In this modern world of 24/7 online global communications and instant messaging systems, it is interesting to take a look at an earlier age’s emerging technology which had the objective of fast-tracking communications between people in different parts of rapidly modernising cities. This novel way of moving mail around drew on the subterranean reaches of urban centres to create channels for transporting them.
Wm Murdoch
It started with the London Stock Exchange in the 1850s…traders trying to buy and sell at the most propitious times of the trading day relied on telegraphs to communicate quickly with their people. The problem at the time was that telegraphs were regularly subjected to delays and hold-ups. A swifter way to communicate was needed for business success, and the technology to do so already existed in Scottish engineer William Murdoch‘s invention of the pneumatic tube in the 1830s.
Enter J Latimer Clark, an electrical engineer, with a patent “for conveying letters or parcels between places by the pressure of air and vacuum”. Clark’s delivery system powered by compressed and depressed air was implemented to connect the London Stock Exchange with the HQs of the Electrical Telegraph Company through a 660-foot long pneumatic tube. By the 1860s the stock exchanges in Berlin and Paris had followed London’s lead. Postal services for both commercial and personal transmittances were a natural fit for the pneumatic tube. Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham and Dublin got their own networks, whilst on the Continent, Berlin’s Rohrpost was introduced in 1865 and Paris went public with Poste Pneumatique in 1879. Other cities got in on pneumatic post and the practice spread to places as far away as Melbourne and Buenos Aires, and most anywhere in between.
The London pneumatic tube mail train at its formative stage!
London Pneumatic Despatch Company
In 1859 Latimer Clark with Thomas Webster Rammell put forward a proposal for an underground tube network in Central London. The city’s General Post Office was chosen as the nucleus of the network because it was “the routing hub of the whole country’s” transport system [Julian Stray]. The two engineers with cashed-up and influential backers formed the London Pneumatic Despatch Company to build a large-scale, underground pneumatic railway✱ with the purpose of transporting mail bags and small parcels on railcars through tunnels. At first LPDC’s prospects of success looked promising, but several developments and reversals (a financial crisis in 1866, logistics problems, technical drawbacks, and the Post Office getting cold feet over the project) saw the Company fold and its operations close in the 1870s [‘London’s Lost Pneumatic Railway: The World’s 2nd Oldest Underground’, (Long Branch Mike, 12-Apr-2015), Reconnections London Transport and Beyond, www.londonreconnections.com].
(Photo: Science Photo Library)
Despite its failures LPDC’s underground railway did capture the public’s imagination and inspired other imitators. There were experiments elsewhere in the 1860s to try to establish a viable pneumatic train network – at Croydon, Devon and Dublin. Ultimately though, for a variety of reasons, these came to nothing [‘London’s Victorian Hyperloop: the forgotten pneumatic railway beneath the capital’s streets’, New Statesman, 18-Dec-2013,www.newstatesman.com].
Capsule [National Postal Museum (Smithsonian)
The principles of “blow and suck”
The pneumatic post services of the day used pressure and air vacuums to transmit mail through a network of tubes. The process went like this: people wanting to expedite the delivery of an important document would take it to the post office where it would be rolled up and placed inside a metal or aluminium capsule. A postal clerk (in New York these employees were known as ‘rocketeers’) would drop the capsule into a hatch which corresponded to the marked lane for its intended destination…by pressing a button the capsule was transported by compressed air through a network of tubes beneath the pavement. Air from the transmitting end blew the capsule in a forward direction along the tubes. At the receiving end of the line a machine would suck the propelled capsule towards it (in the same way the suction of a vacuum cleaner functions!).
A cutting edge over conventional 19th century delivery modes
Using pneumatic power to transport letters (subterranean mail) and other items had readily apparent advantages in its unfettered immediacy…the reliance on horse-drawn vehicles and messengers on bicycles meant that delivery was impeded by the ever-increasingly congested streets of burgeoning cities, pneumatic post transported underground had no such obstacles and delivery was infinitely faster!
Parisian Poste Pneumatique network (Musée de La Poste)
Paris: Poste Pneumatique
Paris, as much as any modern metropolis, wholeheartedly embraced pneumatic tube transportation from the get-go! By the 1930s, when the service was at its peak, Paris had some 466 kilometres of pneumatic tubes. Cost was and remained an issue though…in 1975 the cost of sending one pneu☯ in Paris was eight-times that of having a posted letter delivered. As the 20th century rolled on patronage of the pneumatic post system dwindled, in 1984 Poste Pneumatique closed down for good! It’s inevitable demise was a combination of the service’s high cost and the superiority of newer communications technology (fax, telex) which made it obsolete [‘Pneumatic tubes and how mail was moved in Paris for more than a century’, Larry Rosenblum, (World Stamps), 02-Oct-2016, www.linns.com]
Prague PTT engine room
Bohemian Express Post: Prague’s pneumatic post system
Prague’s pneumatic post is the only surviving post system of this kind still intact in the world. It entered service in the Czech capital in 1889, the fifth in the world to be connected, after London, Vienna, Berlin and Paris. The Prague system operated from a central point, the main post office in Wenceslas Námêstí, and conveyed letters, documents and information to other post offices in the city, to government offices, to banks and to other important institutions. It started with the despatch of mainly telegrams, later telexes were sent through this medium. The city network of tubes covered a radius of 60km. Around 1970 a test was done of its speed of service vis-vís an on-road messenger delivery service. The pneumatic tubes won, delivering a capsule of 50 telegrams to Prague Castle in eight minutes✾ [‘Pneumatic Post System in Prague’ (Jakob Serÿch, June 2004), http://www.capsu.org/features/pneumatic_tube_system_in_prague.html]. In the 1990s Prague pneumatic post was despatching up to 10,000 documents a day! Unfortunately the European floods of 2002 put paid to the Czech pneumatic postal service, Telefonica decided the repairs needed to the tubes was too costly and in 2012 sold the system to Czech software entrepreneur Zsenêk Dražil, an enthusiast of old technologies. Dražil’s ultimate plans for the service are still unclear, but he has hinted at the tourism possibility of it being opened up to the public as a “national technical monument” [‘Radio Praha ❘ in English’, (Daniela Lazarová, Czech Radio, 11-Oct-2003 and Jan Richer, ‘New Owner Promises Bright Future for World’s Largest Pneumatic Post System’ Czech Radio, 08-Aug-2012)].
PostScript: A sample of anecdotal stories associated with pneumatic tube systems
Stories abound about the unauthorised and unorthodox uses of the pneumatic tube networks in different countries by postal workers. Its a trait of human nature that employees in the familiarity of their work environs are known to “push the envelope” and try to get away with things wherever they possibly can, and this sphere of work was no different. Staff of the Prague pneumatic tube system for instance (according to some of the stories told) were known to use it to send sausages and bread rolls to each other! Similarly in New York it was an open secret that post office workers on Manhattan used the system to receive their daily lunch orders from a well-known Bronx sandwich shop…the shop would dispatch the lunches via the tubes from the Bronx PO to the Manhattan PO! The pneumatic tubes were also sometimes utilised to play jokes on staff at another PO, eg, live mice sent through the tubes to get a predictable reaction from the startled female employees receiving the canisters at the other end; a live tortoise-shell cat returned in the same mail bag in which it had been sent, and so on.
Receiving point with collection trays
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✱ the world’s second underground railway after the limited line from Paddington to Farringdon opened in 1863
☯ an item sent by pneumatic post in France was known as a pneu
✾ a similar test was conducted earlier on the New York PTT system where the underground tube delivery easily eclipsed a motor vehicle delivery which had to contend with heavy Manhattan traffic
In December 1941 a Pennsylvanian dentist on holidays in New Mexico, was enjoying exploring the famous caves of Carlsbad Caverns. Dr Lytle S Adams was very impressed by the activity of about a million bats flying around in the dark in the caverns that were their home. He was still vacationing at Carlsbad on the evening of the 7th when news came through about the surprise Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbour. Adams, like every patriotic American was shocked and appalled at the attack, but unlike most every other private citizen, Adams decided, more or less immediately, to actually do something about it.
The small town dentist from Irwin, Pa. devised a plan of action…within one month he submitted a seemingly preposterous proposal to the White House – Adams proposed using bats as flying incendiaries to hit back at Japan in its own cities! An apparently hare-brained notion like this from a suburban dentist could normally be expected to receive short shrift from bureaucrats and military authorities, but Dr Adams had some special connections, he was a friend of the First Lady, Eleanor Roosevelt. This guaranteed Adams’ proposal would get a good official hearing from the Military, and eventually (through a recommendation from leading zoologist Donald Griffin) the approval of President Roosevelt.
The right bat for the operation
Adams reasoned that radar-guided “bat bombs” would wreak havoc when dropped on Japanese cities because the buildings and other structures were made largely of wood, bamboo and paper. The idea you would think, to most reasonable ears, would sound ‘batty’! Adams however can’t be accused of not doing his homework…he researched the subject of bats extensively, eventually selecting the Mexican or Brazilian Free-tailed Bat (Tadarida Brasiliensis), highly prevalent in the southern regions of the US, as the optimal candidate for the task.
Mexican F-tailed Bat-cave, Carlsbad
What made the Mexican bat an attractive choice to Adams and his team of field naturalists (and to the NDRC – National Defense Research Committee) was that it weighed only ⅓ of an ounce, but could carry three-times its weight (one ounce!) Other biological factors in favour of using bats as carriers was that they occurred in large numbers, their proclivity towards hibernation and dormancy meant that they didn’t require food or maintenance, and their capacity to fly in darkness and locate dark, secluded niches to hide in during daylight [‘Bat Bomb Video’, www.wizscience.com].
Destruction by weaponised bats – the theory
The US Military embraced Adams’ idea and developed a strategy to weaponise the bats: attaching micro-incendiary devices to thousands of captured bats…the Pentagon boffins devised canisters (each had compartments housing up to 1,000 hibernating bats) to transport the bats in. B-24 Bombers would release the canisters over Japanese industrial cities initially in the Osaka Bay area of Honshu at 1000 feet. The casings would break apart at high altitude, the now awake bats would scatter and roost in dark recesses of buildings all over the city. The bats, attached to the micro-bombs by surgical clips and some string, would bite through the string and fly off. The time-activated explosives would then cause countless fires to break out all over the targeted city [Anders Clark, ‘NAPALM BATS: the Bat Bomb!’, 3-Mar-2015, Disciplines of Flight, www.disciplesofflight.com].
B-27 Liberator flying over Carlsbad National Park
Bat bomb trial-and-error
The Military labelled the bat bombs Project X-Ray and soon got down to testing Adam’s secret weapon. The first bat test the Army conducted was in May 1943 in California. Several thousand bats collected from New Mexico were induced into hibernation and then dropped from a refrigerated aircraft using dummy bombs. Unfortunately things did not go to plan…many of the bats didn’t wake from their hibernation and merely crash-landed on California soil, while only some of them managed to fly away. The attrition rate for the Army’s test bats was accordingly high. Altogether over the Project’s lifespan around 6,000 bats were used in the Bat Bomb tests (about 3,500 of these were collected from the Carlsbad Caverns) [CV Glines, ‘The Bat Bombers’, Air Force, Oct 1990, 73(10); Clark, op.cit.]
1943: Army Bat Bomb test goes haywire!
The location got changed to an Army auxiliary airfield near Carlsbad (easier access to the seemingly inexhaustible supply of bats from the caverns). Eventually the Army loaded the bats with explosives to trial some live runs. Again the bats performed erratically as glide missile pilots but this time with unintended and negative results…an Army aircraft hangar caught fire, as did a car belonging to an Army general [Clark, op.cit.]. Disillusioned by the reverses, the Army hand-balled the Project on to the Navy and Marine corps.
The Marines and the Japanese Village
The Marine corps in particular took on the renamed “Project X-Ray” with some enthusiasm…after several encouraging tests the test site was moved to the Dugway Proving Grounds in Utah, where a mocked-up Japanese Village had been created in 1943✱. The Dugway tests went better than the earlier ones, according to the testers “a reasonable number of fires” were successfully ignited, and a NDRC observer present commented that “It was concluded that X-Ray is an effective weapon”.
Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah
Tests at the Dugway, Utah, site continued in 1944 with the Marine corps believing that the Bat Bomb Project could be deployed against Japan by mid-1945. The Navy hierarchy however was unhappy at the prospect of a delay of another twelve months-plus and canned the project altogether. The US subsequently focused on bringing the atomic bomb to a state of readiness, and the outcome of those efforts altered the course of both the war and of postwar history.
Dentist-inventor Adams was extremely disappointed when the Military pulled the plug on the project. Adams maintained that what happened with the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been avoided if the US had stuck with his bat-delivered bombings: (would have caused) “thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously … Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life” [‘Top Secret WWII Bat and Bird Bomber Program’, 6-Dec-2006, www.historynet.com].
PostScript: Project Pigeon, BF Skinner’s birds of war
Before the idea of bat-bombing Japan briefly captured the imagination of the US defence establishment, serious consideration had already been given to weaponising pigeons to be used in warfare! The notion was first mooted by influential, pioneering US behavioural psychologist Burrhus Frederic Skinner in 1939. Skinner believed that the humble feral street pigeon, Columba livia domestica, had the innate attributes (excellent vision and extraordinary manoeuvrability) to be trained to guide glide missiles. The behaviourist utilised his technique of operant conditioning to train the birds by rewarding them for pecking a moving image on a screen which accurately steered the missile they were piloting towards their intended target✫ (and unfortunately also towards their own destruction!)
BF Skinner’s pigeons of war
Skinner got some backing from business and the NDRC for Project Pigeon (as it was called), and he was able to demonstrate success with trained pigeons, however the government/military was never more than at best lukewarm on the Project…ultimately by 1944 the Military abandoned the Pigeon Missile because of concern that its continuation would divert crucial funds away from the “main game”, the construction of an atomic bomb. In 1948 the Navy revived the Project, now renamed Project Orcon but in 1953 it was dumped for good when the superiority of electronic guidance systems was established [Joseph Stromberg, ‘B.F. Skinner’s Pigeon-Guided Rocket’, The Smithsonian, 18-Aug-2011, www.smithsonianmag.com; ‘Project Pigeon’, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Pigeon].
Footnote: the US Military’s experiments on bats and pigeons were classified and conducted covertly under a wartime information blackout. They would not of course have been condoned by the American Humane Society (for the welfare of animals) had the organisation known of them.
▦ See also related blog JUNE 2017 on USA/Japan conflict in World War II: Project Fu-Go: Japan’s Pacific War Balloon Counter-Offensive
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✱ two mock-up enemy villages were constructed on this same site side-by-side, a Japanese one and a German one
✫ Skinner, also an inventor, devised a nose cone (attached to a explosives warhead) in which up to three pigeons could perch and pilot the missile’s trajectory
On the tranquil foreshore of the Parramatta River near Abbotsford Point, some five kilometres by ferry from Sydney’s Circular Quay, sits a quiet, out-of-the-way park named Quarantine Reserve. The significance of its name relates to a unique and interesting connection it has with “four-legged immigrants” to this country…for three score-plus years (ca.1917-80) it was the quarantine station for all of Sydney’s (and New South Wales’) incoming animals from overseas. The station was located on a bluff which gently slopes down to the river at the quaintly named Hen and Chicken Bay. Prior to the animal quarantine station coming to Abbotsford, incoming animals were quarantined at Bradley’s Head on the other side of the harbour – in 1916 the site became the location for the city’s Taronga Park Zoo (hence the move to Hen and Chicken Bay in 1917).
⤴ The cow sheds on the bay side⤴ What remains of the cattle stables today⤴ As they once appeared during the station’s heyday!
Today, the animals and their rustic ambience are long gone, as is the medical equipment, the various machinery, domestic utensils, etc, but a good representation of the original property’s holdings remain, albeit in diminished condition. As you stroll through the green reserve whose name commemorates the vital role it once played in safeguarding domestic health from animal contamination, several animal enclosures are jotted across the landscape. In the centre of the reserve are two adjoining cattle stables comprising 24 separate stalls each with troughs, the doors were removed at either ends of the buildings long ago and quite a few of the panels have been vandalised or pulled out altogether. On the day I visited, the stalls had colourful balloons and ribbons appended to them, it was hosting a children’s birthday party! Next to the stables and connecting with them is the site of the cattle yard itself, now a vacant, grassless square.
⤴ The QS piggery
Just across and down the hill from the cow stables is a small faded green building with a worse-for-wear tin roof, this once functioned as a piggery…the pig pens contained food troughs and runs to allow the unfortunate porcine creatures some (very limited) mobility of movement✲. To the east of the cattle stables on the boundary of the reserve are the horse stables (10 in number). Over the years of the facility’s operation prominent international racehorses worth thousands of pounds (and later dollars) were detained here during their periods of quarantine.
⤴ What’s left of the two remaining dog kennels after a large tree fell on them
The enclosures for humans’ most favourite domestic animals (cats and dogs) have fared less well over the passage of time. The station’s dog kennels, numbered 83 when they were rebuilt in the 1950s on the side closest to the Bay, but now only two kennels remain! Even less fortunate for feline enthusiasts, the cattery has disappeared altogether! The same for the sheep runs (not really sure why in the 20th century there would still have been a need to import sheep into NSW – unless perhaps they were unusual, specialist breeds?)
⤴ QS incinerator – manifestly not one designed by Walter Burly Griffin!
A few of the quarantine station’s auxiliary buildings have also survived – including apparently a “dog’s kitchen”, a second kitchen where vegetables were cut up for the pigs, a storage block (the feed store) and a maintenance workshop. Also surviving near the eastern edge of the reserve is a rather unprepossessing structure, a scarred, sombre looking incinerator. Carcasses and animal excreta were disposed of here, although some dead animals were buried on the site including possibly a giraffe (unsubstantiated, could be a legendary urban anecdote?). At the Spring Street entrance to the quarantine reserve is the former caretaker’s cottage.
⤴ On-site info display contains a picture of ‘Hexham’
The Hen and Chicken Bay site before the quarantine station
Prior to the 2.8 hectare site being acquired by the Commonwealth Government in 1916 for the quarantine station❧, the site was occupied by the Hexham Estate with its residential landmark, ‘Hexham’, an 1880s Italianate Victorian property (originally the house was called ‘Emmaville’ by the Bell family, and later ‘Blanchlands’ by the succeeding owner, surveyor John Loxton). Around 1900 the estate was acquired by Lewy Pattison, a director of the early pharmacy chain Soul Pattison & Co. In 1982 ‘Hexham’ (located in Checkley Street on the northern fringe of the Reserve) was demolished after a fire severely damaged the property.
‘Hexham‘ ⤵
Animal quarantine station: postwar to 1980
The quarantine station operated until World War Two when it was temporarily closed because of restrictions on animal imports during the war, and reused by the military for storage purposes. Its reopening in 1945 was vocally opposed by residents in the surrounding Abbotsford streets who had long suffered the undesirable effects of the station’s proximity to them – their senses regularly assailed by the smell, the noise and the pollution (from the incinerator burnings).
In the ensuing years there were ongoing objections from residents and Council – in 1971 the local Commonwealth MP raised a request from Drummoyne Municipal Council about the prospect of the Commonwealth transferring the land to the jurisdiction of NSW Government so that the site could be converted into parkland. Despite the unpopularity with locals, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that a decision was made to move the animals out to a remoter site in Sydney’s outer west, Wallgrove. In 1980 the Abbotsford station was closed for good, and the following year it was turned into a park to commemorate the quarantine station’s historic role.
(Image source: Pinterest)
PostScript: Abbotsford’s and Nestlé’s grand mansion
Not far from the Quarantine Reserve sits an extraordinarily impressive mansion looking out on Abbotsford Bay. Fortunately this house, unlike ‘Hexham’ is still extant! Abbotsford House (situated on the Chiswick side of the suburb) has a similar heritage to ‘Hexham’, built for doctor and politician Sir Arthur Renwick around 1877-1878◘. If you approach the Victorian mansion from the waterfront reserve it is an imposing and most impressive sight, set in extensive grounds which abuts Wire Mill Park…bayside access to the palatial mansion is cut off by a artificially constructed canal running horizontally, giving the property a water frontage. The facade itself is a wonderful symmetrical design, a tour de force of dazzling architectural features (two storey front verandahs, imposing towers with tented roofs, elliptical arches and plastered columns, elegant steps and spired cupolas). Two plaster lions guard the front entrance with strategically placed classical sculptures decorating the lawns✧. “House of Nestlé” 1937 (Photo: RAHS – Adastra Aerial Photo Collection)
⤴ Abbotsford House
After Renwick was forced to relinquish the property in 1903 because of financial debts, it was bought by one of the principals of the Grace Brothers department stores. Then, just after World War I ‘Abbotsford House’ was acquired by the Nestlé company (operating at this time as the Anglo-Swiss Condensed Milk Co). Nestlé built a factory on the estate site which manufactured chocolate and the drink ‘Milo’, whilst the mansion itself served as the administrative centre of the business. The factory closed in 1991 and the whole estate was duly incorporated into a new medium-density housing complex (Abbotsford Cove).
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✲ seldom ever used apparently because of fear of an outbreak of “Swine Fever”
❧ prior to the Abbotsford location, the Sydney Quarantine Station was apparently situated on the other side of Sydney Harbour at Bradley’s Head, and was required to move because what became known as Taronga Park Zoo was established on Bradley’s Head in 1916
◘ the name of Abbotsford House’s architect doesn’t appear to be recorded anywhere
✧ Abbotsford House which gave the suburb its name, derives from ‘Abbotsford’, classics author Sir Walter Scott’s home in Scotland
Abbotsford Quarantine Station (1917-1980)
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50 Spring Street, Abbotsford, New South Wales 2046
Latitude -33.8483 Longitude 151.1228
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Publications consulted:
Canada Bay Connections, (City of Canada Bay), www.canadabayconnections.com
‘Abbotsford Quarantine Station’, 04-DEC-2015, www.historyofsydney.com.au
‘Top 10 Facts About Abbotsford, Sydney’, (Canada Bay Club), www.canadabayclub.com.au
‘Abbotsford House’, (Office of Environment & Heritage), www.environment.nsw.gov.au
a href=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-3.jpg”> Source: Wiki Commons[
China’s most distinctive and enduring icon is its Great Wall – Chángchéng 長城 – or as it is sometimes described, Wan-liCh’ang-ch’eng 萬里長城 (10,000-mile Long Wall). The Great Wall is of course a global icon, one of the wonders of both the ancient and modern worlds, extending 21,196.18 km in length from west to east. Sections of the Wall are around 2,300 years old, dating from the Warring States era. The western end of the Wall by consensus is Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu Province (north-central region of China), but where is the eastern end-point?(Source: Lonely Planet)
ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/image-4.jpg”> Source: Wiki Commons[/cap
Three hundred or so kilometres due east of Beijing is Shanhaiguan (literally “mountain – sea – pass”) in Liaoning Province, one of the Great Wall’s principal passes (popularly acclaimed in China as “the first pass under Heaven”. The Great Wall at Shanhaiguan dates from the 16th century and is 7,138m long with a central fortification, Zhendong Tower, a 4.8k square wall and barbican. The region it defends traditionally has had a strategic importance to China. The section of the Wall here stands between the Yan Mountains and the Gulf of Bohai, its location being easy to hold and hard to mount an assault against made it ideal to repel any invasions from the northern nomadic tribes of Manchuria such as the Khitan, Jurchen and the Manchus. [‘Shanhai Pass’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
‘Old Dragon’s Head’
Five kilometres east of central Shanhaiguan is the what is often commonly thought of as the ultimate stretch of the Great Wall, known as Laolongtou. The wall at Laolongtou (‘Old Dragon’s Head‘✱), built in 1381 during the Ming Dynasty, has been a strategic defensive point for much of Chinese imperial history. To the north of Laolongtou Wall is Ninghai City, a (roughly) square fortress. It’s architectural features include Chenghai Pavilion and Jinglu Beacon Tower. The site also contains an archery field and a military-themed museum (uniforms, helmets, a sabre weighing 83 kilos). The far eastern section of the wall is known as Estuary Stone, on either side of the end section are long strips of sandy beach.
Hushan Great Wall
虎山长城; Hǔshānchángchéng
On appearances ‘Old Dragon’s Head’ seems an appropriate point to locate the end of the Wall. Here’s where the eastward march of the Wall finally hits the sea at the Bohai Gulf, enters the water and continues some 22.4 metres and then abruptly ends⊟. Laolongtou seems a poetically apt spot for the long, long wall to end, and it seems logical, right?❂ Few would have disagreed with this before 1989…in that year another section of the Great Wall was unearthed further east and further north of Laolongtou. The wall, which extends over a mountain (Hushan or Tiger Mountain) for about 1,200m, is just north of a Chinese border city, Dandong (bordering North Korea across the Yalu River). In 2009 the Chinese government, based on the research undertaken by CASS, recognised the Hushan wall as the eastern terminus of the Great Wall. [‘Hushan Great Wall’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
Hushan Wall, Dandong (Wikipedia Commons)
Hushan or Bakjak?
The Beijing recognition of the wall earned displeasure in the neighbouring ‘Democratic People’s Republic’. The North Korean authorities claim that the wall was originally a Korean one called Bakjak Fortress which the Chinese renamed Hushan to link it in as part of the historic Chinese Great Wall. Moreover North Korean academics assert that this is part of a broader Chinese agenda, one aimed at extending Chinese cultural hegemony. [‘Goguryeo controversies’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org]
PostScript: Goguryeo controversy
The North Korean perspective maintains that Beijing’s identification of the Hushan wall as Chinese is a continuation of its practice of undermining the historical sovereignty of Korea’s Goguryeo Kingdom (1st century BC to 7th century AD). The background to this volatile issue lies in Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’s (CASS) 2002 revision of the area’s history…CASS’s North East Project concluded that Goguryeo was not an independent state, the ‘proto-Korea’ that the Koreans affirm, it was historically merely a vassal of the ‘Middle Kingdom’. Both Koreas expressed outrage at this, feelings of nationalism were stirred up and Sino-Korean relations took a nosedive. Suspicions on both sides persist…the historic Goguryeo Kingdom encompassed an area comprising the bulk of the Korean peninsula and a portion of both Russian and Chinese Manchuria, so both Korea and China harbour fears that the other may at some point pursue irredentist claims on part of its territory. [‘How an Ancient Kingdom Explains Today’s China-Korea Relations’, (Taylor Washburn) The Atlantic, 15-Apr-2013), www.theatlantic.com].
Historic map of the twin cities Dandong/Sinuiji≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣≣✱ so-called because the end part (above the sea) is thought to resemble a dragon (long) resting its head (tou) on the ground
⊟ from Laolongtou Wall’s end it is about 305km back to Beijing
❂ logical because the wall enters the sea at Bohai and the vast structure can be physically observed to end, but the issue here is that the Great Wall of China is not some unbroken, perpetually contiguous, frontier entity, it is a series of walls (sections) which meander, end then start again, right across the frontier of China
The above photo shows the well-worn, slightly scruffy and tarnished facade of an old building in the historic industrial inner city district of Sydney. The sign on the shopfront says ‘Chinese Ginsengs and Herbs Co’. Google Maps tells me the address is 4-10 Goulburn Street, although the sign above the entrance indicates the address is “75-77 Ultimo Road Haymarket”. I’m going to go with what the building says rather than what my iPhone indicates…the key point is that this building is within wok-tossing distance of Hay and Dixon Streets, the epicentre of Sydney’s traditional Chinatown.
The awning above the Ginseng shop gives the real clue to the building’s history – in faded blue and red (the colours of the Republic of China better known today as Taiwan or Chinese Taipei), are the words The Chinese Nationalist Party of Australasia. The letters ‘KMT’ and the building’s date, 1921′, at the top of the facade further emphasises its political association with China.
The Haymarket building was purchased in 1921 with funds raised by Chinese-Australian supporters of the KMT or Kuomintang, a Chinese nationalist party headed by Dr Sun-Yat-sen that gained prominence after the overthrow of the last Qing emperor and the transition to republican rule. The Australasian KMT had earlier evolved out of a grass-roots organisation in Sydney called the Young China League, the impetus for the emergence of YCL/Australian KMT came largely from Sino-Australian merchants James Ah Chuey and William Yinson Lee.
KMT Sydney’s regional leadership
Ultimo Road was KMT’s Australasian headquarters, from this building the local Party liaised with the KMT Central party in China and coordinated the activities of other regional KMT branch offices elsewhere in Australia, New Zealand and the wider Pacific Islands. The Sydney Office supervised seven branches – NSW, Victoria, WA, Wellington and Auckland (NZ), Fiji and New Guinea. It also directly administered Brisbane, Adelaide and Darwin and had jurisdiction over Tahiti. Melbourne office having to defer to Sydney’s seniority and hegemony provoked KMT membership tensions between Australia’s two largest cities.
KMT and the Chinese diaspora in Australia
KMT’s Sydney branch performed several functions on behalf of the Party. One of these involved an educational role for the local émigré Chinese. The KMT association fostered modern political ideas, promoting pro-republican values and the virtues of parliamentary democracy as an antidote to the gains made by Chinese communists in courting popular support in the Chinese countryside.
Recruiting new KMT members from among the community in Sydney was part of the Australasian association’s growth strategy. To bind Chinese emigrants to the Party and its objectives, the Sydney office organised dances, dinners, social gatherings, held screenings of Chinese movies. Recreational activities were another means of incorporating the Chinese locals – gyms and sporting teams were established to encourage physical exercise.
At crunch periods in the 20th century during conflicts the KMT were embroiled in on mainland China (the National Defence War against Japan, the Nationalists/Communists Civil War), the offices in Sydney and Melbourne had an instrumental role on the ground in Australia. The two associations maintained solidarity with and mobilised support for the struggles of the Chinese Nationalists headed by Chiang Kai-shek…the local Sydney branch coordinated the collection of donations❉ that were remitted back to Nanking (the Nationalists’ Chinese capital) to finance the war effort (equip the KMT Army, buy fighter planes for the Air Force, etc).
KMT Club (pre-war)
Concurrently with the establishment of the KMT headquarters in Sydney, the Chinese Nationalists with money from Chinese benefactors resident in Melbourne (above ↥) commissioned famous Chicagoan architect Walter Burley Griffin to convert a brick warehouse at 109 Little Bourke Street into the city’s KMT association premises. Griffin’s design of a new facade for the building in 1921 was financed by Canton-born, Melbourne social reformer, Cheok Hong Cheong. Cheong had a long association with Griffin as a client and was a shareholder in the Griffins’ Greater Sydney Development Association.
KMT Club Melbourne – 1980s (Walter B Griffin design) ⬇️
Australasian Canton Club
The Australasian association role eventually extended to working for returning émigrés from Australasia and Oceania. This happened when the Australasian KMT Canton Club was set up in that southern Chinese city(office)◊…its purpose was to assist the émigrés who subsequently returned to China. This assistance took many forms such as advocacy in legal matters, providing board and lodging for members passing through Canton to and from Australia and NZ and advice on investments. The Canton office also produced the widely distributed official journal of the Australasian KMT.
Both 1920s KMT buildings, Sydney and Melbourne, are still standing (the Sydney one the recent beneficiary of a bright, fresh paint job – as can be seen below)…the two clubs continue to have social associations with the local Chinese-Australian community in their respective cities.
回÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷÷回
❉ this material support took on added significance and urgency for the KMT cause after imperial Japan invaded Manchuria in 1937
◊ the location was chosen mainly because of the pattern of past migration to Australia and New Zealand – most Chinese migrants had come from Canton (Guangzhou) or from the wider province of Guangdong
Sources:
Judith Brett & Mei-Fen Kuo, Unlocking the History of the Australasian Kuo-Min Tang 1911-2013, (2013)
John Fitzgerald, Big White Lie: Chinese Australians in White Australia (2012)
Kate Bagnall, ‘Picnics and Politics’, Inside Story, 24-Jan-2014, www.insidestory.org.au
‘Griffin’s Chinese Nationalist Party Building in Lt Bourke’ (Building & Architecture), www.walkingmelbourne.com
Cervantes‘ Don Quixote is without peer as the foremost work in Spanish literature…it is considered without question to be the most influential work in the entire Spanish language literary canon❉. The general consensus among authorities in the field is that it was the primary manifestation (first pub. Vol I 1605) of the novel as we understand the development of that emerging literary form.
DQ & Sancho Panza
The Spanish proudly extol Cervantes’ name in the same reverential tone as the English speaking world bestows on Shakespeare. When it came to adaptations of Don Quixote to the cinema screen however, Cervantes’ great novel has not experienced the same good fortune as screen productions of Shakespeare’s greatest plays have had. While the story of the ageing knight-errant’s folly-filled forays in the campo of La Mancha has been a popular source material for the theatre, opera and both the big and small screen, it has not proved a rewarding experience for some of the leading filmmakers! There have been a number of attempts to bring the book to the cinema that have ended either in disarray or as incomplete projects…the mildly suspicious among us might easily convince themselves that the subject of Don Quixote is jinxed!
Disney: the animated feature’s arrested development
One of the early US attempts to produce a film of Don Quixote was as a feature-length cartoon by Walt Disney. The Disney team laboured for six decades commencing in the 1930s to make an animated version of Don Quixote. Studio artist Ferdinand Horvath produced project sketches of the Spanish knight-errant for Disney as early as 1929. Preparatory work for a film project during WWII using concepts inspired by 17th century artistic titan Diego Velázquez was jettisoned after Disney had two commercial failures in a row with Pinocchio and Fantasia in 1940. The studio tried again, several times (1946, 1951, even as recent as the late 1990s). All of the projects were eventually aborted[1]. Don Quixote thus far has evaded all attempts at being ‘Disneyfied’✫.
Orson on the DQ set
Orson’s never-ending project: Less than awesome
Orson Welles’ efforts to make a film of Don Quixote was an incredibly drawn-out saga that failed to bear fruit. Financing (habitually a millstone around Welles’ cervix) was partly to blame but procrastination by the former “boy wonder” director was taken to a new level. Starting off with test footage as early as 1955, Welles was still intermittently working on the unfinished picture (which he described as his “own personal project”) when he died (1985). By which time Welles had 300,000 feet of shot film in the can! Eventually a version completed by a Spanish director saw the light of screen in the 1990s (described as a “Spanish restoration”). However according to James Clarke, the “print (was) impoverished…the film lacked clarity… (and) Welles’ commentary and dialogue was ineffectively dubbed into Spanish”[2].
The jinx again!
Dynamic Hollywood producer of the 1950s, Mike Todd, was riding high on the back of the blockbuster success of the star-studded Around the World in 80 Days. Todd chose “Don Quixote” as the follow-up project to ’80 Days’ based on the Jules Verne novel. Having cast his new, glamour wife Elizabeth Taylor to star in a lavish production of the Cervantes classic, the hard-headed Todd’s plans for “Don Quixote” perished in the airplane crash that took the producer’s life in 1958.
The doco on DQ the disaster movie!
Terry Gilliam, nearly 20 years worth of broken mirrors!
The award for the most ill-fated attempt to bring “Don Quixote” to the screen goes to Monty Python member and film director Terry Gilliam. Gilliam first conceptualised his project in 1991…pre-production got underway seven years later and production itself got rolling in 2000 in Navarre (Spain). Gilliam brought his own, very idiosyncratic take on the Man of La Mancha (very loosely based on the original story). He cast Johnny Depp as a 21st century time-traveller hurled back to engage with the perpetually confused 16th century “windmill-tilter”.
From the start obstacles and setbacks piled on top of each other – flash floods destroyed sets and equipment in the Spanish campo, as a result the filmmakers had problems securing insurance for the production; Jean Rochefort as Quixote took ill and had to leave the set and the movie altogether; it was discovered that one of the film sites was directly below a Spanish Air Force flight path; plus the production was hit with further financial problems – the net outcome was the cessation and cancellation of the production. Gilliam made several subsequent attempts to relaunch the movie, in all there were eight unsuccessful tilts at making “Don Quixote” over a period of 18-19 years with a succession of actors coming and going. In 2002 Gilliam, no doubt with cathartic intent, released a documentary Lost in La Mancha about the trials and tribulations of trying to realise the plagued ‘Quixote’ feature film[3].
Michael Palin was one of many actors lost in transit in the course of making Gilliam’s film!
The indefatigable American Python resurrected the project once more earlier this year with longtime collaborator Jonathan Pryce in the title role. Finally in June of this year Gilliam tweeted, rather sheepishly, that the filming was finally completed…The Man Who Killed Don Quixote is slated for release in 2018[4].
PostScript: ‘Don Quixote’, a mixed track record in the cinema
Notwithstanding the long trail of misfortunes and misadventures that has bedevilled the efforts of the above film-makers to make Don Quixote, it would be misleading to conclude that the subject has been universally cursed. A survey of Don Quixote’s cinematic history on the screen confirms that it has been far from unmakeable. First point to note is that there have been a considerable number of ‘DQ’ films churned out over the decades[5], many of which went through more or less without mishap, or at least with nothing like the obstacles and hurdles in the way of Gilliam and Welles and others.
From across the world of international cinema these productions include the 1957 Russian version filmed in the Crimea (Dir: Grigori Kozintsev); the 1972 Man of La Mancha (a musical/comedy with Peter O’Toole in the lead); a 2000 feature with John Lithgow as the chivalrous but hopelessly misguided hidalgo (country gentleman); Albert Serra’s modernised Spanish version, Honour of the Knights (2006); a 2015 version directed by James Franco’s USC students, Don Quixote: The Ingenuous Gentleman of La Mancha; and believe it or not, a 2007 Spanish/Italian computer animation comedy Donkey Xote (hee-haw!), a light-hearted retelling of the classic story from the perspective of his squire Sancho Panza’s Equus Africanus steed.
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❉ its literary influence goes far beyond the Hispanic world…extending to his English contemporary Shakespeare who is widely thought to have collaborated with John Fletcher on a play (now lost), Cardenio, believed to be based on an episode in the Cervantes novel
✫ Disney still haven’t entirely let it go…the phenomenal box office triumph of the Pirates of the Caribbean series has prompted Disney to engage ‘gun’ screenwriter Billy Ray to write something similar in tone for Don Quixote, ‘Disney Developing a Don Quixote Movie’, (J Kroll) Variety, 13-Oct-2016, www.variety.com
[1] James Clarke, ‘The troubled history of Don Quixote on film’, BFI: Film Forever, 26-Apr-2016, www.bfi.org.uk
[2] ibid. ; ”Don Quixote (unfinished film), Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org
[3] ‘The Man Who Killed Don Quixote’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘My latest is a disaster movie’, The Guardian, 04-Feb-2001, www.theguardian.com
[4] “Sorry for the long silence…” (@TerryGilliam, tweeted 04-Jun-2017)
[5] in fact the tale of the muddled hidalgo with a penchant for charging at windmills has been a movie subject just about from the first dawn of the moving picture – as early as 1903 a silent film of Don Quixote was made by the French, ‘Don Quixote de La Mancha: DQ and Film’, (Barbara Robinson), USC Libraries (Research Guides), www.libguides.usc.edu
Wm Murdoch
The London pneumatic tube mail train at its formative stage!
(Photo: Science Photo Library)
Capsule [National Postal Museum (Smithsonian)
Parisian Poste Pneumatique network (Musée de La Poste)
Prague PTT engine room
Receiving point with collection trays
Carlsbad Caverns, NM.
Mexican F-tailed Bat-cave, Carlsbad
B-27 Liberator flying over Carlsbad National Park
1943: Army Bat Bomb test goes haywire!
Dugway Proving Grounds, Utah
Dentist-inventor Adams was extremely disappointed when the Military pulled the plug on the project. Adams maintained that what happened with the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki could have been avoided if the US had stuck with his bat-delivered bombings: (would have caused) “thousands of fires breaking out simultaneously … Japan could have been devastated, yet with small loss of life” [‘Top Secret WWII Bat and Bird Bomber Program’, 6-Dec-2006, www.historynet.com].BF Skinner’s pigeons of war
⤴ Abbotsford, off Hen & Chicken Bay
⤴ What’s left of the two remaining dog kennels after a large tree fell on them
In the ensuing years there were ongoing objections from residents and Council – in 1971 the local Commonwealth MP raised a request from Drummoyne Municipal Council about the prospect of the Commonwealth transferring the land to the jurisdiction of NSW Government so that the site could be converted into parkland. Despite the unpopularity with locals, it wasn’t until the late 1970s that a decision was made to move the animals out to a remoter site in Sydney’s outer west, Wallgrove. In 1980 the Abbotsford station was closed for good, and the following year it was turned into a park to commemorate the quarantine station’s historic role.
“House of Nestlé” 1937 (Photo: RAHS – Adastra Aerial Photo Collection)
China’s most distinctive and enduring icon is its Great Wall – Chángchéng 長城 – or as it is sometimes described, Wan-li Ch’ang-ch’eng 萬里長城 (10,000-mile Long Wall). The Great Wall is of course a global icon, one of the wonders of both the ancient and modern worlds, extending 21,196.18 km in length from west to east. Sections of the Wall are around 2,300 years old, dating from the Warring States era. The western end of the Wall by consensus is Jiayuguan Pass in Gansu Province (north-central region of China), but where is the eastern end-point?
(Source: Lonely Planet)
Hushan Great Wall
KMT bldg in Sydney
KMT Club (pre-war)
Both 1920s KMT buildings, Sydney and Melbourne, are still standing (the Sydney one the recent beneficiary of a bright, fresh paint job – as can be seen below)…the two clubs continue to have social associations with the local Chinese-Australian community in their respective cities.
DQ & Sancho Panza
Orson on the DQ set
The doco on DQ the disaster movie!
Michael Palin was one of many actors lost in transit in the course of making Gilliam’s film!
___________________________________________________________________
❉ its literary influence goes far beyond the Hispanic world…extending to his English contemporary Shakespeare who is widely thought to have collaborated with John Fletcher on a play (now lost), Cardenio, believed to be based on an episode in the Cervantes novel
✫ Disney still haven’t entirely let it go…the phenomenal box office triumph of the Pirates of the Caribbean series has prompted Disney to engage ‘gun’ screenwriter Billy Ray to write something similar in tone for Don Quixote, ‘Disney Developing a Don Quixote Movie’, (J Kroll) Variety, 13-Oct-2016, www.variety.com