Geoffrey Robertson, the Greeks and Blue Poles

The Elgin marbles in the British Museum. Picture: Alamy

Geoffrey Robertson QC has been in town, talking about his new book, Who Owns History? Elgin’s Loot And the Case For Returning Plundered Treasure. Taking his cue from Cicero, the great Roman barrister, he argues that justice requires the return not only of the Elgin marbles to Greece, but also the Gweagal Shield - dropped when Cook shot at Aboriginals in Botany Bay in 1770 - to Australia from the British Museum.

His judgment is uncompromising: cultural heritage belongs to the people of whose history it is a part. And Greek-Australians would seem to very much agree. This we know by the sheer number that turned out to hear Robertson speak in Sydney on 5 June. George Vardas - vice-president for Australians for the Return of the Parthenon Sculptures - was there, as was Stergitsa Zamagias-Hill, chief executive of the Hellenic Initiative Australia; as was the president of the Hellenic Lyceum, Liana Vertzayias; as was Christos Karras, consul general of Greece in Australia; and so on, and so forth. They gave him wild applause.

The event reminded me to return to one of the books I inherited when I started as literary editor. I think I told you I had 200 books piled up on the desk? Among them was Wild Colonial Greeks by Peter Prineas (Arcadia, 2020.)

 

The book has a handsome cover but I picked it up mainly because I like the Greeks. Who doesn’t? Don’t answer that question. It’s fraught. Anyway, I settled down to read the chapter called “In Search of the First Greek.” Meaning, who was the first Greek man - and it would almost certainly be a man - to end up in Australia?

The question isn’t easily answered. Hugh Gilchrist, Australia’s ambassador to Greece, gave it a go in 1968, in a three-volume history, Australia and the Greeks. He found a “Michael of Rhodes” and three other men sailing within 600 kilometres of the unnamed Australian continent in 1522, as crewmen aboard the Victoria, one of Ferdinand Magellan’s ships. But since they didn’t land, he concluded that the first Greek-Australians must have been the seven Greek convicts who came ashore in Sydney from the Norfolk on September 7, 1829.

They were the captain and crew of the schooner Herakles out of Hydra, who plundered a British brig on its way to Alexandria, and not long after, were captured by a British man-o’-war and taken to Malta for trial. Some were condemned to hang, but their sentences were later commuted to transportation, largely on account of their youth.

None was older than 22.

They ended up as servants, planting grapes on vines at one of the Macarthur properties. But were they really our first Greeks?

Prineas says another convict with the faintly Greek name of George Manual may have been overlooked. He arrived in 1823, didn’t behave himself, and ended up serving a term of imprisonment at Sydney Gaol, where his card says his “native place” was Corfu and his occupation was “mariner”.

This Mr Manual turns up in old newspapers in 1875, when a bushfire at Castle Hill consumed an orchard of pear, apple, peach and plum trees, generating such heat that the “fruit was roasted on the trees”. According to The Sydney Morning Herald, the owner of the orchard was “Old George the Greek, a man of nearly 90 summers”. Perhaps it was the publicity but this George subsequently found a young bride, who took his surname: Manual. How young was she? Well, poor George was dead a few years later, so maybe “too young” is the answer. His death was reported in at least five newspapers, with one saying he fought under Nelson at the Nile, and the Herald saying that “George The Greek’s” coffin had been inscribed “the age of 101 years”.

Was he our first Greek-Australian?

Probably! And the book is a lot of fun.

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Gorgeous old Blue Poles, the Jackson Pollock masterpiece, purchased for a record price in 1973. There was debate about the painting then. There is debate now.

Readers will know that I loved the new Australian book, Night Blue (Transit Lounge) by Angela O’Keeffe, which tells the Blue Poles story from the perspective of the painting. Last week, we ran a review by Melbourne writer Deborah Robertson, who firmly disagreed, saying in her lively take that Blue Poles got the facts of its own purchase wrong: while it was certainly the most expensive American painting in the world when it was purchased by the Whitlam government, it was not, as the book contends, the most expensive modern painting in the world.

O’Keeffe disagrees, saying she has researched extensively and cannot find an earlier sale of a more expensive modern painting anywhere. She cites a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning authors Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, Jackson Pollock An American Saga, in which the Australian government is described as paying more for Blue Poles than anyone had paid for any modern painting at the time, with only works by the old masters, Rembrandt, Velazquez and Leonardo da Vinci, having fetched more. Who is right? It’s a tricky question to answer: few galleries are willing to discuss prices (or indeed provenance) of their works. I asked the NGA this week, and even the gallery is not sure about the answer. Many paintings are acquired privately. Sales take place in secret. There have been currency fluctuations over the years.

O’Keeffe says she has reason to believe she is right and she wants to celebrate the bold gesture by the government to pay more than anyone else ever had for a modern work.

Our art critic Christopher Allen says: “In some ways, it’s like Sydney real estate prices, isn’t it? You pay an enormous amount, maybe more than anyone has ever paid before, and people say, ‘You’ve been ripped off! I can’t believe you paid that much.’ And in 10 years, they’re thinking: ‘Why didn’t I buy it? It was a total bargain’.”

One thing is certain: Night Blue is the book everyone’s talking about and you should buy one and make up your own mind. Also, the purchase by the Whitlam government was a masterstroke. Blue Poles is still the thing that quite simply stops you in your tracks when you see it in the gallery, just gobsmacking is its beauty. Controversial all its life, it is believed to now be worth many hundreds of millions of dollars. And hours of debate.