659 New Entries Added to ADB Online

The National Centre of Biography is in the process of adding the 659 biographical entries, published in volume 17 of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, to the ADB Online website. The volume covers people who died in the years 1981-1990, whose surname begins with A-K. It is anticipated that volume 18, which will complete the 1980s, will be published both in hardcopy and online in 2012. 

The first entry in volume 17 is George Cyril Abdullah, an Aboriginal community leader. The last is Sir Wallace Kyle, air chief marshal and governor. Between them is a host of men and women from all walks of life, including prominent Australians Sir Reginald Ansett, Sir Robert Askin, William Macmahon Ball, Sir Henry Bolte, Sir Macfarlane Burnet, Dame Elizabeth Couchman, Dame Kate Campbell, Lady (Maie) Casey, Sir John Crawford, Sir Alexander Downer, Sir Warwick Fairfax, Dame Doris Fitton, the ADB’s founder Sir Keith Hancock, Robert Holmes a Court, Dame Zara Holt and Sir Leonard Huxley. 

Although many of the women in the volume achieved prominence in those professions conventionally regarded as the preserve of women, others – such as coast-watcher Ruby Boye-Jones, union organiser Ellen Cashman, diplomat Ruth Dobson, anthropologists Mary Hodgkin and Diane Barwick, restaurateur Margaret Kelly and journalist Patricia Jarrett – demonstrate that some women, at least, were breaking free of the constraints of traditional expectations.

Volume 17 is particularly rich in the lives of those associated with the arts including artists Sir Russell Drysdale, Noel Counihan and Donald Friend, musician and conductor, Sir Bernard Heinze, composer Peggy Glanville-Hicks, dancers Sir Robert Helpmann and Kathleen Gorham, authors Marjorie Barnard, Dymphna Cusack, Eleanor Dark, Albert Facey and Xavier Herbert, and poet Vincent Buckley. Sculptor and potter Guy Boyd, and his cousin, air force officer John à Beckett (Pat) Boyd, join the many members of the Boyd dynasty already in the ADB.

The significance of the twentieth-century innovations such as radio and film is reflected in the biographies of Norman Banks, Lyndall Barbour, Dorothy Crawford, Bob Dyer, Dorothy Jenner (better known as ‘Andrea’), Elsie Chauvel and Byron Kennedy, and the enduring importance of the written word in the lives of the publishers Frank Eyre and F. W. Cheshire. Sadder echoes of the twentieth century are the ADB’s first AIDS death, Bobby Goldsmith, and its first Aboriginal death in custody, Lloyd Boney. Other Indigenous people in the volume include Pearl Gibbs, Jimmy Bieundurry, Dooley Bin Bin, Revel Cooper and Gladys Elphick.

Immigrants who fled from persecution in Europe to establish a new life in Australia include businessman, Larry Adler, journalist Emery Barcs, book-dealer Isidoor Berkelouw, ASIO spy Michael Bialoguski, who would later play a key part in the defection of Russian diplomat Vladimar Petrov, and artist Elise Blumann. Heinz Jeromin, who worked on the Snowy Mountain Hydro-Electric Scheme, represents the many immigrant tradesmen who made their homes in Australia after World War II.

The longest-lived subjects of volume 17 are two centurions: Leslie Claude Hunkin, a public servant born in 1884, and Harry Jacobs, a musician born in 1888, who, immaculately dressed in bow-tie and tails, led an orchestra that played light classics before film screenings at the Palais Theatre, Melbourne. While a minority of the subjects in the volume were born in the late nineteenth century, most of those included lived their lives in step with the twentieth century, being born in its early decades, experiencing the Depression, often serving in World War II, and leading lives that reached fulfilment in the prosperous postwar decades.

As always there are surprises. Did you know that the person responsible for the stunning cinematography in the film classic The Third Man (Robert Krasker) grew up in Perth? Or that the composer of the ‘Dr Who’ theme tune (Ronald Grainer) was a Queenslander?