have met nothing brt kindness in this country, and when I read such drivel as this supposedly authentir account of Sydney life I am ashamed.’’ Distorted

“Helliwell is presenting a malignant, distorted version (of Australia), sponsored by misfits who are no credit to the country from which they scampered,” writes Edward Knox (Warwickshire, England). “His adjectives are nails driven stupidly into the British coffin. Anzac tolerance must be perforated by them. “Crude, rude, lazy, gamblers, selfish —the same old supercilious criticism, rehashed by an individual whose foolish tongue must surely cleave to his well-fed cheek. “Forgotten the Anzacs, the food, clothing, and money gifts. “A Pommy’s gratitude for this has impelled him to present Australians as a nation of criminals, super spivs, and work-shys. “But the Government his paper supports will still accept your charity, and your troops; his readers will still jostle for the free food produced by those same work-shys and ne’er-do-wells. “And, like the sentimental, goodnatured fools you are, you’ll continue to succour a malingering, bumptious relative.” “Mr. Helliwell may like to recall that there was a war on about 1940,” says J. R. Hinchley (Brisbahe). “At that time, despite noble promises, threats, and ‘we’ll show them’ from Whitehall, the German Army pusned all in front of it, back through Norway, Belgium, France, and North Africa, until a bunch of Aussie ’sports’ chartged the course of the war for him and his associates by stopping the Germans at a spot called Tobruk. “Remember it, Mr. Helliwell? “Perhaps Mr. Helliwell may also have heard of the same ‘sports’ knocking the Japs about after the fiasco of Singapore by the ‘old school tie’ mob. “Mr. Helliwell contributes a lot of no'nsense about night clubs, low life, and gambling . . . but nothing about living conditions. "On The Verge" “In Britain they arc always ‘on the verge’ of doing something; while Australia goes on making money out of ‘leaning on brooms and shovels.’ “I’ve worked harder in Sydney and Brisbane than I ever did in Manchester and London. But here I’ve got something to show for it. “Here I’ve lived in fiats with builtin wardrobes, refrigerators, hot water services, showers, and laundries —postwar novelties in the U.K. “Where, then, Is the rough life— Glasgow and London, or Sydney and Brisbane?” “Mr. Helliwell’s articles are untrue and biassed,” says M. G. Mills (Wal’erawang, N.S.W.). “He has met dissatisfied migrants, but like him they have seen little of Australia except Pitt and George Streets, Sydney, and •t. Kilda Road and Swanston Street, Melbourne. “i’ve been an Aussie 12 years . . . Britishers dissatisfied with coming hero are those who had soft war jobs at home and -xpoctcd a Paradise when thov rot ncro.” “Mr. Helliwell has plenty to say about Sydney, especially its underworld,” comments Mr. Rathbone (Kensington, N.S.W.) “This is a pity, because it is known to only a small fraction of the community, and has little influence on most decent Sydney residents. Perhaps now he has returned to England he will send us a few stories about London’s spivs, barrow boys, and pseudo-Yank gangsters.” Mr. Halliwell writes of graziers losing thousands, says “Landowner” (Baradinc, N.S.W., in gambling and giving cars away ... I notice that he didn't meet any of those types, only | heard of them. It is obvious that the | “bushhs'’ as is their way, were hav- | ing him on. “I chal’enge Mr. HelliI well to name a dozen sheep men in I all Austral’a. let alone one district, j who can write a cheque for £-00,000 ‘without worrying’ or to produce a dozen shearers who cannot read or write. “I am also prepared to bet him I £lOOO that he cannot, name one shearer who has earned £3OOO in 12 months from shearir". For a shearer to get that he would have tn shear am •(>.•’- niately 160 sheep a day, five a

week, 52 weeks a year (that has never been done) at the rate 6f £7 a hundred (a rate rarely paid). And will , Mr. Helliwell name me three graziers ! who have cinema outfits in their (homes and invite the shearers along to see the films?” I “You, Mr. Helliwell, have either garnered your information from a bunch of leg-pulling Australians or have concocted a prize piece of foolishness,” says John T. Doneley (Hamilton, Brisbane). “You say rouseaboiits and boundary riders are in the £lOOO-a-year class. The Pastoral Industry Award fixed the rate for station hands at £6 10s a week, with keep—£339 19s—a year. And I have yet to hear of a boundary rider being paid over the award. Seasonal Work “Shed hands, or rouseabouts, receive £lO 10s a week. This works out at £546 a year, if, mind you, they can get work for 52 consecutive weeks, a most unlikely happening. For a a shearer to earn between £6O and £7O a week at the award rate of £5 a hundred he must shear between 240 and 280 sheep a day. A good shearer might do 200 two or three times a year; but he will average, perhaps, 140 when he is working. “We can afford to ignore the insult on shearers being unable to read or write, because the number of Australians illiterate per capita is much smaller than in England, or any other European country. “Yes, Mr. Helliwell, graziers’ wives are buying refrigerators. You see, many of them have never been able to afford them before—they kept their butter in water coolers, and lived on corned meat when the temperature soared towards the hundred. “But not at £2OO each, Mr. Helliwell. . . . The station refrigerator is 99.99 per cent, kerosene-operated—-and the price . . . it’s nearer £9O than £200.” “Mr. Helliwell seems to forget that there are thousands of people in Britain well acquainted with Sydney,” says G. Furlong (Surrey, England). “No doubt his comments on housing are true; but the same thing applies here. "However, the thing that really gets my goat is 'his misjudgment of Australians. I was privileged while in the Lancashire Fusiliers in Flanders to be attached to a battalion of Australians. Rough diamonds, some of them may have been, but they were real men. “If We are to believe Helliwell, you Aussie must have changed a lot. "Personally I seem to remember better that the Aussie was always there when danger threatened the Mother Country. Then there is the little matter of food parcels. We remember those, too.”