Way 1979: Whose celebration?

Bolton, G.C. (1989) Way 1979: Whose celebration? Studies in Western Australian History (10). pp. 15-20.

Abstract

Unread, unreadable, the slim black-covered book had lain for eight years on a remote corner of my bookshelves: Western Australia 1829-1979 with a 6-point sub-title: 'Report on the celebrations to the Parliament of Western Australia by the 150th Anniversary Board'. Afterbirth of the publications spawned by the sesquicentennial celebrations, the Report seemed to qualify for the old Greek epithet, biblia a-biblia, books that are not books. One would like to say of it, as Sherlock Holmes observed of the railway timetable, that its vocabulary was 'nervous and terse, but limited'. But when, stimulated by a request to write an article on the 1979 celebrations for this publication, I took down the book as my first source of reference, I found that such praise would be excessive. The prose is remorselessly, if selectively, factual and-one must admit-useful; particularly since I contrived to spend the first two-thirds of 1979 overseas on study leave, and thus to miss many of the celebrations.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publisher:	University of Western Australia. Centre for Western Australian History
Copyright:	1989 Dept. of History, The University of Western Australia
Publisher's Website:	http://www.cwah.uwa.edu.au/publications/journal
Notes:	Celebrations in Western Australian History
URI:	http://researchrepository.murdoch.edu.au/id/eprint/16556

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