Radiant promise

Three lives cut short by the Great War

Life So Full of Promise: Further biographies of Australia’s lost generation

by Ross McMullin Scribe

$49.99 pb, 640 pp

Just over a decade ago, Ross McMullin published Farewell, Dear People (2012), a magisterial biography of ten remarkable Australians killed in World War I. The book met with much acclaim, including the award of the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in 2013. Life So Full of Promise, a sequel to this volume, provides three more biographies of men whose early lives suggested that they would have made extraordinary contributions to Australian public life, had they survived the war.

In this book, McMullin adopts a similar approach: although the main focus is on the individual men, their stories are situated within detailed accounts of the families and communities from which they came. His aim is to highlight not just the ‘radiant but unfulfilled promise’ of these relatively unknown Australians, but also to illuminate what the war was like for Australians at home. It is clearly a labour of love, as McMullin pursues his ‘extraordinary and inspiring Australians’ through genealogies and military records, personal papers and newspapers, school and sporting archives. Its 562 pages of text provide a meticulously researched, detailed, and vivid evocation of the lives and deaths of these three men and of the worlds they occupied. These were parallel lives, but the men had more in common than the fact of their exceptional abilities and their wartime deaths. All three were keen and talented sportsmen, and much is made of the role that sport in general and cricket in particular played in their lives.

The first biography is of Brian Colden Antill Pockley, whose name referenced his ancestor, Major Henry Colden Antill, aide- government, when the moment came, McMahon clamoured for its help: ‘Where were the answers?’

For those seeking to know what the Morrison government did, why it lost office, and why it should outrival the McMahon government for ignominy and derision, this volume is one place to find answers. g de-camp to Governor Lachlan Macquarie and an early white settler near Picton. Subsequent generations of the family established themselves as part of Sydney’s landholding and professional élite, and Brian attended North Sydney Church of England Grammar School, or Shore, as it became more commonly known. Brian was an outstanding student and sportsman at school. He captained Shore’s football team as well as the combined schools’ team, which played against University, and was one of the first officers when the school established a cadet corps. He was also joint winner of the Pockley Prize, established by Brian’s father, with criteria that emphasised character and leadership as well as athletic and scholastic excellence. Brian went on to an equally illustrious performance at Sydney University, where he followed in the footsteps of his father by studying medicine. Having completed his studies, he began his medical career as a resident doctor at Sydney Hospital in March 1914. However, his career was cut short when he became one of the first Australians killed in the war during an action against the Germans in Rabaul, in September.

Patrick Mullins’s most recent book is the co-authored Who Needs the ABC? (2022). His biography of William McMahon, Tiberius with a Telephone, won the 2020 National Biography Award.

Norman Callaway’s family were of a different social class to the Pockleys, making a modest living from various rural pursuits in country New South Wales before moving to Sydney to advance Norman’s cricket career. Norman’s career did indeed progress, culminating in a world record by scoring 207 runs on début in first-class cricket in February 1915. However, with the casualties at Gallipoli mounting, there was increasing pressure on all ‘eligible’ men to enlist. This was especially so in Norman Callaway’s case, where the New South Wales Cricket Association put enormous pressure on its players. Unlike Brian Pockley, who was keen to enlist at the first opportunity, Norman wavered. He finally enlisted in May 1916, lying about his age, as he was only twenty and could not secure his parents’ permission. Less than a year later, he was killed by a shell at Bullecourt. No trace of his remains was ever found.

The final biography is of Murdoch (Doch) Mackay, who, like Brian Pockley, came from a family which included former soldiers who migrated to Australia after serving in the Napoleonic wars. His father and grandfather were prominent newspaper editors and proprietors in Bendigo and also cricket enthusiasts. His father, George, was in fact invited to join the Australian test team but declined because of paternal pressure. Murdoch was also a talented cricketer, but he was even more talented and committed academically. He entered Melbourne University at the age of sixteen and graduated four years later with a brilliant law degree in April 1911, winning the coveted Supreme Court Prize. His early career as a barrister showed signs of equal brilliance. McMullin portrays him as ‘exceptionally intelligent, an outstanding leader, inspirationally brave, a talented advocate, considerate, kind-hearted and principled with a discerning sense of justice’. He enlisted in 1915, survived his service on Gallipoli, but was killed at Pozières in July 1916.

McMullin charts these three lives and deaths and their aftermath with extraordinary care and sensitivity. He reconstructs the social and political worlds that each inhabited through detailed descriptions of relationships, passions, and events. He does not say how he chose these particular individuals; indeed, in the introduction to his earlier volume he foreshadowed that Harold Wanliss would be included in this second volume, but he was not. One suspects that these three made the cut ahead of other potential candidates because of the richness of the archival record in each case. This includes diaries and correspondence with family, friends and observers. (The photograph of one of Murdoch McKay’s many love letters to his wife, with its incredibly neat and legible handwriting, suggests what a pleasure these must have been to work with.) Murdoch’s father, himself a historian, also helpfully wrote a biography of his son.

The reconstruction of their lives sheds light not just on their special qualities but on so many other aspects of Australian history, from rural development to private education, the role of professions, industrial conflict, politics, religion, and sport. Although none of McMullin’s ‘lost generation’ have thus far been women, these biographies necessarily feature important insights into the role of women in peacetime families and communities as well as during the war. Especially interesting are the aunts of Brian Pockley who set up successful girls’ schools in Sydney and ‘Doch’ Murdoch’s formidable mother, Mary, who was a powerful force in anti-Labor politics and patriotic work in early twentiethcentury Bendigo. The complex web of connections constructed also highlights the many other casualties of that terrible war besides those engaged directly in the fighting, including those who died of ‘Spanish’ influenza and other infectious diseases, like tuberculosis, whose spread was exacerbated by wartime conditions.

The main theme, however, is the one captured so well in the title: the tragic loss to Australia of young men who could have contributed so much had they lived, as professional men, as leaders, and as sportsmen. That point is well made, although I had an uneasy feeling that the biographies verged on hagiography. Perhaps these men seemed so extraordinary and flawless because they did not live long enough to disappoint. They each conform to the heroic Anzac narrative, and although I am sure this was not the author’s intention, this volume is likely to be warmly welcomed by supporters of ‘Anzackery’, especially if they are also cricket enthusiasts. Readers less interested in sport could probably do with fewer ball-by-ball accounts of cricket, football, and tennis matches. Given that it is a large book, with 562 pages of text, a better index would have been welcome. But these quibbles aside, Ross McMullin is to be commended on another impressive contribution to Australian social history. g