Speech

ADDRESS BY

His Excellency Major General Michael Jeffery AC CVO MC

Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia

ON THE OCCASION OF

The launch of the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online

University House, Australian National University, Canberra

6 July 2006

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  • Professor Ian Chubb, Vice-Chancellor, Australian National University
  • Professor Vijoleta Braach-Maksvytis, Deputy Vice-Chancellor, University of Melbourne
  • Emeritus Professor Jill Roe, Chair, Editorial Board, Australian Dictionary of Biography
  • Doctor Di Langmore, General Editor, ADB
  • Distinguished guests all
Good evening everyone. It is a very great pleasure indeed to have been invited to launch the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online, in this 40th anniversary year since the first volume of ADB appeared in print.
 
The launch of the ADB Online marks the culmination of a long, and at times hectic period of intensive planning and work.
 
So congratulations to ADB, to the ANU and the collaborating universities – Melbourne, Sydney, Macquarie, South Australia, Monash, Griffith, Curtin and Charles Darwin – the National Library of Australia, the National Museum of Australia, the National Archives of Australia and the Australian Research Council for outstanding foresight in contributing to the development of ADB Online.
 
Ladies and gentlemen. The 19th century Scottish historian and essayist, Thomas Carlyle would rejoice in the ADB project, for he claimed that “Biography is the only true history.” And with apologies to the scholarly historians in the audience, American poet, Ralph Waldo Emerson agreed with Carlyle when he wrote: “There is properly no history; only biography.”
 
There will be no argument though that the host of creative, brave and productive lives described for us in the ADB, creates a panoramic continuum of our society through the living experiences of our people.
 
While biography necessarily focuses on the individual, a cross section of biographies illuminates broader themes in Australia’s recent history, such as immigration, industrialism, urbanisation, war, material progress, conservative and radical politics, conflict and harmony, and the loss of national isolation and innocence. It also reveals something of the things great and small of which we humans are capable.
 
A scholarly reference work of the ADB’s magnitude encompasses a vast store of information and knowledge, and provides a source of innumerable insights into the nation’s history. The publication of ADB Online is a major step forward in the development of electronic research into Australian history.
But even more than that, the online facility opens up a wealth of opportunities for a far wider Australian and international audience than otherwise would have been possible.
 
As to the vital statistics, ADB’s published volumes contain eight million words of text, chronicling and interpreting the lives of some eleven thousand individuals who contributed to Australia’s national, social and economic development.
 
The ADB Online employs advanced information technology, capable of being adapted to suit technological innovations and the changing needs of scholarship. Links have been established with other electronic resources, thus initiating a national open-information network supporting research in the humanities and social sciences.
The ADB Online will become a primary research resource for our society. For example, it will assist educational and cultural institutions to improve their services and to provide those services over vast distances.
 
It will help to improve the learning and teaching of Australian history in schools and universities. It will enable the staffs of Australia’s libraries and museums to access instant information about individuals and place such information in its true social and historical context.  What a magnificent gift to our nation.
 
And there is another dimension.
 
Recently I spent several weeks in the outback visiting remote communities in South Australia, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory.
 
My aim was to draw attention to the outback through a series of regional visits we called “Bridging the Divide” – to spread the word about outback Australia to the millions of Australians living along our coastline, to encourage them to come out and take a look, and perhaps stay. It strikes me that bridging the divide is precisely what the ADB Online project will achieve for people in regional and remote communities; harnessing a world of authoritative, enjoyable-to-read biographical information providing opportunities for learning and personal enrichment.
It seems to me that the ADB Online is, in its own way, akin to the concept of “the medicine chest of the soul”, those famous words etched over the door of the ancient library of Thebes. Indeed without the records of the past we are unable to reconstruct it, and a community without knowledge of its past has little upon which to assemble its future.
 
Ladies and gentlemen. I note with pleasure that the ADB Online brings to everyone’s personal computer, beautifully written and thought-provoking essays on Australia’s nation builders:
  • great national leaders, such as John Curtin and Sir Robert Menzies;
  • brilliant men and women of science, among them Sir Edgeworth David and Dame Jean Macnamara;
  • captains of industry, such as Essington Lewis and Sir John Storey;
  • acclaimed performers on stage and screen, such as Dame Nellie Melba and Gladys Moncrieff;
  • gifted writers, including Henry Lawson and Miles Franklin;
  • inspirational Indigenous Australians, such as Gladys O’Shane and David Unaipon;
  • brave soldiers, such as Albert Jacka and Kevin Wheatley;
  • notable workers for social justice, such as Caroline Chisholm and Henry Bournes Higgins; and
  • sporting heroes, of whom Annette Kellermann and Victor Trumper are examples.
And there are articles on people who are not household names, but whose lives encapsulate important themes of Australian history; European exploration and occupation of the land; immigration; war and peace; economic prosperity and depression; social conflict and cohesion; and the development of national identity.
 
The ADB teaches also a lesson in the superb art of narrative. And in typically Australian fashion, the ADB prides itself on its blend of elitism and egalitarianism. Yet it is not a “Who’s Who” of Australians.
 
ADB Online speaks volumes about Australia and our national ethos; why that ethos is precious and must be recorded for all.
 
And it is within this context that this day of the 6th July, ADB Online commemorates the birthday, and the life, of John Simpson Kirkpatrick, “the man with the donkey”. Born in England in 1892, Simpson had a brief engagement with the merchant navy, but deserted at Newcastle, New South Wales in 1910. He joined the Australian Imperial Force in August 1914 and was a member of the covering force that landed at Gallipoli on 25 April 1915.
 
Tragically, his life was cut short at the tender age of 23, when rescuing mates and offering first aid at Monash Valley, Gallipoli on 19th May 1915. John Simpson is buried on the beach at Hell Spit.
 
I hope that the release of the ADB Online will inspire many more Australians to learn about the people who have shaped our nation, in some cases changed it forever, but above all who have given Australia its character, its soul, its ethos.
 
It is now my great pleasure to officially launch the Australian Dictionary of Biography Online and in the process to highly commend all who took part in its production.
 
Thank you.