Tom Paine & the Australian Light Horse

Browsing yesterday in the Ferret Bookshop in Cuba Street, I decided to see whether I could buy a replacement copy of Tom Paine's 'Age of Reason'. Its the sort of book to carry in one's breast pocket when leaving the trenches to open up a public policy front - I'm convinced it has protective powers against the heavy artillery of bureaucracy.

I was introduced to Tom Paine while going bush with Jack Kelly back of Cairns and up into the Cape Yorke Peninsula of Australia in 1967. We were interviewing cattle station owners and operators in the Outback. His main interest lay in the closer settlement of inland Australia - mine in the pure economics of transport investment and land development.

Jack was an extraordinary character who proudly blended the larrikin history of the Outback with a fierce Irish nationalism. It was not surprising that a fiery, highly opinionated Irish-Australian should clash with a measured and somewhat pedantic Newcomeover Englishman - echoes of a clash that has been happening for generations.

It did leave though one last impression on me. Tom Paine was the only Englishman that Jack was prepared to admit into his pantheon of heroes. He quoted with reverence Paine's axiom 'My country is the World - to do good is my Religion'.

It is hard to go past that. I ended up building Paine's words into my own outlook on the world. So I owe a great debt to Jack - 'you old bastard!'

Jack H. Kelly (1895-1983)

Biographical Note

1895 - Born 17 May, at Hornsby, NSW.
1907 - Left home for two years; worked in mining, shearing, timber industries
1909? – Trainee opera singer in Italy (personal statement to me)
1914-19 - Served in Australian Imperial Force (as a mounted trooper in the Australian Light Horse force fighting against the Turks in Palestine)
1919-40 - Farmed a block in the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area as part of the Soldier Settlement Scheme – suffering considerable hardship during the Great Depression
1925-37 - Landholders' advocate in the Land and Valuation Court.
1927 - Elected president of the Murrumbidgee Irrigation Authority.
1928 - Elected president of Wade-Mirrool Irrigation Area Shire Council.
1937-45 - Member of Statutory Special Land Board, Murrumbidgee Irrigation Area
1940-44 - Served in RAAF.
1941 - United Country Party candidate for Murrumbidgee in the State elections.
1945-47 – Appointed (with wide powers) to War Service Land Settlement Scheme (WSLS).
1949 - Snowy Mountains Scheme established. Kelly played a major role in its development and implementation.
1948-60 – Founding member of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural Economics. Surveyed the cattle industry in Northern Australia, resulting in a major report published in 1952. Retired in May, 1960.
1961-64 - Involved in Beef Roads Scheme in Northern Australia.
1967-74 - Honorary Fellow, Department of Economic History, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University
1983 - Died April, in Canberra, aged 88.

Publications:

1952: Report on the Beef Cattle Industry in Northern Australia.
1958: Beef Industry Studies in Northern Australia: Economic Survey of Queensland's Gulf Region.
1959: The Beef Cattle Industry in the Leichhardt-Gilbert Region of Queensland: An Economic Survey.
1966: The Struggle for the North.
1966-67: Human rights for aborigines: a prerequisite for northern development.
1967: Northern Australia's Beef Cattle Economy: A Major Field Study in 1967.
1971: Beef in Northern Australia.