Events for October 2010

The cooee has long been heard in Australia in many varied contexts, but it has also had a presence in Britain ever since its notable debut on the streets of London in the 1840s. This paper considers its relatively autonomous literary history beyond Australia, from Sherlock Holmes to Lady Chatterley, Tin Tin and the Bobbsey Twins, from Agatha Christie to John Betjeman, Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett.

This paper examines the contribution made to national political debates by Francis de Witt Batty during the twenty-seven years he served as Bishop of Newcastle from 1931. A graduate of Balliol College Oxford and a convinced imperialist connected to the Round Table Movement, Batty used his position as bishop of one of the more important non-metropolitan dioceses to strengthen ties between Australia and the empire both before and after World War Two. While Batty had deep reservations about the political activism of Bishop Burgmann and argued that it was not the church’s duty to devise specific programs of social reform, he nevertheless came during the Depression of the 1930s to accept certain elements of the Social Gospel. In the 1940s, Batty hosted a series of interdenominational “Religion and Life†conferences in Newcastle which encouraged debate among church members about such issues as the creation of the Welfare State.