The front page of this edition of the Melbourne Herald comes with a rather neat story about Victoria’s separation from NSW, with the Victorian State Library stating that;
“Edmund Finn aka ‘Garryowen’, a journalist with the Melbourne Herald newspaper was among the first to learn the news. He had taken delivery of some South Australian newspapers which had recently arrived via ship from Adelaide. In them he noticed a small summary of news from England which noted the passing of the Separation legislation in both Houses of the British Parliament. Finn immediately organised the printing of a Melbourne Herald ‘Extraordinary’ and saw to it that this was distributed immediately to the ‘residence or business place of any notability’.”
However, while certainly a real article, the story gave me pause, and sent me down a rabbit-hole of Trove archives to find out if this really was the case. It’s a minor part of this country’s history, but the story and its relation to reality goes to show how different things can be between the archives and popular history.
The state library’s article, and many others I’ve seen, essentially claims that the passing of the news was presented in a way that would obscure it from view of the Victorians, and that it was only found out by the luck of Garryowen receiving the South Australian newspapers and finding the relatively small news summaries. What newspaper or newspapers he got delivered is never mentioned, nor is the date of them, so from the start its difficult to ascertain the level of truth to the story.
That lack of information is what led me down the rabbit-hole I discuss in Episode 46. I simply wanted to find out which newspaper could’ve been utilized by Garryowen, to complete the story in my own mind. An older State Library of Victoria site claimed that it was “hidden between an amendment to the Dog Act and an advertisment for a virility cure”, so that seemed like a starting point. However, looking at South Australian newspapers during November 1850, likely amongst those which Garryowen would have received, no such small, hidden, sandwiched summary appeared. However, many others did. As you’ll see below, both the Adelaide Times and Adelaide Observer would have articles multiple columns large regarding the Act, on the 4th and 2nd of November respectively. The Adelaide Times would actually have 4 whole articles out in November, all before Garryowen would release his article on the 11th. Even the South Australian Register would produce an article on the Act, though this would be on the 11th.
And yet none of these articles contained the supposed small summary hidden between the dog act and a virility cure. Maybe such a summary is within earlier newspapers from October, but by this point travel between the colonies was close to a couple days, so I personally doubt Garryowen would’ve been waiting on the delivery of such old newspapers by November 11th. This is where I should’ve left the rabbit-hole, because it was more than enough for the episode. There’s this cute little story for Victoria’s separation which doesn’t exactly hold water when scrutinized, that’s a nice tidbit to add onto the end of the episode’s section on the separation. But my curiosity got the better of me, and Trove, the lovely resource it is, makes digging deeper quite easy. All I had to do was change the search conditions from South Australian newspapers to New South Wales ones, and I would be able to see if perhaps there was more to this story.
It turns out there is. The first search result was one from the Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser from November 2nd, which discussed July news about the Act. This wasn’t discussing its actual passing, so I thought maybe the news was only divulged in South Australia to begin with. This seemed to be confirmed by four further results. All published on the 9th of November, the Maitland Mercury and Hunter River General Advertiser, The Bathurst Free Press, The People’s Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator, and The Goulburn Herald and County of Argyle Advertiser would contain sections on English News which specifically stated that information on the Act was meagre, so perhaps the story was true? But than there is an article from the Bathurst Free Press which says the Act had been passed by the upper house and was simply waiting to be passed through the house of Commons, which was a “probability”. So even if they did not know the Act had been put into effect, they at least knew it was right at the finish line, which would seem to go against the idea that anything about the Act was hidden? But than I find an article in the People’s Advocate and New South Wales Vindicator, also on the 9th, which describes “rumours” from the South Australian Registar that not only would there be a new colony of Victoria, but that Henry Young would become its first Governor. Now, that second part was obviously false, however the first shows that even if the news was only given to South Australia at first it had at least reached New South Wales by this point.
This led me to the inevitable conclusion of the rabbit-hole… was there an article in Victoria/the Port Phillip District which predated Garryowens? Perhaps unsurprisingly if you’ve listened to the episode, or if you’ve noticed the trend at this point, there was one. The November 6th edition of Geelong Advertiser contained an article titled “Australian Colonies Bill (Concluded)”, which included the line “it shall be lawful for the Governor and Legislative Councils of the colony of New South Wales, after the Seperation therefrom of the colony of Victoria” alongside other lines specifically denoting the separation of Victoria. In essence, this article, published 5 days prior to Garryowen’s, presents the reality that the news of separation was known in Victoria way before the story as it is presented could take place.
All of these newspapers article present a pretty clear picture as to the fact that the story repeated by the State Library of Victoria is not just partially untrue but perhaps mostly false. However, standing at the bottom of this rabbit-hole I’ve dug for myself, one question remains on my mind. If newspapers from South Australia to Victoria itself knew and were reporting on the Act days before Garryowen did, why did Garryowen’s article get published on the 11th and not earlier, and why was its publication that was cause for celebration and not the others? Such a question, the rabbit-hole which has appeared beneath this one isn’t for me to solve, at least not today, but maybe someone else can one day let me know.
This post is the first of many I’m thinking of doing to accompany the podcast. Every episode or so I end up with one fact or story or historical article, normally quite small but interesting nonetheless, which makes me fall down a rabbit-hole. Before this post, I didn’t really have a way to engage these rabbit-holes into something more productive, but now I’ll get to put them out there so that you all get to enjoy, or suffer, alongside me. Let me know what you think of this whole concept, and whether you’d be interested in me covering some of the rabbit-holes I’ve fell down over the last 45+ episodes as well.
A History of Australia Podcast 
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