Where the Action Is!
Where the Action Is!
Forbidden City, China, Oct-Nov 1973
It started with some disks and some photographs.
The disks were the floppies religiously kept by Gough Whitlam's long term assistant Elaine Haigh. On them were the speeches, speech notes, letters, introductions, forewords, eulogies, statements that were issued by Mr. Whitlam over the period from 1992 - 2000.
The great thing about Elaine's work is that each speech was systematically filed and kept in date order. Each speech coincided with a physical file diligently maintained by Elaine and a distinguished line of Mr. Whitlam's Chiefs including people like Richard Butler, Peter Wilenski, Mark Latham and, current Chief, Steven Chaytor.
Then we also have Mr. Whitlam's own focus on details. In the files were the successive corrections of each of Mr. Whitlam's speeches, guest lists, letters of invitation, photographs, news cuttings and much more.
All religiously filed and ordered.
Well, it was mostly that way, except for the photographs. Every week Mr. Whitlam receives photographs sent by well-wishers, friends and from the events of the recent and distant past. It would require a staff of fifteen just to file them and sort them. But there they were, hundreds of photographs, unfiled but fascinating.
Could we order them, classify them, secure copyright, get them up on-line in time for the opening of the Whitlam Library on March 14? Back in October I thought not. But once immersed in the files and the photographs, something began to happen.
Our co-partners in the development of the Whitlam E-Collection, Social Change Online, started to look excited each time I mentioned Whitlam texts. A string of people who came to work with us in the Whitlam offices, began to also get excited. Isn't that Mao Tse Tung? Isn't that Prince Hussein of Jordan in that photograph? The bug of identifying, ordering, classifying and locating photographs and people started to take over. The midnight oil burned!
But the work was immense. To get one of Elaine's original Word Perfect files on line, in a coordinated format involved a twenty step process. The original file needed to be preserved. The document needed to be saved in a format that could be coded. The document then needed to be coded. Then translated into HTML. Then saved and placed in a folder with the original. Then uploaded, then checked.
The work of uploading the photographs was even more intensive because it involved seeking copyright permission from the original photographer. A case in point is the famous photograph of Vincent Lingiari and E.G. Whitlam at Wattie Creek in 1975. This photograph was taken by UK based photographer Penny Tweedie. It has appeared in many different contexts unsourced. Our intrepid photograph copyright detective, Suzanne Ramirez tracked Ms. Tweedie down. The end result is, not only the appearance of the photograph, on-line, but Ms. Tweedie has donated a copy of the original print for public viewing in the Whitlam Reading Room.
Other photographs have not been sourced and we still await permission from some overseas photographers and some photographs are impossible to source. It will be an ongoing job to find the copyright holders for these items. So these photographs await our ongoing detective work.
At the end of the day, with the launch of the Whitlam Library approaching, we have 1400 items on line. These include the full array of Mr. Whitlam's speeches from 1992 to 2002. What an insight they provide into Mr. Whitlam's life and times!
Some of the highlights of the on-line collection are Mr. Whitlam's personal war time photographs. These have never been viewed in public before and will form a part of an exhibition being planned in the Reading Room later in the year. They reveal a side of Mr. Whitlam that not many have known about. Another highlight is the wonderful pictures of China, (Oct-Nov, 1973) with one favorite being the tour of the Forbidden City, where guide, Deng Xaio Ping, appears prominently in the foreground.
The Whitlam on-line collection is very much a work in progress. One of the wonderful things about the internet is that we can go on improving the quality and depth of pictures, speeches and documents with more enhancements and supplements over time. We would also like your help in identifying pictures and events and would welcome comments and notes from anyone who may have sent a photograph or letter to Mr. Whitlam over the years.
There is a lot more work to do but we hope that you find the first instalment of Whitlam speeches and photographs as interesting as we have found putting them together. We think there is some truth in the Whitlam adage that the action, if not the fun, does indeed seem to be where Mr. Whitlam is!
Peter Botsman
March 12, 2002-03-11
The people who have worked on the Whitlam E-Collection include: Martin Chadwick, Steven Chaytor, Christina Chong, James Day, Christine Leeder, Lisa Maybury, Suzanne Ramirez, Gillian Smurthwaite, Amanda Thompson. Special thanks to Chris Andree at Assign Recruiting and to Sean Kidney and everyone at Social Change Online.
