Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Correspondence
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pete_tara@kxol.com.au ____________________________________ 4 April '05 Dame Elisabeth Murdoch Cruden Farm Langwarrin Vic 3910 Re: Recognition of Sir Keith - an update Dear Mrs Murdoch Thank you for taking the time out of your busy day to reply to us on 15 February. We would like to provide you with an update and expand on a few points. First off, I would like to emphasize how strongly I feel that gaining tangible recognition for Sir Keith's deeds should be raised by Australians like us. Unfortunately our first approach to Premier Bracks just got the standard response. Then amazingly something jolted them into taking the matter seriously. We have now been advised that it will be looked at and treated as a "Commonwealth-State" matter. Consequently we have followed up with a letter to Prime Minister Howard. For your information enclosed are copies of correspondence. A major factor is that another Anzac Day is upon us - the 90th Anniversary - more books on Gallipoli - more reprints - and alarmingly, exhibiting the increasing trend to discredit Sir Keith - classic examples: Messrs Carlyon, father & son (also enclosed) - what will it be like by the Centenary? We have to do something - we need to lay the picture out simply and clearly for Australian children - so they can be in a position to make their own enquiries. I've looked at the arguments on both sides and think I can see one special tree for the forest - why KM played the spearheading role over other players like Major Dawnay and Ashmead-Bartlett - it is laid out in the letter to the PM. Books like RM Younger's biography don't work because it seen as having a bias. What's needed is a thrust from a force with a motive outside the Murdoch family. That's where our project Australians of Arabia comes in. Our main concern is to expose the real myth-making going on here - why the attention is on Gallipoli and Lawrence, and not on what the Australian Light Horse and Cameliers achieved in Palestine in spearheading victory over the same Turks. And the epochal reverberations on world politics ever since. Explaining these concrete historical facts by necessity means spotlighting the critical role of Sir Keith in getting them out of Gallipoli. I noted in A Fighting Colonel of the Camel Corps (p.129) that your Uncle Nowell tried to get some overdue recognition for the deeds of Australians of Arabia. I wonder if you have seen the memorial he got erected with the help of General Sir Harry Chauvel on the Thames Embankment back in 1920. Some 77 years later (in 1997) I started the AOA project. As alluded to previoulsy, the only notice it has received was when it was plagiarized by a shady evangelist who twisted the work around to give it a pro-fanatical-christian slant, and then ranked above famous authors in the ABC's Favourite Books poll. Please see attached the article in The Age (fittingly Sir Keith's first employer) which sarcastically praised this impostor and exposed the plagiarism of AOA. If we can at least get average folks to the library to study the history of our great country (and even research their own family history) then all this hasn't been in vain. It's becoming an armchair viewing public now - people don't read enough, let alone about history, they want to see it on the big screen - like the film "Lawrence of Arabia". Isn't it ironic that so-called Australian historians have plenty of interest in attacking your husband's historical actions and making them out to be myth, but aren't interested in the fact that Lawrence has gone in the reverse direction, from myth to historical fact, at the expense of their own Australian grandparents?! Maybe the only way we can ever really make people think about the epochal deeds of Sir Keith and the AOA is to somehow beat them at their own game - get the whole story told accurately in a feature film. Told as parallel stories - I'd love to see a young Keith Murdoch up on screen with all the players, including the real TE Lawrence, and of course a Billjim (probably based on Captain Holden of the 10 ALH who beat Lawrence to Damascus). The pipe-dream of making a movie is out of the question, but I would like to start putting together a documentary, what do you think of a title like: => Politics => Facts => Myth => Gallipoli =>... I think it should be directed mainly at children. Like you and your husband wanted for your children, I want Tara to grow up with a sense of respect for our ancestors and altruism - hence the importance of her one day seeing her name attached to this project. In this fickle world, where myth become fact, and sadly, fact becomes myth, maybe together we can sought things out a bit. Take care. Sincerely Tara & Peter Hogan |
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