At last, I emerge out the other end of Manning Clark's monumental history of Australia, charting the land from the arrival of the 17th and 18th century European explorers (and before) through to the fiercely contested 1930s. Clocking in at around 2,700 pages, and filled with dense rhetorical tangents, it has been quite a journey. So, how does Volume VI hold up?

To the positive: the first half of this volume is one of the strongest sections of the entire history - although that's partly the fault of the people who made the stories in the first place! WWI was a contentious period for Aussies, with two hotly debated referenda on whether to force army conscription, and the years immediately following the War were a time of national consolidation, as the "founding fathers" of the Australian parliament were gradually replaced by a new generation, with vastly differing aims on what they wanted the country to be. What Clark uncovers in the 1920s and early '30s is a fiercely divided Australia, one that perhaps wouldn't look that different to the culture wars of 2020! The "Left" was increasingly split between, on the one hand, Communists and their sympathisers, inspired by the revolution in Russia and elsewhere, who recognised that Australia's sycophantic ties to Britain were also ties to entrenched inequality and classism, and on the other, the traditional Labor supporters who wanted to direct the country in a progressive direction without terrifying the pearl-clutching moralists. Particularly engaging is the discussion on the challenges facing Australian trade and exports in the years leading up to the Great Depression, as centrist Labor argued that wages had to come down to save the country, while union strongholds refused to budge by so much as a cent. The immediate outcome was that Labor would remain almost exclusively in the political wilderness (at a federal level) until the 1970s, while the later outcome (not chronicled here) was the great schism of the Australian Labor Party in the 1950s and 1960s.

Meanwhile, across the aisle, Australia's conservatives took longer to get themselves organised. Indeed the two "great" pre-WWI conservative Prime Ministers, Hughes and Lyons, were both former Labor men who proved traitors to the cause! The conservatives were - as they still are - better at working together because of their shared goal of keeping the common people in their place, and as such the narrative here is focused just as much on the rise of the Country Party, which would be a thorn in the conservatives' side - in one guise or another - for a century to come.

Clark writes with his usual rhetorical flourishes (constant repetitions of phrases or quotes, such as the titular young tree green remind one almost of Homer!) and his powerful sense of moral righteousness. Sometimes those rhetorical touches are a tad dramatic here (during a factual paragraph on Billy Hughes' cockiness shortly before his political demise, the narrative voice adds: "Laugh on, laugh on, for retribution is not far away"). His strengths are in his insight of human character and his lifelong love of combing through dull archives in search of the moment of pathos or exasperation. And the nation really was exasperating. When Scullin decided to elect an Australian-born Governor-General, the conservative half of the country lost their minds; King George wasn't well pleased either. Most Australians agreed we didn't deserve a native-born head of state, but apparently it was gauche to even have a native-born representative of that head of state! And always, buried just below the surface, are the reminders that very little of what progressives fight for in the 21st century is new. By the 1930s there were Australians fiercely arguing for women's rights, sexual freedom, pacificism, Aboriginal rights, the raising up of the poor, republicanism, even gay rights, codes of conduct for politicians, and a world order that prioritised kindness and ethics. Arguably the only one of those that succeeded in the 20th century was sexual freedom, and unsurprisingly that was the one item that was of advantage to the straight white men of the world also!

No doubt had Clark been a younger man, he would have continued the history for another volume beyond 1935. But he could not do so, and thus was stuck with a story that could not reach its ending. As a result, he threads through this book the early life stories of John Curtin and Robert Menzies, the most iconic Labor and Liberal (conservative) PMs of their generation, men who would be defined by this era and would go on to rule the next. This almost obsessive focus on "great men", on politics, is a far cry from the mission statement in Volume I of this series, which treated the ordinary convict and settler with as much importance as Arthur Phillip himself. Perhaps Clark had little choice; the possible strands had broadened substantially from 1788, of course, but nevertheless it feels a bit like tunnel vision. As a detailed history of the rise of the Labor and Communist movements in the country, and of the backroom sagas that dominated the reigns of Hughes, Scullin, Bruce, and Lyons, it's worth noting. 100 years on, however, one sometimes feels that we have missed the trees for the woods.

As no-one has reviewed this text on Goodreads, I'm going to list the negative or unusual elements of this, before I wrap up with my positive conclusion!
First, there is a good deal of assumed knowledge. Writers and sportspeople from Australian history pop up, but often only for a paragraph, and sometimes without any introduction. They appear as figures experiencing history, perhaps with quotes from their letters or works, but to many of my generation - and certainly almost all non-Australians - the resonance of these passages will be non-existent without context.
By a similar notion, Clark will sometimes use passing details as colour, but one is left to wonder why. For instance, when reporting the results of a particular election night, he notes that six seats were undecided [on the night]. Well, great, but it's been 95 years, we surely know who won them now. Wouldn't it be more helpful to give us full numbers? Later, he mentions the Southern Cloud crash, the first airliner crash in Australia (and, I believe, one of the first in the world), but he gives just enough information to be tantalising without explaining what happened - the lengthy search, the epic narrative of the plane being found years later, the deaths of those onboard. It must already have been fairly vague history in 1987; to evade the details seems lazy at best.
There are some occasional typos when it comes to dates, where a 2 has been accidentally replaced with a 3, for instance. It can be quite jarring when a sequence happening in 1929 suddenly mentions 1939 for no reason!
While I acknowledged that Clark could not cover every national event in 20 years, the political tunnel vision mentioned above can be quite frustrating. The supreme example of this is the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. One would think that the vision, construction, and popular viewpoint of the Bridge would have made for a scintillating chapter. Instead, we get no mention of the thing until the famous opening day, which played a role in the downfall of Premier Jack Lang. (Similarly, the construction of Canberra, the nation's purpose-built capital, is staggeringly absent.)
There is a bewildering recurrent ominousness to the treatment of Robert Menzies, with the implication that karma ultimately conquered him. In the epilogue, it seems to be that Clark is talking about Menzies' temporary fall from grace during WWII, but of course, that was temporary, he went on to become the longest-serving PM in the country's history followed by a respectable retirement. So although I'm no fan of RGM, I can't quite see what CMC was aiming for.
And finally, by far the most distressing part of this history, is something that can only be put down to Clark's age and health, and perhaps a meek editor? He is constantly changing tense. Yes, you hear me. Within the one paragraph, largely writing in the traditional third-person past, Clark will toss in a sentence or two in present progressive. This is not a style he has used in previous volumes, and so I spent the first few chapters trying to interpret some kind of method in the madness. But alas, it seems to just be madness. Take these egregious passage, in which the tense changes twice!

"Anzac has made Australians more aware of themselves. They were not Australian Britons; they were Austral sons of British sires. But events in Australia and Great Britain would soon deal a setback to that development. Bruce has discovered Australia, but not how to make Australia free."

There is simply no good reason for this, and it's a distracting blot on the proceedings.

Ideologues will continue to deride his unabashed ethical view of history, refusing to be the impartial observer when he can instead sit in judgement of men. But the reviewer's task is to approach a text based on the author's intentions, not on what one would like to read oneself. And from this vantage point, Clark has achieved.

Don't mistake me, I'm very happy to be out of the thicket! It is a digressive, sometimes aggressive narrative of our country's infancy. But as I sit here in the midst of the darkest winter Australia has faced since those horrific days of WWII, I can't help but note the similarities. The 1930s progressives like Katharine Susannah Pritchard, not to mention the Manning Clark of 1987 (the year of my birth, no less), would surely be horrified to hear that in 2020, major media outlets are still able to disparage Indigenous Australians, that former Prime Ministers have no qualms about campaigning against the rights of queer and trans Australians, that a country founded on the work of immigrants and social rejects continues to betray those who seek refuge on its shores, and that a manipulative socio-capitalist construct continues to blast the treacherous claims of Rupert Murdoch to so many willing, ignorant ears.

It is often said that we learn history in order not to repeat it. I have come to believe that we learn history so that we feel less alone in our pain. ( )