Vew from the chair: Speeches of Richard WL Austin

And yet, on the other hand, the fascination with primitive man himself, and his simple way of life, had begun long before. The exponents of what it is now fashionable to call 'the alternative lifestyle' are telling us nothing new. Well before the French Revolution in 1792, the philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau was expressing his belief in the superiority of the noble savage over civilised man. In the early years of the nineteenth century, the English poet William Wordsworth was deploring the materialism that was pervading the world, and calling for a new approach to living. One of his sonnets begins with a cry of despair: The world is too much with us. Late and soon, getting and spending we lay waste our powers. Little we see in nature that is ours. And it ends with an invocation to the Deity: ... Great God! I'd rather be a pagan suckled in a creed outworn. So might I, standing on this pleasant lea, have glimpses that would make me less forlorn have sight of Proteus rising from the sea or hear old Triton blow his wreath'ed horn. The material world is even more with us now than it was in Wordsworth's day, and the great forests are fast disappearing from the face of the earth. Perhaps the carvers of these Malagans will do for us today what Wordsworth hoped the classical pagans would do for him a century and a half ago--give us sight of a Proteus rising from the Pacific and of a Triton from Tombara striking his garamut. Now that you have seen the exhibition, you will be able to answer this question for yourselves. 4 Anzac 1915, Australia 1991. The Mark Hoare Oration, delivered to the Rotary Club of Brisbane Inc. at the Brisbane Club, 24 April 1991 There is an old saying, attributed to one of the early Greek philosophers, that in time of peace sons bury their fathers, in time of war fathers bury their sons. Tomorrow morning, just a few hours from now, in the grey light of dawn, and later in the day when the sun is up, men and women all over Australia will be gathering together in their thousands, in small groups and in large, to commemorate, with honour, sons-and daughters-who died before their fathers; and with compassion, fathers-and mothers-who outlived their sons. And let us not forget that the first gathering of this kind was initiated by Queenslanders and was held in Brisbane, in Queen Street in 1916. Anzac Day is a day of remembrance, not only for those Australian soldiers who fought and died at Gallipoli, and for whom, together with their New Zealand comrades in arms, the term Anzac was coined, but also for all those members of all 145