
The
"confidential" letter from acting Prime Minister
Watt to Herbert Brookes about the formation of the Australian
Protective League - the forerunner of the secret organisation
that Lawrence encountered in Sydney in 1922
THUS
MID-WAY through 1976 - the first full year of what turned
into a more-than-35-year quest for the truth about Lawrence
and Kangaroo - I was reasonably sure on whom Lawrence
had based his two principal Australian characters, Benjamin
Cooley and Jack Callcott.
Rosenthal was Cooley and Scott was Callcott.
I was also reasonably certain that Cooley and Callcott's
fictional "Diggers Club" organisation in Kangaroo
had been based on Rosenthal's and Scott's "real-life"
King and Empire Alliance.
But what about "the Maggies" - the secret para-military
organisation that lurked behind the Diggers Clubs in Kangaroo?
Was that based on reality too?
Given what Eric Campbell had said about the "Old
Guard" in 1925 - a mere three years after Lawrence
had been in Sydney - it seemed likely. (Particularly given
that in 1923 - less than 12 months after Lawrence was
in Australia - a hitherto-secret para-military "citizen's
auxiliary" called "the White Guard" had
come out of the woodwork in Melbourne during a police
strike. It offered its assistance in "helping to
protect essential services" while the police were
absent from duty.)
However, at the time I was looking into this - early 1976
- the existence of secret armies in Australia was virtually
unknown, at least in public, and in mainstream academic
circles.
Yet
among younger historians, particularly those on the left,
there was an emerging belief that behind the standard
histories was an untold story of semi-secret far-right
organisations, some of them para-military in character.
One day in the Mitchell Library in late 1976 I put in
a slip requesting some papers from their manuscript collection.
The librarian looked at my slip and said: "Do you
know that someone else has been asking for those boxes?"
