Life on the West Island - What a Mob

One of the West Island’s most iconic and insightful political commentators, Mungo MacCallum, died almost exactly four years ago. He was a descendant of William Charles Wentworth, who spent the first six years of his life in Norfolk Island. Wentworth became a prominent advocate of constitutional self-government for New South Wales, and at the same time amassed a fortune as a landholder and grazier. He was one of the three trailblazing explorers who made the first European crossing of the Blue Mountains. In his later years, he became a prominent conservative politician.

Unlike his great-great grandfather, nobody could have accused Mungo MacCallum of being a conservative. Prime Minister Gough Whitlam described him as a tall, bearded descendant of lunatic aristocrats. As a journalist, Mungo made his name in the Canberra Press Gallery, writing incisive columns for The Australian and later The Sydney Morning Herald. But he is probably best remembered for his coverage of the Whitlam years in The National Times and then for decades as principal journalist and commentator with the radical weekly Nation Review.

Here at Life on the West Island, we enjoyed Mungo’s provocative and insightful columns for years, together with his multiple books and long-form essays in The Monthly. For seven years, he also compiled devilishly tricky and hilarious cryptic crosswords for The Saturday Paper, which took some mind-bending effort to solve. So, imagine our joy when an almost unknown Mungo MacCallum book surfaced by surprise in our Little Street Library.

Entitled Whitlam’s Mob, it contains 20 brief biographical sketches, along with acerbic comments, on the main players in the Whitlam Government of 1972-75, together with a further 20 short biographies of “The Other Mob.” Mungo became a self-confessed “Whitlamite,” and was horrified at the “constitutional coup” which saw the elected government sacked by the unelected Queen’s representative in Canberra.

As it happens, we were studying in the nation’s capital at the time and came to know a number of those key players, partly because the enlightened principal of our university residential college had a policy that students could invite prominent people to a free served dinner, as long as 20 other residents attended. Consequently, we dined with Gough Whitlam, Malcolm Fraser, Moss Cass, Al Grassby, Fred Daly and others, gaining a fascinating insight into the machinations of federal politics in those turbulent years. All it took was for one of us to wander into King’s Hall, find a minister or shadow minister, invite them for a free meal and then pick them up in our battered Mini or Kombi van.

Reading Whitlam’s Mob brought back many happy memories and greatly increased our admiration for the late Mungo MacCallum’s insight and the breadth of his contacts with senior politicians who were household names in the 1970s. His judgments were well founded and spelled out in uncompromising terms, but so readable that we each managed to read the full 233 pages in a single sitting.

The volume is bookended with a prologue and an epilogue, with the author quoting two memorable aphorisms:

Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive; but to be young was very heaven! (William Wordsworth)

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times (Charles Dickens)

MacCallum illustrates the strength of these words with his concise summaries of some major players:

Gough Whitlam: As Neville Wran put it – it was said of Caesar Augustus that he found a Rome of bricks and left it of marble. It can be said of Edward Gough Whitlam that he found Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane unsewered, and left them fully flushed.

Whitlam spent less than three years in office – less than a full constitutional term, although he won two elections in the process. But in Australian history, his name outshines almost all of his predecessors…

Whitlam once told an illustrious gathering that his preferred sport was rowing, because you can face one way, while going the other. A good line…but Whitlam was always going forward and his eyes were always fixed on the stars.

Jim Cairns: He was a huge influence in the late’60s and early ‘70s in opposition, but by and large a failure in government. “I wear my heart too easily on my sleeve,” he said in a rare personal moment. It is a luxury politicians cannot afford, but it was the mark of a man whose courage and conviction was never in doubt.

Fred Daly: He became the government’s ultimate spruiker, a talent he took into retirement. It is a spruiker, not an innovator or reformer, that he will be affectionately remembered.

Al Grassby: An Australian patriot on his own terms, he railed against the more strident nationalism, which he saw as a shallow excuse for jingoism, or still worse, the basis for some fuzzy idea of Australians as the master race. It was always his wish, and his belief, that Australia would become the most successful multicultural nation in the world. Today even conservatives, John Howard included, would argue that it has become just that. If they are right, then Al Grassby deserves his share of the credit.

Malcolm Fraser: The Fraser regime was largely uneventful. It was a time of recovery, but definitely not of reconciliation. For nearly half of the population, Fraser remained a devilish figure, and few of the rest gave him more than grudging respect.

John Kerr: Malcolm Fraser said that with just one decision, he could go down in history. Kerr died in exile in 1991. Whitlam comfortably outlasted his nemesis, both in longevity and latterly in public esteem. But Fraser’s flattering forecast was at least half right. Sir John Kerr has indeed gone down in history.

There are many more clever and intelligent commentaries in The Whitlam Mob, with quotable quotes on almost every page. If you lived through that era, it brings back hilarity, nostalgia and anger. If you didn’t, it’s well worth a read to get a feel for the West Island’s most turbulent and probably its most progressive era.