Thea Astley - Inventing Her Own Weather by Karen Lamb

Author:Karen Lamb [Lamb, Karen]
Language: ara
Format: epub
Publisher: UQP
Published: 2015-04-22T04:00:00+00:00

PART 3

NORTH OF NOSTALGIA

11

The oldest senior tutor in the Commonwealth

It is now abundantly clear to me, the oldest senior tutor in the Commonwealth if not in living memory, that the school has neither the wish to make me a lecturer nor the slightest intention of doing so.

Thea Astley to the Head of School, Macquarie University, 19761

Astley’s time as a senior tutor at Macquarie University would prove to be one of the most personally satisfying and productive periods in her life. Under its benevolent influence she produced five books and won a third Miles Franklin Award. Sydney’s third metropolitan university had ambitions for a new, more democratic age in education. Even the name was telling, after Governor Lachlan Macquarie, a Scot known for his humanitarianism and keen interest in education. A university proud of its Australian heritage would have impressed Astley; the university motto ‘And gladly teche’, from the General Prologue to The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, even more so.

In 1967 Macquarie University consisted of a set of ideals, sketches and building works. Astley negotiated a trip to the MLC building in North Sydney – Macquarie’s temporary campus – where the situation was refreshingly ad hoc. There couldn’t have been a better way for Astley to start this new phase of teaching, for this was what it was to her. No personal challenge had changed her deep instinct for the profession. The staffroom was cosy, with only five or six in the fledgling Department of Literature and Linguistics, most of whom were Oxbridge-educated academics. Despite this, the inaugural professor Herbert Piper was utterly committed to Australian literature – a focus still reasonably foreign to Australian universities in the late 1960s. Piper, a graduate of Adelaide and Oxford, was a specialist in the Romantic period – and originally had the kind of British-imported vision of university life one might expect from such a background and interest. Yet as head of the English department at the University of New England, he had invited Australian writers such as novelist Frank Hardy and the poet Kenneth Slessor to visit. By the time of his 1966 appointment to Macquarie, he was more than ready to embrace new areas of interest in English studies such as American and Australian literature.

The department that Astley joined differed significantly from those of other Australian universities, both in terms of its members’ intellectual and creative interests and their attitudes to students. From the start, management planned for students to have mentoring support from staff. In time attempts to formalise this within the teaching structure broke down, but the effect of the original intention remained in the teaching culture.2

The new Macquarie students were often women with family responsibilities, free to study for the first time. Astley at forty-two could identify with them. She might invite a busy young mother to meet her for a coffee if that was more convenient than a university office interview. In this setting, and mindful of the problems many women faced in returning to study while still carrying out domestic duties, she might unveil her ‘three washing basket’ philosophy.

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