Rosemary and Ian Dunlop papers

MLMSS 12116

fonds

1913-probably late 1990s

Textual Records, Clippings, Ephemera

9677609

0.16 metres of textual material (1 box) - typescript

Rev. William Ashley-Brown (1887-1970) was born in Queensland and became an Anglican clergyman and writer. He was born W. A. Brown and later converted his middle name to be part of his surname, W. Ashley-Brown. Ordained in 1911, he served in rural New South Wales, being Curate at Christ Church Cathedral, Grafton and then as Vicar of Walgett. In September 1915 he enlisted in the Australian Army, serving as a Chaplain at Gallipoli and then on the Western Front. In October 1917 he joined the Indian Army, serving as Chaplain and later becoming the Archdeacon of Bombay, India. W. Ashley-Brown was married twice. His first wife, Ellen Carter, with whom he had two children, died in India in February 1924. His second marriage was to Alice Preston, in Aden, in 1926. W. Ashley-Brown published two novels and a book on church history between 1927 and 1937. Between 1943-1945 he was the Dean of Gibraltar, returning to Australia in 1945. In 1957 he published his autobiography, 'Memory be Green'. He served as Rural Dean of West Charing and retired to the Central Coast of New South Wales.

Dr Rosemary Kerrison Dunlop (1930-2014) was an academic at Macquarie University in the Faculty of Psychology. The daughter of William Ashley-Brown, she emigrated from the United Kingdom shortly after World War Two. As an assistant editor, she worked on the 10-volume Australian Encyclopaedia, published 1958. She retrained as a psychologist and became an academic at Macquarie University, publishing various professional works relating to the field.

Ian Craig Dunlop (1927-2021) was an ethnographic film maker. The husband of Rosemary, he had also emigrated to Australia from the United Kingdom during the post war period. He studied at Sydney University before joining the Commonwealth Film Unit in 1956, filming conventional documentaries. After encountering Indigenous Australians while working on a project in the Gibson Desert, he decided to branch into ethnographic filmmaking, concentrating upon the form from 1962. His ethnographic films include ‘Dances at Aurukan’ (1962), as well as major series such as ‘People of the Australian Western Desert’ and ‘The Yirrkala Film Project’. He later worked for Film Australia, Lindfield.

David Rainsford Moore (1918-2013) was born in England and was Curator of Anthropology at the Australian Museum, Sydney. Like Rosemary Dunlop, he had worked as an assistant editor on The Australian Encyclopaedia. He also worked on ethnographic films such as ‘Bitter Springs’ (1950) and with Ian Dunlop on ‘Dances at Aurukun’ (1962). He wrote various works including ‘Islanders and Aborigines at Cape York: an ethnographic reconstruction based on the 1848-1850 'Rattlesnake' journals of O.W. Brierly and information he obtained from Barbara Thompson’, 1979.

References:

1. Tiley, David. “The death of Ian Dunlop – from outsider to participant in a true ethical journey.” ScreenHub AU. Accessed 21 February 2024.
https://www.screenhub.com.au/news/features/the-death-of-ian-dunlop-from-outsider-to-participant-in-a-true-ethical-journey-1474029/

2. “William ASHLEY-BROWN.” Virtual War Memorial Australia. Accessed 21 February 2024.
https://vwma.org.au/explore/people/163131

3. Compiled from the Library’s acquisition file

On the death of Rosemary Dunlop (daughter of William Ashley-Brown), the papers passed to her husband, Ian Dunlop, and then to their daughter, Sarah Dunlop. David R. Moore had worked with Rosemary Dunlop on The Australian Encyclopaedia, as well as on ethnographic film projects with Ian Dunlop, and was a friend of the Dunlop family.

This collection comprises of the annotated manuscripts of four unpublished novels accumulated by Rosemary and Ian Dunlop and one unpublished novel written by Rosemary Dunlop, together with ephemera associated with the publication of The Australian Encyclopaedia.

A. Unpublished manuscripts, 1913-1999.

ITEM 1. Ash-Le-Brun. ‘Where the Mirage Beckons. (Glimpses of life in an Australian Bush Town-ship [of 50 years ago])’, approximately 1913.
Bound black hard-covered volume containing typed manuscript with handwritten edits, 221 pages.

ITEM 2. Ashley-Brown, William. ‘Anzac Odyssey’, probably 1916-April 1917.
Typed manuscript with handwritten edits, tied with white string on left side, 320 pages. Attached is a covering letter to The Royal Societies Club, London, April 1917.

ITEM 3. Ashley-Brown, William. ‘The Incense of the Gods’, 5 June 1927-23 May 1928.
Green manilla folder containing typed manuscript with handwritten edits, 351 pages. Page 343 is missing.

ITEM 4. Moore, David R. ‘Tjuringa, a novel’, probably after 1960. This manuscript is a photocopy, approximately late 1990s.
Bound soft-cover volume with orange cover containing a black and white copy of a typed manuscript with handwritten edits, 202 pages, and one page with two colour images of a 'tjuringa', a sacred object.

ITEM 5. Dunlop, Rosemary. ‘Spring Dig’, approximately 1969, being a children’s book set in Sydney’s Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park.
Bound red hard-covered volume containing a typed manuscript with handwritten edits, 147 pages. Includes a hand-drawn map by Rosemary Dunlop and a child's drawing by Sarah Dunlop when approximately 8 years of age.

B. Clippings and ephemera collected by Rosemary Dunlop, 1957-1958.

ITEM 6. Folder containing the following items:
Souvenir menu and newspaper clippings relating to the production and launch of The Australian Encyclopaedia, 1957-1958. One clipping includes a photograph of Rosemary Dunlop.

In copyright:
Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales and Courtesy copyright holder

Scope and content listing and descriptions derived from donor supplied list.

The donor flagged the following in relation to cultural considerations depicting secret, sacred or sensitive material:

ITEM 4. Includes material relating to men's ceremonies:

1) Page after the title page, being photographs of a 'tjuringa' (sacred object);
2) Pages 168-170, being a description of a circumcision ceremony.

The Senior Librarian, Indigenous Collections, Collection Acquisition and Curation does not believe this material requires an access restriction as it is a fictional work.

Reference:

Library acquisition file, donation form

ITEM 1. ‘Ash-Le-Brun’ is a pseudonym of Ashley-Brown. The donor believes the novel is based on her grandfather’s experiences as an outback parson in New South Wales before World War One.

ITEM 2. The donor believes the novel is based on her grandfather’s experiences in Gallipoli and the Western Front in World War One.

ITEM 3. The donor believes the novel is based on her grandfather’s experiences in Gallipoli and the Western Front in World War One.

ITEM 4. The donor believes the manuscript probably 'draws on David’s experiences as a co-director / scriptwriter on the film ‘Bitter Springs’ (shot in May-November 1949, released in 1950)' and that it is a fictional account of the film being made. A researcher working on a book about 'Bitter Springs' told the donor that she believes, '...that many of the characters in the ms are very lightly fictionalised real people: the cast and crew are those from 'Bitter Springs', the anthropologist is a portrayal of Daisy Bates, the missionary is a real person etc.'

ITEM 5. The donor summarises the story as follows: 'The children are on the track of wildflower smugglers. The violation caused by the smugglers is implicitly contrasted to the vibrant spring bush which the children explore. Parallel to this is another detective story as the children, and two adult archaeologists whom they meet, discover and try to decode the signs of past Aboriginal inhabitants, in rock engravings, grinding grooves, stone tools and kitchen middens. This very Australian focus of the novel is way ahead of its time.'

Reference:

Library acquisition file

ITEM 1. The donor attributes the inserted text in the title, ‘of 50 years ago’ to her grandmother, Alice Ashley-Brown, who added the text in pen in the early 1960s.

ITEM 2. This manuscript was housed in a modern envelope addressed to Dr. R. Dunlop. The envelope had a notation written in ink 'W A-B ms. (1916)'. The donor attributes this notation to her mother, Rosemary Dunlop, and wrote the additional note, 'i.e. according to her the ms was finished in 1916.'

ITEM 4. The manuscript is undated, but the donor speculates that, 'the ms refers to the Florence Film Festival (the Festival dei Popoli) which started in 1959, so the ms can’t have been finished before then. Given David’s long-term research on Indigenous topics, the inclusion of some restricted material in his novel suggests it was written before the sensitivity of publishing such material was generally understood, i.e. supports an early rather than late date for the ms.'

ITEM 5. The donor estimates the date of the manuscript to be 1969 as her father, Ian Dunlop, had noted in his diary entry for 8 February 1970 that he had finished reading it.

Reference:

Library acquisition file