In which the pond refuses to give up its addiction and goes juuling with Polonius ...

The pond's medical advisor had insisted that the pond give away all its reptiles.

Complete rest was required, an absence of distractions, long naps, nothing that might produce agitation or unrest in body or mind …

So much for the understanding of medical advisors. Is there any surer way to relax than to listen to the soothing sounds of a prattling Polonius? 

And here it was, Sunday, a day requiring a Sunday meditation, and with the pond having already missed so much, including the Donald's new plan to arm American teachers with basketballs …and the ups and downs of the Donald's telenovela affair with Kim …and the Irish at last making the pond pleased it could celebrate a win for Irish women (let's not mention Saudi Arabia, its scandalous ongoing treatment of women and the supine behaviour of its American backers).

Truth to tell, the pond had spent its time gorging on American cable news, and in memory of the Donald, watched a couple of documentaries about the long-forgotten Korean war - the Battle of Chosin Reservoir reminded the pond that whatever ailed it, it was nowhere near close to hell on earth…

There'd also been stories about the follies of the young, with the talk of juul and vamping in The New Yorker (currently outside the paywall here) which had made the pond wonder about its curious addiction to reptiles.

In that story Jia Tolentino did it for the story, then at the very end (spoiler alert) tossed aside the cucumber-scented vapour and gave it away …

Dammit, did all addictions have to end like that?

So the pond decided to sneak away from bed to spend a little quality time with Polonius …there was no downside, only the chance of a little sneaky R and R, with possibly a nodding off and a quality nap ...

Leaving aside everything else, it struck the pond that to propose that the reef isn't damaged, or perhaps in more scientific terms, to suggest it might be wise not to question the proposition that the reef is damaged, is a remarkably stupid position to take …

Leaving aside the question of climate science, which always gets the reptiles terribly agitated, there's the ongoing presence of the Crown of Thorns starfish, and the impact of agricultural practices, and the expansion of human activities … all of which guarantees that the reef has changed, and will continue to change, and which will result in what most would consider 'damage', at least as the word is conventionally defined …

It might be argued that none of it matters and that the world is constantly changing and things come and go and that's life and that's also death, in much the same way that the Amazon is at the moment being comprehensively fucked over, and so it goes …

But forget all that because Polonius is no climate scientist, and he really deep down doesn't care too much about environmental matters or the reef or such like … and if he can't get the ABC into the story, then sure as hell he can get the commies into the game, and revive fond memories of ancient culture wars  ...

And why does the pond find all this so comical? Well Knopfelmacher was his own worst enemy and at the time there were conspiracies everywhere …

Knopfelmacher, a high-profile Melbourne University academic and outspokenly anti-Communist public intellectual, was less restrained. His review of Henderson's book for ABC Radio 2 in 1982 reads: 
After reading Henderson, it is no longer possible to sustain the thesis that Evatt was a Communist sympathiser, as I had hitherto sincerely believed. ... The wealth of astounding revelations ... reveal that before and throughout the Split, the principal aim of the Movement was not Australia's security but her conversion to, or political manipulation into, a fundamentalist brand of Catholicism ... Henderson's story convincingly supports the following conclusion: A fundamentalist Catholic outfit, supported by part of the Hierarchy, set up a secret organisational weapon for the purpose of penetrating and dominating the traditional domiciles of Australian Irish Catholicism – the unions and the ALP – and through them, Australia. (here)

Indeed, indeed, the bloody Irish Catholics at it again, and there's more on the Knopfelmacher affair in a google book reference here …

But before the pond goes down the road of leftists dominating institutions, please allow the pond to do a Polonius and drift down memory lane.

The pond studied history at UNE under Russell Ward, who had earlier experienced some fleeting fame for his 1958 book The Australian Legend … (a work which conflated history with mythology, a pleasing mateship mythology that didn't find much room for women).

And what do you know, Ward was one of those wretches deplored by Polonius …

In Sydney in the 1940s, he found a radical milieu – the New Theatre, the Journalists’ Club, the Teachers’ Federation and the Communist Party, which he joined in 1941. Reading Ward’s account of his life in Sydney reminded me instantly of Graeme Davison’s depiction of radical Sydney in the 1890s – the Bulletin, the bookstores, the Freethought Hall – the urban environment in which, as Davison insists, the bush legend was born. For Ward, it had to be born again. He was completely typical of his class in being brought up on British history and English literature (which he loved) and learning almost nothing of the history and literature of his native land. As a radical in Sydney, he started to collect Australian folk songs. Until then, he had never heard one. He was introduced to them by a Scottish immigrant couple, neighbours of his in Sydney, who possessed a dog-eared copy of the 1905 edition of Banjo Patterson’s Old Bush Songs. He was invited to their home one night and found the Scottish couple and two visiting British sailors singing ‘Wrap me up with my stockwhip and blanket’. So wayward and attenuated were the conduits for the transmission of the bush ethos. Ward’s autobiography, whose theme is the author’s discovery of an Australian identity, shows how weak a hold the Australian Legend had on the respectable. In The Australian Legend he argues the opposite, against his experience, and uses a poem by John Manifold to clinch the case that the ‘noble bushman’ tradition ‘has captured the imagination of the whole Australian people’, for Manifold belonged to one of the ‘old squatting families in the Victorian Western District, traditionally held to be the most conservative and “aristocratic” social group in Australia.’

And as a result of all this, what happened to him?

The Australian Legend was written in the early 1950s as a PhD thesis at the Australian National University, which provided Ward, then a married man in his late thirties, with a scholarship. The thesis was entitled The Ethos and Influence of the Australian Pastoral Worker. Before it was accepted, Ward became a cause célèbre. An appointments committee at the University of Technology in Sydney unanimously recommended him for a lectureship, but the council overrode its committee on the urging of Vice Chancellor Baxter, who was concerned at Ward’s ‘seditious’ (i.e. communist) connections. The protests of Ward and his supporters were unavailing. The University of New England then offered him a position and he remained there for the rest of his working life, advancing from lecturer to professor. (More on Ward here).

So much for leftists holding sway.

Ward was still embittered at UNE when the pond bumped into him, it hung around him like a pall, the many opportunities he'd been denied as a result of his commie connections. He always had dreams of returning to ANU, but knew he was stuck in the bush for the rest of his academic life (so much for love of bush).

And there were others in the same Wardian boat, because there was a real commie witch hunt conducted by the likes of Santa and his acolytes, and the Catholic church, and sundry other conservatives, not least our man Polonius. 

Cecil Holmes was another example …

The chilling effect of cultural anti-communism induced forms of self-censorship. For example, when film maker Cecil Holmes tried to get a job at the Commonwealth Film Unit, he privately approached the unit's chief producer, Stanley Hawes who was 'polite and agreeable', according to Holmes, but who made it clear he 'would not have his particular government boat rocked by the presence of some trouble-making Red.' (Holmes, 1986: 38) . Holmes was an unashamed member of the Communist Party and had left New Zealand after being sacked and blacklisted. However he had made one of the few Australian feature films in the 1950s, Captain Thunderbolt (1953). This had the rare distinction that it was denied normal exhibition in its own country for four years and it is likely that Captain Thunderbolt was blacklisted by the major exhibitors, perhaps prompted by ASIO. But policing of communism extended to voluntary bodies such as the Sydney Film Festival. In 1956 he approached the Sydney Festival to screen Three in One (1956). Three in One was a 'portmanteau' film comprised of three smaller and independent stories, linked by a theme of mateship. These elements were Henry Lawson's short story, Joe Wilson's Mates , Frank Hardy's story The Load of Wood, and The City, a story by contemporary writer Ralph Peterson. (Shirley and Adams, 1983 : 189-90) (much more on this culture wars here).

Funny how it goes, all this talk of Catholics, mateship and commies, but what's the upshot of all this?

Well it's possible to say with some certainty that when it comes to talk of intellectual fashions, Polonius represents the sort of strand Ireland just voted against … and thank the long absent lord for that …

And now since the pond has been much deprived and on a Rowe-free diet, to hell with it.

Waiter, a lashing of salt, and a tablespoon of sugar, and a little more telenovela romance and a Rowe cartoon please … with more Rowe to be feasted on here …