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BOOK REVIEW
| Philip Payton, Making Moonta: The Invention of Australia's Little Cornwall, University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 2007. pp. xiv + 269.
14.99 paper.
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| Philip Payton is Professor of Cornish and Australian studies at the University of Exeter. His interest in Cornish emigration had been aroused when he read Oswald Pryor's Australia's Little Cornwall while still a school student in Britain. At the University of Adelaide he completed, in 1978, a thesis on the social, economic and political impact of the Cornish in South Australia and has since written extensively on Cornish history and emigration. This expertise makes his book so authoritative. |
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Payton set out in this book to answer questions that long intrigued him:
Why ... was Moonta [a copper-mining community on South Australia's Yorke Peninsula] so self-consciously such a place apart? How had it been able to proclaim its status as 'Australia's Little Cornwall', and over time to defend that title so successfully against all comers? How was it that Moonta, though in many ways an exemplar of the overseas Cornish communities created by Cornwall's 'Great Emigration', also such a visible exception? What was it that lay behind Moonta's Cornish myth?
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Payton is at his best when placing the settlement and development of Moonta in the international context of 'Cornwall's Great Emigration', and when he compares Moonta's Cornish community with others internationally, virtually wherever hard-rock mining – particularly copper mining – took place during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Payton is less convincing in explaining the 'Invention of Australia's Little Cornwall'. The notion of 'invention' suggests objective calculation and conscious purpose. I am unconvinced that the 'myth' was more than majority community recognition of a common identity associated with Moonta and Wallaroo where copper mining continued longer and later than elsewhere: South Australia's Barossa Valley has long been identified with German culture, but there is no hint of a Barossa 'myth'. |
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Oswald Prior probably did more to promote the revival and longevity of this Cornish consciousness in his 1962 book Australia's Little Cornwall, and Payton acknowledges this. But even that could not be considered a calculated invention. The notion of invention is more evident in the promotion of the region's Cornish culture in the late twentieth century following declaration of the mines area as a heritage place and creation of the Kernewek Lowender festival as a means of creating a tourist industry in the region – which Payton describes in his final chapter. Payton's method of pursuing his thesis is to highlight and aggregate Cornish features of the Moonta Mines and its people and to explain their translation to Yorke Peninsula. This benefits from Payton's breadth of scope. |
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However, in focusing solely on Moonta's Cornish elements he fails to acknowledge other features or address issues that might run counter to his thesis. Moreover, while focusing on the 'myth', Payton says nothing about 'making Moonta' in the broader sense of establishing town enterprises such as stores, banks, a diversity of churches, schools, a police station, a railway station and a hospital. He barely mentions the impact of World War I on the community and any effect on its Cornishness. Nor does he highlight other endeavours contributing to community identity such as formation of sporting clubs and cultural societies, apart from those specifically identified with the mines. And he writes little about the town and region since the mines' closure in 1923. Payton noted that Pryor included Wallaroo and Kadina with Moonta in 'Australia's Little Cornwall' when it suited his purpose. He acknowledges the distinction, but does the same. Nor does Payton distinguish between the surveyed town of Moonta and Moonta Mines. This may not have been so necessary for Pryor, but is important for readers less familiar with the area and developments since the mines' closure. |
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Payton highlights the formation of the Moonta Miners Association and details issues with the mines' owners in a chapter devoted to 'Moonta's working-class heroes'. Large sections of another chapter focus on Moonta's contribution to South Australia's Labor movement, particularly through John Verran, who became a Labor Party leader and Premier, and Labor politician Robert Stanley Richards. The sharp focus on Cornishness means that these issues are considered in a narrow context only. Along with the international Cornish context, Payton brings to his work a good grasp of Australian history. It is frustrating, then, that he should refer to the South Australian Parliament as the Adelaide Parliament. But this latter is a minor blemish in a book that is easy to read and well crafted. |
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This review highlights a wealth of issues that Payton's book could, but does not address. Perhaps this is because of expectations raised by the title and preface. This is unfortunate because the book is a valuable contribution to an understanding of the Cornish and their broader contribution to Australia. |
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