The 'Great Literary Witch-Hunt' Revisited:
Politics, Personality and Pique at the CLF, 1952

Andrew Moore

Under the mentorship of L.J. Louis, in recent years Australian labour historians have made great strides in re-interpreting the Cold War. The following article sheds new light on a well-known episode in Australian cultural life during that period. The 1952 controversy over left-wing writers receiving funding from the Commonwealth Literary Fund has been described by Allan Ashbolt as 'the great literary witch-hunt of 1952'. Rather than belonging exclusively to the domain of Cold War politics, the present article reveals that the dispute also reflected the private machinations of a particular individual. This was the journalist and historian, M.H. Ellis (1890-1969), an anticommunist par excellence, who conducted an unrelenting campaign against writers like Marjorie Barnard and James Normington Rawling who did not share his reactionary views. In a dispute that saw the political sympathies of Australia's writers closely scrutinised for funding purposes and consolidated security's role in literary censorship, both human agency and the broad impersonal forces of the Cold War played a part.

The 1952 dispute over left-wing writers receiving funding from the Commonwealth Literary Fund (CLF) is an iconic event in Australia's Cold War. Epitomising the intrusion of transplanted McCarthyism into Australian cultural and intellectual life, questions raised in federal parliament on 28 August 1952 by that unlikely duo of Standish Michael Keon, Labor member for Yarra, and W.C. Wentworth, the Liberal Party backbencher, charged that governmental largesse had lined the pockets of left-wing and communist writers. Moreover, it was alleged, the CLF's advisory board harboured communist interests. According to Keon there was an 'obvious and consistent pattern in the granting of recent awards. A certain group, and that group only [communists] has benefited from the fund'. The CLF's apparent literary bias for members of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) reminded Wentworth that 'we are confronted by an organised clique that is out to destroy freedom'. 1	1
Sensationalised by the media, the issue captured national headlines throughout September 1952 and proved protracted and debilitating, especially for the CLF chair, distinguished writer Vance Palmer, who resigned from his position in 1953. Allan Ashbolt styles the affair Australia's 'great literary witch-hunt of 1952' and describes, in passionate detail, the trauma it brought to both Vance and Nettie Palmer, as well as other members of Australia's leftist intelligentsia. According to Ashbolt, himself a veteran of the period, the episode represented an 'upsurge of anti-communist fanaticism' and was part of a 'wider sociocultural context, of a general suspicion of creative writers'. Driven by the security services, the CLF dispute, Ashbolt argues, was part of a plot to equate communism with sedition, to neutralise dissenting voices and ensure conformity from timorous liberal intellectuals. Already concerned about the number of progressive writers receiving CLF support, Prime Minister Menzies' role as patron of the arts was increasingly circumscribed by political considerations. In a similar vein Fiona Capp paints the dispute as an indication of the growing power of the security services, their increasing willingness to indulge in literary criticism and interfere in cultural affairs. 2	2
While these interpretations are valid, there is a behind-the-scenes aspect of the affair that has not yet been brought to light. That story is one of professional rivalry, affronted pride and personal malice, emanating principally from one quarter the formidable M.H. Ellis. Born in outback Queensland on 21 August 1890 and educated at Brisbane Grammar School on a bursary, Malcolm Ellis was many things. Together with his long-term connections to the security services, 3 he had an impressive curriculum vitae in the area of anti-Labor activism. This stretched back to World War I and the Queensland experiments in state socialism proposed by Premier T.J. Ryan. 4 Apart from his credentials as a journalist and author, above all he was an aggressive and persistent opponent. Ellis has never received his due in terms of his role in inspiring the pivotal CLF dispute. In effect, it will be argued here, the 'great literary witch-hunt' related as much to Ellis's longstanding grievance against fellow author Marjorie Barnard--an obsession that predated the Cold War's anti-communism--as it did to the apprehensions of Australia''s expanding post-war secret state. 5	3

In this respect, the 1952 dispute had its roots in Malcolm Ellis's developing interest in the early colonial period of Australia's history. This began in the early 1930s. At the height of the Great Depression, returning from a period of work in the London office of the Telegraph with his personal life in some disarray, Ellis found gainful employment as a journalist difficult to obtain. Thus he started 'M.H. Ellis Literary Services' and accepted commissions to produce texts such as The Red Road , an anti-Communist polemic. 5 Ellis also took stopgap work, serving for instance as director of the 1930 Radio and Electrical Exhibition at which Guglielmo Marconi, the Italian inventor of radio, from his yacht Elettra moored in Genoa harbour, switched on the lights in the Sydney Town Hall, some 12,000 miles away. 6	4
Ellis's spirits were at low ebb. He later told the oral historian Hazel de Berg, 'I began to feel very lonely and very much at a loose end'. Seeking 'some purpose in life I started to work on Australian history'. 7 Having already dabbled in some of the primary sources in London and India--incurring, he later claimed, £700 in research expenses--Ellis threw himself into studying the early colonial period as a form of therapy.	5
Though he lacked formal training, Ellis had considerable skills as a researcher and boundless energy. From the early 1930s he became a regular at that hallowed enclave of historical research, the Mitchell Library, where perhaps he was not the model reader. The disorganised state of the library, 'full of manuscripts but it was almost impossible to get them', 8 its bureaucratic procedures and strict conservation rules were not always to his liking. According to Ellis library staff were concerned that his research would reveal the extent of the convict taint among Sydney's elite and wanted to limit his access to the Macquarie papers. 9 Ellis's acerbic personal manner was perhaps also a factor. Whatever the reason, his relations with the redoubtable Mitchell Librarian, Ida Leeson, became frosty; Ellis later suggested that by the early 1940s he was on the 'worst of personal terms' with her. 10	6
Dressed in his trademark Homburg hat and pin stripe suit, Ellis, nonetheless, was capable of courtly displays of scholarly generosity. Through a third party--probably Leeson--in the late 1930s he offered to open his research notes on Macquarie and share his knowledge of military matters with Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw when they were writing a biography of John Piper. 11 More than likely the lobbying he conducted with senior political contacts, especially Chief Secretary Chaffey, for archival deposits in the New South Wales State Archives to be made available, was a great service to the study of Australian history, then in its infancy. 12	7
Despite returning to full-time work as a journalist with the Bulletin in 1933, Ellis worked tirelessly on a manuscript on Lachlan Macquarie, a work strongly influenced by the then prevailing conception that historical works should contain extensive appendices of primary source material. In 1939 he submitted the manuscript for the Prior prize. In September 1940, the three judges, Frank Dalby Davison, president of the Fellowship of Australian Writers (FAW), H.M. Green, librarian of the Fisher Library at the University of Sydney and Beatrice Davis of Angus and Robertson awarded a prize to Ellis's manuscript. 13 Dalby Davison described it as 'a monumental work'. 14	8
Gratified by this acknowledgment, Ellis began to seek further assistance for publication, specifically though the CLF. In November 1940, testing the waters, he wrote to a member of the CLF advisory board, Dr George Mackaness of Sydney Teachers' College, demurring. 'I dislike leaning on the taxpayers at a time like this, but I am afraid there is no other way'. 15 Mackaness encouraged Ellis to submit his application.	9
Things quickly started to go wrong. Because of its size and as he assumed that its readers would reside in Sydney, Ellis wanted to hand deliver the manuscript to the CLF's referees. 16 Mackaness persuaded him from this course of action. Then the appraisal process was less than prompt. C.H. Currey, Mackaness's colleague at the Teachers' College, declined to read the manuscript because he regarded the payment as too paltry. In the event Ida Leeson was the CLF's principal reader. Illness delayed the completion of her report, which was not positive. Leeson remarked that the author 'lacked the historical training necessary for a work of this kind, and his literary style is not good'. The manuscript suffered from 'excessive quotation' and was more 'an extensive selection of source material, with notes and annotations, rather than a historical biography'. 17	10
Relying primarily on Leeson's advice, Ellis's CLF grant application was rejected, though with a recommendation that if its length could be severely pruned the manuscript could qualify for support. Unfortunately Ellis's petulance and capacity for disputation was perhaps then not so well-known, or A.L. Shepherd of the Prime Minister's Department which administered the CLF awards may well have been more diplomatic in informing him of the committee's decision to reject his application. Reading the burden of Leeson's unattributed reader's report, in particular a remark that the manuscript was replete with 'antiquarianism', no doubt was a wounding experience. 18 The injury was compounded when the cherished 1,200 page manuscript was returned in a poorly-wrapped parcel, falling apart, rather than in the sturdy, locked suitcase in which it had been submitted.	11
In common with any rejected grant applicant, Ellis was understandably miffed. Indeed it is fair to say that he was outraged, claiming, among other things, that the CLF's rejection effectively ruined any chance he may have had of securing a publisher in Australia and amounted to an official ban on its publication. 19 Fuelling his affronted pride was a particular bone of contention. Ellis began to assert that Marjorie Barnard had obtained 'clandestine possession' of the manuscript when it was in the possession of the CLF. He claimed to have seen Ida Leeson showing the manuscript to Barnard in the reading room of the Mitchell Library on 15 January 1941. Never one to stint on colourful details when levelling an accusation, Ellis claimed that Barnard's recently published Macquarie's World had plagiarised his CLF manuscript. As he told Professor Waterhouse of the Australian Limited Editions Society, 'My problem was not so much that it [ Macquarie's World ] might be in competition with my work as that it might be largely actually my work'. 20 His outrage was compounded by the knowledge that in 1941 Barnard obtained a CLF Grant to pursue a writing project (Ellis presumed to work on Macquarie's World ) while his study, far superior in his belief, was knocked back. Ellis's conviction that he was the victim of a conspiracy was fuelled by the fact that Flora Eldershaw, Barnard's 'other half' of the 'M. Barnard Eldershaw' writing team, was a member of the CLF's advisory board. The 'conspiracy' hatched against him Ellis constructed as one of patronage and plagiarism, a matter of the utmost gravity for it impugned the integrity of two great public institutions, the CLF and the Mitchell Library. 21	12
Ellis was like a man possessed, especially when it came to his attention that at a meeting of the Australian Limited Editions Society on 27 March 1941 'Miss Barnard broke into the flow of vitriolic remarks' about deficiencies in his manuscript. 22 Apart from complaining to the CLF and the trustees of the Mitchell Library, as well as seeking solace from Mackaness, Ellis also sought redress from the Limited Editions Society, the publisher of Macquarie's World . On 30 March 1941 Ellis reported to Mackaness:	13
The Limited Editions Society affair is very awkward; especially with women involved. A lady who has a collaborator on your Committee, is reported to have admitted quite openly that she had read one of my manuscripts, that she knew she had no right to see it; that she considered it poor in style, and so inaccurate that she was not likely to be influenced by it & make use of it in a novel on Macquarie she is beginning to write. 23
On 1 April 1941 Ellis repeated the substance of the above allegation to H.M. Green, complaining that the Australian Limited Editions Society had been 'unsporting' in 'sponsoring' Barnard's book. 24 Green sent Ellis away with a flea in his ear, assuring him that on the basis of his personal knowledge of Barnard she would not have not stolen or improperly used Ellis's manuscript. Green advised Ellis: 'I think you are treating extremely unfairly a woman who is probably not in a position to use the legal remedy which theoretically lies open to her'. 25	14
Muddying the waters was doubt about the status of the Prior prize winning manuscript and that submitted to the CLF. Ellis claimed that the latter was simply a 'working copy in process of revision'. He had sent this version, he claimed, 'because it was on tough paper and would stand considerable handling without damage'. 26 It strains credulity, however, to believe that Ellis would not have put his best foot forward in relation to securing a CLF grant. It seems more likely that the manuscript which won the Prior prize, the one submitted to the CLF the following year and that published by Dymock's in 1947 were very similar, although the 30,000 word appendices of primary sources were deleted from the book and some minor editing was probably completed.	15
Ellis's accusation of plagiarism was built on slender evidence. For instance, in his manuscript, near a reference to D.D. Mann's The Present Picture of New South Wales, Ellis had appended an unrelated handwritten note reading, 'Schoolmaster--Kissing Point'. Ellis surmised that this caused Barnard to record in Macquarie's World that Mann was a schoolmaster. According to Ellis the note 'did not appear anywhere else save in the copy of the manuscript which was in the hands of the Commonwealth Literary Fund'.27	16
Marjorie Barnard claimed consistently that she had not plagiarised Ellis's work. So little did she have to hide that she even offered Ellis the opportunity to read her manuscript before publication. 28 Nevertheless, she had read the Prior prize winning manuscript in 1939-40; Barnard later reported that a representative of the judges had asked for her opinion. 29 She	17
read the manuscript and found a number of points which appeared to me to be inaccurate. I took, and had no occasion to take, no notes from Mr Ellis's manuscript while it was in my possession. 30
It seems that Ellis imperfectly understood the implications of the term 'plagiarism'. He wrote a lengthy critique of Macquarie's World for his own information, but failed to list anything other than minor errors of detail, most of them trivial, as well as differences of interpretation. 31 It would seem that for Ellis any competitor in the field of early colonial history was by definition a plagiarist. Moreover, Barnard's CLF grant related to an historical novel which evolved into Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. 32 Macquarie's World was an unrelated commission from the Australian Limited Editions Society.
Ellis was aware that Sydney's literary world regarded him as a brash, reactionary Queensland interloper. He was correct in surmising that there were tight personal interconnections within Sydney's literary circles. The friendship and professional relationship between Barnard and Flora Eldershaw clearly was germane to Ellis's complaints, or could be seen so. Had he been aware that Barnard and Dalby Davison were lovers 33 he would have made as much public fuss about that as he did of the Barnard-Eldershaw connection.	18
Malcolm Ellis was a good hater. Having failed to secure any satisfaction from the Australian Limited Editions Society, he shifted the focus of his campaign to the question of impropriety by the CLF. For a good many years his rage and extensive correspondence--many thousands of words--was directed at that quarter. To review the barrage of paper emerging from Ellis's typewriter, the CLF engaged the services of Frank Wilmot, publishing director of Melbourne University Press. Wilmot systematically addressed Ellis's charges, remarking that many were 'impudent' and 'deliberately intended to be offensive'. Wilmot observed : 'I do not believe that anyone so childish, could do a life of anything' and concluded 'Obviously he has worked too hard, his mentality appears to be showing strain'. 34	19
Between 1941 and 1946 the matter continued to bubble away, though inevitably the 'exigencies of the war' and Ellis's growing reputation as the military journalist 'Ek Dum' (left-wing Diggers knew him less respectfully as 'Dum Hek') 35 meant that other issues took precedence. With the end of the war, however, Ellis looked again to having his manuscript on Macquarie published. Inevitably this fanned the embers of his dispute with Barnard and the CLF. Increasingly well connected in conservative political circles in Canberra, Ellis had become especially chummy with A.G. Cameron, later speaker of the House of Representatives. Cameron championed Ellis's cause in parliament, asking a pointed question to Chifley on 26 March 1946 about the status of CLF grants that had been awarded to Barnard, Frank Dalby Davison and the communist writer, Jean Devanny. Chifley's reply contained the false inference that Barnard's CLF grant had indeed been awarded for Macquarie's World , intelligence that would have enraged Ellis. 36 In April 1946 Ellis wrote to the Liberal Party leader R.G. Menzies to call for the matter to be reviewed. Menzies encouraged Ellis to take the matter up with Chifley, in his position as chair of the CLF. This was unnecessary advice. Ellis had already written a closely typed 45-page letter to the prime minister. 37	20
What was changing in this period, of course, was the political climate. The Cold War had begun and in this context, as Buckridge suggests, 'it was inevitable that writers ..., especially those on the Left, should have felt the blast from the ideological furnace'. 38 A long-term opponent of the Labor Party and the left, indeed a former employee of the security services in World War I, 39 Ellis needed little prompting in this direction. Apart from his many Bulletin articles and his book, The Garden Path (1949), fulminating against the communist menace, as he had been for the previous thirty years, Ellis was an important player in various back-room initiatives designed to resist any left-wing encroachments on Australian capitalism. As part of a four-man committee formed by the Bank of New South Wales and the Commercial Bank of Sydney to combat Chifley's plans to nationalise the private trading banks, Ellis astutely advised that the banks' response be cast as a 'people's campaign' rather than a dispute between the banks and the Labor government. 40 In relation to the Barnard affair expedience and enmity thus ensured that a private obsession would assume an increasingly political dimension.	21
Although Marjorie Barnard was no raging lion of the Left, she was certainly of left-liberal persuasion. A committed pacifist and anti-fascist, she had joined the Peace Pledge Union and Australian Labor Party (ALP) briefly in 1940, at which time she was prominent in condemning the censorship provisions of the Commonwealth government's National Security regulations. Through her activities with the FAW and along with Eldershaw and Dalby Davison, Barnard played 'a significant role in shaping and promoting a heavily politicised literary agenda for Sydney writers in the years around the Second World War', as Maryanne Dever puts it. 41 Ellis did not mention Barnard by name in The Garden Path , though it had not escaped his notice that under Davison the FAW had 'become very like a branch of the Communist Party'. 42 Given that there were many in Barnard's social and literary circle, including her friend Jean Devanny, more firmly committed to left-wing groups and ideology, specifically the CPA, the implication of Ellis's innuendo was sustainable. In any case even a 'nineteenth century liberal', as Barnard later described herself, was in danger during the Cold War. Thus, when Ellis wrote to R.G. Menzies on 9 April 1946, he first blurred the line between his five-year vendetta against Barnard and the CLF with the more general issue of left-wing authors benefiting from the public purse. In a letter primarily concerned with the Barnard affair, Ellis also reported:	22
A notorious communist whose activities were in part responsible for the banning of the Communist Party in 1940, at the end of 1942, while her party was still under ban as a subversive organisation, had merely to express a wish to visit a war area whose secret military movements of vital importance to the safety of the country were in progress, and your Committee smoothed her way with a grant of £150, priorities and special permits before she had even put a pen to paper. Her book was recommended by your committee to the publishers and the public. 43
The 'notorious communist' was Jean Devanny, and the book Bird of Paradise (1945), a collection of articles aimed at raising morale. That wily politician, R.G. Menzies, of course, was receptive to the tenor of such a complaint. He replied on 10 April 1946:	23
Since receiving your letter of yesterday's date I have had a long talk with Mr Cameron. I am very interested to have the information from you because the members of the Committee have become increasingly disturbed about the operations of the Fund ... I will myself take every step to see that the matter is fully investigated In the meantime, the next time I am in Sydney, I will give myself the pleasure of calling on you and having a discussion about it. 44
The CLF resolved to meet all of the protagonists in Canberra in the hope that the matter could be resolved amicably. Unfortunately the day proposed for the meeting--20 July 1946--was inconveniently close to the day of Ellis''s second marriage and so the meeting was postponed at the last moment. Ellis subsequently pulled back from participating in the proposed inquiry because he felt its informal character could compromise CLF advisory board members such as DR Mackaness. Increasing he sought a formally constituted, 'properly protected' forum to adjudicate upon the matter.	24
More than likely, given the temper of the times, with the chill winds of the Cold War gathering force, Ellis sensed that he was on a winner. Increasingly he invoked the spectre of Barnard as a subversive left-wing writer and used the customary McCarthyist dragnet approach towards an intelligentsia that, he felt, was dangerously underwritten by left-wing revolutionaries. James Normington Rawling, who received CLF support to work on the poet Charles Harpur, was another writer denounced by Ellis in correspondence as a former 'chief publicity officer of the Communist Party'. 45 Through the good offices of his brother Ulrich, a staff member of Sir Earle Page, leader of the Country Party, Ellis was able to ensure that an inquisatory question about Normington Rawling was asked in parliament by Page to Prime Minister Chifley, 46 who was thus obliged to write a 'please explain' letter to Normington Rawling.	25
Unsatisfied by the response, in May 1947 Page initiated a full dress rehearsal of the 1952 CLF dispute in federal parliament. 47 On this occasion the focus of a similarly protracted debate fell on Normington Rawling's fellowship and his politics, but this was but one of the gems of information Ellis conveyed to the pages of Hansard through his compliant mouthpieces, Page and Cameron. Claiming to have been 'dealing with this matter behind the scenes, at least since 1946' (that is when Ellis first wrote to him about the matter), A.G. Cameron suggested that the CLF had become a 'nursing home for communists' and obligingly raised the issue of Jean Devanny's alleged access to sensitive defence projects during the war. 48	26
Haylen, it seems, understood the provenance of the present dispute about the activities of the CLF. He told the House:	27
But the real story, if it must be told, is that a disgruntled man outside this House has related in strong terms to the honourable member for Barker (Mr Archie Cameron) and the new recruit, the right honourable member for Cowper, the story of his disappointment in failing to secure a fellowship himself. On every occasion on which the literary committee has made an appointment, he has come forward with a fresh lie. We have had to stand up to a vendetta by this man Ellis and his employer, the Sydney Bulletin , who are haters of Labour [sic] and of the Communists. 50
Though Haylen's revelation was not widely publicised, unsurprisingly it rendered the 'disgruntled' Ellis even more so. Not even the successful publication of his own Lachlan Macquarie in 1947 and approving comments from R.G. Menzies could mollify him. The Liberal Party leader enthused that Ellis's book was 'a first-class piece of historical work, lucidly written, and splendidly printed and produced' and suggested 'The other book of which we know will be indeed an insignificant competitor'. 51 Ulrich Ellis echoed these sentiments, suggesting that his brother's Macquarie 'will make the Barnard Eldershaw [sic] job look very sickly''. 52	28
Enraged by Haylen, Ellis demanded that all relevant documents be laid on the tables of parliament. This request was denied on the basis that parliamentary privilege should not embrace the possibility of libelling innocent parties. The alternative offered was a private inquiry presided over by no less a legal luminary than Sir Robert Garran. The distinguished former solicitor general was approached and agreed to the appointment.	29
In the circumstances the promise of having the matter adjudicated upon by such an eminent legal figure was a generous dispensation. Ellis did not concur. That witnesses would not be compelled to present evidence on oath and still would not be 'fully protected' was enough to ensure his rejection of the proposal. Nor, more than likely, would a private inquiry have assisted Ellis's desire to attract as much publicity to the matter as possible. He believed the whole matter had assumed such grave national importance that only a Royal Commission to investigate the operation of the CLF would suffice. Not even Ellis's champions in Canberra thought the matter that serious. His great supporter, R.G. Menzies, chided him for rejecting the Garran option. 53	30
Ellis's campaign progressively left a number of bruised and exhausted souls in its wake. On the eve of the projected 1946 inquiry in Canberra, Marjorie Barnard had confided in a colleague from the Australian Limited Editions Society:	31
The whole business disgusts me so much that it leaves me too tired to be properly angry. It is a purely external accident, like falling into a cask of molasses. 54
In 1952 Barnard was understandably 'knocked a bit by the Wentworth business ... bitterly regretting that she ever took a fellowship'. 55 Wentworth had described Macquarie's World as 'a cheap pot-boiler ... written by Barnard Eldershaw'. 56 The frustration in a letter to Judah Waten was palpable, if understated. Barnard wrote:	32
We've had a bit of publicity in parliament recently as no doubt you've noticed, with all the facts wrong. Dirty bit of work. I've been advised to take no notice. My old enemy Ellis is obviously behind the attack on me & Macquarie's World. Why do we write? It certainly isn't for money and scarcely for fame. 57
Other writers sustained Ellis-inspired collateral damage well before the 1952 fracas. In 1947 James Normington Rawling penned a sad reply to Prime Minister Chifley, who had written in relation to Page's question in parliament. Normington Rawling admitted that while he was part of the generation that had been inspired by events in Russia in 1917, he had also become disillusioned by the Stalinist practices of the CPA. Such was the tenor of his subsequent radio addresses and newspaper articles that he felt sure that Party members 'would designate me as their No. 1 enemy'. Normington Rawling asked Chifley if it were possible that his former political allegiances not be dwelled upon in reply to Page. His family had already suffered considerable pain because of his former political beliefs. Moreover, Normington Rawling did not want any adverse publicity to harm his chances of resuming employment as a teacher in a private school after the expiry of his fellowship. 58 This aspiration was not fulfilled. Despite appearing- ironically with M.H. Ellis- as a witness for the 'prosecution' at the 1949 Royal Commission into Communism in Victoria, it seems likely that his cards were marked. Apart from a brief period as a research fellow in political science at the Australian National University (ANU), Normington Rawling spent the rest of his teaching career 'in an unsatisfactory series of appointments at non-government schools'. 59 His resolutely apolitical work on Harpur was not published until 1962. 60	33
Marjorie Barnard showed great nobility of spirit in response to this protracted and bitter campaign. The pedantic and sometimes fractious archaeologist/historian Ord in Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow who believes so passionately in 'the canons of exact scholarship' bears some similarity to her 'old enemy', though the portrait is oblique and more attractive than Ellis, no doubt for legal reasons. 61 In 1946 she may have had the ability to slow down or thwart the publication of Ellis's Lachlan Macquarie . According to Ellis, Dymock's Limited had threatened to break up the type unless Ellis desisted from his campaign. 62 If this was so, it was without prompting from Barnard who advised the publisher:	34
I am of course low enough to want revenge, and this could be it, but not low enough to want it at your own expense--and it would be costly if it is already set up--hitting enemies with friends never was my favorite sport anyway. Hence my sudden retirement into a blank neutrality. 63
Malcolm Ellis was not similarly inclined. Despite the encomiums of the new prime minister and favourable reviews of his biographies of Macquarie, Francis Greenway and John Macarthur, it seems that Ellis still smarted from the failure of his CLF application in 1941. In 1956 he was awarded a CMG for his 'services to literature'. 64 It may be that Ellis's supporters in Canberra felt that this would compensate him for his earlier disappointment. Certainly this was the high point in his life, matched only by the conferring of an honorary doctorate by the newly established University of Newcastle in 1962. Unfortunately, in Ellis's conspiratorial world there was always something from which to take offence. In 1948 when Australian Quarterly reviewed both Lachlan Macquarie and Macquarie's World in the same issue Ellis was greatly antagonised, all the more so because the reviewer preferred Marjorie Barnard's work. Ellis fired off an outraged letter accusing the reviewer, Duncan MacCallum, of academic incestuousness--boosting an inferior work simply because its author was a former honours graduate of his university. Ellis also observed: 'It seems to me that it is about time that Australian School and University history departments turned their eyes from Moscow to their own cities'. 65	35
Increasingly he sought retribution in a clandestine fashion, preparing dossiers on leftists who had been recipients of CLF grants. In short, Ellis's detective work largely fuelled by a disappointment that dated back to 1941--was the genesis of and supplied ammunition for the 1952 'witch-hunt'. The recipients of Ellis's researches were precisely those politicians who caused the celebrated 1952 CLF fracas. It was from M.H. Ellis that Standish Keon learned about the 'left leanings' of Meanjin and the Christesens (Clem and Nina) and that Eric Lambert was an 'Associate of known Coms'. Ellis encouraged Keon to believe that Judah Waten was 'Frankly disloyal and sacrilegious'. He reported that the historian Brian Fitzpatrick had appeared before the Lowe Royal Commission in Victoria where 'he denied that he was a Communist' about which Ellis commented 'Peter denied Christ'. 66 On 15 September 1952 Keon wrote to Ellis:	36
I am enclosing the balance of the papers you left with me.      Mr Wentworth obtained from me the roneoed summary of the Barnard Award which you left with me, and I presume that he has returned it direct to you.      I have obtained some more information on the Awards and intend to keep the pressure up. You may have noticed that the P.M. refused to make the papers in connection with the Awards available.      In view of Vance Palmer's open association with the Eureka Youth League, as patron, etc., I think Menzies should get a kick in the pants over his statement that Palmer was not a leftist. I'm sending the P.M. a letter, and will send you a copy. 67
W.C. Wentworth had long been on side with Ellis. The pair was in the habit of sharing pamphlets and intelligence about communist activities. With another Liberal Party cadre, John Carrick, Wentworth had supported the publication of The Garden Path in 1949. 68 No doubt he needed little encouragement to write to Menzies on 8 February 1951 to express his concerns about an apparent communist bias in the granting of CLF fellowships. In Wentworth's view there had been one 'particularly scandalous incident' that involved the rejection of Malcolm Ellis's manuscript on Macquarie and 'the acceptance of an entirely mediocre book on the same subject by another author whose ideological leanings were rather more to the Left'. 69 On this occasion Menzies defended the CLF, 70 however the foundations of the 1952 'witch-hunt' were already established.
Wentworth's parliamentary tirade in August 1952 included only a brief reference to the Ellis-Barnard dispute. According to Wentworth, Barnard's 'cheap potboiler had been funded, while another 'scholarly and definitive work on the life of Macquarie' by an unnamed author 'noted for his anti-Communist outlook' was rejected. 71 Thus, despite his personal responsibility for the dispute, Ellis remained a shadowy presence in the animated parliamentary and public debate about the CLF's activities in 1952. On 8 September 1952 Ellis wrote to A.W. Fadden, another close political colleague, suggesting that all practising writers should be removed from the CLF advisory board. According to this more sanguine appraisal both 'conservative and communist' authors were cliquey and 'all live in small families like garden wrens', admiring each other's work while denouncing 'other groups or individuals who may invade their limited field and reducing their allowances of bread and butter'. Ellis concluded:	37
Viewing the fellowships which have been granted with those who have done the granting I am in doubt whether what has come about is not more due to the impact of personal associations than to politics. 72
In this letter Ellis belatedly described the 1952 conflict in terms that accurately reflected the course of his 12-year campaign against Marjorie Barnard. But at this late stage, taking the high moral ground and dissociating himself from the corrosive ideological crusade that had caused such severe ructions within Australia's literary community was, at best, disingenuous. Ironically, depending on the relationship between Barnard's CLF grant and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Ellis's fire may have been better directed at Flora Eldershaw. If the relationship between the grant and book was as direct as Barnard suggested in 1946, there might have been a conflict of interest arising from Eldershaw's position as both a CLF advisory board member and a beneficiary of its decisions. It seems, however, that Eldershaw became involved in the writing of Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow after the decision on the grant had been taken, at some stage near the end of 1941. Moreover, while the disputed grant ended up funding the writing of that book, it was actually awarded for a project which never appeared, an historical novel based on the early colonial period. 73	38
The legacy of the 1952 'literary witch-hunt' was profound. As Buckridge writes, the 1952 dispute was the most 'sustained and damaging' of the Cold War's intrusions upon Australia's intellectual life, causing the resignations of Vance Palmer and Flora Eldershaw from the CLF's advisory board. 74 Political censorship and literary criticism became entwined. Ashbolt suggests that the episode edged writers 'towards a discreet withdrawal from open political activity and from any sort of writing that seemed to be politically motivated or coloured'. More than likely this was how it affected Marjorie Barnard. The 'witch-hunt' also prompted--as Ashbolt again points out--the emergence of a growing concordat between the ALP right-wing and the Liberal Party, signalling the emergence of the Democratic Labor Party in 1954-55. 75	39
Clearly the 1952 CLF 'witch-hunt' was both a product and manifestation of the Cold War, part of a broader contest in which Malcolm Ellis was no more than a minor, if persistent, player. But while a campaign against leftist writers might well have happened without his intervention, the episode assumed greater piquancy because of its genesis with the indefatigable Ellis. And the view that Australia was spared some of the McCarthyist excesses of the Cold War, in the sense that at least Australia's writers did not inform on each other to the authorities, is clearly erroneous.	40
Malcolm Ellis went on to contest many other legendary disputes. With his attacks on the 'crypto-communist' Manning Clark in 1959-62 Ellis very nearly brought down the infant Australian Dictionary of Biography. 76 He also contributed to ructions within the ANU perhaps because the university neglected to confer an honorary doctorate upon him . 77 Ellis also accused another author, the educationalist, R.H. Travers of plagiarism, but this was a half-hearted charge and as baseless as the charges against Barnard. 78 In 1954-55 he staged an unsuccessful palace coup against certain 'desiccated ancients' and 'would-be wreckers' within the Royal Australian Historical Society. History House briefly resembled a war zone. 79 In 1957 Ellis inspired the socalled 'Great Rum Rebellion Debate' with DR H.V. Evatt, the matter of scholarly differences of interpretation in their respective books, John Macarthur and The Rum Rebellion , secondary to Ellis's resolve to denigrate the ALP leader's politics. 80 Ellis also caused enmity within the elite Pioneers Club. As A.H. Chisholm observed in 1964 Ellis seemed to have 'a regrettable phobia against numbers of organisations and persons connected with Australian history'. 81 Peter Coleman's assessment that Ellis 'relished public controversy and ... was never ... afraid to be the odd man out', rings true. 82	41
Given the vehemence and duration of the controversy with Barnard, it was hardly surprising that it was some time before Ellis again sought assistance from the CLF for his writing projects. In 1965, however, he was awarded a £1,000 fellowship to complete his long-mooted biography of the original W.C. Wentworth. Most writers would have been delighted, all the more so given an unsuccessful track record in terms of funding. Instead, on the morning the grants were announced, Ellis rang CLF board member Douglas Stewart 'highly indignant' that he had been slighted by being granted only a 'second class fellowship'. He was particular galled to note that fellow journalist Cyril Pearl had received a full £2,000 fellowship to work on a biography of 'Chinese' Morrison and that his claims were regarded as only parallel with young novelists like Christopher Koch and Thomas Keneally. 83	42
Understanding the root causes of Ellis's prickly temperament is beyond the province of this article. Significantly, however, there is little sign that Ellis did much work on the Wentworth manuscript, despite reporting to Canberra in September 1966 that skeleton drafts of all chapters had been completed. 84 Instead, in 1967-68 he spent much time negotiating lucrative contracts with North Broken Hill, Peko Wallsend and Standard Telephones and Cables to write corporate histories, 85 tasks which he justified on the basis that 'trained writers are at a premium these days' and 'a biography always improves by being allowed to mature'. 86 Ellis also endured increasingly poor health and died on 18 January 1969. The mystery of the missing Wentworth manuscript cannot be resolved. Its absence caused one long-term supporter and referee for his 1965 CLF application, Professor James Auchmuty, Newcastle University's foundation vice chancellor who enjoyed parallel intelligence connections, 87 to rummage around in Ellis's papers for some sign of the work, perhaps worried that its non-appearance might reflect poorly on him. 88 It may be that unlike his left-wing opponents, who mostly completed writing projects when assisted by CLF money, Malcolm Ellis had rorted the public purse.	43
Endnotes * For comments and advice I am grateful to DR Robert Darby and the two anonymous Labour History referees. 1. Commonwealth Parliamentary Debates, ( CPD ), vol. 218, 28 August 1952, pp. 717, 728. 2. Allan Ashbolt, 'The Great Literary Witch-Hunt of 1952' in Ann Curthoys and John Merritt (eds), Australia's First Cold War 1945-1953 , vol. 1, George Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1984, pp. 153-182; Fiona Capp, Writers Defiled: Security Surveillance of Australian Authors and Intellectuals 1920-1960 , McPhee Gribble, Melbourne, 1993, pp 117- 133. The issue is also discussed in John McLaren, Writing in Hope and Fear. Literature as Politics in Postwar Australia , Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp.115-116; Susan McKernan, A Question of Commitment. Australian Literature in the Twenty Years After the War , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1989, pp. 51-53; Patrick Buckridge, 'Creating a Space for Australian Literature 1940-1965' in Bruce Bennett and Jennifer Strauss (eds), The Oxford Literary History of Australia , Oxford University Press, Melbourne, 1998, pp. 178, 183; Maryanne Dever (ed.), M. Barnard Eldershaw , University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1995, p. xxiii. 3. See Andrew Moore, 'Malcolm Ellis: Labour Historian? Spy?' in Robert Hood and Ray Markey (eds), Labour & Community: Proceedings of the Sixth National Conference of the ASSLH , Wollongong, 1999, pp.137-141. 4. See, for instance, Ellis's 572-page manuscript detailing the 'Disloyal Actions of the Queensland Labour [sic] Party and its Adherents'', Mitchell Library (ML) MSS 880. Ellis's career as an anti-Labor activist is discussed in Andrew Moore, 'The "Historical Expert": M.H. Ellis and the Historiography of the Cold War', Australian Historical Studies , vol. 31, no. 114, April 2000, pp. 92-96. For further biographical details see Brian Fletcher, 'Ellis, Malcolm Henry' in John Ritchie (ed.), The Australian Dictionary of Biography , vol. 14, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1996, pp. 95-97. 5. M.H. Ellis, The Red Road: the Story of the Capture of the Lang Party by Communists Instructed from Moscow , Sydney & Melbourne Publishing Company, Sydney, 1932. For details of M.H. Ellis Literary Services see M.H. Ellis to managing director, Angus & Robertson, 12 August 1931, Angus & Robertson papers, ML MSS 314/29. 6. Margot Beasley, Sydney Town Hall. A Social History , City of Sydney, Sydney, 1998, pp.68-69. 7. M.H. Ellis interview by Hazel de Berg, tape recording, 7 November 1967, National Library of Australia (NLA), De Berg tapes, tape 334, transcript p. 4011. 8. Ibid. , pp. 4014, 4016. 9. Ibid. , pp. 4021-2. 10. M.H. Ellis to J.B. Chifley, 28 November 1946, National Archives of Australia (NAA), A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 11. Marjorie Barnard typescript, 'Chronology of Events Connected with the Writing of Macquarie's World ', NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963, pt 1. 12. M.H. Ellis interview with Hazel de Berg, transcript, p. 4023. 13. Ellis's subsequent correspondence proceeded on the basis that his work was the sole winner of the Prior prize in 1940. In Jacqueline Kent's recently published biography of literary editor Beatrice Davis ( A Certain Style , Viking, Ringwood, 2001, p. 90), it transpires that Ellis's biography shared the prize that year with Kylie Tennant's The Brown Van (renamed and published as The Battlers ) and Eve Langley's The Pea Pickers . 14. M.H. Ellis to The Chairman CLF (Commonwealth Literary Fund), 23 August 1941, M.H. Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882. 15. M.H. Ellis to G. Mackaness, 4 November 1940, Mackaness papers, NLA MS 534/327/1. 16. M.H. Ellis to G. Mackaness, 10 November 1940, Mackaness papers, NLA MS 534/327/1. 17. I. Leeson to G. Mackaness, 17 February 1940, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 18. H.S. Temby to M.H. Ellis, 26 May 1941, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. At various stages it suited Ellis to argue that his application had been rejected outright; at other times he would recall the wording of this letter more accurately. 19. M.H. Ellis to the Chairman, CLF, 23 August 1941, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 20. M.H. Ellis to Professor Waterhouse, 5 April 1941, NAA, item 463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 21. 'The Ellis manuscript', typescript prepared by H.S. Temby on 10 December 1946, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1 is a valuable summary of this complicated series of allegations and counterallegations, 1941-46. 22. Unattributed typescript in Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882. 23. M.H. Ellis to G. Mackaness, 30 March 1941, Mackaness papers, NLA MS 534/327/9. 24. M.H. Ellis to H.M. Green, 1 April 1941, H.M. Green papers, NLA MS 3925 series 2 box 2. 25. H.M. Green to M.H. Ellis, 2 June 1941, H.M. Green papers, NLA MS 3925 series 2 box 2. 26. M.H. Ellis to J.B. Chifley, 28 November 1946, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 27. Ibid. 28. M.Barnard to M.H. Ellis, 3 April 1941, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882 29. The representative was undoubtedly Frank Dalby Davison, a close friend and colleague who often consulted Barnard about matters which he felt lay beyond his expertise. 30. Marjorie Barnard, typescript, 'Chronology of events connected with the writing of Macquarie's World ', NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 31. M.H. Ellis, typescript, 'Comments on Macquarie's World ', Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882. 32. As is discussed later, the relationship between the CLF Grant and Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow is open to debate. However in Barnard's subsequent reflection, 'Chronology of events connected with the Writing of Macquarie's World ', NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 Barnard wrote: 'The novel for which I was subsidised, To-morrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow', written in collaboration with Flora Eldershaw, took four years to complete. It is very long'. 33. Carol Ferrier, Jean Devanny. Romantic Revolutionary , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1999 p.157; Drusilla Modjeska, Exiles at Home: Australian Women Writers 1925-1945 , Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1991, pp. 208-210. 34. F. Wilmot to H. Temby, 12 September 1941, NAA A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 35. See Tribune , 2 July 1949. 36. See CPD , vol. 186, 26 March 1946, p. 638 question asked about the status of Barnard's CLF fellowship. 37. M.H. Ellis to J.B. Chifley, 28 November 1946, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 38. Buckridge, 'Creating a Space', p. 178. 39. See NAA, B197/0 item 2021/1/270. Moore, 'Malcolm Ellis: Labour Historian? Spy?', pp. 137-141. 40. M.H. Ellis to R.R. Mackellar, 21 November 1947, Ellis papers, ML MSS 21883; 'Record of Activities: Anti-Bank Nationalisation Campaign', 16 August 1947 to 10 August 1949 compiled by RR McKellar, Westpac Archives A2057/49. For this reference I am grateful to Peter Henderson and DR Warwick Eather. 41. Maryanne Dever, '"No Time is Inopportune for a Protest": Aspects of the Political Activities of Marjorie Barnard and Flora Eldershaw', Hecate , vol. XVII no ii, 1991, pp. 9-21. Further analysis of Barnard's political beliefs is in Modjeska, Exiles at Home , pp. 108-110, 113-114; Robert Darby, While freedom lives: political preoccupations in the writing of Marjorie Barnard and Frank Dalby Davison, 1935-1947, PhD thesis, UNSW, 1989; Robert Darby, 'Introduction' in Robert Darby (ed.), But Not For Love: Stories of Marjorie Barnard and M. Barnard Eldershaw , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1988, p.14; and Dever, M.Barnard Eldershaw , p. xv-xvii. Barnard describes her political views in 'How Tomorrow and Tomorrow Came to be Written', Meanjin , vol. 3, 1970, pp. 328-330 and manuscript of same in Barnard papers, ML MSS 2809. 42. M.H. Ellis, The Garden Path: the Story of the Saturation of the Australian Labour Movement by Communism , Land Newspapers, Sydney, 1949, p. 448. 43. M.H. Ellis to R.G. Menzies, 9 April 1946, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882; the slight empirical foundation for this charge is discussed in Ferrier, Jean Devanny , pp. 208, 237. 44. R.G. Menzies to M.H. Ellis, 10 April 1946, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882. 45. See NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 46. CPD , vol. 191, 26 March 1947, p. 1163. 47. CPD , vol. 191, 8 May 1947, pp. 2099-2109. 48. Ibid. , pp. 2108. 49. Les Haylen, Twenty Years' Hard Labor , Macmillan, Melbourne, 1969, ch. 11. 50. CPD , vol. 191, 8 May 1947, p. 2109. 51. R.G. Menzies to M.H. Ellis, 3 February 1948, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21890. 52. Ulrich Ellis to M.H. Ellis 26 December 1947, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21890. 53. R.G. Menzies to M.H. Ellis, 3 June 1947, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963, pt 1. 54. M. Barnard to B. Waite, 13 July 1946, Australian Limited Editions Society papers, NLA MS 3774. 55. Ashbolt, 'The Great Literary Witch-Hunt of 1952', p. 179. 56. CPD , vol. 218, 28 August 1952, p.727. 57. M. Barnard to J. Waten, 31 August 1952, Waten papers, NLA MS 4536/2/92 cited by Dever, 'No Time is Inopportune', p. 18. 58. J.N. Rawling to J.B. Chifley, 12 April 1947, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 59. John Pomeroy, 'The Apostasy of James Normington Rawling', Australian Journal of Politics and History , vol. 37, no. 1, 1991, p. 34; see also Fran de Groen, 'Harpur's Biographer. J.N. Rawling: Background Information and Papers', Notes and Furphies , no. 3, October 1979, pp. 1-3. The episode is also discussed in Michael Pollak, Sense & Censorship , Reed, Sydney, 1990, pp. 375-376. 60. James Normington Rawling, Charles Harpur: An Australian , Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1962. 61. See, for instance M. Barnard Eldershaw, Tomorrow and Tomorrow , Georgian House, Melbourne, 1947, pp.17, 204. For drawing my attention to the possibility that Ord was modelled on Ellis, I am indebted to DR Robert Darby. 62. M.H. Ellis to H.S. Temby, 27 April 1947, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 63. M. Barnard to B. Waite, 13 July 1946, Australian Limited Editions Society papers, NLA MS 3774. 64. NAA, A 2925/1, item 56/2. 65. M.H. Ellis to the Editor, Australian Quarterly , 8 July 1948, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21885. It seems that the reviewer was not the Duncan MacCallum who was a member of the history department at the University of Sydney from 1949 to 1970, but that Ellis believed he was. 66. Typescript re procedures of CLF, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21890. 67. S.M. Keon to M.H. Ellis, 15 September 1952, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882. 68. M.H. Ellis to the D.M. Cleland (director Liberal Party of Australia), 24 August 1949, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21889. 69. W.C. Wentworth to R.G. Menzies, 8 February 1951, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 70. R.G. Menzies to W.C. Wentworth, 21 February 1951, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. 71. CPD , vol. 218, 28 August 1952, p. 727. 72. M.H. Ellis to A. Fadden, 8 September 1952, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21882. 73. The absence of Barnard's own CLF file from the archival record precludes too definitive a response to this matter. One of the few references to the shape and texture of the original project, which never appeared, is in H.S. Temby to M.H. Ellis, 30 May 1947, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 1. This suggests that the original application made reference to Governor King, the Wentworths and Richard Bourke. Temby informed Ellis: 'No reference whatever was made in her application to Lachlan Macquarie. After her application had been approved she decided, with the approval of the Advisory Board, to write a book which she described as an historical novel of the present time, written of to-day from an imaginary vantage point in the future'. Chifley's statement in 1946, that the grant had been awarded for Macquarie's World , was in error. 74. Buckridge, 'Creating a Space', p. 183. 75. Ashbolt, 'The Great Literary Witch-Hunt', p. 153; Dever, 'No Time is Inopportune', p. 9. 76. A recent account of this dispute is provided in Gerald Walsh, 'Recording "the Australian Experience": Hancock and the Australian Dictionary of Biography ', in D.A. Low (ed.), Keith Hancock: the Legacies of an Historian , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 2001, pp. 249-268. See also Ann Moyal, Breakfast with Beaverbrook: Memoirs of an Independent Woman , Hale & Iremonger, Sydney, 1995, ch. 5, and Andrew Moore. '"History without Facts": M.H. Ellis, Manning Clark and the origins of the Australian Dictionary of Biography ', Journal of the Royal Australian Historical Society , vol. 85, no. 2, December 1999, pp. 71-84. 77. Manning Clark, A Historian's Apprenticeship , Melbourne University Press, Melbourne, 1992, pp. 7-8; S.G. Foster and Margaret M. Varghese , The Making of the Australian National University , Allen & Unwin, Sydney, 1996, p. 132. 78. Documents in Ellis papers, ML MSS K21891. 79. Russel Ward, A Radical Life: The Autobiography of Russel Ward, Macmillan, Melbourne, 1988, p. 214; Bob Reece, 'Don't Accept Lifts from Professors to Wagga', Australian Historical Association Bulletin , December 1996, p. 90; M.H. Ellis to the Honorary Secretary, Royal Australian Historical Society, 20 July 1955; M.H. Ellis to C.H. Currey, 26 July 1955, Ellis papers, ML MSS K21890. 80. See M.H. Ellis, 'Rum Rebellion Reviewed', Quadrant , vol. 2, no. 1, Summer 1957-58; M.H. Ellis, 'The Great Rum Rebellion Debate', Bulletin , 2 February 1963; a brief account of this controversy is in Moore, 'The "Historical Expert"', pp. 102-105. 81. Letter to the Bulletin , 7 March 1964. 82. Cited in Patricia Rolfe, The Journalistic Javelin: an illustrated history of the Bulletin , Wildcat Press, Sydney, 1979, p. 293. 83. NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 2. 84. M.H. Ellis to AL Moore, 31 March 1966, 21 August 1966, NAA, A463/50 item 1965/2963 pt 2. 85. See documents in Ellis papers, ML MSS K21890 which suggest that Ellis was being paid £500 per quarter by North Broken Hill and was negotiating a fee of £600 per quarter with Standard Telephones and Cables Pty Ltd. 86. M.H. Ellis to James Auchmuty, Auchmuty papers, University of Newcastle Archives, A6273 (1). For permission to quote from this source, I am grateful to Mr Denis Rowe, archivist, University of Newcastle Archives. 87. See Kenneth R. Dutton, Auchmuty: The Life of James Johnston Auchmuty (1909-1981) , Boombana Publications, Mt Nebo, 2000, pp. 136-141. Auchmuty's connections with M.H. Ellis are discussed in detail at pp. 236-240. 88. Gwendoline Ellis to U.R. Ellis, [nd], Ulrich Ellis papers, NLA MS 1006 series 1, box 8.

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