Endurance Page 32

  ‘What, you want to run the thing in Australia? You mean quit the AIF before the war’s over?’

  ‘I’m the best person to do it,’ I insisted.

  ‘For a fee, I suppose?’

  ‘Well, some arrangement.’

  ‘I see. Well, that’s a matter for the High Commission to approve.’

  ‘So who should I approach?’

  ‘Who should you approach? Well, let me see . . . I suppose the AIF attaché to the High Commission.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘That would be a fellow you already know. I believe you address him as Captain Not-Very-Smart.’

  That, I thought, was most unfortunate.

  The Sunday crowds at the gallery were the largest. I spent time mixing with the visitors, especially the diggers on furlough, listening to their conversations.

  ‘This one’s called Death the Reaper. Poor bastard’s probably been lying in that ditch for well over a week, I’d say. And look—you can make out the grim reaper in the smoke of the shell burst!’

  ‘Here’s An Incident in the Battle of Zonnebeke.’

  ‘That ain’t Zonnebeke. At least, when I was there it was all mud.’

  A week of making appointments with High Commission staff, interminable meetings and having a word here and there with my ‘contacts’ achieved precisely nothing. It was made clear to me that I would not receive approval to exhibit the pictures in Australia. Finally I tracked Bean down at AIF GHQ.

  ‘Blackall and Brighton!’ I exclaimed, unable to suppress my frustration. ‘Smart has thoughtfully organised a tour of the exhibition photographs of the Australian Imperial Forces to be shown in Blackall and Brighton and such other provincial English towns as have a civic hall and an abiding interest in Australian soldiery!’

  ‘Really, Hurley, you should be pleased with the exhibition’s success.’

  ‘I offered to arrange duplicate prints, so one set could go to Australia . . . but no, this would be unnecessary expense, I was told. Damn it, Bean! I risked my life to take these photographs—surely I should be allowed to use the negatives.’

  ‘There are many who gave their lives with no expectation of gain. The negatives belong to the AIF, not to you. And you haven’t exactly helped your own cause, Hurley, by boycotting the official opening. And you may have heard I have to respond to a complaint that you bypassed army censors. I can’t say I’m surprised.’

  I shook my head in disgust. He stared at me through his horn-rimmed glasses. ‘By the way, Hurley, some congratulations are due; you’ve received a Mention in Despatches. I put your name up some time ago. Took a while to come through.’

  A Mention in Despatches for me and a Military Cross for Wilkins! We performed the same duties and I had served across two war fronts. It was all so blatant and tawdry. But to deliberately spite me by denying the Australian public the right to see pictures of their soldiers was pure bastardry.

  I stormed back to the Imperial Hotel. I was so aggravated and distracted I was lucky not to be run over by a bus. By dinnertime I was incensed and after what little dinner I had I was fuming. The injustice of it was overwhelming. What was so wrong with trying to make my living away from this immoral war? Bean and I were on the same side serving the same country, yet he carried on as if he was the great friend of the digger. What sort of crusade was he on that I must needs feel ashamed to want to go home and work to support my wife?

  After a fretful night I awoke still aggrieved and with a tightness in my chest. I wondered if this was an early sign of angina, and I vowed to never again agree to any deal that left me with no say in my own work. Attending the gallery was now pointless. I removed my things from Australia House and decided to have nothing further to do with the exhibition and the High Commission. Having also had enough of the red tabs, I took the steps needed to have myself posted to the Reserve List. Before I knew it my salary was stopped and I really did need to find a way of making a living. I wondered how my fortunes had declined so quickly. I knew I could have handled things better, but this did not diminish my anger and sense of hurt. These days, instead of taking things in my stride, I found an all-consuming anger was my first reaction to grievances. I blamed this on being very rundown. My cold was back and I often had sleepless nights. There was an epidemic of Spanish influenza in London and I was anxious to leave, but not before I could secure my future. Thwarted by Bean, I could not now rely on my work with the AIF to earn an income.

  This made the rights to my Antarctic work even more important. I desperately needed to be free of the Beans, Shackletons and Mawsons of this world. I could see nothing but endless struggle trying to live within the scope of someone else’s imagination or subject to their greed. In my experience, the world was fuelled by conflict, from the trivial to the obscene. I could no longer throw in my lot with those around me. There was no one I could fall back on. I determined I had to seize control of my own fate. This war must one day finish. There were still places on earth unseen where I could apply my craft better than anyone, places where I could lead my own expedition, where I could take my own risks. On Aurora I had read stories of the Pacific and the New Guinea isles and I knew the very heart of Australia was a nascent beauty waiting to be depicted in theatres to city dwellers everywhere.

  Perris was my next port of call. He no doubt saw me coming. He said the Australasian rights for the Endurance film were available and that British and European rights had been sold for ten thousand pounds. After weeks of stonewalling and haggling, he eventually agreed to sell me the Australasian rights to the Endurance film, but not until I had agreed to give up my twenty percent share in the worldwide rights.

  I knew once the war was over the biggest threats would be the Mawson and Ponting films. Although it meant further delaying my return to Toni, I pursued negotiations with Mawson and Ponting throughout July, until I had deals on the Australasian rights to all three Antarctic films. Only then did I feel confident I had a means of supporting my new wife and myself.

  Perris mentioned he had been impressed by the AIF exhibition, especially the colour slides. He complained of the difficulty of running a newspaper after losing so many staff to the war.

  ‘I often think,’ he said, ‘of how Shackleton struggled against the odds to bring back all his men alive—and for what? So they could join up and be killed or maimed in this godforsaken war? McCarthy and Cheetham were both killed not long ago. You knew Wordie was badly wounded and McIlroy at Ypres. And you remember that odd bod Orde-Lees?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  ‘He jumped off the Tower Bridge.’

  ‘He killed himself?!’

  ‘Good lord, no. He’s very much alive. He wore one of those parachute things to show the Royal Air Force it could save lives, if they would just allow pilots to wear them. Quite an amazing feat, parachuting from the Tower Bridge . . . you’d have to see it to believe it.’

  ‘Oh with Orde-Lees, I believe it.’

  At last there was good news from France. The German spring offensive had collapsed and the German forces had fallen back. In the meantime, I was kept busy with the work involved in gathering film and prints to take to Australia.

  It was not until the first week of August that I left London for Port Said. By then I had been away from my bride for almost four months. Even before we reached Plymouth there was a loud boom and the ship in front of us was rocked by a torpedo. We did not falter, but steamed past at an increased rate of knots as the crew of the sinking vessel took to their lifeboats. This was not a war for good Samaritans. We were then stuck in Plymouth for a week waiting for a convoy. Just before departure, a letter arrived from Mawson: Leslie Blake had been killed in France. There were no details. I felt quite numb. There was no one on board I could talk about it with—not that I would have—and I was not a drinker. I just kept to myself. The sooner I was home the better.

  17

  Sydney, 1918–19

  We arrived in Sydney Harbour two days after the Armistice was dec
lared on 11 November. In my luggage I had the cinefilm and photographs which I was confident would get me started in Australia. Between Antoinette’s extensive collection of dresses and hats and my film equipment, we were a lot more overloaded than the disembarking soldiers. I made sure customs didn’t see the film spools and charge import duty. The streets of Sydney were crowded with large numbers from the armed services and others in uniform, along with throngs of well-wishers and many who were just drunk.

  Toni was three months pregnant and having been terribly unwell on the sea voyage came off the boat on a stretcher. It was a great surprise to me that Toni was expecting. We had not been together very long. My knowledge of such matters was confined to what I had read in Shackleton’s Encylopaedia Britannica while stuck on the icecap.

  My older sister Nancy offered her house for a small wedding reception because, she said, at Ma’s place there was not enough room to swing a cat. Nancy and her husband had escaped the crowded rows of small terrace houses and laneways of Glebe and bought a home in a new housing estate in Haberfield, a few miles to the west. I was, of course, excited for Ma to meet Toni, though strangely a little embarrassed Toni was pregnant. The wedding reception had been my sisters’ idea and Ma had reluctantly agreed. Not surprisingly, Toni was quite nervous about her first meeting with my family. She insisted on high heels despite her condition.

  I was a little taken aback to find Ma had invited Elsa to the party. After the war started, she became engaged to a corporal who was later reported as missing in action. She had kept in touch with Ma all these years and Ma had insisted she come along. Elsa was most attentive to my wife; she became one of Toni’s first friends and, eventually, a nanny to our children.

  As things turned out the reception at Nancy’s was the one and only time Toni and I got together with Ma and my siblings. Both Toni and I felt uncomfortable with them all and I had never enjoyed small talk.

  ‘Toni, would you like to join us ladies in the kitchen?’ said Nancy.

  ‘She’ll do no such thing, Nancy,’ interrupted Ma. ‘Antoinette is not used to being in a kitchen. She’s more comfortable sitting on a lounge on the verandah.’ Ever since Ma discovered that Toni had never learned to cook, she constantly played on this and steered the conversation towards recipes and her children’s favourite dishes.

  My sisters and their husbands had little idea where I’d been since the Shackleton expedition. Over supper I was asked what it was like in the Holy Land, but in a very short while the conversation drifted back to cricket, the Spanish flu and prices in the shops. I almost had not recognised my siblings. My brothers drank as if they were in the fo’c’sle of Endurance. Nancy had somehow expanded to enormous proportions. I couldn’t understand how she or her husband had let it happen. My sisters, I decided, would not be a good influence on Toni. In any case, we would soon have our own family and in the next several months I would be flat out with work.

  Toni said very little, and whatever she did say, Ma asked her to repeat. We had been invited to stay the night and Toni retired early to bed.

  Ma insisted on sleeping on the verandah lounge. At the end of the evening she sat outside by herself, sipping away on a glass of sherry.

  ‘Poor Jamie,’ she said to me. ‘You’re a photographer and you can’t see what everyone else can see.’

  ‘What can’t I see?’

  ‘Why, that you’ve gone away and married a nigger!’

  I was stunned. ‘But—but you have French parents.’

  ‘She may speak French, but, Jamie, she is a gypsy!’

  ●

  As I had expected, the theatres in Australia are anxious for anything to do with the war. Fortunately I have brought back with me cinefilm from Palestine, not part of the London exhibition, which I am able to cobble together into a reasonable feature, especially when I include the Light Horse in Jerusalem and views from an aeroplane. It looks promising. I spend my days catching the tram in and out of the city to meetings with Kodak and Gaumont and theatre owners and camera clubs. Toni by now is quite uncomfortable and housebound. She is used to me ranting about the buffoons and idiots I have to deal with, but is dismayed when I report my latest adversity.

  ‘Australasian Films had agreed to give the film a run at the New Lyceum, but now it’s all off. All theatres are closed because of the influenza outbreak. No one knows how long it will last.’

  ‘Then how can I go to the hospital, Frank? I could get sick there.’

  ‘I don’t know about the hospitals, but even the people on the tram are wearing face masks. They won’t go near a crowded theatre or exhibition hall.’

  ‘Frank, for once stop thinking about your film. Think about where I will have this baby!’

  Of course what Toni does not appreciate is that it is the very thought of her having a baby and me not having regular work that makes me agitated.

  Finally, after some months, theatres reopen and my film With the Australians in Palestine runs to full houses at the New Lyceum in Sydney. The theatre then agrees to run my Shackleton film, In the Grip of the Polar Ice Pack. Australasian Films proposes two weeks in Sydney then two months touring the other states. The theatre’s advertising describes me as Captain Hurley. I am told that if we want the public to come along, they have to know I am a returned soldier. Though I have had enough of the AIF, and my honorary commission has been terminated, there is no doubt the title adds to the authenticity and heroic quality of the story I want to tell. It is compensation for the injustice meted out to me by the AIF. And, after all, from now on I have decided to be the captain of my own adventures, the captain of my soul.

  Then, to my surprise, Toni gives birth to twin girls. I had not expected twins. Neither of us had. Suddenly we don’t have enough space and I have to look for a bigger house to rent. It is winter and with the twins we become housebound. Most days my cabin fever forces me out on long walks. Toni can’t keep up with me and prefers to take the twins in a pram at her own pace. I soon find it is best not to tell too many of my colleagues about the twins as it leads to the worst sort of time-wasting conversations.

  The touring of the Shackleton film means my first Christmas as a father is to be spent away from home, which I am quite used to but Toni is not.

  ‘Frank, I will have no family with me. Your family don’t visit.’

  ‘Toni, it is not my choice. It is the season when the theatres are full. It is the best time for making a good return. I wish you could come, but you can’t expect to travel with children.’

  ‘But why so long and why not come home for Christmas? There are others who can read your script.’

  ‘The audience expect to hear from me: Captain Hurley.’

  ‘But you don’t do the matinees.’

  ‘Toni, I have spent eight years of hard toil. I can’t walk away from this opportunity. Besides, the twins won’t notice I’ve gone.’

  ‘Well, Frank, that is true. But I will. I’ll be stuck here by myself.’

  ‘Look, I am no different to the thousands of men who have been serving overseas away from their families for years now.’

  ‘Oh Frank, you are different, very different.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘You won’t miss us. You do what you want to do. You play with your cameras more than your children. You don’t give them hugs and kisses, or me for that matter!’

  ‘That’s nonsense. I adore you and the twins.’

  ‘I hope so, Frank, but you don’t show it.’

  18

  Melbourne, January 1920

  Successful openings in November at the Lyceum and New Olympia theatres in Sydney softened Antoinette’s resistance to my going away. Evening performances were often standing room only and the crowds queued along footpaths to get in. There was no question I had to seize the opportunity.

  In the first week of December I bade a fond farewell to Toni and the twins amid the noise and bustle of Central Railway Station. Brisbane was my first stop, then a long train
journey back via Wagga Wagga and on to Adelaide for Christmas. I was close to a state of exhaustion by January when the train rolled into Melbourne, where I was to meet my greatest challenge at the Palais de Danse in the beachside suburb of St Kilda.

  ●

  Wearing a jazzy new sports coat and cap, I push through the Sunday crowds outside Luna Park on my way to the Palais de Danse, listening as I go to the murmurs as I am recognised. The Palais has three thousand well-worn seats earning a shilling for each show. I have begun to relish my new-found ‘hero’ status: Captain Frank Hurley, polar explorer and official war photographer. My autograph is highly prized and everyone these days seems to carry autograph books in their back pocket.

  That spell, however, is rudely broken when I am confronted by an oaf of a spruiker at the Palais entrance. In the summer heatwave his grimy red face drips with sweat. With scant regard for accuracy he is wearing what I take to be a polar bear suit and is accosting the crowd: ‘Roll up, roll up! Come ’n’ see da captain. Come ’n’ see da bloke wot’s been ter de South Pole!’

  In truth, of course, I have never been to the South Pole, there are no polar bears there, and some will tell you I am not a captain. But the spruiker is not interested in facts.

  The real heroes, of course, are here: the now not-so-young-looking men with strained expressions, limping to their seats or with pinned shirt sleeves. I had wanted to show my photographs and motion pictures of them at Ypres so their countrymen might understand what had gone on so far from home. But Charlie Bloody Bean and his stuffy civil service bureaucrats with all their red tape put paid to that idea. No way would they let me charge a brass farthing to exhibit the photographs I risked my life to take.

  Despite an opulent façade, the Palais de Danse consists of little more than a huge rectangular corrugated-iron roof perched on brick pillars, with flapping canvas walls giving blessed ventilation in the January heat. As soon as the audience’s peanut shelling has died down to a steady crackle and the last squawking infant is removed, I commence my oration with coloured glass lantern slides of Shackleton, our expedition vessel Endurance and yours truly. My projectionist, O’Shea, assures me he has not touched a drop today. He takes my cue to commence the motion pictures which have been synchronised to the narration in my script.