Australia's Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s
socialists and bush poets alike was pervasive enough to warrant some pointed criticisms, for instance of its defiant and exclusionary style of masculinism soon to be further entrenched with the militarisation of mateship following the First World War. Dyrenfurth pays due attention to the Anzacs and their mythologisers, but the national battle over conscription is given a more extended treatment, presented here as a battle 'over the meaning of mateship' (105) From this point on, for several chapters, the history becomes a more narrowly political one not surprising given Dyrenfurth is a wellestablished historian of the Labor Party. Occasionally, this meant that the focus on mateship in a multi faceted sense was temporarily put on pause. The cultural thread, however, is never lost entirely and indeed it moves to the foreground in the post Second World War period. The damning critiques of Australian complacency from the likes of Donald Horne, playwright Alan Seymour's attack on Anzac Day in his 1960 play The One Day of the Year, and the irreverent satire of John O'Grady (as 'New Australian' Nino Culotta) all feature as high profile challenges to the conformism of the Menzies era and the mateship ethos in particular. By drawing on these well known examples, Dyrenfurth is aware he runs the risk of overstating the influence of these 'would be obituarists' (171) a trap he mostly avoids through counter examples of the enduring appeal of mateship. Cultural and political history blend most seamlessly in the chapters on the 1970s and 1980s; the latter decade in particular offers rich pickings of mateship's many possible expressions, while the former allowed Dyrenfurth to bring to the centre important critiques of misogynist and homophobic elements. Dennis Altman's withering appraisal of The Adventures of Barry McKenziewas well worth revisiting, but there were also missed opportunities. What about feminist protests against Anzac Day, Wogs Out of Work, the Aboriginal rights movements? How do they fit into the 'new' nationalism of this period and the revival of mateship? There were fleeting glimpses of such challenges, but at times I yearned for a stronger critical voice or a more finely honed case study. Obviously a wide ranging history such as this does not always allow for this, though Dyrenfurth is clearly capable, as his astute treatment of modern Labor's shortcomings demonstrates. The Afterword states that Dyrenfurth set out to 'reveal mateship's secret past' (221) While many of these examples would be familiar to students of Australian history, the history was also sufficiently revelatory to justify this claim. Mateship: A Very Australian History is a welcome addition to Australian historical scholarship.