Jack Cox - Dodge Rose

The principal part of the argument surrounding the different forms of land tenure and how and why they changed in colonial Australia, including Attorney-General v Brown and its implications for landed property rights, has been drawn, at times textually, from A.R. Buck, The Making of Australian Property Law (Federation Press, 2007). The same is true of Geoff Lindsay, ‘By Your Deeds Be Known: Episodes in Australian Legal History’, Francis Forbes Society for Australian Legal History: Australian Legal History Essay Competition, 2009, for the argument surrounding John Batman. The following memoirs have been drawn on in the second half: Lydia Gill, My Town: Sydney in the 1930s (State Library of NSW, 1993), and Sheila Hall, Y eumburra and the Hall Family: A Story of the Hall Family, Founders of a Bank, A Newspaper and a Fine Merino Stud (Bushell Press, 1979); as have the interviews appearing in Jacqueline Kent, In the Half Light: Life As a Child in Australia 1900–1970 (Angus and Robertson, 1988), and Wendy Lowenstein, Weevils in the Flour: An Oral Record of the 1930s Depression in Australia (Scribe, 1978).

The photograph of the boardroom at 48 Martin Place is reproduced courtesy of the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. The frontispiece and the photograph superimposed on that of the boardroom have been provided by the Health and Safety Laboratory and are © Crown Copyright. The photograph of the bathroom appeared in the May 1927 issue of Australian Home Beautiful and was copied from Peter Timms’ Private Lives: Australians at Home Since Federation (Miegunyah Press, 2008).

My thanks to Kate Lilley, Bruce Gardiner, Vicki Laing, Gloria Carlos at the Yass and District Historical Society Museum, Jen Reed, Matt Hare, Jeremy M. Davies, Paul Filev, Aaron Kerner, Jeff Higgins, Mikhail Iliatov, John O’Brien, and Nathaniel Davis, as well as the team at Text. I would also like to thank Stephen Groenewegen and Graham Shirley at the National Film and Sound Archive, Phil Ward at the City of Sydney Library, Janice van de Velde at the State Library of Victoria, Aviva Wolff at the Sydney Jewish Museum, and staff members at the Caroline Simpson Library and the Kings Cross branch of the City of Sydney Library.

I am grateful for the award of a Marten Bequest Travelling Scholarship in 2010.

I have never met or heard a description of Perry Quinton. The names of the residents of Kingsclere in 1928 are like-wise all that is reflected of them in this book. An earlier version was submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy at the University of Sydney in 2011, for which it received government funding; I would like to express my gratitude to the other members of the English department who saw it through.