The First Dismissal

by Luke Slattery

How Governor Macquarie invented an idea of Australia, a convict built it—and how Britain tried to tear it down. While violent revolution and social upheaval rocked Europe, far away in New South Wales, Governor Lachlan Macquarie was sowing the seeds for the Australian idea of the "fair go." Macquarie was a reformer and an emancipator. He believed that a person's worth—be they gentry, infantry, or convict – lay in what they were capable of doing, not what they had done in the past. He freed the brilliant, mercurial convict Francis Greenway and appointed him government architect for the buildings that would shape a new nation. But to the Tory British government of 1820, Macquarie and Greenway's unconventional alliance threatened NSW's very legitimacy as a penal colony.  Here Luke Slattery breathes dramatic life into Australia's first political dismissal and, along the way, maps Macquarie and Greenway's bold collaborations and extraordinary architectural—and cultural—legacy.

Genres: History, Australia, Nonfiction

165 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Luke Slattery is a Sydney-based journalist, editor and columnist whose work appears in The Australian, The Age, the Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review. Internationally he has been published at The New Yorker online, the LA Times, the International Herald Tribune, the UK Spectator, and the US Chronicle of Higher Education. Mrs M is his fifth book, and his first novel.

Reviews

[Jenny · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a very interesting piece on a controversial time in British politics and in the colonial settlement of NSW. It basically details the years Lachlan Macquarie was Governor and his downfall as plotted by some elites and politicians in the Mother country..Some of the old language was a bit hard to follow so I found I had to concentrate and have my dictionary handy.
I learnt about this in history at school but it is different reading it as an adult.

[Andrew Carr · Rating 1 out of 5]

I wanted to like this book. I'm a fan of the penguin special/kindle single short size for non-fiction books (far too many in this genre are too long by half), and the initial argument - that Governor Macquarie helped initiate Australia's sense of the fair go and egalitarianism - was engaging.

Unfortunately, this is a badly structured and confusing read, which is unforgivable in such a short piece. The writing itself is not bad, with a few charming sentences, but there was a need for a strong editorial hand. The chronology jumps all over the place, there are few linking sentences, major sections are included with seemingly little relevance, and the central argument is rarely - and badly - prosecuted.

It is sometimes useful in historical writing to identify opponents, even villains who try and block the central actors in your story. But they should only serve for dramatic tension, and to help demonstrate the importance and significance of your central themes. Instead, the author ends up spending much of the book trying to prosecute the character of John Thomas Bigge, who was sent to Australia to investigate and undermine Macquarie.

As such it feels like we're dragged back into a 200+ year old factional argument, no different than you might find in the pages of any of the current tract of political memoirs currently on our shelves. Do you imagine 200 years from now any audience will want to become invested and take sides over Gillard or Swan's account of who was to blame?

As I said, I like the penguin specials length, but -and this is not the first one I've read to seem under-edited - there needs to be a much tighter
editorial control to make the series really shine. Get the argument up front, make sure it is woven coherently through, and ideally provide some endnotes to help prove the credibility of the claims and give those interested in the ideas some future reading options. This could have been a good christmas conversation starter, but instead i'd recommend giving it a miss.

[Peter Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A worthwhile addition to the history of Australia

This is a thoroughly researched and well written account of the governorship of Lachlan Macquarie and of the petty political attack on his legacy by John Bigge, acting as agent for the British Tory government of the day.

The comparison of political ideas from 1810 to 1820 compared with contemporary Australia was an interesting way to end the essay.

If you have an interest in Australian history, this essay is worth a read.

Peter Anderson

[Diane · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written discussion of Gov Macquarie and his impact on the personality and culture of Sydney and Australia, its growth from penal colony to a desirable settlement location and what he fought against back in England.
A bit repetitive and one sided towards the end, but nonetheless I'd recommend to anyone who has any connection to Sydney at all. Also inspires me to check out Greenway's remaining works around the place.

[Henrietta Cheshire · Rating 4 out of 5]

A most excellent and informative read.

[Benjamin · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an extremely nifty little book (really more of an extended essay than a book). Necessarily slight but it serves as a pretty good introduction to Macquarie, Greenway and the Bigge commission.

[Avril · Rating 4 out of 5]

Enjoyably partisan; like Slattery I'm completely on the side of the Scottish Governor who believed in rehabilitation and the 'fair go', and against the English Commissioner who believed in retribution and 'small government'. But I really struggled with the lack of footnotes and bibliography. I know the Penguin Specials are meant to be shorter essays that can be read at speed, but that's no excuse for not footnoting sources!

[Merrill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't know anything about Governor Macquarie. I got a good sense of where the Australian 'fair go' came from.

[Brian · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting insight into the politics of England, its society and it's attitude toward the penal settlement at Sydney in the 1810-1820 period.