Journal of Interdisciplinary Gender Studies

9:1 (July 2004)

Former New Zealand Prime Minister David Lange once quipped that ‘[New Zealanders] see Australia as a place of wide open spaces and lots of money – a sort of California in drag.' Renowned for his incisive wit and throw away lines, Lange most likely had in mind images from late twentieth century Australian popular culture spotlighted by that celebrated queering of the Australian Outback, Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1994) depicted on the cover. What he almost certainly did not have in mind was the systematic queer re-reading of two centuries of the Great Australian Legend, offered to us in David Coad's provocative and stimulating canvas.

Organised into seven chapters by chronology and theme, supplemented by a useful glossary of ‘Oz Lingo' for non-Australians, this book will appeal to both an academic and popular audience interested in gender studies and Australian studies. It is also a very timely intervention for a society that is witnessing the rise of the metrosexual and one that is mired in a debate on the crisis of masculinity in schools; a debate which tends to reduce the problem to a dearth of male teacher role models in the classroom whilst appearing to ignore the impact of constructions of masculinity. To this extent, Coad's prompt is an important one: ‘The label “poofter” in the minds of certain individuals, is still synonymous with gender traitor, non-man, unmasculine and un-Australian.' (p.44)

 

The author begins by identifying the seminal identity icons of Australian society. He immediately subverts the stereotype by moving beyond the heteronormative frame of reference. In so doing he announces the tensions between the celebrated models of heterosexual hypermasculinity – notably the bushman, the digger, the larrikin – and the reality of diverse Australian masculinities. Sustaining the ‘Oz bloke fantasy' has simultaneously relied on exclusions – of women and non-Anglo Celts – and on repression of the homoerotic. The premise, then, of this book is to explore the dissonance between Australia as a proclaimed locus of heterosexual hypermasculine activity (epitomised by the ‘Wild Colonial' bushranger) and the widespread incidence of same-sex and other nonconformist practices. A recurrent theme in his deconstruction of these Legends is the 'con(fusion)' of hypermasculinity with Australianness.

 

'Gender trouble' as he calls it, began with the convicts. Convict Australia created an environment conducive to 'sexual dissidence' but then made a futile attempt to ‘control, eradicate, or kill the queer'. (p.19) The Hyde Park Barracks was a 'major site of sex and gender trouble'. (p. 28) Boys acted as female surrogates for male convicts at the Barracks; they were the protected ‘fancy girls of men'. (p.29) Not only the act of sexual relations but the giving of female names to boys by the older prisoners was one element of the 'feminisation of males'. Coad has consulted a range of primary sources including letters, poetry and official documents and locates the dominant narrative – that of ruling class males. But he also looks for traces of the counter-narrative and finds some – such as the letter of Denis Prendergast to his lover Jack. He documents various cases which attest to his claim that the ‘sexual activities of some convicts cannot be explained away as simply situational homosexuality.' (p.37) Bushranging – characterised by its anti-authoritarianism and larrikinism – also reeks of 'gender trouble'. Coad sees the endless public fascination with the Kelly gang and modern-day criminal 'Chopper' Read (who are structurally linked as 'Wild Colonial Boys' through their gang membership and mateship) as a sign that Australia is still wrapped up in its convict and bushranging past. Furthermore, he argues, the strength of the Kelly icon is such that it can resist challenges to its unambiguous, stable identity precisely because hypermasculinity and Australianness have been inextricably bound together for over a century. This is despite the fact that there were 'quite a lot of queer things about the Kelly legend'. (p.70)

Homosociality, a phenomenon on which the Lawsonian tradition of mateship is predicated, has almost always been seen in compulsory heterosexual terms. Russel Ward conceded the possibility of a homoerotic aspect to bush mateship in his 1958 classic The Australian Legend but 'true' homosocial relations have always depended on their non-eroticisation. Coad cites testimony from court records and court depositions to establish the presence of homoerotic relations in the bush.

 

His re-evaluation of these myths also devotes considerable coverage to cinematic and performance-based representations of gender scripting. The Man from Snowy River (1982), for instance, does not permit any blurring of traditional gender roles; crossover must be rigorously suppressed for this mythic tale to be successfully enacted. These essentialist gender constructions then find distribution for consumption by overseas audiences, most famously in the form of the Sydney Olympic Games opening ceremony – a global popular culture extravaganza. The queer nineties deviated from such rigid gender scripting as exemplified by Priscilla; indeed Priscilla can be seen as a site where heteronormative masculinity is constantly unsettled and problematised, and where the stereotypical 'real' Aussie bloke is opened up to scrutiny as an idealised construction.

 

Marketed as the 'first book-length queer reading of Australian culture', Gender Trouble Down Under offers a great deal of food for thought and a valuable starting point for further explorations in the field. Coad states his case vigorously and while a French-English dictionary will come in handy in following some of his points, an exercise in word-mincing this is not. His is a bold canvas, theoretically sophisticated and one that deals in turn with Australian literature, history and film.

 

There are some signs that the author is less at home in Australian history than some of his other subjects. And there is also a selectiveness in the use of some sources. The dissection of Errol Flynn's role in the feature film In The Wake of the Bounty (1933) is an interesting one, but the point at which 'Hollywood gossip' (p.25) becomes a substitute for reliable sources weakens the analysis. I regularly found myself questioning how representative of same-sex behaviours in the bush were the examples cited in the text; indeed claims regarding the widespread incidence of same-sex relations are not interrogated for motivation unlike his enthusiastic interrogations of the silence or denial of the possibility of homoerotic relations. Coad is certainly guilty of exaggeration for effect when he asserts '[Bushman] Bill was probably as bent as his dog's hind leg'. (p.92) He is able to show that the Australian bushman iconography of the 19th century is derivative of the American frontier imagery of the cowboy, and some brief comparative observations between the two frontiers follow, but an informed comparative case study of homosociality awaits more detailed research and analysis. And there is a virtual silence on that revered twentieth century Aussie masculine icon, the surf lifesaver.

 

Nevertheless, I commend this book to readers on a range of grounds. Some of Coad's more memorable lines will long reverberate with me. Part of his achievement is to offer us a salutary reminder that Australian males have too often revered and played out hypermasculinity myths (sustained through the rejection, even denigration of the feminine), causing a 'masculinist ghetto' (p.177) and the impoverishment of Australian manhood.

James Bennett

University of Newcastle